my next controversial question!! bass speakers into a marshall straight cabinet??

#41
bon viesta said:
... it’s a shame my questions often get “buy something that’s already in a store” as a response, instead of something a bit more enlightening. though i do understand why people would say that, because modern bass technology is obviously going to better than what i’m attempting even though that’s sort of the whole point. as long as i don’t blow something up, that is.
Click to expand...
The reason you're getting a lot of "buy something that's already in a store" responses is because with today's technology you can almost surely get whatever sound it is you're looking for. Many other people have already done the experimentation and the science, so there's usually no point in trying to re-invent the wheel. For example, you're free to try to make a good square wheel, but that's already been tried and rejected. If you need a wheel, just go buy a round one.

Those guys in the 60s that you seem to be idolizing were still experimenting, and trying to make the best out of what they had available at the time. Today we can all benefit of the results of all their research, and the scientific developments behind modern cabinet designs, and just buy the stuff we like.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Wasnex, chadds and bon viesta
#42
I was there. Marshall cabs the guitar cabs were called 1960a slant or b straight. The Bass cabs said Bass in the upper corner and were advertised to go down to 30 cps. whether that was true or not. They were call 1935a of b. The 100w cabs said 100 in the upper corner. They were call 1982a or b. A 1960a or b does not sound so good for bass, IMHO.

I played them. You could play bass through the 100w or the Bass. They sounded nice. You could get a clear sound out in the room that might not sound as perfect up close. I bought the Marshall HW set and it sounded nothing like the old stuff. Returned it.

Listen to Jack Bruce. That distortion was the humbuckers plus cranked heads plus torqued speakers. Not my thing. I loved it for him. Noel Redding, live sounded worn out distorted. Where Jimi disliked the Sunns Noel sounded clearer and stayed with them. He replaced the JBLs with Altecs. Less distortion from Billy Cox. Marshall heads especially the 100w have limited headroom before breakup. Great for guitarists not for bass.

New gear doesn't sound like this stuff. If you are attracted to it for it's sound, who's to judge? I liked it. There is a difference between a recording of a Superbass 100 head on a 50w Bass cab in the studio mic'ed and live cranked in those days.

I was repeatedly told I had a Noel Redding like studio sound when using an SWR SM-400, a Goliath Jr. and a Ken Smith. Why? That's the sound I wanted to hear so my touch made it happen.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: MattZilla, Wasnex, bon viesta and 1 other person
#44
DIY projects for bass players are more educational than cost effective. You can build a cabinet, amp or speaker, but you are unlikely to beat the quality and pricepoint of commercial offerings unless you are very experienced and educated. Ive made a bunch of stuff myself, and some was even good, but i never saved money in the end. If you are looking for a cool project cabinet to do with pops, check out Greenboy or BFM at speakerhardware.com. Great stuff with the engineering already done, and you can finish the cab as vintage looking as you want.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cartier76 and bon viesta
#45
chadds said:
I was there. Marshall cabs the guitar cabs were called 1960a slant or b straight. The Bass cabs said Bass in the upper corner and were advertised to go down to 30 cps. whether that was true or not. They were call 1935a of b. The 100w cabs said 100 in the upper corner. They were call 1982a or b. A 1960a or b does not sound so good for bass, IMHO.

I played them. You could play bass through the 100w or the Bass. They sounded nice. You could get a clear sound out in the room that might not sound as perfect up close. I bought the Marshall HW set and it sounded nothing like the old stuff. Returned it.

Listen to Jack Bruce. That distortion was the humbuckers plus cranked heads plus torqued speakers. Not my thing. I loved it for him. Noel Redding, live sounded worn out distorted. Where Jimi disliked the Sunns Noel sounded clearer and stayed with them. He replaced the JBLs with Altecs. Less distortion from Billy Cox. Marshall heads especially the 100w have limited headroom before breakup. Great for guitarists not for bass.

New gear doesn't sound like this stuff. If you are attracted to it for it's sound, who's to judge? I liked it. There is a difference between a recording of a Superbass 100 head on a 50w Bass cab in the studio mic'ed and live cranked in those days.
Click to expand...
that is the sound i want!!!! that crackled, booming, lowdown distorted thunder from the likes of the stockholm 1969 jimi hendrix show, cream live in 1968, and andy fraser with free.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: MattZilla
#46
Mushroo said:
When you listen to an old recording, there is no guarantee that you are hearing the bassist's touring stage rig. Just because you've seen photos of Redding/Cox/Fraser/Bruce playing through Marshall stacks live in concert, that doesn't guarantee that's what you're hearing on those famous old recordings.
Click to expand...
...and the official "live" recordings of the period sometimes had parts dubbed over when the original tracks weren't good enough.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bon viesta and Mushroo
#49
ardgedee said:
...and the official "live" recordings of the period sometimes had parts dubbed over when the original tracks weren't good enough.
Click to expand...
i heard during jimi hendrix’s show in hawaii(?), the one that you’ve probably seen on youtube lately with all the hippies in the audience, the wind was blowing so bad that mitch mitchell had to overdub his entire drum part for the live recording. you can see where his movements don’t match up with what you’re hearing. they had foam all over the mics on that concert :wideyed:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Lobster11
#50
you know, speaking of drums… i think the reason i’m so obsessed with the idea of making a bass rig that looks totally vintage is because coming from a drumming background you could NEVER do that. and if you wanted to, you either had to buy old drums or pay 3000+ bucks for something that looks sorta vintagey. when i saw the brand new world of bass amplifiers and guitars, i thought to myself, “jesus christ this is an opportunity to do so much!!”
 
  • Like
Reactions: MattZilla
#51
bon viesta said:
that is the sound i want!!!! that crackled, booming, lowdown distorted thunder from the likes of the stockholm 1969 jimi hendrix show, cream live in 1968, and andy fraser with free.
Click to expand...

