Large Bass Cabs

[BassAdder60]

With the trend to go smaller or certainly lighter are we seeing cabs that are lacking in low end depth as a sacrifice to weight ?

 

Not referring to the high end stuff but the everyday offerings from manufacturers 

 

Point in case is the cab up for sale on here large heavy 212 600w 4ohm cab 

which I would imagine would be a lot fuller than my two small Neo Ashdown cabs ?

 

Thoughts ? 

 

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Search 'Hoffman's Iron Law'. If you're going to go small and low you it requires a lot of power, and drivers that can take it, both thermally and mechanically.

[BassAdder60]

It makes an interesting read Bill … so perhaps smaller box with more efficient higher powered cones can produce more bass. 
 

Would there be any benefit of say upgrading the small Ashdown 210 Neo cabs ( Sica speakers ) with higher powered 10” speakers ?

They are rated total 300W and I believe even Ashdown have uprated  cabs to 500W 

Interested if my limit is the compact sealed cab or a combination of cab volume and speaker or speaker itself ? 

[nilebodgers]

I've got one of the Ashdown 210 sealed cabs too (300w non-neo version). The cone excursion when driven hard on low notes is visibly pretty large. For that small cabinet size there is going to be a complex trade-off between max cone excursion, thermal power handling and driver sensitivity.

 

It could turn out that a higher power driver with greater Xmax could have less sensitivity and will not actually be louder or offer any practical advantage. Be interesting to see what Bill says.

[Merton]

2 hours ago, BassAdder27 said:

It makes an interesting read Bill … so perhaps smaller box with more efficient higher powered cones can produce more bass. 
 

Would there be any benefit of say upgrading the small Ashdown 210 Neo cabs ( Sica speakers ) with higher powered 10” speakers ?

They are rated total 300W and I believe even Ashdown have uprated  cabs to 500W 

Interested if my limit is the compact sealed cab or a combination of cab volume and speaker or speaker itself ? 

Power rating has nothing to do with LF output capability. Or very little at best. There’s a lot more to a driver than it’s thermal power handling.

[Downunderwonder]

3 hours ago, BassAdder27 said:

perhaps smaller box with more efficient higher powered cones can produce more bass. 

These be in the expensive cabs you didn't want to talk about.

[Downunderwonder]

3 hours ago, nilebodgers said:

I've got one of the Ashdown 210 sealed cabs too (300w non-neo version). The cone excursion when driven hard on low notes is visibly pretty large. For that small cabinet size there is going to be a complex trade-off between max cone excursion, thermal power handling and driver sensitivity.

 

It could turn out that a higher power driver with greater Xmax could have less sensitivity and will not actually be louder or offer any practical advantage. Be interesting to see what Bill says.

If you're seeing large excursion you need a highpass filter. 

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

7 hours ago, BassAdder27 said:

It makes an interesting read Bill … so perhaps smaller box with more efficient higher powered cones can produce more bass.

There's very little difference in the sensitivity of different bass drivers, so that's not going to work. Higher power handling to get more bass out of a smaller cabinet is a requisite, but the thermal ratings aren't what matter, mechanical ratings are. You can't get those unless you have the driver data sheets.

 

If you really don't want to get high output in the lows use a sealed cab. Even when the same size as a ported cab they give up almost an octave of low frequency extension.

 

Look at it this way. Violins don't go as loud as violas, which don't go as low as cellos, which don't go as low as double basses. Size is the reason why. The same physics apply to speaker cabinets.

[chris_b]

19 hours ago, BassAdder27 said:

With the trend to go smaller or certainly lighter are we seeing cabs that are lacking in low end depth as a sacrifice to weight ?

 

If the cabs you're listening to don't do enough low end, you've got to start listening to the cabs that do. They are out there and there is a great selection.

[Lozz196]

It’s strange but I’ve recently realised that I’m not keen on cabs that go too low in frequency as they seem to separate the bass from the rest of the instruments rather than placing it with them. 
 

Re the larger cabs, one of the best cabs I ever had was a Marshall VBC412, obviously big, 100lbs+ but oh, the sound, didn’t need to add much in the way of low end on the amp, it was just solid and beefy. 

[chris_b]

Low mids is where the good bass lines live.

