Amp stands

[Alan Wilkes]

I have always put my bass combo on the ground for a 'True Bass sound', but am now considering using a stand just to raise so i can hear better ( i am aware of monitoring), my question is do they detract the sound with the amp being off the ground?

 

Thanks

 

 

[casapete]

1 hour ago, Alan Wilkes said:

I have always put my bass combo on the ground for a 'True Bass sound', but am now considering using a stand just to raise so i can hear better ( i am aware of monitoring), my question is do they detract the sound with the amp being off the ground?

 

Thanks

 

 

I’m no expert, but from my experience it largely depends on the floor and the room.

Hollow stages can be problematic causing random boominess, where a stand may

help alleviate this. Also acoustic pads like the Auralex Gramma can help isolate

any booming. 

Personally I’ve always preferred the cab on the floor, although the recent trend for

stacking slim cabs vertically does seem like a good plan. Having the speakers 

nearer ear height can’t be a bad thing. 

[Franticsmurf]

I've been using a cheap picnic table from Go Outdoors for the last year or so. I like having the speakers raised and for gigs where I use backline, the picnic table raises them about 18"/50cm of the ground. It folds up flat and if necessary I can drape a black cloth over it to make it more inconspicuous. 

[Phil Starr]

1 hour ago, Alan Wilkes said:

I have always put my bass combo on the ground for a 'True Bass sound', but am now considering using a stand just to raise so i can hear better ( i am aware of monitoring), my question is do they detract the sound with the amp being off the ground?

 

Thanks

 

 

True bass sound is an interesting concept Like so much in life it's 'whose truth' is the truth? What you hear and what the audience hear are very different

 

Bass frequencies are omnidirectional, they are reflected by the floor and by any nearby walls and ceilings. Bouncing round the room they take multiple paths creating valleys and peaks where the bass is quieter of louder so even different bits of the room et diferent bass sounds. Meanwhile the treble and mid ranges are beamed out like a torch beam very bright/loud stright ahead but with little sound leaking out at the sides. If any of your bass is going through the PA then you'll hear all of the real lows just the same as the audience  but just about nothing of the mids and tops So it depends upon what you want to hear, If you want to hear what the audience hear then you need to point the peakers at your ears. If you want to hear every nuance of your playing then again you need those mids and to point at your ears. If you want to warm yourself in lovely bassiness that you don't get any other time  than on stage then that's just your preference and f you raise the speakers or tilt them you'll hear something different.

[Downunderwonder]

Players often complain the raising guts the lows. That is not what is happening. They are getting a way bigger earful of tone and the same amount of lows.

 

Guitar players are the worst for that.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

3 hours ago, Alan Wilkes said:

I have always put my bass combo on the ground for a 'True Bass sound',

What's that? Never heard of it. But then I've only been playing since 1965. 😉

Quote

do they detract the sound with the amp being off the ground?

Only when lifted at least 70cm, and even then the change could be for the better, it can reduce boom.

[Alan Wilkes]

Thanks for your interesting and enlightening answers. 👌. I like to know a little of what i sound like ( for playability)and getting direct from the amp is a good measure.I have used a monitor just in front of me getting my sound only ( i can usually hear eveyone else OK), but there isnt always room.tried IEM, but dont get on with them very well. And yes going through the PA particularly the SUB does help. THanks again.

[bassbiscuits]

I’ve always favoured my cabs being on the floor. Maybe I’m just used to the sound I get that way after so many years. And I means not having to carry around an amp stand. 

[Phil Starr]

My favourite monitoring was an old Hartke Kickback10. I rolled off the bass quite hard and pointed it at my ears, which picked up more than enough bass coming from the FOH. Not a nice sound on its own but in the mix with the band going hard it sounded great. It got ditched in the end as the drummer wanted more bass so it was back to drowning in a warm bassy mush until I went in-ears.

 

Your best bet would probably be to tilt the combo back to point it at your ears, that gives you 'more-me' but won't change things too much for the audience or the rest of your band. I've got a stand that will do that going spare if you want it.

[PaulWarning]

First thing I do at a gig is look round for table to put my 'stack' on, it's so much better for hearing myself, with the speakers at ear level.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

5 hours ago, bassbiscuits said:

I’ve always favoured my cabs being on the floor. Maybe I’m just used to the sound I get that way after so many years. And I means not having to carry around an amp stand. 

No stand required. Tilting the cab back does what you need. The top picture is a cab flat on the floor. The audience is within the arc where the mids and highs are audible, you're not. The bottom picture is tilted back. Both you and the audience are within the mids and highs dispersion arc.

 

Edited March 21 by Bill Fitzmaurice

[chris_b]

15 minutes ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

 

 

Most of my gigs don't have FOH and I rarely play with "wall of sound" guitarists, so this is why I've always been a fan of "blasting the back of my knees". The audience gets the sound and I don't. The last thing I want is any cab, even mine, pointing at my ears.

 

Even when pointing at the back of my knees, my cabs disperse the sound very efficiently, so I can hear myself clearly.

[bassbiscuits]

18 minutes ago, chris_b said:

 

Most of my gigs don't have FOH and I rarely play with "wall of sound" guitarists, so this is why I've always been a fan of "blasting the back of my knees". The audience gets the sound and I don't. The last thing I want is any cab, even mine, pointing at my ears.

 

Even when pointing at the back of my knees, my cabs disperse the sound very efficiently, so I can hear myself clearly.

Quite.

 

I wear earplugs unless I’m using IEMs anyway, from years of finding myself tucked in between loud cymbals and loud keys players, so an overall flavour of the onstage sound with the harshest peaks taken out is pretty much what I want to hear. 

I suspect my bass sound works better as part of an overall mix than it does by itself. 
 

