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Poping noise through amp when hitting hard lows

#22
Violator1069 said:
Not all settings....if I play lightly I dont get the pop...if I hammer down I do...its not the string hitting the pup so i either play to "heavy handed" with the new tuning or need better amp/cab to handle the lower notes
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If it's not a string hitting a pickup I too think it's the speaker or a safety relay of some kind, maybe both, be careful it's probably doing damage every time it pops and/or the protection circuit gets activated.
 
#25
Seriously though, I had a cab doing the same thing with the popping noise. Almost like a clicking noise. For whatever reason it went away. I dismissed it to getting broke in. That may or may not be accurate but it doesn’t happen anymore.
 
#28
Violator1069 said:
Not all settings....if I play lightly I dont get the pop...if I hammer down I do...its not the string hitting the pup so i either play to "heavy handed" with the new tuning or need better amp/cab to handle the lower notes
Click to expand...

One of my Markbass rigs will do that if I run too many lows and pluck with a heavy hand. It's the voice coil hitting the backplate. If it does it too much your speaker could lose its springiness/resistence. The solution is to not run so low and lighten your touch. Or, a speaker that is rated higher with longer excursion.

That's my take on it.
 
#29
Unless you have bad GAS and are keen to go shopping for amps it does sound as if some experimentation is in order. I think I'd try rolling the bass right off on the amp, yes all the way, and playing with some welly. If the noise is still there I'd think it's most likely the instrument, and if gone, well seems as if you're hitting the amp too hard. From there, if I could borrow an HPF to experiment it would be perfect, failing that aa graphi equaliser with narrow bands I'd try cutting out completely below say 60hz, which would simulate the HPF. If that does the job sounds like an HPF is going to be a good move, even if you still want a new amp too.
 
#30
“The sound cuts out.” I’d suggest the sound your after can’t come out of a 150-watt combo. What ever is causing the pop is causing the amp to clip, Which isn’t good and you may start hearing more distortion in your sound, which is kind of what you’re after with that setup.
 
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#34
You're exceeding your available headroom at some point in your signal chain. Choose your point:

-At the pickups (by hitting the poles)
-At the preamp (by clipping the preamp)
-At the power amp (by exceeding your available voltage and clipping the power stage)
-At the speaker cabinet (by exceeding your excursion or having your voice coil slam into the backplate.
 
#35
Play the bass exactly how you were when it was happening but turn the amp volume down a ways. If it still does it, it's your technique and the strings are hitting the pickups. If it doesn't do it, it's the voice coil of the speaker bottoming out.
 
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#38
Pulverizor said:
Q: If the string does hit the pickup and is maybe momentarily stuck, would that create a 'square' wave signal into the amp damaging the speaker?
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No,

if any then there was generated transient noise that harms the loudspeaker. Its a frquency content which is generated by the signal envelope shape. For example a sine wave of steady frequency but variable amplitude does (naturally) alo generate transient noise.
Transient mose is kind of a frequency spectrum generated by variable amplitude of a signal rather then its harmonics
 
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#39
Mingo Sanders said:
You beat me to it.

Here's a video of perfectly safe square waves (and sine waves):
Click to expand...

Very nice vintage Hameg oscilloscope. The HM203-7 was a very top seller produced the Hameg Company

The noticable dynamic level of the speach genrates an additional frequency content which (in theoretical considertion) covers a broadband bandwidth form DC to infinite. In real practice the transient noise shows a peaking comparable to a Gaussian waveform shape. For a bass guitar the "peaking" of transient noise is (almost always) of a lower frequency numbers than for a 6-string or for a violine.
Naturally the peaking of the transient noise envelope is directly dependent on the tuning of the instrument.


A HPF helps to protect any device from subharmonic transient noise!

Btw I feel the sine vers square considerations meaningless and boring.
I think there is way more of interest to analyse the speach trace!

Regarding Shannon theorem of entropy there is most of information stored in the midband that covers about 200Hz..2kHz anyway.
At the top range of the audible spectrum its even very hard (if not impossible) to distinguish minor chords vers major chords.
 
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#40
Thanks for all the responces guys and gals.....my amp is actually a carvin pro bass 150 head mounted in a 15" carvin box but seperatable for the speaker box if I wanted to.... I lowered my pick ups on the low side about 3/4 screw turn on both the neck and bridge pups....raised my action from 3.5mm to 4.5mm.....tuned it down to drop b......changed the settings on my eq and added a ampeg bsr410 cab to go along with the 15".....havent had any more popping sounds yet....lightened up my picking style as well......I am hearing some buzz through the cabs but turning up the noise gate and Jacking into the low input Jack curved that right up......
 

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