Al Krow

Would seem to make sense to import this directly from the US. After shipping, VAT and Customs you're probably still looking at a £100 saving i.e. nearer £300 Or if you're actually travelling to the US even better - you'll fall under the VAT and Customs thresholds for personal goods (assuming you're not bringing much else back of value that are 'imports' ) of £390 and you can then pick this up for nearer to £200. Which is what US bass players are paying.

My starter for 10 would be a BF Super Compact. Comes as an 8 ohm cab and handles up to 600W. 21lbs or 23 lbs depending on cloth or metal grille - there's currently one of each in the FS. I've not found anything of similar quality that can match this for portability. Pair with a D class head of your taste. In my case, I've been pairing that with a DG M900 v1 which delivers around 450W at 8 ohms and has built in DG B3K and VMT drives. I'm just about to swap it out for a second gen DG amp, the AO900, but my M900 has not really broken into a sweat on any of the gigs I've used it for. Used - both amp and cab are likely to come in a little over budget, but not by too much. But there are plenty of excellent D class heads for less cost and I'm sure you'll be getting plenty of recommendations! And just as importantly, welcome back to bass-land!

Budget? Happy to buy used?

Had a bit of time over the last few days to A/B the AO900 with the M900. My focus was on the drive tones plus the EQ. Drive comparison This mainly boils down to whether you prefer the AO over the B3K and VMT, or not. If you don't, stick with the M900 v1 or get the v2 for the additional bells and whistles noted in my OP which are, without doubt, a nice addition. I've A/B'd the drive with 3 basses: a Yammy PJ (passive) and two active basses: Ibby SR Premium and a Spector Euro 5LX - at pretty decent volumes but at home rather than in a band mix. Fortunately for me(!) I do prefer the AO over both the B3K and VMT with all three basses, although the VMT ran the AO close with my Spector. The AO has a cleaner drive tone and less top end 'mush' (VMT) or fizz (B3K) and it's good to be able to blend A & O and add bite (boosting at 2.8kHz) / growl (shelving bass boost for a fatter low end) to taste. My current AO setting of choice is a 60% alpha 40% omega blend, with bite engaged combined with a slight EQ boost at 250Hz for added mid punch plus a slight boost at 3kHz and 5kHz for added bite. This may well change in a band mix, but I suspect this is going to cut through a fair bit more than either B3K or VMT has done on my v1. EQ Bass is all about the mids right? The M900 v1 has 6 EQ mid centre points to choose from which is two more than on either the M900v2 or the AO900. However on the v1 having chosen your preferred centre points you then have two mid dials you can simultaneously engage. Whereas on the v2 and AO900 you can vary four EQ mid points simultaneously. This really does give a lot of sonic flexibility and more than offsets the loss of the 750 Hz and 1kHz EQ centre points in my books. Conclusion If you're a fan of the AO drive, the AO900 is undoubtedly an improvement on an already very good amp, both in relation to the drive and the EQ; and the additional bells and whistles are all welcome additions on top. I've got a few gigs in the diary at the end of the month so will be able to try the AO900 out in the mix then, but I think that's me done in terms of comparison and I'll put my trusty v1 up in the FS shortly.

Which sub are you using Harry?

That's a good shout, although that Behringer did look like quite a substantial additional piece of kit, albeit amazingly good value in typical Behringer fashion! I've just come across this - the Rolls SX21 crossover unit, which looks simple and compact. Although its two outputs are unbalanced, not sure that's going to make too much of a difference? Seems to me I could just take an output from the mixer as the input to this unit, set the crossover frequency at (say) 120Hz and send the low to the sub and the high to the tops. Job done?

So usual low end cut...which seems to be defeating the whole purpose of a meaty chest thumping sub! But I guess with the smaller form factor of this unit I shouldn't have too high expectations.

I do like the look of that one (although I'm assuming no longer in production as it didn't show up on the RCF website when I just looked), particularly as it's < 40lbs! Be interested to understand from @EBS_freak what he has in mind re 'processing'.

The smallest seems to be the RCF SUB 905-AS II - 15" 67 lbs and £1,200 (which is a lot, given what we spent on the 310As) The Alto at £340 really is a budget option (albeit some of Behringer subs are even cheaper). I guess it would be the sensible one to dip our toes into, or see if I can get an RCF used. The only (and significant) point about going "cheap" is that if it sounds crap, it will prejudice the band against bothering with subs at all. I think I just need to spend some time having a browse through this over the weekend: https://www.thomann.de/gb/active_subwoofers.html

Thanks John, you're absolutely right, I meant Alto. Now corrected. Yup matching logos - that's going to be very important to any audience members with OCD 😁 Again more seriously, not sure I've heard anyone EVER say a bad word about RCF gear (no doubt I'll shortly be proved wrong), so definitely worth checking out.

