Phil O'Keefe Posted March 8, 2017 Share Posted March 8, 2017 ...for club gigs? Rock band, playing average sized clubs - not some mega-sized club that approaches the size of a community theater or something. What speaker configuration? What's the minimum amount of power you'd want to have? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted March 8, 2017 Members Share Posted March 8, 2017 I'd like to have a 100 Watt Roland Cube 1x12 a.k.a. "Portable Earthquake" for several reasons - not the least of which is the portability. They sound great and have a balanced line level output that can be run into the PA and monitors if/when more power is required. The bass player in my band has one that he uses when we play small gigs. One night I was listening to him and thought "that sounds like Jack Bruce." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mr.Grumpy Posted March 8, 2017 Members Share Posted March 8, 2017 I played a country gig with a 200 watt head and a 4x10 cab and it struggled to put out enough volume. And the bass was DI'd to the PA too. This particular amp (a Crate) had a non-defeatable limiter, so it just goes to it maximum volume and stays there, it didn't really distort or get gritty, just squashes the signal. I've since upgraded to an Ampeg PF-500. It's never done the "cut out" these amps are notorious for. For me, 300 watts minimum, and a 4x10 cab as a minimum. Separate head & cab of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mikeo Posted March 8, 2017 Members Share Posted March 8, 2017 Phi, This is kind of a trick or maybe I might say a tricky question. Years ago when I was looking for a nice bass amp I tried countless amps and cabs, for countless manufactures. Some where tube amps, that were pretty loud at 100 watts, some where class D amps, that tossed out 1000 watt with not much weight to haul. I ended up getting a UK made Ashdown ABM 500 combo, thing I would have no issue lifting a a 4X10 cab. Since I am in the middle of nowhere the amp was shipped to me from Bass Central in FLA. No UPS or Fed Ex would handle this delivery, but a private shipping company. I really never thought about the weight. Dumb. The first amp was damaged in shipping and it looked like a fork lift truck drove through it. Like I wouldn't notice. The second one was fine, and we cut it off the pallet at work. The thing weighs in a 110 lbs. I loaded it in my SUV, and almost busted a nut, as they say. I brought it down my cellar stairs once. I was much younger than, I will tell you. It moves very well on a dolly. Kids don't do what I did. Killer amp and it will play just about anywhere. 500 watts of pump thunder. It has a sub harmonizer and a DR out. The new ones have a built in compressor. No regrets, but if I was a gigging bass player, I think differently. My Ashdown kinda looks like this, but mine has the metal grill and 4 Jensen Blues in it. I see a lot of Aguilar DB 751 on stages at clubs.There 1x12 cab is a nice one too. A 4 lb Aguilar super light is perfect and my idea of gear these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gspointer Posted March 9, 2017 Members Share Posted March 9, 2017 Assuming adequate PA, and a band that controls its volume? Genz-Benz Shuttle, with an aguilar 1-12 as a second cab if not using an E-kit. If my gear needs to carry the house, I am going to start bringing in 4-10 cabs until I feel good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted March 9, 2017 Members Share Posted March 9, 2017 Outfits like TC Electronic are doing marvelous things with the new Class D amps and Neo speakers. I'd probably get the biggest thing I could still lift. (Sorry Mikeo but I don't intend to injure myself. ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mikeo Posted March 9, 2017 Members Share Posted March 9, 2017 Outfits like TC Electronic are doing marvelous things with the new Class D amps and Neo speakers. I'd probably get the biggest thing I could still lift. (Sorry Mikeo but I don't intend to injure myself. ) I hear ya Injury free so far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Drummer44 Posted March 9, 2017 Members Share Posted March 9, 2017 I don't gig much, anymore... too much heavy lifting, not enough return on investment. That said, we re-thought our equipment and decided to run everything through the PA. Bass, guitars, keys, vocals, the whole magilla. No instrument amps. If we gotta hump our own PA, we'd have to deal with that schlepping anyway, no need to add more weight in amps. If the house PA works, less schlepping altogether. -D44 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted March 9, 2017 Members Share Posted March 9, 2017 Assuming adequate PA' date=' and a band that controls its volume? [b']Genz-Benz Shuttle[/b], with an aguilar 1-12 as a second cab if not using an E-kit. If my gear needs to carry the house, I am going to start bringing in 4-10 cabs until I feel good! A friend of mine has one... … it's a great little amp and can fill a small room on its own. I haven't heard it with an extension cabinet but we have successfully run it through the PA in bigger places. