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One cab for all the guitars?

#41
When I started jamming with my current band the guitarist was using a Line 6 Floor Pod straight into the powered mixer and PA in our practice space, and I was new enough as a bassist that I didn't really have any gear preferences of my own. This led me to think up a system where we both used modelers, into separate sides of a stereo power amp, all housed in one rack case...either with a pair of identical full-range cabs or actual dedicated guitar and bass cabs.

Every configuration I came up with eventually struck me as problematic...not least because if things soured in bandland, we'd have this big-ass rack to separate again. And it wouldn't be much (if any) less to carry unless we took the plunge on an in-ear system, which was (and still is) fiscally out of the question.

Then the guitarist showed up one day with an old Marshall 2 x 12 combo and it was so perfect for what he was doing, sound-wise, that the whole plan no longer seemed worth even thinking about for us. He sounded so much better through that amp that carrying a few extra things if and when we ever gig seemed well worth the trouble.

Then he showed up with a newer solid-state Marshall head and drug out his old 4 x 12 and it not only sounded a little worse, it's now a bigger pain in the ass to move around. I'm trying to coax him to pony up for some repairs to the combo, but I am not getting a lot of traction. My focus is now on trying to appreciate that I have guys to play music with within easy driving distance, and let him work out his own amplification.

What is the moral of this story? Lower your standards? Sometimes I lose my own thread, sure.
 
#42
Yeah, 2 guitars and a bass in the same speaker?
That's a PA.
You could try amp simulators into a small PA. Better option is SMALL combos for the guitars, mic'ed into the PA, bass direct. Definitely doable, technically. Good luck convincing everybody to even try it.

I'm not bitter...
 
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#43
LowActionHero said:
Yeah, 2 guitars and a bass in the same speaker?
That's a PA.
You could try amp simulators into a small PA. Better option is SMALL combos for the guitars, mic'ed into the PA, bass direct. Definitely doable, technically.
Click to expand...
This...

It's doesn't need to be that complicated, and folks have been going this route now for years. It is everything going through a single speaker, it's just not a guitar cab. With the amp sims, the guitars can tweak their own sound without having to deal with the qualities of going into some crazy speaker cabinet. The amp sim gets the cab sound for you. Otherwise, the cab is going to be one big compromise as you're going to deal with the way each speaker works with the cabinet. I'm not going to delve too much in the engineering as this isn't the amps forum. But, it may not sound as good as you like, it may not be as compact as you like, and not as simple as you like. At this point in time and tech, going through an amp sim into the PA is a legitimate way to downsize and keep things simple.
 
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#44
jive1 said:
This...

It's doesn't need to be that complicated, and folks have been going this route now for years. It is everything going through a single speaker, it's just not a guitar cab. With the amp sims, the guitars can tweak their own sound without having to deal with the qualities of going into some crazy speaker cabinet. The amp sim gets the cab sound for you. Otherwise, the cab is going to be one big compromise as you're going to deal with the way each speaker works with the cabinet. I'm not going to delve too much in the engineering as this isn't the amps forum. But, it may not sound as good as you like, it may not be as compact as you like, and not as simple as you like. At this point in time and tech, going through an amp sim into the PA is a legitimate way to downsize and keep things simple.
Click to expand...

We're already using amp sims to a certain extent. The heart of our setup is a Line6 Helix Rack and a Laney IronHeart Studio, both in one rack box. The Helix goes into the return of a guitar combo because it has no power amp of its own (thinking of getting one of those small Mooer power amp pedals so we can just use a cab instead of a combo), and the Ironheart goes into a speaker cab. Then there's the bass rig... I use the Eden WTDI pedal, and feed that to the return of an Ashway combo.

So all of our amps / preamps also have DI. But at the gig we had last week, the mixing console only had an overall phantom power button, not per channel, and the Helix manual says that you can't connect it to something that has phantom power (and I'm assuming it's not goof for the other equipment either), so we ended up having to mic everything (since we needed it to be on for the vocals).

Getting our own PA system could be an option, since there's some relatively cheap options available, but it's still a lot more gear that we'd have to bring, so maybe some small combos is the way to go, like some have suggested... Though I do like the flexibility that Helix offers, being able to use the same sounds in both the studio and on gigs... But I guess that's just life, things are either simple or flexible :)
 
#45
Walter Woods 4-channel bass head (1980s?)

WALTER4ch.jpg


Old two-channel guitar amps were designed so that more than one player could share the amp. On some you will see jacks marked microphone or even accordion! In the late 1980s Peavey sold a solid state guitar combo that had four independent channels (can't recall the model name).
 
#46
brianrost said:
Walter Woods 4-channel bass head (1980s?)

View attachment 2806311

Old two-channel guitar amps were designed so that more than one player could share the amp. On some you will see jacks marked microphone or even accordion! In the late 1980s Peavey sold a solid state guitar combo that had four independent channels (can't recall the model name).
Click to expand...

In a full range gig, all the instruments and vocals go into a single PA system. So one system is sending the full band and vocals to the audience, similar to a single cab. Carvin made the AG series for guitar, bass and vocals into a single PA-like powered speaker. Works great for acoustic gigs as it has 3 or 4 channels. Problem is you need around 200-300 watts on bass to be heard above a loud rock drummer. Unless your drummer is using electric drums, the bass needs that kind of power over acoustic drums. Acoustic drums sets the needed amp power for other instruments. Electric guitars can do fine with 15-50 watts. Keyboards seem to work well with 100-200 watt amps. Hence the advantage of guitar and bass amp sims into a mixer and out to a full range PA. Then your limit is how big and powerful is your PA/monitor system. Tailor your PA to fit the gig, and keep the amp sims the same.
 
#47
I went ahead and bought an active PA speaker with two inputs... haven't tested it against drums, but with 1000W and 132dB peak, I think it should be loud enough.
If it works well in rehearsal, I'll probably get a second one, so we can have up to 4 instruments into those speakers. Will probably keep using a separate cab for bass. This setup is for rehearsals and small gigs... for bigger gigs (if we get those), we can DI the guitar amps to the venue's PA system.
 

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