alexclaber

I like hats, old or new, as long as they suit me!

[quote name='ikay' post='1128311' date='Feb 15 2011, 01:26 PM']Anyone noticed any benefits re dead spots? Just wondered whether absence of headstock mass eradicates dead spots or just moves them a bit further up the neck...[/quote] For a given neck density/stiffness the deadspot moves higher up the neck, which makes it less significant. My first bass was a headless Hohner Jack. Steinberger licensed bridge gave it very stable tuning, especially for a cheap instrument. The aesthetics seem to work well if you're Robbie Shakespeare...

Seriously though, I think you'll have more success with something cheap, small and old where you can really overdrive the speakers than you'll have with any number of fancy cabs. Speaker distortion is such a big part of his sound and you'll only get the distortion if you're pushing the speakers hard enough, and the bigger your cab, the more stupidly loud you'll have to be to get that sound. Alternatively, I see Lozz is selling that VBC412 which does the JJ sound so well - no more unwieldy than many Ampeg cabs and a bargain to boot!

A key part of the distortion on his early sound was having a hole kicked in the speaker cone.

[quote name='deepbass5' post='1126553' date='Feb 13 2011, 11:22 PM']the Epi will be twice as loud as the peavey due to the in-efficient peavey speakers compared with the Epi.[/quote] The Epifani may be slightly more sensitive overall than the Peavey but it won't be a big difference - I wouldn't be surprised if the Peavey is a bit louder in the lows. Whatever your budget you can't beat Hoffman's. Richard, it doesn't matter whether you daisychain or run two leads from the amp, electrically it's the same.

Yep, split cable - dead easy to do with speakons and sensible gauge cable (most stuff is way oversized for the short runs in bass rigs). You can split it at the amp end or at the Midget for a particularly tidy shorter run.

[quote name='fryer' post='1126359' date='Feb 13 2011, 08:09 PM']You say that ' The problem has nothing to do with maximum power handling capability '. But why not, 'cos if I put 700 watts out of the Firebass, surely the Epi would handle this, but the Peavey wouldn't ?? Sorry but I don't see why it isn't a problem.[/quote] 700W between two cabs so 350W each. And that's irrelevant anyway as it'll be the unspecified excursion-limited power-handling restriction that kicks in first. Just 300W into an 8x10" stack will be so loud it'll drown out most drummers so it remains a moot point.

Have a look at the block diagram for the amp. You may be able to run the preamp output out through an FX loop, through a line level attenuator (ie a 25k pot) and then back in to the power amp, so you can push the preamp hard and then pull it back. Alternatively if you're running the amp that quietly you should be able to get plenty of bottom from one cab by messing with your EQ.

I wouldn't recommend running two different cabs in series because their dissimilar impedance curves will cause strange power distribution and tone issues. Try just using one cab instead.

[quote name='icastle' post='1126022' date='Feb 13 2011, 03:10 PM']It's not line level. [/quote] Yes it is. Either plug both cabs in at once (daisy-chained or direct, it doesn't matter) or use them singly, whatever sounds best.

There's nothing wrong with your head - although the Ashdown amps have a distinct sound it's a good sound if you like it and it works for your music. You only need to change it if the tone with whatever cab you get isn't to your liking (or if you want to go light with the head too but it's not exactly heavy heavy). I'd be surprised if you need more power (which would be the only other reason to change it).

Yes, except they're in parallel, hence the 4 ohm nominal load. More importantly, assuming the two cabs are very similar, by using a pair you've doubled your excursion-limited power handling and you've increased your lower frequency sensitivity by 3dB due to acoustic coupling.

To expand on my excessively succinct comment, there's a whole host of nice sounding powerful lightweight heads out there. There's quite a large overlap in what they can all do tonally but for different bassists playing different basses through different cabs I'd recommend different heads, if a new head is being sought. If you want a change in tone then I'd look to change other stuff first (playing, gain, EQ, strings, etc). I'd never change anything for the hell of it, not if you really do love how your current rig is performing. If my rig is working how I want it to, then I can get on with the music. Obviously sometimes you never know what you're missing until you try something new but that can be slippery slope, especially in the world of rock musicians and Class A drugs, or indeed in the world of bass geekery and Class A amplifiers! Does the Classic 450 have the same DSP preamp, despite the much reduced control set? It's the cunning DSP stuff that makes the RH450 do what it does (and it's very good at what it does, if that's your bag!)

If it ain't broke...

Yes, rounds indeed - missed that you have flats on there. It's much easier to take away what you don't want (like excess mids and treble) than it is to add what's missing (a shortage of the same). A twist of suitably configured tone knob plus a shift in right hand technique should give you what you need (as long as you're not pushing your amp too hard).

