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In Reply to: Re: Put a midrange driver or tweeter into your cabinet. posted by MBanks on April 6, 2004 at 15:30:08:
If you really want to get nice sound, you'll forget about using any commercially available bass amplification / speakers. Most commercial bass amps have horribly limited bandwidth, anemic power supplies and terribly hashy treble response. Combine that with bass cabinets that are tuned WAY too high in frequency to achieve proper bass weight on low frequency passages and the massive amount of cone break-up at high frequencies and you'll know why your treble response sounds as bad as it does.Going to a preamp with an active crossover, compressor, noise gate and built in EQ driving a high powered stereo amplifier that features a sturdy power supply will blow your mind in terms of the sound and versatility that you have. You'll find that you've got much more even output from string to string with far greater impact and harmonic structure. If you really shop around, you should be able to do find a suitable preamp and a power amp for WAY under $500 on the used market. Now you're half-way there.
As far as speakers go, most commercial designs are absolute pieces of crap. They think that "bass" means 70 - 80 Hz. If you doubt this, play an open E and see how much lower in output it is than your other strings. That's because the speaker / cabinet isn't tuned or capable of reproducing that low of a note at full amplitude with good linearity.
My suggestion is to head over to Parts Express ( or your favourite supplier of raw drivers ) and pick up an Eminence Delta 15LF (290-417) and an Eminence Alpha 6 (290-400). Install these into a good sized ( 6 cu ft ) sealed and stuffed cabinet. The 6" should be installed in its' own chamber and it doesn't have to be big at all. You can either break up the box with a sealed shelf type brace for the sub-chamber or use a piece of PVC with stuffing inside of it for the sub-chamber. Crossover frequency selected should be somewhere between 1.2KHz and 1.8 KHz at most. The higher that you go in crossover frequency, the more ragged the treble response will be. At the same time, the lower that you go, the less power handling that you'll have. Even at 1.2 KHz, that little 6" driver will drink up gobs of power to say the least. Wire the cabinet up with at least 14 gauge cable and preferably 12 gauge.
When you get the cabinet together, you can vary the amount of stuffing used in both chambers. With the woofer, the more stuffing that you install, the "tighter & drier" the sound will be. This will give you greater bass weight on the very bottom, but you'll sacrifice a little "mid-bass warmth", tonality and punch. Obviously, you can fine-tune the quantity and density to suit your own preferences. Doing the same with the 6" mid will vary the sound somewhat, but not as drastically as it did with the woofer. Less stuffing will provide more harmonic energy, giving the upper notes more bite without being harsh. Once again, fine tune the quantity and density of damping material used to suit your own tastes.
The stereo amp allows you to bi-amp, which improves power delivery and control over the larger driver. Optimally, you would have two of these cabinets, one on each side of the stage. You would end up with a nominal 4 ohm load for both channels of the amp, which is nothing for a decent amp to deal with. The use of an amp with bipolar output devices and a heavy "iron core" ( non-toroidal ) type transformer is highly recommended. While many amps are using mos-fet outputs, toroidals and switching power supplies, they typically don't provide the sheer "oomph" that a well built "old school" type power amp can provide. An old Peavey CS-800 or even an old Crown ( NOT a "Power Base") could be used with great results here.
I can pretty much guarantee that a "budget" system like this with dual cabinets could be easily assembled for well under $750. It would absolutely smolder any of the high dollar "big brand name" bass rigs out there. While you would only end up with about 98 dB efficiency on the speakers ( dual cabinets ), which isn't as high as some other designs, there isn't a commercially designed product on the market that would touch this type of design in terms of extreme bass weight, impact or transient response. That's because all of the other designs use poorly designed cabinets, are tuned too high, use poorly designed vents and are worried about profit margin rather than sound and total performance. Sean
>PS... In case you're wondering, i used to use an Ibanez MC-944PW neck through body with Bartolini's and active on-board EQ feeding a Crate preamp driving an SAE 2600 600 wpc stereo power amp. Speakers were eight 15" Black Widows crossed over to eight 10" Scorpions at 1200 Hz. Haven't touched my bass in years though....
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- Most bass rigs are garbage - Sean 23:16:21 05/21/04 (0)
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