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New Amp Day


isaac42

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Well, okay, not exactly new, but I've been playing through a late 60's Sunn 200S. But new to me. Well, not exactly new to me, either. It's an old preamp (Peavey TB Raxx) and a power amp (Pyramid), that I had never used before, running into my 200S cabinet.

 

Sounds great. Not better than the 200S, but more versatile. It does a basic clean sound, which the 200S excels at, about as well as the 200S, but I was able to punch up the low end a bit without affecting the midrange better than I can with the 200S tone controls. Additionally, the solid state power amp is just a bit more solid than with the 200S, no doubt due to the higher damping factor. Taken together, this setup will be a better fit for this band than the classic 200S rig. Kinda hurts me to say that, but it's true. and the drummer and guitarist both loved it. Looks as though I have a new rig.

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A bass player of mine back in the late 70's bought himself a Model T head and Matching 2X15" folder cab.

That sucker would rattle my teeth when he played. It was a big step up from the Acoustic amp he had with two

separate 15" cabs.

 

I suppose If I really needed allot of power I could pull either my Peavey 500w or Crown 2000w heads out of my PA rack

and run the Boss preamp rack unit I have to drive the power head. I suspect my cabs might rattle a bit but I could run all 4 of

them at 2 ohms and really put a hurting on the audience.

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Cool. I always liked 2X15" cabs for bass. I wish I still had my Ampeg B52 can with 2X15" Altecs in it.

That cab with the V4B head was my favorite bass rig. I played all the Jersey Shore clubs using that thing

and kicked but over any other bands bass rig we gigged with. a 100W Tube head is a whole different animal then

the solid state stuff. It would require a good 500W head to compete with it and even then it wouldn't have the same drive to the notes.

Its just that big open boom you hear in a large room that sounds so cool being reflected back at you.

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I once test drove the Sunn 300T. They had both the 4x10 and 2x15 cab to go with it. Really great price too. I passed on it and thought the Ampeg SVT 300 and 8x10 cab might be the right choice for me.

 

I'm not a gigging bass player either, it was all for my cellar studio:D

 

I then hear about a newer company called Ashdown, whcih was supposed to sound like the Ampeg stuff I was crazy about. No tubes to mess around with. I ended up with that Ashdown ABM 500 4x10 combo, which I still have. All 110 lbs of it. I almost buckled carring it down my cellar stair. Like I said it's a good thing I'm not a gigging bass player.s

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In the 70s I had a V4B with an SVT 8x10 cab. Best sounding rig I ever had. Now I'm using a Tech 21 Sansamp with an Ampeg B1RE pushing a Hartke 15 and and SWR 2x10 with a tweeter. Good sound, but nothing solidstate can really sound like tubes. Recently saw the V4B has been reissued. Thinking about it, thinking about it......

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Mikeo, I have both the Sunn Model 410H and the Model 215. They make a monster stack, but I almost never need anything like that these days.

 

WRGKMC, my Model 215 is loaded with JBLs, but the tuning isn't right. Tuned too high. Still sounds pretty good, though.

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Mikeo, I have both the Sunn Model 410H and the Model 215. They make a monster stack, but I almost never need anything like that these days.

 

WRGKMC, my Model 215 is loaded with JBLs, but the tuning isn't right. Tuned too high. Still sounds pretty good, though.

 

JBL's and Altecs ran neck and neck in the high end speaker market back in the day. Each had their own sound. I have a pair of 12" that came in my 67 Blackface Bassman I used for many decades until a F#*%ing Peavey head blew up and went DC on me and pumped 120 volte AC through them and cooked the voice coils. I still plan on getting them re-coned one of these days.

 

I had bought a set of the same White Backed Aluminum Framed Altec 15's a guy I worked with had re-coned.

first used them as PA speakers in Altec A7 Cabs then I swapped the stock Ampeg speakers into the PA cabs and put the Altecs

in the B52 cab. They were definitely brighter and louder. The V4B head had all the adjustability you could ever need to adjust for

the cab or the Bass settings so even if the speaker resonance wasn't perfect it was still sounded better than those budget Eminence speakers.

 

From what I've read the V4B and V4 Guitar circuits were the same except the V4 had a reverb circuit.

In reality I found that not to be true though. I played out with another band and the other bassist had a V4.

When swapping them on my cab you could hear the difference. It may have been the tubes but I doubt it.