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gspointer Posted March 9, 2017 Members Share Posted March 9, 2017 I absolutely love mine. I also own the best bass amp ever made but it never gets used anymore. I was at the music store the day they got it in as a demo. I was blown away by how light it is and how big it sounds! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members One_Dude Posted March 10, 2017 Members Share Posted March 10, 2017 I have several amps and amp & cabinet combinations, and I do believe that more mass makes for more thump. However, as these units seem to be getting heavier as I get older, I keep looking for less weight that can still deliver the thump I like. Lately I am using a Line 6 cube, 75 watts with a 10" speaker. Weighs about 35 pounds and coupled with my Epiphone EBO, it has plenty of thump, along with a line out for a PA if needed. I'm playing mostly in a medium sized church these days and not in a rock situation, so this setup may not work well in that environment. But I have Ampeg, Peavey, Hartke, Fender Bassman, and GK amps for those jobs, and can couple them with either 2x10, 4x10, 1x12, 1x15, or 1x18 cabinets. More stuff than I need, but you can never have too much. As for wattage; my equipment goes from 60 watts to 500 watts. If more is needed I can use one of my PA heads that puts out 2000 watts. So I consider the job, and try to match my equipment to the situation. One_Dude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted March 10, 2017 Members Share Posted March 10, 2017 . . . Lately I am using a Line 6 cube' date=' 75 watts with a 10" speaker. Weighs about 35 pounds and coupled with my Epiphone EBO, it has plenty of thump, along with a line out for a PA if needed. . . .[/quote'] Is your amp the LowDown 110 by any chance? Our church owns one of those. Surprisingly nice little amp for its size. Forum member bluzboy bought one recently and he likes his as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted March 10, 2017 Members Share Posted March 10, 2017 Gear has become highly efficient these days. Many players are going with smaller amps and simply micing them. Of course this causes issues in having efficient PA's too. I'd rather have big tone then loud tone. You don't need that much stage volume to play along with others but you simply cant get a big sound from a small speaker. It can be loud as hell but that has little to do with big tone. Bass winds up sounding more like a guitar through small speakers and cabs. The guitar amp cabs wind up having to be even smaller to get the right sonic match between instruments. I can get buy with a single 15" cab and a lower wattage head so long as the speaker is efficient. The old Portaflex tube amps were barely enough for stage work in small clubs. Something with a little more headroom is ideal. Anything smaller I cant match the drummers kick tones which is the key element to having a tight sounding band. Many drummer I've played with liked using oversized kick drums 24"~26" too. My favorite bass amp of all time was my 100W V4B with a 2X15" B52 cab loaded with two 15" Altecs. I could do anything with that amp. The 350W Portaflex Head I have now doesn't come close to matching that V4B. Manufacturers overrate these new class D heads so much. I'd need at least a 500W version to match the tone of the V4B. Again its not the loudness as much as the tone/footprint you get running the amp at lower volumes clean. I used to run that Head at 1/2 power in regular small to medium clubs un-miced and my sound man was always telling me to turn down. That was mostly because of room resonance, not actual loudness. The guitarists used small combos in the 100W range. The SPL on the speakers they used wasn't especially high and they were transistor amps so they were more like 30W tube amps with the settings they had dialed up. They were miced to give them larger footprints. When I play out now I prefer to use my single 15" folded Sunn cab. Its small enough to move but produces some big tones. Its a long throw cab that doesn't sound good till you're 15" or more in front of it, then it sounds like a much