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#45390 by stillkicken
Mon Nov 03, 2008 3:15 am
I'm going to build/put together my own bass amplifier system (the only way I'll get in a band is as bass player). How many watts do I need to completely kick ass for an "average" bar venue. Would 2 cabinets of 4 12's each do it? Maybe 1200 watts total. More?

#45393 by ZXYZ
Mon Nov 03, 2008 3:50 am
50,000 Watts ought to do it.. :twisted: With 20 15" rev-cabs 8)

#45395 by stillkicken
Mon Nov 03, 2008 4:01 am
I like XYZ and Macho08, all of it very precise, nice. Now just tell me how many f**king watts you think I need. [/i]

#45398 by The KIDD
Mon Nov 03, 2008 4:28 am
Im kinda old school and drawing from set up experiences of yrs ago but my FAV set up was a cat that had 1500W with two 4-10 cabs..(Mitchell cabs I think). Covered the fequency spectum quite well.I just played a bass job this past weekend and used an 18 w/ horn cab with 500W..Wasnt enough really :lol:..Something about those 10's though.Some others on here can prolly better advise on the pwr req.

John

#45414 by philbymon
Mon Nov 03, 2008 12:05 pm
You can get away with far less than 1200 watts, sk. I do in most bars & venues. The more the better, most ppl would say, but just remember that you hafta lug that thing around, too.

In some small venues I've used a small GK keyboard amp with only 1 10 inch speaker, but it worked just fine for the needs of the room & the audience in a basically acoustic setting. It's 600 watts RMS, but boy is it nice not to have to carry a ton of stuff into a teeny lil room.

I've also used some very low-watt (100-200) amps at open mics, & they worked just fine, if not great. Yeah, I like the beefy beats as much as the next guy, but I do what I gotta sometimes.

#45427 by jw123
Mon Nov 03, 2008 4:26 pm
The bass player in my band Aint Yo Mama uses a Hartke head with 500 watts. He has different cabs to use 8x10, 4x10, 2x10. We take whatever we need for a gig. But realistically he can use his head with a 2x10 cab when I use a 2x12 combo and we are balanced out well volume wise. I dont think you need as big a rig as you think to play out.

If you are playing a bigger venue you will be in the pa anyway and all you do playing loud is make your overall sound to the audience turn to mush, you also overblow your singer and force the monitors to be turned up til they feedback, and then the guitarist cant hear himself so he turns up and you just have a wall of mush.

We ran sound for 7 groups over the weekend of various genres, some of these groups had huge rigs and they sounded like hell. The best band of the whole lot had 2 guitarist using Line 6 2x12 combos, which I think were the 60 watt variety and the bass player had one of those old Ampeg Portaflex amps, I think its 60 watts tube and has a 15 inch speaker in it. They sounded better and were way easier to mix than any of the bands that had stacks and all the bass cabs.

Our bassplayer who uses the Hartke only turns his master volume between 1 and 1.5, I use a power soak on my guitar rig. I guarantee you live we have as good a tone and sound as anyone youve ever heard. Big amps are way over rated, get something smaller that gets a good tone and in the long run you will be way better off.

When we played our headline slot in the lineup all the other bands came up and said dude how do you sound so good? I had my cabs stacked up like I was in a huge arena but I had my volume level at a whisper. You need to take in consideration what the audience is going to hear when you set your volume, not try to be louder than all your bandmates, that just turns into a cluster f**k. But hey if you want to sound like sh*t thats your problem, not mine unless Im unfortunate enough to run sound for you.

#45430 by Starfish Scott
Mon Nov 03, 2008 4:31 pm
LOL

I keep a setup for everyone, that way if something blows, I have a spare.

My bass rig is a Marshall 200 watt IBS head and 2 - 2x15" Peavey cabs.

I use a cheese Boss Me5B to color it and it's as much as I would need unless we're playing Giants Stadium.