 

I do Have an 18" JBL in an EV cab with 2X10's. Its a pretty good cab even though its very old. 18's don't sound as good as 15's

to me but the 10's help out. The JBL 18" has some higher mid tones so its isn't muddy like many other 18" speakers

 

I have a JBL in my 1X15" Folded Sunn Cab. I really like that cab allot. I wish I had a second one. If I did,

I'd dump using all my other cabs. My old bass player fried the original speaker which was only good for 80W.

I put a budget Eminence in there and it sounded OK. The JBL was better but it barely fit in there with its huge magnet.

Sunn also made an 18" bin. A 15 & 18" together would be a killer amp. Maybe a pair of 10s added in for stage presence.

I have the 18" JBL from the EV I could use and have a matching set. Finding one is the hard part though.

 

I recently bought two 15" speakers from Parts express for my old Traynor Cab.

They were 300W Celestion's made for Trace Elliot amps. The speakers sound great for guitar, and would sound great for bass.

But if you know anything about Traynor gear you'd know they made solid gear but their cabs are very shallow. They likely had

some heavy duty heavy paper speakers in their cabs with the heads voiced for them.

 

I mean, the cab would be OK for a gig and all, but it sure ain't no B52 cab. No way,

I tried two other sets of 15's in the cab and they sounded shallow as well.

 

One cool cab O have is a 6X12" Sunn Cab. The speakers a mounted inside a 90 degree angle in a V pattern. This give the cab a really

wide range of dispersal because you have speakers shooting out 3X3 at 45 degree angles, You can lay it on its side and the speakers

act like a floor monitor. I used it for guitar for awhile and it added some nice effect.

 

Hauling it around was a ball buster though. Sunn cabs weigh a tone. Plus the speakers were old and patched up

and was pretty tired for bass so I stored it for awhile. Has an oddball impedance too. you need to use 12 ohm speakers

to get a normal rating for a head or a head with a variable impedance. Cool Stuff Though.

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Used the new rig last night at the gig. Played my Mapleglo Ric with stock high gain pickups through the 'new' component amp into the Sunn Model 215 with the JBL drivers. It's a small room, so I kept the volume down, but the flexibility of the preamp allowed me to kick the lows up enough to get a really solid low end without it being too loud overall and without making it sound too thick in the low midrange. There was something in the chain that lacked just a little: it was impressively solid down to the low G, but lost a little below that. The only differences from rehearsal, where that didn't happen, were the room and the cabinet, so I'm inclined to think that it's not the bass or the amp that was lacking.

 

AND IT SOUNDED AWESOME! The volume was constant all the way up the neck, solid but not overpowering. The low notes made the floor vibrate. Best sounding rig I've ever played through, and I have ideas to make it even better.

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Put an EQ in the mix at rehearsal yesterday. Didn't really help. It was a cheap, low quality EQ. Not particularly transparent: I could hear the difference when switching it in and out, even with all of the sliders set at zero. I'll try a different EQ next week.

 

OTOH, I also brought my Digitech Bass Synth pedal. It sounded great!

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I've tried a number of EQ's and boxes in effects loops for bass.

Many do just as much tone sucking as they do enhancement so you pretty much break even.

There are a few items that do work fairly well though. I found they need to be voiced for bass

to have beneficial results because a bass EQ range is from 40hz to around 4Khz max. anything above

that and you just boost noise.

 

One cheap pedal I found works well is a Behringer Bass Limiter. It gives the strings a nice punch without

getting flabby like a compressor. A limiter prevents peaks, but it doesn't boost valleys so you don't get that pumping noise.

Its also got a tone knob that can be adjusted boost slap bass tones or give it some flat wound sound. Mild but effective.

 

An even better one is the Toneworks Ampworks Bass Modeling Signal Processor. I bought one on EBay a few years ago

and have been using it mostly for recording. The effects are super lame. I only use it for its Preamp/EQ/Compressor and

amp modeling. Its got a few knobs where you can select an amp head and cab type, anything from classic bass heads

to cabs with different speaker types. The SVT and classic Tube head combo gives me some monster bass tones.

I can dial up some Vox, Fender, and "other" tones depending on the combinations I use along with its three band EQ.

 

I also have a Digitec bass pedal I've used but I'm not real impressed with either their pedals or their rack units.

Thin and sterile sounding has to be my opinion on their stuff. I messed with that GP 5 rack units for guitar for days

and Its really a lame unit in comparison to other units I have. The bass pedal can get you some modeled tones

but you have to jack around with sub menus that aren't that easy to get to or switch between.