bigger cab then it actually is. The JBL I put in there barely fits because of the magnet size. Its still better then the stock speaker it came with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members One_Dude Posted March 10, 2017 Members Share Posted March 10, 2017 From DeepEnd; Is your amp the LowDown 110 by any chance? Our church owns one of those. Surprisingly nice little amp for its size. Forum member bluzboy bought one recently and he likes his as well. Yes; my amp is the LowDown 110. I think it sounds much bigger than it is, and before this amp I never wanted to go smaller than a 12" speaker. I use it mainly when playing with acoustic instruments that are mic'd into the PA system and I have no trouble being heard. It may not do as well when playing with drums and loud electric guitars, I have not tried it in that kind of group. I use it at church and for bluegrass jams and have received a number of comments about how good it sounds. I would not hesitate to use it for small to medium sized acoustic venues where the other instruments are mic'd into a PA. OneDude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted March 10, 2017 Moderators Share Posted March 10, 2017 In my opinion, you can't have too much power. That's especially true for those of us who prefer a clean sound. Similarly, your speakers can't move too much air. On the other hand, rigs can be too big, and take up too much room on stage. Modern amps tend to be much smaller for the same power than older amps, so that's not a problem, but the physics of speakers haven't changed. With bass speakers, you can have smaller, more efficient, and deeper bass extension, but an improvement in any one necessitates a loss in one or both of the others. Fortunately, with power being cheap and light, we can sacrifice efficiency and go for as much low frequency extension as we want (and sometimes that's not nearly as much as me might think) and still have a pretty small cabinet. Advances in loudspeaker materials allow for considerably more power handling than in years past, and new magnet materials allow for the same magnetic flux from a much lighter magnet. What we need depends on what we're doing. In one band, I play through a 1960s Sunn 200S amp (originally rated at 60 watts, but I've modded it a bit so that it now puts out more like 80. Not really a significant difference) and its cabinet, which contains two 15" JBL D140 drivers. It's plenty loud for most situations and goes plenty low, but the amp is fairly heavy and the cabinet is both large and heavy. Another advantage is that, when I push it too hard, the resulting distortion is rather pleasant. In another band, I've used a 150 watt Sunn Model T amp. An advantage with that amp is that it rolls off the low end, so the lowest bass notes don't use up the available power. This makes the amp louder, but not as deep. In most cases, the absence of the lowest notes isn't audible, as the frequencies just above those are quite prominent. I use that with a different JBL loaded Sunn 2x15 cabinet and/or a 4x10. Sometimes I add in a slave amp to power the other cabinet. Sometimes that rig is not adequate. I also use a rack amp made up of a Peavey T. B. Raxx preamp and a Crown XLS 1500 power amp. Both of the cabinets I use are 8 ohms, so the Crown can put out 300 watts into each. That's usually plenty, but I have been in situations where the clip light was coming on, and even had the amp go into thermal shut down. I don't really like playing that loud, but if the band is loud, I need to be, too. So how big an amp do I need? Depends on the band, more than anything. With my low energy cover band, 60 watts and a single 15 is plenty. With my high energy cover band, 300 watts and a much larger 2x15 cabinet is barely enough. I tailor the amp I take to the band and the gig, but never hesitate to take the relatively high powered rack amp. Maybe I should configure it to run in bridge mode. That's over 1000 watts into 8 ohms. After all, you can't have too much power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted March 10, 2017 Members Share Posted March 10, 2017 Yes; my amp is the LowDown 110. I think it sounds much bigger than it is, and before this amp I never wanted to go smaller than a 12" speaker. I use it mainly when playing with acoustic instruments that are mic'd into the PA system and I have no trouble being heard. It may not do as well when playing with drums and loud electric guitars, I have not tried it in that kind of group. I use it at church and for bluegrass jams and have received a number of comments about how good it sounds. I would not