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Share your weird/unconventional rigs!

Hifi power amp from the (?) 50's and retrofitted projector speaker boxes.

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An old Peavey PA column completely redone with steel, line x and poly-cone woofers. Go ahead, spill your beer on it. I'll just hose it off.

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I have shown this before, I have two 4x10 cabs, but I go through our PA so to save stage space, which is limited on some gigs, I took an old Crate vocal monitor and put in a $25 Pyle car subwoofer. The photo shows a Peavey Deca 528 power amp, which I have just replaced with a GK MB 200. It makes set up and tear down easy and eliminates weight in the band trailer. I am 61 and I can still haul heavy stuff, but why bother when the little rig gives me plenty of volume and good sound on stage. My band is classic rock and some country and we usually don't get crazy loud like some bands.
 
This isn't unconventional- but I played a "smooth jazz night" w bass/acoustic-electric guitar/keys running into a single powered monitor, last monday. While I would have preferred having a separate sub running crossed over- it handled our small (and loud) room and enabled patrons to have conversations and tune in or out as desired.
 
i dont have any pics, but i have two weird things i do-

gennerally i just use a 1x12, or 1x15. one of my favorite 1x12 cabs doesn't have any tweeter or anything- i have a seperate one in its own cabinet, and i point it in weird directions (backwards, towards drummer, ext) to experiment with sound- works really well, but looks very strange.

i also do the same thing with my 2x6" combo amp- i'll run my normal rig, and run a line out to the small amp and point it backwards, or sideways at a drummer or something like that. doesn't add much headroom, but definitely adds a little something on weird stages where your drummer cant hear you.
 
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Alesis NanoVerb - two-channel digital multi-effects processor
Behringer MDX-2100 Composer - two-channel compressor/limiter/gate
Garnet PA40 - 4 input 2 channel 40w solid state PA head
Yorkville B115 with Black Widow speaker

Total cost: $250CDN!!!

Do you have problems with the nanoverb clipping? I used to use one for recording (back in the 4 track cassette days:roflmao:) and it would ruin many takes with clipping.
I was usually using it in an effects loops and maybe it works better at instrument level? It'd be fun to use one of those again.
 
that looks awesome! is there a thread or pics of your renovation? I'd love to make one.

Sorry, no pics for either.... which one did you mean?

The Peavey column was just removing everything, wood fill/ Line-x and reload with different drivers (repainted the corners with gloss black epoxy). The grill was a scrap piece from a local metal shop that I cut to size with my dremel (13 ga; not a quick job by any means, lol). The drivers are GRS $10 POS's from Parts-Express. I have to tame a fairly big hump at 100Hz with EQ, but it sounds alright and gets loud enough. I actually have two of them... traded an old guitar combo for the pair.

The Ampro is a bit more involved... Notice the top cab has a jewel cover... That's where the amp was, sort of a "combo" amp originally. I also bought two of the speaker boxes, so three pieces total. I sold all 3 of the old Jensens, and tore up one speaker box to make the head box to match the remaining boxes.... loaded them up with MCM 55-3212 4 ohm drivers and use a series cable I made to show the amp 8 ohms.
 
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I will have to look for photographic evidence of these, but my weirder rigs that actually got used often were

-mesa markIIc+ combo into an ampeg DD12 2x12 with the speakers on both sides. This actually sounded fantastic and was really loud. Confused many sound persons.

-Radioshack 100w PA head into a Dr bass 2x10. I used a different rack EQ plopp'd on top almost every gig. Always sounded pretty good. Really light and portable.

-Gibson thor combo chopped into a head plopp'd on top of a traynor bassmate combo with the chassis removed, running the original 15" speaker. I recorded a record with this rig and played many shows with it. Some of the best tones I ever achieved! Long live the gibson thor!

But I would say the weirdest rig I ran regularly was one of those fender 'death star' 4x12 cabs with two different 50w tube heads (gibson thor and ampeg B-25) running into each pair of 2x12s.
It was a phase nightmare, but I made it work.
 
I've never done a conventional rig.

Most conventional has been the amp section of a fender super twin guitar combo in a dodgy home made head cabinet into a marshal bass cab.

More usually I have used a PA power amp into a single 15" PA cabinet. It's what comes first that can be weird.

Did 6 months of regular cover band gigs running a 31 band EQ as a preamp. Sometimes a rack compressor and a 31 band eq.

Current rig is running a boss guitar distortion pedal into a rack compressor into a power amp.
 
@kohanmike Nice looking rig! Hope you don't mind if I take inspiration from it, do you? Soon enough I'm going to have my old Peavey TKO115, it's about a pound a watt and puts out about 75 watts. Of course its a little wider than a standard (old lady) grocery cart, and probably heavier than most I've seen would handle, so maybe I'll build something up with a dolly handle, pneumatic tires and axel using the cabinet structure to mount things to...
 
Do you have problems with the nanoverb clipping? I used to use one for recording (back in the 4 track cassette days:roflmao:) and it would ruin many takes with clipping.
I was usually using it in an effects loops and maybe it works better at instrument level? It'd be fun to use one of those again.

I have not been having issues with clipping using the NanoVerb, no. I have read that it's designed to take an instrument-level input, so that may have been the issue. The in and out level control have a very usable range for bass. I have found that most of the reverb sounds have a lot of "white noise" in the samples and sound pretty trashy even when used on the lowest level. Also, I haven't gotten the delay to work AT ALL. The rotary, chorus, and flange are all very useful and sound good, and the non-linear setting (vague) give a pretty cool fake-bowed upright bass tone!
 
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Not as weird as some of the PA hybrid rigs, but here's the dutty biamp rig I run when the FOH is vox only (otherwise I just give the engineer the feed from the radial prod2 and rely on sub bleed and a bit of wedge). The ABM900 and the warwick are on the lows and on the highs I swap between the studio monitor and the HT5 into the ashdown cab depending on the size of the gig. It's not properly crossed over, just heavily EQ'd. The AB pedal's for swapping between my bass and my cheapo yamaha keyboard.

This is awesome! Has a real mad-max, post-apocalyptic vibe about it. Do you have any videos of you playing this full rig live?