AFter a nice bass head and cab

P

perceive

New member
Hi all,
I have a nice bass that i currently play through a sansamp.
It's a nice tone
But
I may need to play soon. *gulp*
So I am looking for a bass cab and amp.
Doesn't need to rock the whole world. Not even the hemisphere.... but a good warm tone, more 70's than modern, would be really nice, a tinge dark and sinister but warm and relatively clean (there will be no overdrive).
I have a USA P bass for this and don't necessarily trust my local shop rep as he likes overdriven bass.
Some bands for examples of the tone: Pink Floyd (circa ummagumma/live at pompeii) ...
any help would be appreciated - google responds with too much information and again I don't necessarily trust what I can find between a million shop ad's..
Thanks!
 
The most important thing to me is the speaker cabinet. A good cab will usually have some kind of tuned port to help the sound come out properly, but different speaker sizes and types can have very different characteristics.

10 inch bass speakers are my favorite by far. They sound tight. They can cut through a dense mix and be very clean. A good speaker in a well designed cab will provide all the bass you need. IMWALTO, they're the most versatile.

12 inch bass speakers center more around the midrange. 12's are great for guitar, but many bass players have used 4x12 guitar cabinets to get a growly distorted tone. Think John Entwhistle. How quickly any speaker will go into distortion depends on the speaker design as well. Celestion Greenbacks will distort faster than Altec or JBL speakers or something designed for more power. We're thinking about slight distortion from the speakers, not Big Muff Pi distortion. An old, heavy Hiwatt or Ampeg 4x12 might be something to check out for a retro sound.

15 inch speakers need space. I like to give them so much space that I'll completely avoid them if possible. Again, the way the speaker interacts with the cabinet design is important to the end result, but sometimes 15's are very hard to control. They give you a massive wall of low end that can easily be excessive in a jam room. This can be a good thing to make the bass project in a large room, especially if you're using a second cab that has 10's in it. Some 15's sound ok. Think "lots of bass". Beware.

I haven't seen 18" cabs for a while, but I've owned 2 types in the past. One was an Acoustic reflex cab design. This was a huge cabinet with one speaker in it. If you don't have a van or something, forget it. 18's are more balanced than 15's across the spectrum. Nice big low end, but better mids and highs than 15's. Easier to control. The second 18 that I've had was a very small Traynor cab with a cheap speaker in it. I think it was a Cambridge. I sold it out of necessity only, otherwise I'd still have it. I don't see these things around very often.

If you have a great bass and a great cab, sometimes all it takes is to get a very simple head that will kick out loads of power. Tube watts seem to be much louder than solid state watts. If you're thinking of doing gigs, 200 solid state watts at a minimum might not fit all needs. If it's a head that's capable of 400 or so at 4 ohms, that might be a good starting point. The heads that I've used that I'm happy with are Ampeg and Sunn tube heads, or my SWR 4004 solid state. (If a bass head has at least 4 big power tubes, forget about watts. It's likely to be extremely loud and very clean at the lower end of volume output.)

I've demoed heads that had fans and crap in them that made them rattle or be noisy. Yuck. The newer, small, lightweight heads seem to reach their limits faster.

Hopefully some of this will give you some ideas. Good luck.


sl
 
How about an Ampeg SVT head and an Ampeg 8x10 cab.

Not exactly cheap, but it's a great, great rig.
 
Thank you for the advice! It certainly has given me a good enough education to give me a decent start so thanks !! you guys rock!

I wish there was an easy guide for all this but I guess then ext thing to do is pick up my bass and try a couple out
 
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