hesitate to use it for small to medium sized acoustic venues where the other instruments are mic'd into a PA. OneDude The church's LD110 is mainly for practicing/stage monitoring but yes, it can get louder than you'd think. We run the Line Out to the PA, which has a big Peavey power amp (not sure how many Watts) and a nice big pair of speakers. The guitar amps are either miked or we run a Line Out depending on whether the amp has a Line Out. I mainly play acoustic guitar with a pickup DI'ed into the PA but I'm also the backup bassist. Glad to hear you're liking yours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members One_Dude Posted March 11, 2017 Members Share Posted March 11, 2017 I've been thinking about how I got to using the Line 6 LD110, and thought the evolution of the amps I have used at church might be interesting. I have been playing bass at this church for many years in the form of three or four different groups. Sometimes in more than one group at a time. I was primarily a guitar player when I was asked to play bass since that was the need at the time. I found that I really preferred playing bass, but the only amp I had at the time was a Peavey guitar amp so I used that for a while. About the same time I joined a wedding/party/festival/corporate gig band on bass and used the same amp. Didn't take long till I ruined the speaker playing bass through the guitar amp. One of my bandmates sold me a Standel with 2x12 that I used in the band after that, and I replaced the peavey speaker and continued using it at church. Then I found a Kustom (Roll & Pleat) bass amp with a 2x15 cabinet to use for church. That was fine until my sons went off to college and there was no one to help me get that thing up from the basement each week. Next amp was a Fender Bassman head with a 1x15 in a cabinet that I made. Worked well until it developed a ground hum at church, but not at home; (maybe something with the electrical circuit at church). I moved on to a Peavey head with a 1x12 cabinet for a while. Occasionally we would play outside where I used the same head with a 4x10 cabinet; plenty of volume. Next came an Ampeg BA115; a great amp, but heavy enough that I started leaving it at church instead of hauling it back and forth. That group broke up about the time I decided to make a serious effort at downsizing with regard to the weight issue. Tried a couple of smaller practice amps that just didn't cut it, and went back to the Ampeg. Finally found the Line 6 LD110 and gave it a try; and no regrets. It does the job for this particular application, and I'll stick with it until I find something that sounds as good with half the weight. For regular jobs outside of church, I only use the Line 6 for small to medium venues when playing with acoustic instruments. For non acoustic jobs I bring out one of my other amps. One_Dude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted March 12, 2017 Members Share Posted March 12, 2017 . . . I found that I really preferred playing bass, but the only amp I had at the time was a Peavey guitar amp so I used that for a while. . . . . . . Didn't take long till I ruined the speaker playing bass through the guitar amp. . . . Yeah, a guitar amp will do in a pinch--I've used my Fender FM65R for practicing bass--but among other things you want a closed back cabinet which guitar amps don't always have. It helps the speaker go lower and keeps the cone from making too long an excursion. OTOH, a bass amp does a nice job for acoustic guitar. This thread got me thinking about just what amp I might choose. I was browsing on the Guitar Center site and the GK MB210II looks pretty good: http://www.guitarcenter.com/Gallien-Krueger/MB210-II-2x10-500W-Ultralight-Bass-Combo-Amp-with-Tolex-Covering.gc. 2X10 combo, 500 Watts with an extension speaker jack, 35 lbs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members One_Dude Posted March 13, 2017 Members Share Posted March 13, 2017 Wow, that GK MB210 looks good. Lots of power for a 35 pound amp; I'll have to check it out the next time I'm at Guitar Center. One_Dude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mikeo Posted March 18, 2017 Members Share Posted March 18, 2017 For light weight bass amps, I really like this. 4 lb amp. I'd get the carry bag too. Matched up with one of these. Two if you need to cover more area. 25 lb speaker. Even I can handle weigh like that. Aguilar is a nice small company and the builder, build one amp from start to finish. Check em out [video=youtube;pZ7su8KkKY8] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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