Bi amping advice needed please!

[Ruck]

If I were to buy for example a Hartke 7000, and use its cross-over to send roughly 250w of high mids and highs to one cab and 250w (or the relative amount to balance the power needed to coincide with the power of the higher frequency crossover) of bass and low mids to another cab, do I effectively have a rig that is kicking out around the 500w level overall? Watts not being a great measure of loudness I kinda gather that but i dont really know what im talking about exactly and Im just trying to give you a rough idea of what im getting at.

Many thanks!

Edited April 28, 2015 by Ruck

[Merton]

You want more power in the bass/lows - for example the GK biamp system offers 50W for the highs and 400W+ (depending on the model) for the bass

[xgsjx]

yiu only need a fraction of the wattage to move cones producing mid/high frequencies as what you do for getting low frequencies to move things.

You're right that watts is a poor way to measure decibels.
I'm not familiar with the Hartke you speak of, but GK do amps that are capable of putting the small amount of watts needed to the "treble" cab (for want of a better word) and a decent amount of power to the bass cab.

[Ruck]

Thanks chaps! yeah i kinda already own a GK 1001RB head and two Neo 212ii's funnily enough but I find I struggle to eq the bass to the room 50% of venues I play in but im referring to function halls, village halls etc and not necessarily music venues. My band have no subs FOH which is part of the problem but as late I find my tone a bit lost however ever i try to eq things. I use a Fender P-bass with roundwounds so im thinking it shouldnt be that hard at some gigs. Some gigs I have perfect tone and have no problem at all but this is either as we're playing a small room or the whole band has turned up to 11, as that tends to happen a bit.

Might be that I dont know how to eq things properly or positioning my stack in the best place, might be my guitarist hogging all the frequencies. I thinking perhaps adding dampening to the inside of the Neo212s as ive read that might make the cabs more focused.

But just for gear heads sake, instead of a bi amp system that instead of dedicates high frequencies to a horn, Id like to play around with a bi amp system that dedicates 40hz to 150hz for example, to subwoofers.

Probably a silly idea. But would like to hear your thoughts please

[xgsjx]

You shouldn't struggle with a rig like that.
How do you stack your cabs? Stack them as a vertical array, if you don't already.
Maybe the cabs or amp just doesn't have the sound you want.
What about adding an active subwoofer to your rig?

[Ruck]

Yes you are right, I dont struggle to be heard! and maybe the rig just doesnt have the sound i want. I've got my p-bass tone and i love it, but im not fussing over finer details if you get what i mean or want a signature sound. Kinda just wanting to be able to tame my sound in the mix in the larger halls that we play and within budget (which would be the value of my rig traded basically) so as to overcome the lack of FOH subs.

An active subwoofer sounds like a fun idea but not within budget. Maybe I just dont like the low end of my P-bass? or rather the low end of the P-bass coupled with my rig dont work well in large halls? Justs gets so boomy and undefined and reducing the 1001RBs lows and low mids just results in lack of oomph and dynamic range in the low end in this situation. Ive tried dual band compression with a Rane DC24 in the fx loop to just compress everything under 120hz slightly, trying like 1:1.2 ratio with -30db threshold or 1:3 ratio with -10db threshold or something like that, gain level adjusted accordingly. This coupled with the -50hz cut on the GK 1001RB I would of thought should tackle the boom somewhat and more focused low end but I just keep getting defeated but these large hall gigs

Edited April 28, 2015 by Ruck

[xgsjx]

Are you on a wooden stage at these larger halls?
Damping under the cab could help (I used some strips of drum riser foam, some on here use a Gramma Pad).
A thumpinator might help as it reduces the lows that you don't hear.

[JTUK]

How are you splitting the signal...?
Ideally, you should have a cross-over point and then into a stereo amp
and then you run those two separated signals into 2 cabs...
You'll have control of volume into those cabs from the amp...

If you have 200w per side, you still only have 200w of power.
FWIW, I think bi-amping and sub for bass monitoring are a waste
of time. and it is simpler to run a straight signal into 2 different cab types.
If you have infinitable time for set-up then maybe... but if time isn't
on your side for sound checks, then keep it simply as more variations
means you go hunting for a basic sound, IMO and you don't have the time for that.

[BigRedX]

Bi amping is great if you do it right and have a definite need for it other than it sounds like a good idea.

As others have said the upper signal range needs a lot less power to be heard so most of the time you won't be utilising the full power potential of your amplification. On the other hand you do have the possibility of much more control over your sound to get the just the right balance. Off course you need the right cabs to do this - most bass cabs are designed to be full range which isn't what you want at all in a bi-amped system. When I used to run a bi-amped system my top cab was custom made based on the speaker housing of my favourite guitar combo with 2 x 8" speakers. The bottom cab was a standard 1 x 15 with the tweeter removed a more bass focused driver installed.

For me the biggest advantage to bi-amping is if you use a lot of effects you can distribute them in the signal path where they will do the met good and have the least adverse effect on the overall bass guitar sound. The only disadvantage to this is that you will need supply separate DIs for the high and low portions of the signal to the PA and this often requires a bit of re-education for the person mixing the sound.

Edited April 29, 2015 by BigRedX