Does One Really Need A Big Amp?

[Ryan Griffith]

Greetings, fellow denizens of Bassdom! I have a nice 100W combo which I'm happy with, but wherever I look I see players with stacks & rackmount systems etc... And it's universally accepted that one needs a 300+ watt head plus a couple cabs, at least. However, from both reading this forum & experience on a pickup gig, I've noticed that even the big rigs are run through the house. I've searched the forum, so as not to repeat a thread, but can't find a really good answer. If you're going to run your amp through the PA, why do you need a big, powerful EXPENSIVE system? The only answer I've personally gotten was that a combo's not loud enough for your bandmates to hear on a big stage. My answer would be to run the bass through the stage monitors, if it has to go into the house anyways. For small clubs, my 100W combo holds its own nicely, and most medium & larger clubs seem to have a PA anyways, so why not just run my combo into the house & forego the beating my wallet would take getting a stack... is it really necessary anymore?

 

Regards,

~Griff

[J.T.]

The answer to your title is YES!!! That's coming from the Tim Allen "more power" school of thought.

 

Seriously, you pointed out the reason for the big systems- stage volume. I played with a rap group that had a LOUD rock drummer and blues/metal guitarist who had 100W tube amp that he would crank to get his sound. At the time I didn't have money for a big amp, so I prayed for gigs at clubs that had house systems because they were usually huge and everybody could finally hear me. Going through the monitors would be nice, but I have yet to play anywhere (granted I'm not a seasoned veteran) that either (a) had monitors that could withstand bass frequency response at a decent enough volume or (b) had a soundman willing to put the bass through the monitors for fear of blowing them up due to lack of (a). So, monitors weren't an option for me, I just had to have a rig that could keep up. I've played in rap, rock, and jazz bands and the stage volume is generally the same although my combo cranked could handle the jazz gig.

 

The part about having the ultra expensive high fi stuff just to be run through the pa is that a good pa is only supposed to amplify what it's given without its own coloration. Theoretically, your rig is supposed to sound exactly like your rig, just louder and through their speakers. This doesn't always happen, but it's supposed to. However, even if the pa colors the sound, if you give it crap, crap's gonna come out. Plus, not everyone always plays gigs where their sound comes through the house. There's no reason to have two rigs- one for playing the gig with the house system and another for playing the unamplified coffee shop or small club gig.

 

To be honest, until people started speaking up, when I first got here people were talking about their 100W and 200W setups and I wondered how in the world anybody could hear anything. I don't think I've ever played a gig where I could be satisfied with 100W that either my bandmates or the audience was hearing anything I was playing. Then again, I also found out a lot of people have eq settings that cut the bass and boost the mids which is just totally foreign to me. LOL

 

[ 02-14-2002: Message edited by: J.T. ]

[Lee Flier]

Well our bass player uses a small Ampeg combo and we can hear him just fine... and I would complain if I couldn't hear him from the other side of the stage cuz we're a 3 piece and I'm the guitar player. So it would kinda suck if I couldn't hear him. And yes sometimes I do just ask for a little bit of bass in the house monitors.

 

But mainly I wanted to say that it looks really funny with this being the most recent thread, when you're on the forum home page it says "Does one really Need A Big..."

 

Hey, it's not the size, it's what ya do with it!

 

--Lee

[AlembicKoa]

Originally posted by Lee Flier:

Hey, it's not the size, it's what ya do with it!

 

Not quite true. Of course, it depends on the venue you are playing. I have played jazz/cocktail/dinner gigs with a Dano Nifty Seventy. It was fine. However, outside of those gigs, 100 and 200 watt rigs do not make it. Good drummers hit the drums. Guitar players use amps like Mesa, for instance, where they get mountains of mid range sound from little boxes. It takes some wheaties to push the low frequencies, and get them out into the room. People shake their asses to the bass, and enjoy hearing it. What you hear on stage is not always indicative of what is needed out in the room, or even worse, theatre, stadium, etc.

[jeremy c]

my rule of thumb is to add up the watts of all the guitar amps on stage and then double it..that's how many watts you should have.