[stevie]

2 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

Your best bet would probably be to tilt the combo back to point it at your ears, that gives you 'more-me' but won't change things too much for the audience or the rest of your band.

 

This is an important point that's generally neglected. The reason you need to point a cab at your ears is because the cone drivers used in bass cabs beam at mid/high frequencies, above about 1kHz or so. So, unless your cab is a constant-directivy design (like a proper PA), you'll only hear those crucial frequencies when your head is directly in front of the cab. Most tweeters fitted to bass cabs don't help either because they don't produce much below 5kHz and the cheap bullet tweeters normally used also squirt the sound forwards in a tight beam.

 

So,  tilting a cab might help the player standing directly in front of it (just don't move to the side) but, in those instances when the bass isn't going through the PA, it actually makes it worse for the audience because the mid/high freqencies are now being squirted at the roof.

 

Taller cabs or cabs on stands are easier for the player to hear, of course, as their ears are closer to the drivers. But even then, unless you have a constant directivity design cab, your audience is still going to hear the indistinct, muffled sound that is typical of the bands I hear playing in small venues around here. The solution is a cab that's been designed to be used on the ground and that delivers the same sound to the player as to the audience by crossing over to a midrange driver or HF horn before the beaming becomes a problem.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

My preference is to hear what they hear. To each their own.

[SimonK]

1) Depends on the floor - as someone said above if the stage is hollow it really is a good idea not to have the cab directly on it (I use an old beer crate that doubles as a cable/random junk carrier for this).

 

2) Currently I'm playing mostly on carpeted floors. I've preferred the cab directly on the floor as I feel more of the bottom end. When tilted up I can definitely hear the mids & highs better, but I feel it loses something into the room.

 

3) All such problems are solved by using a full stack 🙂 !

 

3.5) using a "bass-board" is something I've been meaning to try however: https://www.eich-amps.com/bassboard-s

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

De-coupling can work, but not for the reasons given by their proponents. Stages don't vibrate in response to being in contact with a cab. They vibrate in resonance with the acoustic output of a cab, which can then cause the cab to vibrate. In extreme but very rare cases that can result in a low frequency feedback loop. Isolation by and large doesn't do much, as it doesn't address the cause. What does work is a parametric EQ, to dial out the resonant frequencies, and lifting high enough to create a floor reflection null at the primary resonant frequency. Identifying the resonance used to be a matter of trial and error, but RTA apps make it easy. I have this one on my phone:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dom.audioanalyzer&pli=1

[Phil Starr]

There's no panacea to all this. IMO the best thing is that the audience don't hear your cab. If you are playing to 50 people then for them to hear the instruments from the backline means the sound levels on stage would need to be so high that your hearing is being damaged. On top of that it would also be bleeding into the vocal mics. On stage should be just for monitoring and the audience should just be hearing the PA. However most of the time with live music you have to compromise especially if you are a bunch of weekend warriors on a limited budget.

 

Tilting the cab is unsurprisingly all about angles. If your ears are 1.5m above the floor and you are only 1.5m in front ot the cab then it would have to be tilted 45deg but if you are at the end of a 6m guitar lead that angle woudn't need to be so acute. If you are on a 1.5m raised stage then your backline may well be pointing at the audience's ears but if you are at their level then tilting the cab a little might improve their experience, but only for the front row, anybody at the back is going to find the sound had been absorbed by the bodies in front of them and some of the sound is reflected off the ceiling and walls anyway.

 

The other thing is that whilst speakers do 'beam' the higher frequencies it isn't all or nothing. We use the analogy of a torch/flashlight but sound isn't focussed as sharply as a spotlight, there is loads of 'spill' off axis. Even if your speakers were perfect pistons driving the air they just aren't pinpoint spotlights, more like floodlights. 15deg off axis you might not really notice any huge change and neither would the audience.

 

[Phil Starr]

16 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

De-coupling can work, but not for the reasons given by their proponents. Stages don't vibrate in response to being in contact with a cab. They vibrate in resonance with the acoustic output of a cab, which can then cause the cab to vibrate. In extreme but very rare cases that can result in a low frequency feedback loop. Isolation by and large doesn't do much, as it doesn't address the cause. What does work is a parametric EQ, to dial out the resonant frequencies, and lifting high enough to create a floor reflection null at the primary resonant frequency. Identifying the resonance used to be a matter of trial and error, but RTA apps make it easy. I have this one on my phone:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dom.audioanalyzer&pli=1

This ^

 

It distresses me a little that people pay quite a lot of money for an isolation pad that doesn't do much and might fix a problem that only exists in really exceptional circumstances. It's so much more likely to be acoustic feedback and may not be the bass cab at all, it could be set off by the PA or any other source of low frequency sound.

[Bassman68]

It makes you wonder why manufacturers don’t angle the speaker baffle inside the cab itself? 🤔

[BassmanPaul]

That just makes the box bigger for no real gain over tilting the whole box.

 

[bremen]

Fender did a 4x12 with angled speakers, as Mr Paul says it was huge.

[PaulThePlug]

Loves the idea of kickbacks...

Try a bit of 2"x2" under the front

Edited March 23 by PaulThePlug

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

1 hour ago, bremen said:

Fender did a 4x12 with angled speakers, as Mr Paul says it was huge.

It wasn't all that large, and that's one reason why it was horrible. There wasn't enough air space. It would have with a flat baffle, but not with the angling. Plus it wasn't ported, and it used guitar drivers. Fender didn't make a decent bass cab until the 1980s. I designed guitar cabs that are cross-fired inward and angled upward and they work very well, but with guitar cabs the air space doesn't matter.

[bremen]

I was 16 when I borrowed it, seemed huge at the time. Mind you, I was a four stone apology, not the two separate gorillas I am today.