Can an active cab be used passively?

[Crawford13]

I am going to start using my helix for gigging. I have seen an active EBS cab that I’m interested in. But here is my question, a lot of the gigs I do in Glasgow the venue expects bands to share just 1 bass amp. Can I use the active cab for my helix. Then provide an amp for the other bands, and use the active cab passively without power?

[Steve Browning]

I would say not unless you could get an input straight to the speaker. Most actives seem only to have the mic/line input and so plugging the back of an amp into that is going to embed the speaker voice coil into the wall opposite it, I would suspect.

Other may have a different way to make it work but I haven't seen one that would allow for this without modification.

[Crawford13]

Just now, Steve Browning said:

I would say not unless you could get an input straight to the speaker. Most actives seem only to have the mic/line input and so plugging the back of an amp into that is going to embed the speaker voice coil into the wall opposite it, I would suspect.

Other may have a different way to make it work but I haven't seen one that would allow for this without modification.

Thanks man I appreciate it, I will go with my other plan to run the helix through the effects return of my amp.

[chris_b]

Unless there is a bypass I would expect the amp to be hard-wired into the driver.

 

[obbm]

If you really, really want to use the active speaker then all you need is a stand-alone pre-amp for the other bands to use with it.

[Steve Browning]

9 minutes ago, Crawford13 said:

Thanks man I appreciate it, I will go with my other plan to run the helix through the effects return of my amp.

Not sure what you mean here. Do you mean by-pass the amp head (to distinguish it from the active cab) pre-amp? If so you are left with the same issue.

[Crawford13]

3 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

Not sure what you mean here. Do you mean by-pass the amp head (to distinguish it from the active cab) pre-amp? If so you are left with the same issue.

Sorry I wasn’t very clear here. I will use a normal cab with my amp and use the fx return. I just like the idea of a powered cab so that if I knew I wasn’t going to be amp sharing I wouldn’t take my amp.

[chris_b]

8 minutes ago, Crawford13 said:

I will use a normal cab with my amp and use the fx return. I just like the idea of a powered cab so that if I knew I wasn’t going to be amp sharing I wouldn’t take my amp.

Sorry, I thought you were talking about active cabs.

Why would you worry about your amp? I don't see how anyone can mistreat an amp in a way that will damage it. Cabs, on the other hand, can be damaged by players not looking after them.

[Crawford13]

7 minutes ago, chris_b said:

Sorry, I thought you were talking about active cabs.

Why would you worry about your amp? I don't see how anyone can mistreat an amp in a way that will damage it. Cabs, on the other hand, can be damaged by players not looking after them.

I was asking about active cabs. I have no problem with people using my amp, it would just be one less thing to carry for some gigs if I knew I wouldn’t be amp sharing. Sorry for all the confusion.

[Gottastopbuyinggear]

Does your amp have a DI out on it? If so you could use that as the input to the active cab?

[pete.young]

22 hours ago, Crawford13 said:

Sorry I wasn’t very clear here. I will use a normal cab with my amp and use the fx return. I just like the idea of a powered cab so that if I knew I wasn’t going to be amp sharing I wouldn’t take my amp.

In that case, you might like to check that you have a serial effects loop so that the whole of your signal gets processed  (many are, many are parallel) and that the Helix is happy to run at line-level.