[lownote]

Liked my PJB 7" 300w drivers for performance and happy to accept others' insistence that the 5" drivers are even more useful at 400w. Don't quite understand how they do it but thenthere's a lot I don't understand.

[Lozz196]

3 hours ago, chris_b said:

Low mids is where the good bass lines live.

Very true Chris, last night at band practice I cut at 40Hz and the result was my Precision supported nicely with a good strong presence but no low-end boom/sludge. 

[Lfalex v1.1]

6 hours ago, chris_b said:

Low mids is where the good bass lines live.

Yep. I was going to ask why the OP needs a lot of real-world lf extension? Gigging without PA support? 

 

Am I right in thinking that Hoffman's Iron law relates to the parameters of compactness, bass extension and sensitivity; you can only have any two, but at the expense of the third. For example: you can have oodles of bass and good sensitivity,  but not in a small box. 

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

That's correct. It's not how Tony Hofmann wrote it down, but that's the gist of it. Why his last name ended up getting another 'F' with respect to his law no one seems to know.

Edited September 3, 2021 by Bill Fitzmaurice

[warwickhunt]

4 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

Very true Chris, last night at band practice I cut at 40Hz and the result was my Precision supported nicely with a good strong presence but no low-end boom/sludge. 

 

When I used Thunderfunk amps the only EQ I ever set and left, was rolling off below 40hz.    

[Lozz196]

For my uses most amps seem to have the bass just a bit too low, but then I suppose manufacturers have to take into account those that detune, and 5-string basses. When I listen to the bass sounds of the songs that I grew up with in the 70s & 80s they’re not deep low down bass at all, though at they time they seemed so.

[Downunderwonder]

On 03/09/2021 at 04:20, BassAdder27 said:

Thoughts ? 

If it's the Genz neoX it's a bargain and not all that heavy. People do blow them up if they put silly big amps on them and rely on knob positions to tell them what the limit is.

[Downunderwonder]

1 hour ago, Lozz196 said:

For my uses most amps seem to have the bass just a bit too low, but then I suppose manufacturers have to take into account those that detune, and 5-string basses. When I listen to the bass sounds of the songs that I grew up with in the 70s & 80s they’re not deep low down bass at all, though at they time they seemed so.

A HPF (high pass fiter ) can make the bass control very much more useful.

[Lozz196]

Yeah I’ve got a Tech21 Q-strip on way which has an HPF on it, think removing all that excess is the way to go.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

1 hour ago, Lozz196 said:

When I listen to the bass sounds of the songs that I grew up with in the 70s & 80s they’re not deep low down bass at all, though at they time they seemed so.

That's because the speakers of that era, both the ones we played through and the ones the recordings were listened to on, weren't capable of going low. Don't forget that the #1 playback system in those days was a car radio/CD player, and cars didn't have subs as standard equipment then. Even studios didn't have great sound. The Yamaha NS-10 and LS3/5A weren't exactly bass monsters, and while Altec A7s were big and loud they didn't really go all that low. Give a listen to anything from the 50s to the early 80s and there one thing you'll almost never hear: a low E. The inability of vintage speakers to play a clean low E above bedroom levels is what started me building my own.

[dave_bass5]

14 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

Yeah I’ve got a Tech21 Q-strip on way which has an HPF on it, think removing all that excess is the way to go.

I loved my Q/Strip. In fact i brought it back after selling it. Its now gone permanently, but i wouldn’t hesitate to get another (used though).

The HPF is nice to have but its not adjustable and set quite tame for bass. Nice to have that extra protection though, but might not make a huge difference. 

[Lozz196]

That’s good to hear Dave, I don’t want too much of a difference, just enough to reduce the boom and the effort on the cones a bit.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Definitions vary from person to person, but what most consider to be boom is a response peak in the midbass, from 80-120Hz. The usual cause of boom is an enclosure that's too small for the driver, especially when it's sealed.

[dave_bass5]

44 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

That’s good to hear Dave, I don’t want too much of a difference, just enough to reduce the boom and the effort on the cones a bit.

The Q/strip is pretty wonderful for EQ, but amazing for proper tone shaping. The issue i had with it was too many great tones in it, i needed a programable version. This made it hard to settle on any one tone, and as i had my BDDI as well life was complicated, so to make life easier i stopped using it.