lowquality.net

I’ve been really pissed off about my bass rig for awhile now and I am venting.

I’m using two Bergan­tino cab­i­nets, which I love (a 2x10 and a 1x15 both have tweet­ers, which I leave flat). My beef is def­i­nitely not with them, they sound great, and just as impor­tantly, they fit in my car. The Bergs don’t have as much of that “sub” boom sound that I’d like some­times, but for their size and weight, they are more effi­cient than many much larger cab­i­nets. These cabs run at 8 ohms each but I chain them together for a 4 ohm load.

Now here’s where things get a tad ghetto: I am using a Sans Amp RBI into a Crown XS700 power amp. I don’t know why I let myself get suck­ered into using the preamp/power con­fig­u­ra­tion again. I did it once, years ago, and I wasn’t happy with it then and the gear I had then was bet­ter! I bought all of this stuff because I was out of col­lege and needed a larger rig for play­ing shows. I guess I ran out of money when I bought the Bergs.

First of all the Sans Amp works great in my home stu­dio, but live it just doesn’t seem to make any sense, a three band para­met­ric EQ is suf­fi­cient when you’re going into a board, but every time I play a dif­fer­ent room I stand there fid­dling with these three knobs try­ing to iso­late the one fre­quency that is caus­ing me grief. It’s nice to have a graphic EQ, even if you leave it mostly flat, just to adjust a lit­tle for the room. I digress. On the Sans Amp RBI, the blend knob, which con­trols the amount of “Sans Amp Cir­cuit” and “Drive” you want to use, is com­pletely unin­tu­itive. When I roll it back I get this really growly mid-range sound, which when I want a growly mid-range sound is great, but, like it or not, it clips my power amp and I have to roll it back to where I can barely hear it again. The alter­na­tive is to have almost no midrange and not be able to hear myself with a full band. I’m no expert, but the Sans Amp Cir­cuit sounds like an EQ pre­set that scoops out the mids like a nu-metal gui­tarist. I like to take the highs way down and con­cen­trate on the low-mids and lows because it fills the space that the drums and the gui­tar leave out.

I’m not sure that there is any­thing really wrong with the Crown XS700. It clips a lot for an amp that should be run­ning at over 1000 watts bridged mono. Granted, I play loud with the Jay Rakes Band, but this clip­ping is occur­ring with the EQ flat and usu­ally hap­pens with aggres­sive attacks on low strings. I’ve tried using com­pres­sion ped­als and had some improve­ment but, really, adding another piece of gear shouldn’t be the answer. I want less! Also, that stuff never really worked well enough to be worth it. I think, per­haps, this amp just wasn’t intended for what I am using it for.

I am sure some peo­ple have had great suc­cess with Pre­amp / Pow­er­amp setups but I have not. When you think you are sav­ing money by get­ting a preamp/power amp rack, you should con­sider what you are not get­ting. You are not get­ting a bass amplif­ca­tion solu­tion that is designed and man­u­fac­tured by one com­pany. Even if your pre­amp has all of the bells and whis­tles of a high-end bou­tique amp (the SansAmp RBI really does not), you are still com­bin­ing two dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies’ prod­uct philoso­phies to achieve one goal: good tone. Crown does not have the elec­tric bass player in mind when they design their prod­ucts. Crown’s idea of good tone is not the same as Eden’s, or SWR’s, or Ampeg’s, or whomever. A sound-reinforcement style power amp may have been designed with a higher damp­ing fac­tor (mean­ing bet­ter con­trol over the speak­ers) and there­for have a tighter, more effi­cient sound. For a PA, that’s great, you’ll get a really great, clean, full-band sound. For a bass amp you may want some of that boomi­ness in there and so where you think you’re get­ting a deal by “build­ing your own head” you’re really not get­ting what you’re look­ing for.

Another thing to con­sider is the need to plug into two AC out­lets instead of just one. This seems like a minor issue, but I am con­stantly con­fronted with stages that lack proper power dis­tri­b­u­tion. Club own­ers don’t know any­thing about that shit and your gui­tar player is gonna hog every­thing up with his pedal board, amp and what­ever else. Sure you could keep a power strip in the car (and will prob­a­bly have to) but wouldn’t it just be eas­ier to have one less thing to worry about on the gig? Just plug in that bad-ass bass head and rock!

I learned all of this the hard way, and I would have known bet­ter if I had tested some of this stuff out on a few gigs before I com­mit­ted to it. It’s taken me a year or so to really fig­ure a lot of these prob­lems out. When I get the funds, I plan on get­ting some­thing sim­pler that meets the needs of just sound­ing great and push­ing the hell out of the Bergan­tino cabinets.