would it be ok to run a bass thru a 100w laney aor? the cab i have is a 4x12 guitar with 65w speakers.....lemmy uses guitar cabs right?
You probably want to roll off the lows all the way first. Maybe the AOR head has EQ that will do it? (Start with the bass EQ all the way down, and everything else up, and not too loud). Or if you can, get an EQ pedal in that signal chain and turn the bass all the way off. The danger is that you might fuck up your guitar speakers, if you send too bassy a signal, too loud, through speakers that aren't able to handle the lows.
Or you may be fine. But tread carefully if you can't afford to replace speakers.
what lumpy said..
Yep, Lumps covered it. You could run the head into bass speaks/cab, but 100W probably isn't gonna be enough oomph (stagewise anyway, might be great for recordin')
why would a 100watt amp blow out 4x65watt speakers? what happens at lower frequencies that doesn't happen at higher bass frequencies? tube amps dont even clip like SS[put the power rail to the speaker basically]
Are these "guitar" 12" drivers built with really small travel for enhanced mids and the ability to get away with minimal surrounds and coil size in the restricted travel so they are really efficient at higher freqs?
i could see maybe "bottoming out", issues there, where you hear that loud crack of the coil smacking the back of the housing when driven hard at too low of a freq.
[im a home stereo guy so this should explain my weird /different perspective on speakers and amps, and maybe missing simple things involving music speakers and amps]
Quote from: jibberish on February 16, 2012, 06:00:00 AM
what happens at lower frequencies that doesn't happen at higher bass frequencies?
Excursion, which is the thing that breaks speakers. Sealed cab will help by limiting the excursion, but will also limit bass output, provoking eqing more bass, which will break things.
Basically it will work fine if you don't expect it to sound like a bass, sounding guitary like Lemmy's bass is fine, actual bottom will shred up the speakers real good. Also it will be stressing the amp harder so it will require a bit more maintenance.
I was always told- You can play guitar through bass amps but not bass through guitar amps. Always stuck by that rule, never had a problem. I have used a guitar amp for bass in a pinch, but you definitely need to set the EQ's correctly and adjust the volume or its not gonna last very long. It would work fine for low volume recording though.
Also, I really wouldn't consider Lemmy's rig as "guitar cabs". I believe he uses his signature Superbass II head with a 4x12(modified for bass) and a custom made 4x15. I would say his cabs are built to handle it more so than a normal, off the shelf guitar cab.
Lemmy def has bass speakers in his cabs now, but I think he ran damn near the same rig as Fast Eddie back in the day.
Quote from: grimniggzy on February 16, 2012, 10:33:32 AM
Lemmy def has bass speakers in his cabs now, but I think he ran damn near the same rig as Fast Eddie back in the day.
this is true.
They are probably Celestion speakers that are pretty much guitar speakers, for sealed cabs, rather than modern type bass speakers that have more in common with PA ones. Its all about using appropriate gear for the sound rather than forcing it to do something it isn't supposed to. I play bass through a guitar rig, valve head and 4x12 all the time, I eq it to sound like I want to not blindly roll off lows, I use a guitar rig because I want it to sound like one though. The only thing I' totally avoid is pushing a SS high power bass head into a guitar cab, because that can destroy cones with very brief idiocy and not much warning, even with guitar.
Quote from: grimniggzy on February 16, 2012, 10:33:32 AM
Lemmy def has bass speakers in his cabs now, but I think he ran damn near the same rig as Fast Eddie back in the day.
I never knew that. I would love to have one of his signature stacks though...kind of a dream amp of mine.
al cisneros (sp?) from sleep was also known to use a guitar rig along with his bass rig.
Quote from: hayseed on February 16, 2012, 01:32:22 PM
Quote from: grimniggzy on February 16, 2012, 10:33:32 AM
Lemmy def has bass speakers in his cabs now, but I think he ran damn near the same rig as Fast Eddie back in the day.
I never knew that. I would love to have one of his signature stacks though...kind of a dream amp of mine.
always kinda struck me as
overkillhaha
i use an AOR as my main guitar rig and also mess with it for bass you shouldnt have a problem as long as the cab/speakers can handle it. but i do run my aor into either a 1x15 bass cab or a 4x10 or both.
