Overdrive: How High in Hertz do you go?

As high as you need to to have the top-end you want for your particular OD/DIST tone - no more, no less ; } ...There's a gazillion tonal distributions of OD/DIST and some of us actually use more than one, so don't be afraid to experiment to find a few that are useful for you. Generally speaking, distortion shifts the frequency balance upward, so sometimes it takes some EQing to rebalance the booty portion of the derived signal.

Finally: Ears. Use them, that's what music is all about.

 

Tell that to Evelyn Glennie!

 

Correction:

Ears. Use them, that's what music used to be about.

Still, I bet she "hears" better than many who are playing today ; }

 

I like grind and distortion - I have many cabs, none with tweeters - they all roll off in the 4-5kHz range, similar to a guitar speaker which seems to work very well for the dirt. I would say you want decent response up to at least around 3KHz, but I wouldn't want anything beyond 5Khz.

 

What JGR said.

My #1 cab has no tweeter, and that's the reason I use it: it sounds much smoother with the aggressive grind I always dial in.

 

P.S. My #1 cab is the Berg NV610. It's spec'd to 4.5kHz, but with enough treble boosted (active bass, fresh roundwounds) it'll give up to 6kHz at least.

Even with the tweeterless cab I dial in bright distorted tones, ranging from live John Entwistle to Justin Chancellor. Again, without the tweeter the gritty highs sound much smoother. With my tweetered cabs I have to roll the tweeters way back, and by the time I reduce the buzzy bees effect to a manageable level I wind up losing too much info in the 3kHz to 5kHz range.

 

A lot of my time is spent with a two-way cab that has a dedicated 6" midrange cone that goes high and unlike larger cones has great off-axis response at the higher frequencies. Which means the frequency balance changes less in diffeent listening positions, that icepick-in-ear doesn't happen in one spot while its muffled when you are way off to the side.

It's glorious to hear an ultradriven cascading sound that's meant to eat spectrum, through this particular setup. It's enough to make guitarists AND bassists jealous simultaneously... Play the same through 10" drivers with the same EQ treatment and it practically sounds like a pillow was put over something.

Conversely, when a sludgey lowermids DIST is called for, I just roll off some treble/uppermids.

* * *

But I also play though a three-way cab of the same incarnation. Unlike most bass cabs the tweeter is well-integrated with the midrange source and padded back sufficiently so that its output blends well. Distortion/OD through it sound more like you would expect through a good non-hyped PA stack, or studio monitors or good home system. Which ultimately may be where your distortion is heard though anyway ; }

 

I was just going to say, "Doesn't anybody run wide-open?" I'm a bedroom fan, although I don't use distortion with others.