 

Assuming you can be in the monitors is a big assumption...then the singers will complain they can't hear themselves and the monitor wars will start...(unless you have multiple monitor mixes which is pretty rare in a club situation). Also it leaves too much in the hands of the sound system. The more balanced the sound is on stage, the better chance you have of getting amplified through the PA properly.

 

Either everyone turns down (yeah trying telling that to a guitar player with a Marshall or a Fender Twin) or you have no choice but to keep up.

[Chad Thorne]

"Does One Really Need A Big Amp? "

 

....um, yeah, what they said...

 

Plus I'm a Luddite and a Cretin and a back-balding, graying boomer who just doesn't feel right if he doesn't have a AMP to fiddle with, even setting aside the flapping-pants-legs phenomenon. My preference, with bass as with guitar, is to plant a mic in front of my speaker cab; that way, the mic captures the "voice" of my instrument, which is bass + amp, in my book. YMMV.

[g.]

Nobody needs more. Nobody needs anything, really. They just want more ; }

 

There is little visceral similarity between hearing distant sounds that vaguely resemble a bass while standing many meters back from the FOH (front of house, PA speakers, if there are any available for other things besides vocals), as compared to having a big warm curtain of sound enveloping you and power on tap so that your every command -- every fingered nuance -- is faithfully translated into detailed sound right where you are, with no delay or lack of intelligibility.

 

And what wedges or sidefills have I ever seen in bars, clubs, and convention rooms (not to mention private parties) around here that can do the low B I want to hear and feel, and the very reason I scrimped and saved for my very own, custom-tailored big mutha bass monitor system for? I mean, standing near that thing is fun!

 

Man, I'd love to get rid of some cartage at times, but the cost is too high. Later, maybe, I can go rocking with a mic'd or DI'd single Acme B2 on a milk crate. But not right yet.

 

 

<-- greenboy ---<<<<    deja vu

[jimbones5]

Man, you gotta have a big rig so you can move some air. At least enough to make your singer's butt cheeks wiggle in the wind. It's gotta thump baby.

[Wally Malone]

I know I've posted it before that I really like to add on cabinets when needed. Even when I use 6 or 8 tens I still like to be fairly close to my rig. I like to feel that bass. The one exception I recall was when I was on a European tour with Bo Diddley back in 1987 and on a majority of the shows the backline had Trace Elliott rigs. Sometimes they were their higher powered rigs with a fifteen and a four ten cabinets and other times a lower powered 410 combo amp. For some reason with the TE's I preferred the tone I got from the 410 combo. On these gigs we always went through the house systems as well and when I used the smaller combo amps and since I was on the side of the stage (Bo was between the drummer and myself) I would have the amp on the side of the stage facing my right ear. Bo played with so much bass on his guitar and this seemed to work better because with the combo and lower power I tended to go for more of a midrange sound to hear myself. Nowadays what ever rig I'm using I like it up in my ear range. Probably the reason I like stacking cabs is so I can feel it in the floor and have that clarity up at head level.

 

Wally

[AlembicKoa]

Yup...I'm a DOF from the Ampeg SVT School of Bass...

 

Comes a time when it's all about the pants legs flappin'...

[Ben]

Hey, McGryff, you are getting the lowdown from some real pros here, so "what they said". I'll just add some weekend-warrior thoughts.

 

Even if you stick with a 1x15 cab, using an amp that has more than 100 watts, and a good cab that can handle the power (and with a decent tweeter and crossover), will make the 1x15 sound much punchier, clearer, and deeper. Not only is this more fun to listen to, but everyone else will be able to hear you better even though the volume is the same. You will also find that your bass plays better, with more "touch", dynamic range, and nuance.

 

A few years back I was playing my old P-bass through a combo similar to yours, and thought tweeters were un-necessary for bass unless you slap (which I don't). It sounded OK, but since then I have gotten a new bass, good active electronics, fancy strings, and gone through a couple of more modern amps(each of them more expensive). Part of this was just GAS, which is always fun on its own, but at each stage I have also found a real improvement in sound.