Quote from: justinhedrick on February 16, 2012, 01:35:05 PM
al cisneros (sp?) from sleep was also known to use a guitar rig along with his bass rig.
Yeah, Al runs a DS-1 with the tone jacked all the way clockwise on the guitar rig side. Pretty sure he uses guitar speakers since he regularly borrows gear & is pretty much losing all his lows from running his DS-1 that way.
Quote from: grimniggzy on February 16, 2012, 01:36:10 PM
Quote from: hayseed on February 16, 2012, 01:32:22 PM
Quote from: grimniggzy on February 16, 2012, 10:33:32 AM
Lemmy def has bass speakers in his cabs now, but I think he ran damn near the same rig as Fast Eddie back in the day.
I never knew that. I would love to have one of his signature stacks though...kind of a dream amp of mine.
always kinda struck me as overkill
haha
Haha! Very punny!
Stanley Clarke has guitar cabs in his bass rig (Jazz Chorus 120) for extra sizzle. Lots of people do it, you just have know what you're doing. Jibberish's explanation was correct, the guitar speakers are built to emphasize mids. Bass waves are big and require big speaker movement to reproduce. Treble frequencies are small/tight and require less magnet movement to reproduce ('excursion' - the distance the magnet travels when it vibrates). It's the guitar speaker's poor little magnet traveling too far/too fast/too violently, trying to reproduce big bass waves, and then your speaker gets all tored up. Bass speakers are built to handle more excursion.
Using guitar cabs is being done successfully all the time, you just need to take protective measures first, and use the guitar cab as a supplement, not as the main bass cab, if you want to sound like a "bass"
The Rickenbacker bridge pickup has a cap on some models that cuts the bass output from the bridge pickup so when you use Ric-O-Sound you can put the treble to a guitar amp safely. Never come across anyone using it though.
Quote from: Lumpy on February 16, 2012, 03:38:16 PM
Stanley Clarke has guitar cabs in his bass rig (Jazz Chorus 120) for extra sizzle. Lots of people do it, you just have know what you're doing. Jibberish's explanation was correct, the guitar speakers are built to emphasize mids. Bass waves are big and require big speaker movement to reproduce. Treble frequencies are small/tight and require less magnet movement to reproduce ('excursion' - the distance the magnet travels when it vibrates). It's the guitar speaker's poor little magnet traveling too far/too fast/too violently, trying to reproduce big bass waves, and then your speaker gets all tored up. Bass speakers are built to handle more excursion.
Using guitar cabs is being done successfully all the time, you just need to take protective measures first, and use the guitar cab as a supplement, not as the main bass cab, if you want to sound like a "bass"
The magnet doesn't move the voice coil moves.
I had an idea of a moving magnet microphone, but the cost to prototype it would be huge.
Quote from: justinhedrick on February 16, 2012, 01:35:05 PM
al cisneros (sp?) from sleep was also known to use a guitar rig along with his bass rig.
If you notice, Al almost always uses TWO 4x12s. The more surface area that the frequencies are spread over, the less chance of damaging a single speaker. When playing bass, I've been known to do the 8x10 + 2 4x12's thing. There's just SO much speaker that it's hard to destroy them unless you're running straight square waves.
Long story short, if you can afford to replace speakers, do it, but don't take our advice because we're just bums off the net, so your mileage may vary.
"Using guitar speakers for bass is similar to a hot rod. Yeah, it'll do 200 MPH, but for how long and how much money are you willing to spend?
The square waves damaging cones thing is a myth. It will just sound utterly aids, no more chance of damaging stuff than a sine wave of same power, unless you ahve crossovers and hf elements involved.
Lemmy sounds like a regular guitar player here...
have used my AOR 100 for bass a number of times
but only with a bass 4X10
it sounds fucking awesome
ok, thx for clearing that up, esp lumpy. i guess my bad assumption all along was that 12" driver=woofer.
from all the lore, it sure sounded like midrange speaker abuse with guitar 12"-ers used for bass.
but it didnt make sense, because all[home stereo]12"drivers are woofers. they don't blow up at any frequency, within power handling range. you would never, ever use that large of a mass cone for mids[in a home stereo]. too slow/flexy for detail. all they do is physically attenuate the highs.
