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New rig planning, Cab discussion

J

JimWasHere

Sep 8, 2010
715
5
Portland, OR
#1
Hello folks, I'm Jim. I'm usually just a lurker, but this time around I'm curious to hear what some of you have to offer.

The story goes something like this... A couple years ago I agreed to store some gear for a coworker, who didn't know what he had, and never came back for it. So I have a pile of mesa guitar stuff, studio preamp, quad preamp, switcher, and a Simul-Stereo 295.

This power amp is a crazy black box of tone. Right now, sitting behind me is my bass, plugged directly into the line in of the power amp, and then into a random 4x12 guitar cab, and it's the smoothest, cleanest, and warmest tone I have ever achieved. So a couple days ago I roll on down to the closest GC and audition that amp with an avalon vt-737sp and an ampeg 4x10 cab. All the good things I just said, they got better.

Now on to my questions. First, from anyone who has experience with that channel strip, how delicate is it? Is a shock rack going to be enough to keep it alive in gigging life?

And second, I'd like to hear some ideas on what cabs to audition with it when I go back to pick up the preamp in a few months. Of course there's a few obvious choices (810e Powerhouse 2x12). I'm trying to preserve that super warm tone while still keeping a tight clean low end, but for the sake of versatility I need to be able to dial in a decent amount of attack for an aggressive rock tone, and I'd like to be able to do that at a reasonable volume.
 
#3
JimWasHere said:
Forum related question... Is the wait for a mod to approve the post from not having upgraded to supporting member yet? The wait caused this to pop up on page 4. :crying: Poor me.
Click to expand...

No, supporting membership is only required to sell stuff in the classified section. It's some wierd computer glitch/phone glitch.

I don't have any experience with your channel strip or whatever it is and couldn't tell you anything about ruggedness/physical durability. As far as cabs go, try the stuff out with as many different things as you can get your hands on. Stuff will all have a different tone/performance level but most are different takes on the same old stuff. If your stuff is "all that", look into speakers that are "all that". You won't find many in the big manufacturers product lines, most are small company stuff or DIY/custom build designs.
 
#4
Thanks Will. I've been very seriously pondering the custom/diy route for quite awhile. I'd like to narrow things down just a bit at this point... Cab suggestions that do not use different range drivers?

In order to feel like an ok person while putting my foot down about getting my cab miked, I like to be able to do it with one mic. Asking some random engineer at some random gig to take a pre-di as well as 2 cabinet mics is going a bit far for me. :p

That being said also, my preference will be to run a pre-di for the low fundamentals (anything under 100ish) and a mic'd cab for pretty much everything else.
 
#5
Well, I suppose I should narrow my question a bit.

Item number A, Smaller is better. As long as I can compete with a drumset, I already have almost too much stage volume. Also, carrying small things is better than carrying large things.

Item number B, I want to be able to mic the cab with a single mic (read, no three way cabs), and I do not need true full range sound from the cab, as it's always going to be blended with a DI for the sub 100hz type stuff.

And yes, I've put some thought into diy cabs, and in fact am going to pick up a 4x10 parts cab next week :p
 
#6
You certainly can mic a 3way cab with one mic, a little homework is all it takes.:D

You place it slightly back, doesn't take much, maybe 4 fingers, centered where the 3 driver edges meet. Then angle it slightly to bias the sound towards one or the other until the balance you want is reached.


Mostly bumping the thread for more suggestions.
 
#7
will33 said:
You place it slightly back, doesn't take much, maybe 4 fingers, centered where the 3 driver edges meet. Then angle it slightly to bias the sound towards one or the other until the balance you want is reached.
Click to expand...

I've done that for other people's cabs at work before, they were happy with it. I wasn't, but hey, if they're happy, and the audience is happy... But that's when I've found myself battling more bleed than I want to as well, especially with something sensitive.

I also prefer to use a di/cab blend though, get the flavor of one and the cleanliness of the other. Hence, the full range not required part.
 
#8
JimWasHere said:
I've done that for other people's cabs at work before, they were happy with it. I wasn't, but hey, if they're happy, and the audience is happy... But that's when I've found myself battling more bleed than I want to as well, especially with something sensitive.

I also prefer to use a di/cab blend though, get the flavor of one and the cleanliness of the other. Hence, the full range not required part.
Click to expand...

You mus' be one dem der fellers who knows what dey doin', we don' see yer kin' ' roun' here much.

With a few notable exceptions of course....:D
 
#9
Was rather funny going into GC to audition that preamp, and the proaudio guy was really worried that something might blow up mixing the two worlds together. I showed up with all the right cables, even made up an xlr to 1/4 t/s to make it all work, and that was about the time the poor guy went back to his behind the counter work :p

My day job is lighting at a small theater, and I pick up extra work there as a sound tech, get to work with some killer engineers, and some killer musicians. I love my job.
 
#10
With a rig like that, I really don't think there's a single live speaker that could really capture it all and do it justice where you could just mic a single speaker and DI the true bass. A 3way might not be needed bit I think a 2-way (woofer + 6" paper cone midrange) would be. Raise the frequency on your DI content some and you might be able to find a single, highend (ultra expensive) single driver that might do it justice.
 