 

I don't play loud that much, so my rig hasn't gotten much bigger, but it has gotten audibly better. More important, my longest-standing outfit is a folk group that has been together for 13 years, and at each stage, as my sound improved, the main acoustic guitar player in that group has noticed and appreciated the difference. He is now starting to seriously upgrade his rig, too, which is cool, and our sound keeps getting better.

 

FWIW, at some point during the past year or so, Chuck Rainey made a comment in Bass Player that you need about 400 watts in a bass amp to get the dynamic range you need. This has stuck with me, since he ought to know, and, based on my limited experience, it seems to be true.

[g.]

From last week: How loud do you guys play

 

Another: Are amplifiers becoming obsolete too?

[Tom Capasso]

My take on this is that it so much depends on your circumstances. I like Ben's comments about getting better sound, but I think the rack/multiple speaker thing that so many people are doing is cool because of the flexibility. I don't have the rack amp deal yet, but now that I have some more speaker cabs, I know I can do a better job in my rock band. We use the PA for vox only (it barely does that). With a second cab, I can point one at the drummer who says I'm never loud enough (I love that guy ).

 

There have been so many thoughts in this area, read thru this (and the threads greenboy dug up). Your answer is in there. I just hope it's also in your wallet I know it's not in mine yet...

 

Tom

[g.]

Just an aside: in the late eighties and early nineties when the grunge feeding frenzy floated Seattle's fleet, a few of us were doing a grungy tech variant with samplers and synths and guitars and drum machines in some of the local clubs.

 

We made great use of distributed sound systems consisting of multi-buss mixing boards and Barbetta self-powerd, biamped cabs (sold in the midi keyboards sector and discovered at NAMM shows and later, in Keyboard mag's reviews).

 

Instead of mains on either side of the stage, we were running line-level from the mixer busses down XLR cables to all corners of the rooms, and the onus was on no one point source to develop SPL or tone.

 

This is one way to take advantage of whatever cabs and power amps are handy, to take less endowed rigs and still make powerful mojo. And those distributed sources don't need to be as loud as some are always situated near a portion of the audience. Even little practice amps can be enlisted, and the sonic experience can be quite pleasing and high quality.

 

Actually better than having all the cabs in once place with all the attendant phase problems and proximity SPL overload.

 

 

<-- greenboy ---<<<<    the college of doing

[zujo]

Man last night I played at a local club and the sound guy told me to leave my amp in the car if I wanted and use the house gear. The house stuff was a Carvin RL6815 Cyclops 600W combo.

 

MY JAW DROPPED ON THE FLOOR WHEN I HEARD MY BASSES THROUGH THIS THING!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Up to last night I was a firm believer that a lot of power on stage did not make a diference if you had at least 150W at your sevice while running your signal to the PA.

 

I was wrong and just saved my first $50 to upgrade my equipment with this combo!

[g.]

zujo, the mojo just keeps on getting better. Running FOH 5 nights a week on a well-designed headroom-aplenty system was a similar awakening for me after engineering with whimpy PAs in so many cases.

 

Good luck in your quests for big bottom ; }

 

 

<-- greenboy ---<<<<    developed a fetish for subwoofers

[ikestr]

Zujo,

 

Sounds good, dont it? In my opinion there is NO substitute for wattage. In my last band we did all T40 stuff with a roland V drum set which allowed our stage volume to be very low. I played through my combo amp, 210 watts and never had to turn up above 2 or 3. For grins and giggles I demoed a couple of other combos with less power (75-150 watts) and the 'umph' was not there. Now, do I need 210 watts for that application...probablly not, but what I gain by having the 210 watts is headroom. To me there is no substitute for headroom, which equates to wattage.

 

For my big rig, thats what I call it anyway, I use a 600 watt head run mono through a 4X10 cab. Have I ever needed or had to use all that power?...no, but the headroom allowed me to get a cleaner, clearer reproduction of the true sound than a say a 200 watt amp would have.

 

Dont get me wrong, I dont play loud, I only play as loud as the situation dictates. For me IMHO, you cannot go wrong with too much power than you need/want.

 

 

An aside: Hello, my name is Ike. And tonight I will be pumping the wattage through your cottage.

