Bass through guitar speakers- Wait, hear me out!!

[Kyron]

So...
I took delivery of an American Fender Dimension Deluxe V last week; beautiful bass.

With my Trace V4 and associated cabs all covered up and stacked out of the way from a gig a couple of weeks back, I was too impatient to set it all up in the lounge to try my new bass...

My Engl Thunder 50 combo was set up in my lounge from some gui**ar noodling the previous night.

I decided to plug the bass in for a quick test- It sounded really good? Albeit at a very low volume and with bass freq eq'd low.

Later in the week I setup my V4 and a 2103H; after playing through the ENGL combo, I couldn't help but notice a lack of clarity/definition and sharp response that I had heard through the gui**ar amp?

It got me thinking about bands in the 60's and early 70's; without the abundance of bass gear available that we have today, they appeared to use guitar cabinets of a sort. The cabs would blow a lot apparently, as you might imagine.

My question to the experts:
Is there a modern speaker/cab that can provide the clarity and sharp response from the Vintage 30 fitted to my ENGL combo, but is designed to withstand bass frequencies?

Bit of an odd one I know; maybe one for those who seek to replicate vintage bass tones...

[Twincam]

Regarding the guitar combo, well its probably not because of the guitar speaker as such its because the cab as a whole is tuned higher.
I've found that at lower home volumes or even quieter jam volumes a higher tuned cab or even open back cabs (with bass driver) can have great clarity and definition.
The problem is this only works for lower volume.

There are plenty of modern low tuned bass cabs that have more clarity and definition than your te2103h which is a decent cab but compared to many modern cabs is a bit long on the tooth with all due respect.

[Kyron]

Thanks for the quick response!

Could you recommend a tighter sounding cab?

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='Kyron' timestamp='1476570362' post='3155377']
Is there a modern speaker/cab that can provide the clarity and sharp response from the Vintage 30 fitted to my ENGL combo, but is designed to withstand bass frequencies?
[/quote]Yes, one that uses bass drivers plus midrange drivers or one that uses bass drivers low-passed and guitar drivers in a separate compartment, high-passed. As for the latter that would probably require a custom build, I'm not aware of anyone who currently makes one. Another option is to put a guitar combo atop a regular bass rig. Since you'd have two amps that opens up all sorts of possibilities, including getting Chris Squire's signature tone the same way that he did.

Edited October 16, 2016 by Bill Fitzmaurice

[Phil Starr]

If you really want to pursue this then the conventional approach is to use lots of speakers, using twice as many means you only need half the excursion. This is the basis of 4x12 cabs for bass and 8x10's for that matter.

The first question to ask yourself is what it is you like about the guitar tone, the brightness is probably down to the presence peak of the Vintage 30 in the 1-3kHz range http://celestion.com/product/1/vintage_30/ that is not much different to a similar peak in the Eminence Beta 12 which does have more power handling and more bass. http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Beta_12A.pdf .

The other thing you might be liking is the lack of lower octave fundamental (the frequencies below 100Hz) which mask a lot of the other frequencies and can make things woolly sounding. It wouldn't be difficult to design out the deep bass frequencies or just to eq that way. A couple of Beta 12's in a sealed cab might give you a sound you'd like.

Until recently Celestion used to make just the speaker you would have wanted with their Green Label models but they have recently reduced their bass speaker range with the introduction of the Pulse speakers. I suspect there are other good drivers to look at though.

If you need them I have some of the T/S parameters for the vintage 30, sadly not the Xmax

[b] Vintage 30 8ohm[/b]

D – 0.26m
Re – 7.3ohm
Fs – 75Hz
Qms – 9.3
Qts – 0.43
Qes – 0.47
Mmt – 29g
Cms – 0.18mm/N
Vas – 72litres
Bl – 14Tm
Rms – 1.35kg/s

[Kyron]

Phil, Bill,
Thank-you both for your inputs.
I think I'm going review and cross reference some 12" speaker datasheets to see if I can identify one close to V30 specs.
I guess I wouldn't know whether it is the V30 in particular I liked the sound of 'most' (compared to other guitar speakers), as I haven't played a great deal of bass through guitar speakers... I have though, played through a fair amount of bass cabs, and ultimately, a wide range of specific bass speakers. The majority though, have all been ported...

I like the idea of a sealed cabinet with a pair of 12" drivers. One of the better cabs I played my V4 through (to my ears), was a Matamp 4x8 (sealed, with the dodgy, but fair quality chinese neodymium speakers Jeff managed to come by...).

I really appreciate the help gents, thanks again; I'll definitely be posting here again with equally silly questions

[Beer of the Bass]

The Eminence Beta 12 does have that presence peak which sounds good for bass, but having played guitar through them I feel like they're still missing something that I can hear with Celestions or similar guitar speakers. I can't put my finger on what it is, but the guitar speakers have something nice going on at the top end that the Beta doesn't have as much of, which makes them sound a little duller than the guitar speaker. That's my subjective opinion based on playing a guitar amp through the Beta and then through a couple of different guitar speakers (Celestion V30s and a WGS ET90), so it might be entirely in my head!

