Mesa Boogie Powerhouse Cabs

[jazzyvee]

I use mesa boogie bass cabs in my rig and want to try bi-amping but cannot find the frequency range of any of them anywhere on line not even on the mesa boogie site.
Do you have any idea what it is? The most I've found is that they are full range cabs but that doesn't tell me anything.


Jazzyvee

Edited May 16, 2013 by jazzyvee

[DGBass]

I dabbled with a bi-amp setup some years ago using a Peavey 115 combo for the lows and a BH500 2x10 for the top end with some success using the combos built in x-over. Selecting the crossover frequency was done by twiddling the knob and listening for the best tone. Neither cab was a full range one though...the powerhouse 1x15 has switchable crossover frequencies but i'm not sure if you can disable the horn completely. What kind of setup are you using?

[jazzyvee]

My bass has a separate output for each pickup so I want to try sending each pickup to a separate cab and not use a crossover. I have an alembic SF-2 that I can use as a pre-amp into a QSC-PLX2402 and then out to my mesa boogie cabs but not sure if I should be using my 1x15 or 4x10 for the neck pickup, or even the 4x10 on the bridge and 1x15 on neck as I don't know which is supposed to have a better low end.

I tried a simpler approach with the bass in mono using my F1-x pre-amp recently at a gig. I used the pre-amp crossover low and high outs at sound check but got a better sound by using the full range out from the pre-amp into the two cabs via the QSC.

Yeah the powerhouse cabs have an attenuator for the horn only on my 1x15 but the 4x10 is newer and has the switchable crossover frequencies and the attenuator.

I've had some pretty poor bass rigs at gigs for a while now and so I really want to start taking my own gear to gigs as much as I can so I have some consistency with my on stage sound.

[alexclaber]

Biamping is not going to be beneficial with those cabs. The 15" may go lower than the 4x10" but the 4x10" will move more air and so be better at the lows. The 4x10" probably goes higher than the 15" but has worse dispersion through the mids so will be harder to hear around the room. So neither cab is a specialist at either lows, mids or highs.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='alexclaber' timestamp='1371735588' post='2117519']
Biamping is not going to be beneficial with those cabs. The 15" may go lower than the 4x10" but the 4x10" will move more air and so be better at the lows. The 4x10" probably goes higher than the 15" but has worse dispersion through the mids so will be harder to hear around the room. So neither cab is a specialist at either lows, mids or highs.
[/quote]+1. One bi-amps when they have two cabs with distinctly different frequency band widths. Mesas, and for that matter virtually all electric bass cabs, don't.

[molan]

I tried bi-amping for a while with lows going to a 1x15 and highs to a 2x10 with tweeter.

As Bill points out, both were built as full range cabs and really didn't sound very nice bi-amped. Felt like I was losing something from the overall tone rather than gaining

[chris_b]

You're aiming for a level of complexity that will be lost on 99% of gigs and probably 100% of bands!

You've got some great cabs (I had Boogie 115 and 210 cabs, with EV's).

I'd just run them straight for the best and fullest sound.