In which case I may be forced to go with the (much!) cheaper QSC Alto option; that would certainly save on the faff of getting a splitter pedal combined with separate lpf and hpf channels (and would likely set me back another £150+ or so). Oh dear, what to do with the £££ saving 😁 On a more serious note, hopefully the QSC Alto won't sound crap / boomy in comparison to something that has the branding of BF? I generally believe you more often than not get what you pay for, and I'm struggling to think that the speaker and driver, in particular, in a £340 QSC Alto sub together with the rest of components will be anything like on a par with those used in a £1,600 (new) BF LF1400. I wasn't thinking of paying anything like that, but there are a couple currently available here and on eBay used, but the difference in new prices is noteworthy to illustrate the point i.e. the BF is over FOUR times the price of the QSC Alto new.

That's brilliant, thanks John. I was looking at a BF LF1400 recently and was advised I couldn't do what you've just said with the LF1400 in combination with my RCF 310As, but maybe what I was told isn't correct.

Yup that is definitely the theory. Not having owned a reverse P, I can't comment in practice. But I do know that I'm not using a solo'd P on my Yammy PJ 5ers, but have settled on the blended PJ setting which kinda ties in with what you're saying. Both the Ibby SR655E and the Jackson Dave E models are offering the reverse P (as do Sandbergs, but we're starting to stray into > £1k territory, certainly for new with the Bergs).

I'd forgotten about this one... Recently released JACKSON SIGNATURE DAVID ELLEFSON CONCERT BASS CBX-M V 5 string PJ & blend knob reverse P EMGs 3 band EQ 35" scale graphite reinforced neck £659 GAK in the UK available in white Downsides seems to be purely active; no passive 'fall back' 21 frets rather than 24 frets I could see this being an excellent workhorse gigging bass. Oh dear...I'm kinda getting a sense of small bubbles building up in the depth of my gut, again, now that I have recently moved on my BB P35. Must resist, must resist...😂 A completely spooky "snap" arriving at the same conclusion!!

Steve - pics are always good, so yes please! But you weren't 100% of the fan of the Mackie, so hopefully this flexiblity is available on some of the other subs you're more keen on. However from what you've said I'm not clear that you are managing to feed the subs with just the low end <80Hz range i.e. we really need a lpf not hpf, but maybe that is what the sub has (would make more sense!)

Cheers Phil - always good to have your input and insights! One matter I'm trying to get my head around is a piece of kit that will allow me to take the XLR out from my mixer and to split it into two: one to go to my RCF310A tops with hpf applied at around 80Hz and the other to go to the sub with lpf applied at the same crossover frequency => both the tops and sub are working in their optimal frequency range. Given that I am dealing with unamplified signals as I am using active tops and would be looking for an active sub, I'm guessing an hpf / lpf splitter pedal with a couple of DI outs should do the trick? Anyone using one / come across one? Or alternatively an AB/Y pedal to split the signal routed through separate hpf / lpf pedals. I appreciate that this is sounding complicated, but should be easy enough to load three pedals onto a small pedal board and just get out when the sub is being used?

A post from another thread, which was very interesting in terms of getting a sound guy's perspective: "As a FOH guy, if you are playing in anything larger than a wine bar I'll take SUBS over NO subs... 99.999999% of the time! 3-way tops might work…but single 15/12/10's simply can’t reproduce the entire spectrum to give enough "bottom". Gives me far more control over the mix, and for dance music it lets me get that chest thumping kick/bass mix going. So yeah…subs all the way."

Maybe it's just me, but my biggest issue with much of the Tech 21 stuff is that it all sounds very samey. Tim Starace playing the Tech 21 Geddy Lee pedal sounds hugely like Tim Starace playing the Tech 21 Steve Harris pedal...ah well.

@dave_bass5 I could listen to Tim Starace all day and I love his new band! Still doesn't make this pedal worth £400, though 😁

With active tops like the RCF310As any tips on how best to get the tops plus one active sub connected up with a view to ensuring the tops are dealing with (say) >80Hz and sub is dealing with < 80Hz. It's classic hpf territory, I know, but not sure how you get there post-mixer and daisy chaining one top to the sub? Be very interested in how you guys are going about this and also whether 80Hz is an optimal cross-over frequency?

@Dad3353, this looks like a really good 'old' thread. Would you mind working your magic to 'refresh' the earlier posts for us please? Thanks (again!) in advance

It seems from the (very helpful, thank you!) responses so far that not all subs are equal. My biggest concern would be muddiness of sound (= makes things worse), followed by lack of "heft" / low end kick (= not adding much). Based on your experiences so far, are there subs that you rate highly and others you would recommend to steer clear of? Some of you have already shared your thoughts on this in earlier posts, so thanks for that.