ideas for a studio tube bass rig for recording only??

GroupDIY Audio Forum

Help Support GroupDIY Audio Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

bradb

Well-known member
Joined
May 5, 2005
Messages
523
Location
Brooklyn, NYC
Hi everyone,

I'm plotting how I can put together some sorta bass rig that I can use at home for recording. I'm thinking of emulating an Ampeg B-15. It doesn't have to be exact, just in the ball park.

I need to bounce these ideas off of you guys....

I'm thinking of getting one of www.avatarspeakers.com 15" guitar cabs, BUT with a sealed back, stuffing it with some polyfill and putting a 4 Ohm Eminence speaker in it... this will cost me about $260. Dave at avatarspeakers says the 15" guitar cab is the discontinued 15" bass cab with no front port and an open back. I'll be modifying it so its totally sealed... like the b-15 (right?)

I'm thinking of powering it with my Fender Twin Reverb (no reverb, gain up, master down)... (this is why I'm going with the 4 Ohm speaker).

Is this idea crazy? or just crazy enought to be brilliant?

any other directions that you guys can send me in would be appreciated.

bb
 
Brad, IMHO fender twins are among the worst amps for bass. The low end is sloppy and farty and the midrange isn't agressive enough. The top end is also too agressive. I often use guitar amps for bass, for both clean and crunchy sounds. In my old band I would often go for a cruchy Chris Squire type sound, so I used a Marshall lead 100 biamped with an Ampeg V4B. I also used Hiwatts, Soundcitys, Ampeg V4, Bassman 50, Deluxe, and other guitar amps for the top end. About the only one that didn't work for me was the Twin. That was true for clean sounds as well. I just don't think they are voiced right.

-Chris
 
that I can use at home for recording

You need to push some air as well or just a cable that supplies an quite-OK signal that makes you think there was a real amp and a mic in front of that amp ?
If it's the latter and you'll be re-recording bass anyway for the serious takes outside the home, my suggestion won't be difficult to guess.

So DI, but not DYI...: buy one of those DSP-boxes (bss-versions of the POD, V-Amp, ...). Insanely priced and more than good enough to use for recording some song-ideas at home at night.

Alternative might be to build a G9, or get a pre-amp... like perhaps one of those old Peavey tube-pre's - they sound good but for some reason are to be had for little money. I use my old T.B.Raxx for recording bass at home, works fine.
 
There has been some talk around here before about this. Forgive me if this is obvious, but the first and most important step is to make sure you have a really good sounding instrument. I'm afraid a great amp won't make up for a bad sounding bass. If you do have a great bass I find an amp is usually not necessary. If you really want to use a Fender amp, try a Tremolux. They sound amazing in the studio, but only at very low volume. I must have played through a hundred B-15s and none of them ever took my breath away.

I think the only way to know if your idea is going to give you the sound you want is to try it and see.
 
hey everyone,

thanks for the replies...

Emperor-TK - i'll take this into consideration...

jrmintz - i've got two great basses, am fender jazz and a rickenbacker 4003, i have a sans amp DI and the hamptone DI and a bunch of SCA pre's that I can run the sans amp to. I generally don't like the string noise present on DIs, thats why i'm leaning toward an amped solution.

have you used the Tremolux thru a bass cab?
 
Yes, a tremolux head through a Tremolux bottom. It's two tens and something about the proportions of the box make it sound great for bass, I think. But it won't handle much volume - you have to record it soft and crank it up.

Is the Jazz bass passive? That's the key to me.
 
The only problem with that pre, as shown, is that the output impedance is rather high and it won't do a good job driving mixer or tape machine inputs, etc. But if your power supply can handle the added current draw, it's easy enough to add a cathode follower driving a stepdown transformer. You could precede the CF with a common-cathode stage to compensate for the stepdown ratio of the transformer. This would invert the signal polarity, but that can be corrected by flipping it again at the transformer.
 
Here's my recording bass rig:
001-bass.jpg

002-bass.jpg
 
I'm wondering if i'm painting myself into a corner and making things difficult by building this cab with a 4 Ohm speaker to match the fender twin...

Should I go with an 8 Ohm speaker (theres millions more options) and then try to find a different bass head? any recommondations for a low wattage tube head?

thanks guys for all the ideas/advice
 
FWIW I'd suggest low wattage and at least a 2 way speaker. So many bass rigs neglect the hi end and that's where all the definition is.
 
It's all subjective, obviously. I hate bass rigs with extended high-end. I like a bass that sounds like a bass! I was hatin' it during that early '90s period of aluminum-cone speakers, active pickups and poppin' and slappin'... Yuck. Give me a passive P-Bass through a tube amp and a 15" cab anytime :thumb:
 
I was hatin' it during that early '90s period of aluminum-cone speakers
The Hartke stuff :wink:
I do love those tweeters in my 4*10 SWR-cabs though. Just adding a tiny bit of them, say attenuator less than 15% open, does the trick for me (passive Jazz, pick)
 
The Hartke 10" bottoms aren't bad. I have one and I hate all amps :green:

It's the boinky active basses that sound awful and the Hartkes accentuate that.
 
[quote author="bradb"]I'm wondering if i'm painting myself into a corner and making things difficult by building this cab with a 4 Ohm speaker to match the fender twin...

Should I go with an 8 Ohm speaker (theres millions more options) and then try to find a different bass head? any recommondations for a low wattage tube head?[/quote]

That's what I'd do. I've had excellent results with a Fender Deluxe; it's a blackface non-reverb that I've had forever. I juiced up the power supply years ago with a bunch of big computer-grade caps, and the bottom is more solid and tuneful than I can begin to describe. I usually use it with a homemade cab containing a 15" Jensen that I bought from a guy named Luis in the 1970s. No tweeter -- I'm with Dave on that. Sometimes, though, I'll also take a DI from the speaker output.

Peace,
Paul
 
The Hartke stuff

Don't get me wrong Seth, didn't want to diss Hartke. It was just that the period Dave described was so... so very a period (everybody slappin' etc), and the Hartke & actives etc were a bit of the 'anchors' (for lack of a better word) for that period.

so very a period
and that may sound condescending again, which is not meant... etc :wink:
 
[quote author="NewYorkDave"]The only problem with that pre, as shown, is that the output impedance is rather high and it won't do a good job driving mixer or tape machine inputs, etc. [/quote]

So Dave, does that mean when I am using the pre with an ordinary DI that I am not stepping down the impedance enough? I still need to add a CF? What I have been doing is bass pre->DI->mic pre->recorder and it sounds pretty darned good.

The output of this thing is wicked loud, where I need at least 20 dB pad on the DI, or even 40dB if I want to add a little "hair" of the tube. Also, using this as a pre into a tube poweramp overdrives the power amp above volumes of 2 or 3 on the pre. I haven't gotten around to taking any voltage measurements on the output though.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top