Edited October 16, 2016 by Beer of the Bass

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1476649585' post='3156030']
The Eminence Beta 12 does have that presence peak which sounds good for bass, but having played guitar through them I feel like they're still missing something that I can hear with Celestions or similar guitar speakers.
[/quote]It's not what they're missing, it's what they have: excursion. A Beta 12 has 4.4mm xmax, a typical guitar speaker has 1mm or less. That allows a guitar speaker to go into compression and break-up mode at low power levels, the exact opposite of what you want a bass driver to do.

[Beer of the Bass]

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1476654794' post='3156108']
It's not what they're missing, it's what they have: excursion. A Beta 12 has 4.4mm xmax, a typical guitar speaker has 1mm or less. That allows a guitar speaker to go into compression and break-up mode at low power levels, the exact opposite of what you want a bass driver to do.
[/quote]

My guess would be that the character I'm hearing in the highs with the guitar drivers was the added harmonic content produced by that cone breakup. I like the Beta for bass, but it's cleaner than a guitar driver if that's what the OP was enjoying. Though it certainly goes in that direction more than many speakers used for bass.

[jazzyvee]

I have experimented with a guitar combo on my bass rig at home few times but I think it would be impractical for me to use live so for now I haven't pursued it.
I use a QSC power amp on my bass rig and also have a bass with separate outputs from each pickup. So each pickup goes into a separate rack pre-amp and then to a separate amp channel and individual cabs. From the pre-amp that takes the bridge output I sent some of the high end via it's crossover to a Roland JC120 and that gave me a much more hifi sound. I don't know anything about Trace gear so wouldn't know if you have a crossover output to try using the guitar amp in this way.
I hope you find a solution.

[Phil Starr]

[quote name='Kyron' timestamp='1476570362' post='3155377']
So...

My question to the experts:
Is there a modern speaker/cab that can provide the clarity and sharp response from the Vintage 30 fitted to my ENGL combo, but is designed to withstand bass frequencies?


[/quote]
[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1476583449' post='3155420']
Another option is to put a guitar combo atop a regular bass rig. Since you'd have two amps that opens up all sorts of possibilities, including getting Chris Squire's signature tone the same way that he did.
[/quote]

With the gear you have this has to be worth a try, it'll cost you nothing other than time. Roll off the bass going to the guitar combo and then tweak the eq on the bass amp to get the balance of bass you want to achieve. If you like the sound enough it might be worth pursuing a single box solution long term. It'll be fun to try. Alternatively you could try using the guitar amp as your on stage monitor and feed a mixture of miked up cab and DI to the PA to get your bass sound at the volume you'd like.

[Kyron]

I have been playing around with the idea of a passive crossover; feeding highs to a guitar cab and lows to a bass cab.

What frequency would we want to crossover at? 800Hz, 500Hz - even lower?

The downside is that you wouldn't be making much use of the full range potential of the bass cab speaker, I guess.

What are peoples thoughts here?

[Phil Starr]

There are lots of ideas above for you to try and I'd suggest actually trying them to see if you can find that elusive sound you hear in your head.

Seriously, what we are all doing here is pretty much a series of thought experiments. you'd be better off just trying things out in actual experiments

Mixing two entirely different speakers doesn't give easily predictable results as neither of them will have a flat frequency response. Instead they have some frequencies they emphasize and some they only do weakly. If you mixed two speakers where the peaks coincide they will jump out at you when you play them, if the troughs coincide then they'll be even weaker, more usually they won't line up and you lose a lot of the character of both speakers.

Another thing is in BFM's earlier post "[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][size=3]It's not what they're missing, it's what they have" [size=4]By adding the bass back in with bass speakers you shift the balance of the sound and the top end will be masked a little, at least subjectively. You could lose the clarity you seek simply by adding in bass. That brings us to the final problem, we don't really have a great set of words to describe our subjective experience of sounds. Look at previous debates about 'heft' I for one am convinced we weren't all talking about the same thing. You've clearly heard something you like and you want to add it to your sound. The answer to this is to try stuff out, we can point you into the right direction technically but in the end there aren't sets of equations to guide you.[/size][/size][/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]To answer your question directly. I'd use an electronic crossover first. You can then sweep the crossover frequency up and down until you find the one that works best, once you've done that you can then go away and build a passive crossover for that frequency. If all you really want is the deep bass that would damage the guitar speakers but will fill out the sound you could just crossover at 100-150Hz ie just use a sub not a bass speaker, or use the bass speaker as a sub. [/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I'd start off just running the bass gear you have with the guitar gear you have and tweak the eq on both. That on it's own will keep you busy for a while with all sorts of options. Then try the same thing using an active crossover which you can borrow from someone's PA which will give you a whole range of other sounds. Then you'll know which sounds best to you and not be guessing.[/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Go on, it'll be fun [/font][/color]