As you have a passive bass you could put a much larger value capacitor on the tone control, so when you turn it down the lowpass filter reaches right down into the mids. Very cheap to do and easily reversible. Rock with tone up, dub with it down.

Aha! Presumably some of you remember these? 10" or 12" woofer I believe, in a ported bandpass cab (the horizontal slot is the port on the rear enclosure, the vertical slot is the port on the front enclosure). The vertical slot also diffracts the higher frequency output for broader horizontal dispersion. Not a terribly hi-fi way of doing things because you get lots of mids and highs bouncing around the front enclosure and interacting but having used one ages ago it did cut through in a honky sort of way.

[quote name='dincz' post='1123066' date='Feb 10 2011, 07:28 PM']Is there any way to widen the high frequency dispersion of large drivers by adding some kind of magic reflector (effectively a kind of "audio lens") in front of the cone?[/quote] Yes but the challenge is to do it without it screwing up the response in general. For guitar cabs, many of which suffer from an icepick in the ear on-axis treble peak, something like a simple 'beam blocker' can work very well. The Midget T's tweeter-mount works a bit like this with the tweeter kicking in to fill the gap.

[quote name='Phil-osopher10' post='1121836' date='Feb 9 2011, 07:52 PM']Specs have no 'real' affect on how it sounds in terms of tone? They can tell you how loud it goes? Is that why alex, you give the one month return period?[/quote] I deal with the tone (and SPL) issue by finding out things like what bass(es) are used, what strings (and how worn in is ideal), what amp(s) is/are used/liked, what they've liked/disliked about their rig and/or other rigs they've used, what music they play, what their band is like, what venues they play, what bass tones they like (I ask for clips or samples, so no risk of words confusing matters) and so on. Quite often people enquire about one model and end up with a different one because their answers to the questions suggest their original choice isn't the best fit. Since adding that questioning method to the process, and becoming more experienced at analysing the answers, we've had very few people want to take advantage of the one month return option, which is nice. Certainly the last thing I want to spend my time doing is shipping cabs around the world in the vague hope that someone might like them - I want to be pretty damned certain that they will! [quote name='janmaat' post='1121238' date='Feb 9 2011, 12:25 PM']after so much talk about speaker diameters - i would really like to hear some more about the dimension of the cab, how that relates to the speakers etc. - and the volume.[/quote] The size of the cab affects two things - the low frequency sensitivity and the dispersion: The bigger the cab, the higher the low frequency sensitivity for a given LF roll-off in the lows - the lower the cab goes, the lower the LF sensitivity for a given size, or to put it another way, if you want a certain LF sensitivity then to go lower you have to make the cab bigger. Simplistically the smaller the cab volume compared to the cone area, the higher the low frequency roll-off will be - you can get around that by using heavier cones but that lowers the LF sensitivity - no free lunch! Hoffman's Iron Law: Sensitive, low, small - pick any two. The horizontal disperson is inversely proportional to the width of the radiating plane - so the greater the total width of the speaker(s), the less consistent the sound will be as you move from side to side across the venue.

[quote name='garethfriend' post='1122923' date='Feb 10 2011, 05:36 PM']Good way of quieting down cymbals?[/quote] Not hitting them as hard. A lot of drummers don't understand how to balance a kit correctly through how hard they hit each part of it - a great drummer can be recorded with with just a handful of mics and still perfectly sit each part of the kit in the mix - numerous Led Zep recordings being fine examples of this. If he smacks the cymbals too hard then the guitar will go louder, so will the vocals and so will the bass - and then you end up with a band where you can't hear the kick at all and the snare is muffled. Power is nothing without control! (That would be a good line for an ad...)

Bought three basses, never sold any of them! The second two are rather good, the first isn't worth enough to be worth selling (that the emotional attachment thing).

Get your drummer to use hot-rods for rehearsals, damp the kick more and turn down everything: Nothing short of two feet thick concrete surrounding the rehearsal space will contain the lows!

I was thinking you could swap between using the Orange the normal way and preamp-bypassed depending on the gig and the bass. Have you tried using the Puma as the preamp and Orange as power amp?

Can you just use the Orange's power amp and bypass its preamp by running your bass into a preamp pedal and then that into the FX return?

When I had an SWR Grand Prix I replaced the 12AX7 with a NOS 5751. Here's what I said about it "I replaced the original tube with a NOS triple mica 5751. Less hyped highs, tighter lows, more transparent. Less gain though (as with all 5751s) so may not be suitable if your bass has a low output." voxpop, have you ever tried a Class A discrete component preamp like an Avalon U5? That has a remarkable way of bringing out every last detail from your bass yet sounds even cleaner and smoother than the valve preamps I've tried.