The reason 12" cones make bad mids/highs is because the wider the radiating plane, the more directional they are at higher frequencies, it is why you get 'beaming', you can make them to produce the highs well enough, but they'd only work if you were right in front of them, it is pretty much the only thing that cone diameter directly influences, anything else associated with diameter is pretty much myth. The sacrifice home stereo stuff makes for hifi sound and sensible sized cabs is sensitivity, they won't go very loud for a given power input, because they don't need to.
Quote from: mawso on February 17, 2012, 01:42:39 AM
have used my AOR 100 for bass a number of times
but only with a bass 4X10
it sounds fucking awesome
i think i'll go with this answer.....i applaud you.
Speaker manufacturing and cabinet design are pretty complicated. Take a gander at Thiel Small parameters.
Guitar speaker cabs are pretty easy, the only thing you shouldn't do is put 4 12" speakers in a square shape.
Marshall make a bass 4x12. Have done for a while. Cabinet shape isn't much different from the guitar cabs.
Was reading something somewhere, where Jim Marshall said the reason Marshall 4x12s are that shape/size is because that was the smallest shape/size he could fit 4 speakers in. He didn't know anything about the acoustics and cab design then. Seems like acoustic science is more crucial in a bass cab (to get them good lows).
Marshall make guitar cabs, write 'bass' on them and call it good.
The failing about 4x12s is that they are so directional that if you stand in front of it to eq your head, you can't actually hear what is coming out of the speakers.
Quote from: Mr. Foxen on February 17, 2012, 08:31:51 AM
The reason 12" cones make bad mids/highs is because the wider the radiating plane, the more directional they are at higher frequencies, it is why you get 'beaming', you can make them to produce the highs well enough, but they'd only work if you were right in front of them, it is pretty much the only thing that cone diameter directly influences, anything else associated with diameter is pretty much myth. The sacrifice home stereo stuff makes for hifi sound and sensible sized cabs is sensitivity, they won't go very loud for a given power input, because they don't need to.
moot point when they cant even play the highs do to inertial attenuation. also large cones are impossible to make perfect and they get standing waves and other flex distortions going, unfortunately at higher frequencies.
you cannot get detail out of that. sheer volume, sure, but that doesnt cut it when you need to reproduce the whole music in detail. you get fuzzed mud. the middle of the cone isnt even doing what the edges are anymore...too much time and flex
12" cones can go plenty high enough to become directional. Especially if you put they next to eachother. Also the flex is part of the breakup mode of the cone and part of the tone of the guitar speaker, which makes it pretty vital to the 'tone'.
dont forget , i'm describing a home audio perspective of why 12" midranges are not used and why i was puzzled about the "dont run 12" guitar spkrs as bass spkrs" which started the whole thing. now i know, they are glorified midranges.
what you describe is for music gear. those qualities are absolutely unwanted in home stereo. we sort of have two arguments that have missed each other in passing.
heh, the whole premise of some of my questions was the way things are for home stereos make no sense in the music gear application, because the music gear applications and situations like you are describing wouldn't even be part of the equation wrt home speaker design.
like a hf beaming issue would never even be arrived at because the whole thing sounded like ass, beam or no beam.
stereos have to accurately reproduce, music gear just has to produce so you have much latitude in the sound you dial in, because you are creating it. so the blown speaker in geezer's bass rig sounded killer. the slightest flaw or coloration in a stereo fucks up the music.
Some home stereo/PA stuff does apply to bass gear, but generally gets ignored anyway because musicians are idiots that buy with their eyes not their ears. Hifi sounding bass cabs are lovely if you can actually play bass, otherwise they show up how shitty your playing is, the 15+6 cabs like Fearfuls and suchlike are great, and some of the Barefaced stuff you can play a cd into and it sounds fine, aside from being mono/half of the stereo. There is a bass cab maker using high excursion home hifi type woofers in bass cabs, but clearly aiming for the never get out the bedroom sorts who never push any SPL (same ones that are constantly emailing me asking why the 120w amp they bought off me doesn't distort).
http://www.musicgoround.com/detail.aspx?id=1207561
AOR with a bass preamp?
I don't think so ...
AOR ~ Pro-Tube.
That's probably solid state.
Definitely solid state.
Too bad he already bought it, probably.
He as in me? I didn't buy it. Just thought it seemed appropriate to post about in this thread. I would however probably buy a 100 watt SS Laney Linebacker guitar model if the price was right but they are hard to find.