I even broke a window with it once and didn't even have to throw a thing..lol

#45433 by jw123
Mon Nov 03, 2008 4:43 pm
Heres Aint Yo Mama at our Halloween Gig this weekend, you can see our stage amps, I wound up unhooking the Laney top cab on my rig cause it was too loud, Andy our bass player brought the 8x10 but was only a little over 1 on his master volume.

Image


We bring the big cabs out for the metal venue shows we play just to keep all the little wanna bee players freaking out at our amps, realistically I have a POD PRO unit that I may plug straight in our pa this weekend and Andy is going to use a Sansamp to plug into the pa.

I agree with the captain, we always have spare amps at gigs. If you use tube amps eventually you will burn a preamp or power amp tube at a gig.

#45437 by Hayden King
Mon Nov 03, 2008 5:19 pm
I have a GK 800 that will fill nearly any bar sized room. 500w is plenty anywhere short of clubs. of course you can just run through the board.

#45449 by Franny
Mon Nov 03, 2008 7:43 pm
Rule of thumb is 3 times the wattage of your guitar player, or higher frequency players (keys, horns, guitar).
Remember, bass is lower on the projection scale so you need power to throw yourself out there.
Also most amps and cabs need to be pushed to work at their design specs. So using a 1200watt power section when you only need 300-500 watts is the worse thing you could do to an amp and cab. Also NOT having enough power to drive your cabs will burn them up quickly.
Best thing to do is read some bass amp sites, SWR, Genz Benz, Peavey and so on, and it will become clear that theres a certain parameter or matching up of speakers and amp formulas they all use.

#45465 by HowlinJ
Mon Nov 03, 2008 11:50 pm
The best bass rig ever is the 100 lb, 300 watt Ampeg SVT tube amp.

Back when my wife was playing bass, she used a Peavey 1000 Probass preamp, driving a modest 200 watt PAS solid state stereo amp, 4 ohm 18'' Peavey Black Widow for lows and one 10'' Altec Lansing for highs. That was a great sounding rig , and adequate for every place we ever played, inside or out.

My son uses a little Peavey TNT. Good enough for a bar gig.
I suspect that any good bass amp made these days should work just fine. Wattage is less important then quality, in my opinion.

#45537 by ted_lord
Tue Nov 04, 2008 8:57 pm
not that I have any gigging experience but in the little I've had I've noticed that the louder bass gets the muddier the sound is, like jw was saying...the most important element of any band is the tone (at least to me) and if decent sized with a relatively low volume setting is the best way to preserve it (in most situations club's, bar's, small out door settings) you should probably look into that so I'd have to say that 500 watts would be adequate with 4 heads

#45559 by fisherman bob
Wed Nov 05, 2008 12:26 am
It all depends on what kind of music you play and how big the venues are. Is your goal to be so friggin loud that you're making noise and not music? How many watts does the rest of the band have available to them, how many watts does your PA have? What about tone control? What about producing a sound that WORKS? What about the bass you play? Active electronics? What kind of effects do you like? Wattage is only relevant IF you play something that people WANT to listen to. The POWER you play with has nothing to do with wattage. What EFFECT does your music have on the audience? I play through a rather small amp, Peavey TNT 115, and we pack a punch because we get the desired reaction from the audience. Occasionally I wish I had a bigger amp, but that would only make the other band members play louder and the vocal clarity would suffer. In my opinion TONE CONTROL is the key, but that's because the genre of music we play doesn't require liquifying eardrums. My two cents, hope you find the wattage and amp that WORKS for you. Later...

#45639 by stillkicken
Wed Nov 05, 2008 6:28 pm
Thanks guys for all the input. So if I built two cabs with a set of tens and a set of twelves each and two amps per cab then I could tweak as needed right? I'm going to look for used heads maybe and go from there, really want to build/experiment the rest myself as I'm a carpenter, was a mechanic, know some electrical, sounds fun to do. BUT I did see this guy playing a homemade guitar that sounded awfull so I'll try to stay away from that sort of thing. It would be hard rock and metal (hopefully)

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