Running multiple cabs is probably going to be essential to getting booming lows out of old school 412s. The difference between one of my HT4121s and two is pretty significant.

From what I have read, it was fairly common for bass players to blow the drivers out of their Marshall 412s.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MattZilla, D.M.N., bon viesta and 1 other person
#52
Wasnex said:
Running multiple cabs is probably going to be essential to getting booming lows out of old school 412s. The difference between one of my HT4121s and two is pretty significant.

From what I have read, it was fairly common for bass players to blow the drivers out of their Marshall 412s.
Click to expand...
that may likely be a part of the sound, but if it isn’t (which, no matter what, the sounds of drivers dying won’t be part my sound since it means destroying a driver, no matter what rig i end up with in the end) then hopefully proper bass speakers would mean less of that madness happening. that was the primary reason i didn’t just instead go on with buying a guitar cab or something. guitar speakers can be used for bass, but at a certain point they crap out and die. usually the louder it is, or the more bass you shove into it. you can fart out of bass speakers with a tube amp but you won’t destroy the speakers. and plus bass speakers farting sounds a lot better.
 
#53
bon viesta said:
that may likely be a part of the sound, but if it isn’t (which, no matter what, the sounds of drivers dying won’t be part my sound since it means destroying a driver, no matter what rig i end up with in the end) then hopefully proper bass speakers would mean less of that madness happening. that was the primary reason i didn’t just instead go on with buying a guitar cab or something. guitar speakers can be used for bass, but at a certain point they crap out and die. usually the louder it is, or the more bass you shove into it. you can fart out of bass speakers with a tube amp but you won’t destroy the speakers. and plus bass speakers farting sounds a lot better.
Click to expand...
Oh, you can blow them just fine with a tube amp!
 
  • Like
Reactions: MattZilla, bon viesta and Wasnex
#55
Marshall did make bass cabs. Looked like the traditional cab, Just a little deeper. Sounds vintage. Big and bulky.
The same amp through 2 eminence 10s in lightweight cabs sounded better to my old tired ears.
Screenshot_20180810-201043.png
Resized_20180519_103906.jpeg
 
  • Like
Reactions: DJ Bebop
#56
bon viesta said:
yeah if you’re pushing too much power! haha, with how protective i am of my hearing while playing bass i don’t think a 100 watt tube amp would see the light of day beyond a 2 on the volume knob. maybe a 3.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. If the box and the driver aren’t optimized (vents, closed, volume in cubic inches, etc…), you could blow a speaker with less than 100 watts. Correct me someone if I’m wrong.

As an example, I had the idea when buying my Traynor YGL-3 combo to replace the drivers with two Eminence Basslite S2012. In my head it was ok, 2x150 watts with an amp pushing only ~100 watts (150 watts « at best » at full blast with insane amount of distortion theoretically).

I got advices here to forget it (thanks to the knowledge here) as the combo was open back and unless not driven hard (and not too much bass dialed on the EQ), I could easily damage them…
 
  • Like
Reactions: DJ Bebop and bon viesta
#57
ihixulu said:
My hunch is that they were able to get away with it back in the day because of the relatively low power ratings of the amps of the day, typically 100W, and the narrower bandwidth those amps put out, i.e they were grinding out more mids than bass bass if you know what I mean.

Steve Harris of Iron Maiden used to load guitar cabs with EV drivers for many years so your idea is not completely bonkers. I suppose it depends on what kind of sound you're after and how often you're willing to replace blown drivers.
Click to expand...
This no doubt has nothing to do with your question but, I have a Mesa WD 800 but it could work with just a HPF. I like to run my HPF up a lot to recreate the sound of those vintage cabinets. They were not deep in dimensions and the old school speakers didn't bring any low end as we are use to today. So with the HPF set kinda high, I get that effect out of my modern deep cabs. Then when I'm done with that, I dial it down and get the modern deep sound. Same cab :)
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Pauly 4001, DavidEdenAria, S-Bigbottom and 2 others
#59
bon viesta said:
noel redding. billy cox. andy fraser. jack bruce. what’s the deal with all these guys? they used marshall 4x12 cabinets either primarily or at a time in their career, and at the very least i heard what they sounded like with them. and unlike the bassman 2x12 i was talking about the other day, these guys actually sounded particularly awesome with these amplifiers. the bassman is sort of ambiguous. so would the earth explode if i put eminence speakers with a low volume capability (think basslites) into a marshall style 30x30x14 straight 4x12 cabinet? i know you amp techies have the best intentions in your heart, but please don’t smite me for asking such a dubious question :nailbiting: all these questions are sort of my research on what to do with any potential amp set up. if i criss cross and jump around from style to style and question to question it’s just because i’m trying to figure out what’s possible and what’s not.
Click to expand...
Those Basslites will be fine those Celestions from the 60's were 25 watt speakers. Divided by 13 makes a similar bass cabinet and a 4-10 cabinet Fred Tacone the owner said he tried different emminence speakers and found the right match for the cabinets. I would call him hes a great guy and makes two different Tube bass heads. I'm old and am of the belief that a true 100 or 200 tube watts is quite loud especially when pushing 8-12's. The old Marshall Super bass would get alot of amp distortion as you turned up the bass control. I played a Marshall Major thru a Marshall 4-15 cabinet with celestions rated at 50 watts each and it was punishing with a great sound.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ethereal Thorn, DavidEdenAria, DJ Bebop and 1 other person
#60
In the late 70's Marshall made a solid state bass head rated at 100 watts and it had 2 cabinets each with 2-12's I thought it sounded really good and loud. All these current amps rated at 800 watts and many don't sound as loud to me as many of the 100 watt heads of the 70's.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back