#15
JimWasHere said:
and if I'm pushing hard enough to start waking up the cab, I'm probably already too loud. Ok, the whole post di thing just went on the test list.
Click to expand...

This is true, but a lot of it depends on the individual player. Some guys view their amplification as simply a way of making the tone they already have happening louder. Others view the amp AND the speakers as a tone shaper/extension of their sound. Maybe not breakup but the individual speakers tone profile. I'm sure you know, no speaker is an exact reproduction of what it's being fed, all impart some color to the sound, some more than others.

The classic Ampeg SVT rig is a good example of this. Those pre's are relatively neutral, if you took a line from there, it wouldn't sound nearly as much like an SVT as it should. A lot of the color comes from the power amp stage. The speaker level DI will capture this but the speakers themselves are left out of the equation. Those sealed cabs have a gentle roll off slope in the low end being -3db at 58hz. Depending on the year model, they'll start rolling off the top end between 3-5khz. That's a far different sound than what's coming out of the amp.

A PA grade poweramp is a "garbage in/garbage out" device that shouldn't alter the sound, just make it louder. There, coming out of the pre is the whole tone. The speakers are still out of the equation but, if the player is one who does not want the speaker to impart a lot of color on the sound, it's a non-issue.

A lot depends on the sound engineer as well. Many want a dry bass signal they can tweak for FOH without having to undo all the player has done. Players who depend in pedal boards and speakers to get they're tone, usually don't get along with these guys too well.;)
 
#16
will33 said:
A lot depends on the sound engineer as well. Many want a dry bass signal they can tweak for FOH without having to undo all the player has done. Players who depend in pedal boards and speakers to get they're tone, usually don't get along with these guys too well.;)
Click to expand...

It's funny how this seems to work, at least IME. I'm not making a living at either playing my bass or as a foh engineer, but I do have a pretty healthy perspective from both sides of the fence. The one thing I've only seen in a few *very* pro level rigs is a sense of the rig being designed from the ground up with every level of performance in mind, and that includes things like whether or not the tone from the speaker cab is going to foh, or whether the di/mic blend is really being fed through the monitors. If the entire rig is put together with things like that in mind, the engineer can see it (unless they're... well, blind), and it makes it extremely simple for them.

The thought has occurred to me to try out a 210av type cab, and the places where it rolls off, under 60-ish and over 3k-ish, those would be the parts of the tone that I want to fill in with an active, pre effects di anyway. Driving tubes hard is something I would like to be a part of the tone, where speaker breakup isn't necessarily. And if I did go the route of speaker breakup at any point, I would still want to do it with a small enough cab that my stage volume wasn't enough to kill a small elephant.
 
#17
Also, regarding speaker breakup on a 2-way or 3-way cab. It's rather unpredictable as you design the cab where each of the drivers will break up. (no experience with fEARful) My concern with something like the fearful cabs would be having the midrange driver breakup way after the lowrange driver. Or... This isn't a problem with things like an 810e, because all of the drivers are relatively identical.

The problem with it in an 810e is the volume level required. I've literally seen an 810 cab with mic out on the loading dock, because it made the stage volume so unmanagable.
 
#18
The fEARful isn't designed for any kind of speaker breakup. It should be viewed more as an incredibly loud monitor. Clean, widely dispersed reproduction what it's fed with the actual speakers not imparting much flavor.

More stuff to carry but a fun tone is to use a biamp set up with a clean SS amp feeding lows to a good woofer and actual guitar amp and speaker carrying mids and highs for a bass rig. Amp power, spl and number of speakers can be scaled up and down to suit volume needs. In my situation, it wouldn't make sense for me to scale something like that up to big stage/venue volume levels. Playing around at home with one bass cab and a little 5 watt Epiphone Valve Jr. is a whole lot of fun though.

Makes clean bass and grindy mid and upper harmonics.
 
#19
Yeah, the fEARful was a terrible example :p

Here's a new question... I've heard several times, and not just on these forums, that people have had a farting problem when taking the 210av under 45-ish at volume. Can anyone that's owned it expand on that?

Then the big question. The 210av is supposed to just be a 1/4 (1 compartment) of an 810e? If that's the case, or if they're at least using the same drivers and the same internal volume, why the difference in odor (farting)? I ask because I'm about to possess an extra 4 legend bp102s, and a sheet of plywood.

And now, to go dig that crossover out of the closet and play.:bassist:
 
#20
The 210A/V is supposed to sort of mimick a tiny 810 but it's not an exact 1/4 of one. It's not designed for the deep lows and yeah, farting would be an issue down there. The speakers are also different but I don't know by exactly how much. A pair of SVT replacements would make it a 16ohm cab for one thing and it's not.

Editing your thread title to something more specific/technical might get some more bites from some of the others in the know around here. Now it's pretty vague, or sounds somewhat like another noob wondering what 410 or practice combo to get. Technical discussions usually get more play than this.
 

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