 

The big thing with bass that's not noticed on guitar as much is you can have resonant notes depending on the key you're playing in.

 

On my one bass, The Key of E can have the low strings boom out more than the higher strings so I usually tweak the treble

and mids up a little so the higher notes sound balanced. If I play in A I may have a normal balance between the strings played

around the 5th fret. Having a box where I can twist a knob to give me a brighter tone for rock stuff or meaty lows for softer stuff

just makes my life easy. I like to enjoy playing and not be hassled by fighting my gear to get my tones.

 

 

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Took my TEAC EQ to rehearsal yesterday. left channel doesn't seem to be working, but the right channel is. Just a small boost at 62Hz and a larger one at 31Hz, and the low end was even more solid than before. The TEAC was completely transparent; with all sliders set at zero, I couldn't hear any difference at all when switching it in and out. With the boost, the deep lows generated by the Digitech Bass Synth Wah were really apparent, as they never had been before. I think a subwoofer would help even more.

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Put an EQ in the mix at rehearsal yesterday. Didn't really help. It was a cheap, low quality EQ.

/QUOTE]

 

I suggest you try a Tech 21 Sansamp if you can. I use one with an Ampeg B1R and it gives me all the tonal control I need.

 

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That would require me to buy something. One of the things I've been doing is trying out things from my junk pile. Another factor is that cash flow is an issue for me, and will continue to be for another year or two. Besides, the TEAC EQ worked really well.

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Interesting twist. Just for grins, I took a different bass to rehearsal last week. I usually play my stock Ric into this rig, and use another Ric with Bartolini 'buckers with my other band. Last week I took the Bart Ric, and it didn't sound particularly good at all. It sounded, to my ears, well, like a Peavey. I'm guessing that the low output of the stock Ric (despite the "high output" pickups!) is low enough that it doesn't overdrive the Peavey preamp, whereas the Barts are causing enough distortion to affect the sound in a detrimental way.

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Interesting twist. Just for grins' date=' I took a different bass to rehearsal last week. I usually play my stock Ric into this rig, and use another Ric with Bartolini 'buckers with my other band. Last week I took the Bart Ric, and it didn't sound particularly good at all. It sounded, to my ears, well, like a Peavey. I'm guessing that the low output of the stock Ric (despite the "high output" pickups!) is low enough that it doesn't overdrive the Peavey preamp, whereas the Barts are causing enough distortion to affect the sound in a detrimental way.[/quote']

 

 

 

That's why allot of amps have a nigh and low DB input. If you have hot wound or active pups you can plug it into the less sensitive input and match what you'd get with passive pickups in the higher gain input.

 

Its not always the gain though. Some pickups have a boosted bass response that sound great in a thinner sounding amp, and vice versa.

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~~

I played both basses into the low gain input.

 

No Kiddin. Those pups must be hot wound then.

 

What I'd try is using some 5751 Tubes instead of the 12AX7. I did that in my Marshall amp because I didn't like the super saturated tone I was getting and it did cool things down a tad. Didn't notice any volume changes, it just cleaned up the saturation. Otherwise putting lower value pots in the guitar can help too. If its got 500K you can try 300 or 250K pots and see what you get.

 

I use a combination of a 500k and 250K in my Gretch bass. I added a pup to that bass and I didn't need so much bridge coming through so using a 250K balanced the two pickups.

 

I don't know if rick still does this in their basses. In some of them they put a high pass cap of .47mf I believe in series with the bridge pickup to remove bass and hive it some more treble spank. You could grab a few caps from .3 to .8mf and try them in series with each pup till you get just the right amount of roll off to match the head. You can pair the up or put them in series to get more or less frequency roll off to find tune it in. You don't even have to open the bass to test it. Just find a guitar cord where you can sticjk the cap between the tip and the hot wire, then select the pickup and find the combination you need. You could even do a side by side A/B test with your other Ric.

 

Chris Squier used that trick to get his bass tones and I'm sure it will work with just about any pickup.

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You may want to try them on that Ric with Bartolini 'buckers and see if it helps. You don't need to open the bass to try it. Just take a guitar cord, remove the hot wire from the plug and stick the cap in series. This will let you try out different caps and find the right one.

 

I believe my Ric guitar used a .047uf cap. That made the bridge pup too thin. You may want to try something higher till you find the exact match, then decide if you want to install them inside. Or you could just build one into the cord and use that cord with that bass.

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