Worst Bass Cab You Have Played Through?

[el-zilcho]

My first amp, the Fender BXR 100.
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The sound was what I can only describe as 2-dimensional, and it weighed a massive amount for its size and loudness. Was very glad to upgrade to the Hartke 3500 + VX410 cab.

I'll heartily second the opinion about the Fender BXR 100, a very "boxy" sound. It was also my first amp. The salesman told me to crank the master and control the volume with the input gain, to defeat the built-in limiter.
I would put it in the same ballpark as the Peavey TNT115 (Sheffield speaker), but even worse.

 

[backin82]

I'll heartily second the opinion about the Fender BXR 100, a very "boxy" sound. It was also my first amp. The salesman told me to crank the master and control the volume with the input gain, to defeat the built-in limiter.
I would put it in the same ballpark as the Peavey TNT115, but even worse.

Yes!!! Boxy is another great description. It had the sound of cardboard or like a dry, flat, 2D sound.

 

[SkylineFiver]

18” Bullfrog bass cab

 

[rmayer]

SWR TRIAD..

I thought the Triad was great at low volumes and mellow/bluesy studio applications. But try and rock it out, and the 10" would just fart out. Forget the H.F. Horn control, it needed one for the 10. Damn, but it sounded so good in theory.

 

[57pbass]

I thought the Triad was great at low volumes and mellow/bluesy studio applications. But try and rock it out, and the 10" would just fart out. Forget the H.F. Horn control, it needed one for the 10. Damn, but it sounded so good in theory.

In my experience it sounded great at volume level 0
In theory is was perfect.. I wonder what convinced S Rabe to release this into the marketplace..

 

[Blues Bass 2]

Mid-1970s Fender 4-12 Pyramid baffle (or whatever they said it was) cab.

I bought one of these new with the Bassman 100 head . The head was good but the cabinet was pitiful.

 

[fdeck]

Worst:

Traynor 18 inch folded horn.

Second worst:

My first DIY build, in 1981.

 

[shoot-r]

Cabs that are just "not" what I wanted to hear:

Any of Fender's early bass cabinets.

Any of Vox's bass cabinets.

Sunn's 200S and 2000S cabinets. Not sure if it was the cabs I didn't like or the low powered Sunn heads. Totally unusable in a live, loud rock band of that time unless you wanted speaker flapping distortion.

Ampeg's 410 HLF cabinet. All boom and mud and (for me) the hardest to transport cabinet I've ever worked with.

Eden's 212XLT. All boom with a nasty mid-bump that couldn't be dialed out.

Anything from Randall's bass cabinet line. Boom and mud.

And, for my ears, the absolutely all time worst.....PV's early 115 thin cabinet. Don't remember the model name. Cabinet dimensions were 24"×24"×11"D, nasty with a capital N.

 

[chris_b]

My worst cab was a A Vox Foundation 118. Woolley and indistinct, like it had several duvets and a couple of blankets thrown over it.

 

[Bass4ThePublic]

Easily the ashdown MAG410. I had just picked up my 60’s SUNN 200s and needed a cab. Went on guitar center and found the cheapest cab on their used site. Should’ve known. Showed up, 2 of the 4 speakers were blown lots of Zzzzzzzzz. Picked up a proper 2x15 sunn cabinet a couple months later, still have it! Thing only ran me 300 bucks.

 

[eriky4003]

I had the Peavey 1516 from the 90's. Specs output were too low, in my opinion, and the cab was too heavy.

 

[Hurricane Jimmie]

So Anyway, I'd have to say my 72 Ace Tone amp & cab.
50 watts. 2x12 cab. Solid State.
Traded my first amp for it.
A Fender Blackface Bassman. 50 Watts. 2x12 Cab. Tube.
And I threw in some cash.
It probably didn't sound that bad. I was just expecting so much more.

 

[Pedulla-Player]

I bought a used EBS410 about 13 years ago from a Pawn America store and it was the worst 410 that I have ever owned. I'm not sure if it was flawed or if they are all like that but anytime I added any bottom to the low end the speakers just couldn't handle it (maybe farting is the proper term??). I played one gig with it and luckily, they gave me a full refund because it was returned within a week of purchase.
The thing weighed a ton as well if I remember correctly. I wanted a second 410 cab to bring my Genz Benz Uber410 closer to head level, but that EBS was just terrible. I could definitely tell that the bad noises were coming from the EBS cab and not the UBER410.
I loved the UBER410 and played through it for several years, but ended up selling it because I had a back surgery and I needed to switch to lighter speaker cabs. That thing was a tank!

 

[PolkaHero]

So many complaining here about a 1x12 setup. I think my GK MB112 combo sounds fantastic. Is it enough for a big festival gig? No, but for smaller gigs and rehearsals it's great.

