Tronographic Rusty Box to Crown XLS 1502 to a pair of Genz Benz NEOX-212T's... any worries?

The 1502 is nice as it has selectable input "sensitivity" -- 1.4v or .775v

I would be curious what the output of your preamp pedal puts out.........

 

I see no problems, and I know the Mesa 800 has a soft limiter, but I am confused about cranking the Master "above 3 o'clock." If you are plugging your bass into the Rusty Box, and the Box into the effects return, are you saying your master volume still works but limits too much at 3 0'clock?

 

The only prob I see is melting faces. Pretty sure the RB can drive an amp.

 

Then you don't have enough rig for the gig.

If you need more power per box, you probably need more speaker as well. You must be talking about some really loud playing, or a lot of very low end.

 

I believe (please someone correct me if I'm wrong) .775v=0dBu



taken off the web.......

For electronic calculations (voltage and wattage) the 0 dB references are: 0 dBu (or dBv) = 0.775 volts 0 dBV = 1 volt 0 dBm = 1 milliwatt (0.001 watts). The standard reference value for 0dBm is 0.775 volts into a load of 600 Ohms. For most audio calculations, simply assume you are NOT using a 600 Ohm load and thus dBm can equal dBu. For example, a +24 dBm output specification on a mixing console can be used as +24 dBu to calculate voltages. The reason for this is that modern audio equipment will put out the same voltage whether there is a "load" on it or not. Thus knowing the power in a line level audio circuit is of little value and simply complicates what you need to know. Example: 6 dBu is the ratio of some voltage divided by 0.775 volts. That voltage is 1.55 volts.

 

Common misconception, rated output can be achieved at way less that 100% pot rotation because it is also dependant on how hot the pickups are, the set-up of the instrument, and how hard it's being played. Did you have the Subway set to the 2 ohm position?

Which model Crown, I'm not sure you are stating it's rated power correctly.

 

XLS1502, according to his thread title.

 

Sorry, I got two threads mixed up.

Should be a reasonable matchup, but only responsible for about a dB more SPL. You might prefer the limiting method in the Crown better (or worse), but regardless I would recommend ear plugs.

 

Not even a half dB.

At that power level, if driving hard, you will want to exercise some caution. This applies to all speakers as a general statement.

 

More watts in the amp is safer than less watts. Ask someone who has regularly blown speakers...

The Brian Gibson Interview: Lightning Bolt’s Low End

ME: Do you remember what you were using before and what kept blowing up and what you ended up purchasing?

BG: I initially had a Hartke 3500, a 350 watt amp, and I had an 18” sub and a 4×10 and the Hartke was frying all the time and the speakers were frying all the time and then when I came back, I got an Ampeg SVT Pro 4 and that’s like 1200 watts…

ME: Yep, that’ll do it.

BG: …and then I got two subs and two 4×10 so I kind of doubled the size of the rig because there were just more speakers I could hear myself over Brian and less prone to blowing stuff. I mean, I still blew stuff a lot. It took me another 5 years to learn how not to blow up speakers all the time which was by getting super powerful amps.

Now, I have two 3,000 watt amps. Weirdly the more power you have the better it is for your speakers because what’s really bad for your speakers is going into the red. It’s not really watts necessarily.

ME: It’s just how you’re overdriving the speaker and for how long.

BG: Yeah, being in the red causes it to clip and these square wave signals that burn your coil.

It’s a weird thing with speakers. I had always thought I needed to get an amp that wasn’t too many watts and speakers that could handle a ton of watts and that would solve the problem. But even a really powerful speaker if I was cranking an amp into the red, I’d still blow it and it was really confusing for me.

Over the years, I’ve learned the discipline of matching the speaker watts to the amp watts and just having a super powerful amp. So you can get as loud as you need to get and you’re still in the green.

I used to go far into the red and just blow up a speaker in like a week.

 

Ultimate face-palm... this has been addressed multiple times with some pretty good stickies at the top of the forum.

I typically see WAY more speaker damage from over-powered rigs, especially rigs that are not adequate for the task.

 

>> I typically see WAY more speaker damage from over-powered rigs, especially rigs that are not adequate for the task.

Your use of the word "rigs" is confusing here. Does rigs refer to amplifier (as in "overpowered") or does rigs refer to speakers (as in "not adequate")? If it's amplifiers, can a rig simultaneously be both overpowered and not adequate for the task? It's surprising to see an engineer be so smudgy with terminology.

I simply quoted a professional musician, who has dealt with the issue for years with his own money, providing his story about arriving at what works for him at sustained high-volume. You can perma-facepalm if you wish.

 

Rig as in speaker's and amp(s) together not able to generate the desired volume.

 

I've been running a crest prolite 2.0 (550 watts) into a 410 hlf (500 watts) for a year now with 0 problems. I run a compressor as a limiter in my rack to take out the peaks for my iems and speaker so that helps when I backline and ppl of different volumes plug in. I have never been able to turn the amp up higher than 6/10 though because it overpowers the guitarists at that point. We keep stage volume relatively low. It's still really loud though.