 

Ike

 

[ 02-15-2002: Message edited by: ikestr ]

[music-man]

Originally posted by McGryff:

If you're going to run your amp through the PA, why do you need a big, powerful EXPENSIVE system?

 

Funny - I have often had to justify this to the unlucky woman who is sharing my finances ...

 

1. If I were a sequencer, it would probably not make a huge difference if I played through a Gorilla or an SVT ... BUT playing great live shows isn't just a matter of sticking your fingers in the right places and being able to hear each other's parts adequately - great live shows are all about ENERGY. If I sound great on stage, I play better, the rest of the folks in my bands play better, we get more energy, the crowd digs that energy, etc. All that energy stuff is why people come out to see you play, instead of popping your CD into their stereo and settling into their couches with a snifter of brandy (or whatever).

 

2. No matter what the theory and spec sheets say, a PA sound just isn't the same, and people who crowd the front of a stage are getting a good bit of the amp wash from the stage (never played a stadium, though).

 

3. Stage volume is no small issue - as already noted, clubs won't always be willing to pump lows through their dinky monitors, and even when they do, I have no control over what it sounds like. On top of this, drummers I play with really groove off bass - it's tough to get enough boom out of a wedge, so that the drummer (sitting in the back) can feel it ...

 

... all that said, there are definitely shows where I leave some of my boxes at home. Some of this has to do with the venue size, etc. But I'll admit, it also is related to how much I'm willing to give the gig - hate to say it, but for gigs with bands I love a little less, I may not take more than my 2x10 and a head (lest you get on my case for slacking on gigs, 300W into an Eden, so it's not like they're sufferin' ...).

[BassLand]

Hi All,

 

I skimmed thru the topic and thought to respond to the general question. I preface my thoughts on amp size by saying I used to gig with (in a somewhat cronological order) a 300wt with 4-15s, a Acoustic 370 with the single 18 with tweeters added, a Polytone 101 (15", 2-8" and a tweeter added), a SWR SM400 with first an 18"-10" energy group system again with tweeters added (I guess I should say high frequency driver but tweeter uses less typing) and graduated down to an Energy Group 12" with the SM400 to finally a Euphonic Audio with a 10 inch 3 way system and 500 watts in the head. I also use a SWR WM-10 for rehearsal.

 

I prefer a smaller amp these days. But I also prefer high quality. I never had any roadies and at this stage of the game it is not likely they will ever be there. I ocassionally use the single 12 with the EA combo but that is the extraordinary situation. I still have the 18-10 EG system holding down my Garage floor. I haven't used it in several years. I let drummers and/or guitarists know if they are too loud right away and avoid playing with them if they don't do something to deal with the issue. My feelings on where the bass is in the mix comes from recordings (which usually have the bass mixed up pretty high) once the proper mix is achieved on stage then there is a PA mixer that takes that persormance to the audience. I have been known to unplug a feed if the PA mixer has me too high in the mix in an attempt to get me to play softer onstage. I always insist that I go thru my amp and their feed from there (Direct Out). It is my feeling that I be in control of my sound not some knob tweaker. He/she has to do his job while staying out of my way while I am making music.

 

 

BL

[Mike H.]

I say go with what works for you. I have an SWR Workingman's 10 that I drag around for practice/acoustic gigs. I also have an SWR Bass 350 head and a 4x10 cab. I always run through the PA in a big enough situation (outdoors for instance); but in a full electric setting with a powered PA for vocals only and competing with a drum set, and two guitarists (who incessantly compete for volume) I find that I need the head and cab set up.

 

I have also spent a lot of money on gear, and saving it has recently become a huge revelation in the last year. So if you can save a few bucks, why not?

[dougray]

mcgryff a stage bass setup doesnt have to be exspensive? peavey makes a nice 4X10 cab and 300W+ head"firebass" you could probably get the whole setup new for under 800bux.and it will do ya fine..

[g.]

Carvin. Very good bang-for-buck. Peavey too, both depending on tastes and abilites to tweak.