 

[Joebone]

No-Name 15" folded horn, like an old Cerwin-Vega cabinet, in small outdoor gig backline with no FOH and an underpowered TC Electronics amp. A nightmare. Quoth the raven: "Nevermore!"

 

[unlined4string]

In the mid 70's I briefly owned a Fender bassman setup with the 4x12 cabinet that had each speaker mounted on a different baffle with all four facing inward toward the center. Why? Joel DiBartolo was using one on the Tonight show, and I loved his sound. I couldn't get a good sound out if it in any room. I expect the sound I heard on the show was from a good DI rather than the stage amp.

 

[LiptonJigglers]

You might just be that's okay, at least you know what you want. I've backlined some of the stuff above and they were all fine to me and the band.

Picky yes but also inexperienced, undergoing a constant process of upgrading from lower quality to higher quality bass gear, mixing and matching different amps and cabs and not having a clear concept of what I wanted and how to get it.
On top of that, my sound didn't settle until I found the right amp for my needs. Once I found that, cab searching came easy. I think this was a major factor in decision making.

Many of the cabs I've mentioned simply didn't sound good or farted out to easily or were focused in tonal ranges that didn't suit my tastes..that I was learning about.

I used to scoff at people saying "I sound like me regardless of what I play through"... it's taken some time for the reality of these words to actually sink in with meaning. My style of bass playing is in the simple rock, punk, alternative but more low end focused, with less mids and even less highs.
Some cabs do this better than others, much easier than others.
Front ported cabs tend to be my preference and 15's have been my go to from day one and after 20+ years, after trying all kinds of amps and cabs, I've come full circle.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

I'll tell you mine. Bandleader's Chinese made Ampeg 4x10 that I played through tonight. Couldn't get a decent sound out of it running my Stingray into a Mesa Subway TT-800 head no matter what I did. Absolute rubbish.

Yours?

That would be the GK 115bpx cab that I bought in 2006. I had actually used a GK guitar amp in 1997 to play bass into a couple of JBL 112 with wide horn speakers that really sounded good. So their "Brat Pack" was on sale and I bought it with high expectations. The amp that came with it was also crap. It was a GK Backline 250, which I thought was 250-watts. It was 250 PEAK watts, dp 125-watts rms, AND it could only handle a minimum load of 8Ω. That combo put out the muddiest sound I could imagine no matter how I set it. When we gigged and went through the sound board, the sound tech could clear out the mud it produced either.

I used it with a 4Ω Sunn B202 (212 that handles 100-watts) cab I had that had both serial and parallel outputs from the cab and by using the serial output, that allowed me to use it with my Sunn cab because serial outputs add up the ohms instead of reducing them. So the watts went down from 125-watts rms to about 85-watts rms but the extra 24" of speakers made it a little louder and sounded a lot better. Still not great, so bought an Eden Nemesis RS400 (400-watts rms) which is a great sounding amp. Unfortunately that caused my Sunn cab to make farting sounds very easily, so bought an acoustic B410 when GC first brought them out. Sounded better but still had to drop the bass EQ to 10 o'clock to clear up at least some of the mud.

Then, in bought my WT500/800 (bridges at 800-watts into 8Ω or 400-watts into 4Ω per channel). It has two power channels so hooked the 410 up to one side and the GK115bpx up to the other. Then used the balance know to send more power to the channel with the 410 and it sent less to the 115. That finally tamed that boomy cab without sacrificing the normal bass EQ for that "starving-for-some-bass-EQ" acoustic B410. Gigged that for another 5-years, until I moved to Washington. My DNS-410 (by DNA) arrived 2-days before we moved from Virginia so I didn't get to play through that until we got here. Then, by itself, it was louder than and much better sounding than my 410+115 stack.

I had both that acoustic B410 and that GK115bpx listed on the classifieds here for a few months but finally just donated them to a local church, who was very happy to get them. So I had that cab for almost 10-years and was ever so glad to get rid of it. Now, I have used GK gear that sounded quite good and worked quite well, but that bottom-of-their-line GK-115bpx was by far and away the worst cab I'd ever had.


The GK "Brat Pack":

 

[DWBass]

I'm sure many will disagree with this but the worst cab I've ever played through was the 810 Fridge. Beamed too much and never put out the low end I liked. I was just never able to connect with one. I Don't hate it but don't love it either. To me it's always been a highly overrated cabinet.

Same here. I kept asking where the booty was!!! Also a couple times an Eden rig was supplied and I couldn't get any volume out of it.

 

[sawzalot]

I had an Eden 210 XST that I just didn’t agree with. No mids and it just got lost in all the sound on stage.