Anybody got any experience with using just a powered cabinet and a preamp? Sounds like it might be good for practice or small gigs. I have a GK Plex on my pedal board. curious if anyone does this. Thanks.
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Powered cabs and preamp
- Thread starter Vinnie Detroit
- Start date
I’ve been doing practices and one small outdoor gig with a guitar player and me with just my VT Bass DI run through a mixer (all eq flat on my channel) and in to a single Alto TS312. Sounds good enough and works well for a quiet, small, outdoor venue, although I need to turn my tone knob down a bit to avoid string noise and fret clank. It lacks the big sound of my true amp/cab rigs, but I don’t expect that from it.
I gigged for 7 years with Taurus Silver line TD-1 Preamp and Active Powered Roland D-Bass 115X Bass cabinet 330 watts with great results. Active matches internal amp to Speaker electronically and of course no losses due to Speaker wire and electronic Xover.
I've used both QSC (K and K.2 series) and EV PA self-powered speakers fed by a preamp.
QSC goes so far as to say that they have an optimized DSP program on their K.2 series for bass players, however I wouldn't say they're particularly good. Placing a preamp before the amplifier does help, but those speakers use a lot of multi-band compression and dynamic EQ which will begin to fight you at Rock-Band levels. You can't override some of that compression or dynamic EQ on those boxes because it's there to keep you from destroying the speakers.
Out of all the people I know who tried the QSC K.2 solution, the only way some of them got it to work, was to team it up with one of the QSC sub-woofers - but by then you've obliterated the weight savings and compactness of the rig.
There's a couple of fusion guys who are using custom Meyer Sound integrated systems as bass rigs. It's pretty funny to see a tiny inverted J-Array up on stage just for the bass player.
Honestly, You'd probably be better off seeking out a powered bass-specific cabinet like the Phil Jones or Bag End products.
QSC goes so far as to say that they have an optimized DSP program on their K.2 series for bass players, however I wouldn't say they're particularly good. Placing a preamp before the amplifier does help, but those speakers use a lot of multi-band compression and dynamic EQ which will begin to fight you at Rock-Band levels. You can't override some of that compression or dynamic EQ on those boxes because it's there to keep you from destroying the speakers.
Out of all the people I know who tried the QSC K.2 solution, the only way some of them got it to work, was to team it up with one of the QSC sub-woofers - but by then you've obliterated the weight savings and compactness of the rig.
There's a couple of fusion guys who are using custom Meyer Sound integrated systems as bass rigs. It's pretty funny to see a tiny inverted J-Array up on stage just for the bass player.
Honestly, You'd probably be better off seeking out a powered bass-specific cabinet like the Phil Jones or Bag End products.