 

 

 

 

[ 02-16-2002: Message edited by: greenboy ]

[where02190]

OK here's my 2 cents worth from an engineers point of view. (20+yrs international major venues/artists)

 

Reserve power is always the way to go. You should never be using every ounce of wattage from your rig, as the quality of the sound will be inferior. Lower frequencies require more energy (wattage) to reproduce than high ones.

 

Regarding the need for more volume, granted, certain sounds require a certain preamp/amp drive. Small and medium sized venues (under 1000 capacity) this of course can be an issue if the right amp speaker combination is not used. I'd be a rich man if I had a dollar every time I mixed a great band in a small venue that screwed themselves by playing too loud and driving half the audience out in the first 5 minutes. Energy does not equal volume, it is a combination of proper dynamics and raw talent interaction, blended together to make a magical moment capturing the listener.

 

The limitations of most house pa's is a major factor, and unless you are absolutely certain of the quality of both the system and it's engineers, don't rely on it. However, this is not license to bring the 20 marshall and SVT stacks in either. I've heard bands with nothing more than a couple of small combos rock the house in a good sized club, with minimal pa.

 

Bass frequencies need distance to develop fully, the lower the frequency, the longer the wavelength. This is a law pf physics many bass players ignore, and attemt to reproduce bowel shaking tones 2 feet from their rig, not realizing that 60 feet on the audience side, all they are hearing is 45hz rumbles, everything else being masked by the +8db boost on the bas players onstage rig. I'm not saying suffer with a thin sound, but understand the fundamental roots of your notes and keep your onstage reinforcement within them. Bigger is not always better.

 

Bottom line for me is this. I should be able to turn off the reinforcement (FOH and monitors), and (with the exception of direct keys and vocals) hear everything, just not as loud. If that balance is achieved, even an inexperienced engineer can make your band sound great, because he has a great. balanced sound to start with.

 

All this is meant to help, not bash anyone, and no offense meant to any of you musos, including those too loud bassists with the 5 SVT's.

[g.]

where02190,

 

All good points. The more one understands the principles of sound reinforcement and psychoacoustics, the better they are apt to understand the use of their rig. I don't always run flat, but that's where I always start. And if I am doing too much boosting in any range (especially bass) to hear the tonality I desire nearby and farther away, then I likely don't have the right cabs, strings, pickups, etc.

 

Besides what you mentioned about headroom with amplifiers and the deleterious effects of driving them too hard, there is also a similar caveat with cabs. If one is making woofers work too hard for too long, voice coil overheating and compression result, or overexcursion and coil misalignment.

 

Like Wally says, bring enough speakers for the job, if you notice this is happening to you. Guitarists hardly have to develop a sense of this (to the detriment of many I think), but bassists sure should. Driving more cones and surface area less hard to most ears sounds better and certainly is easier on the gear.

 

It's all tradeoff on how much wiehgt and bulk one wants to carry, so many of us start out with powerful amps and make sure our average cab requirements are up to the job. One reason 410 cabs are so popular is because you get a fair amount of power handling and surface area in a small package. Though the response curve of most of them is not what I personally am looking for tonally, many players have found a good sound with them.

 

Those of us not lucky enough to work with competent soundmen and PAs adequate for more than vocals all the time, need to have it right at the local rig, and have a band strategy that all members will comply with, to get the best sound for the audience, and maybe a little compromise on stage (and boyo do those smaller venuse often have some odd stages and rooms!).

 

When we are blessed with the assistance of a sound engineer, it's indeed good to understand that everybody should depend a bit on the PA for volume and trust the engineer and treat with respect. I've done sound for bands before where one member of the band was so loud that even with no PA support for him, he was still blasting the joint, and making it impossible to boost the others in the board mix without thoroughly trashing the audience's ears. The stressed sound on stage was degraded as others tried to hear themselves. Double-plus ungood!

 

 

<-- greenboy ---<<<<    teamwork!

[Ben]

Great thread!

 

I agree with dougray, I have a Peavey 410TXF that I bought last summer, it is a really good cab for the price and all I would ever need. That particular 4x10 is bigger and heavier than some, but gets right down to a low B no problem. Personally I prefer GK heads to Peavey, but I did try a Firebass with my cab and it worked just fine.

 

(I have just replaced the 410 with two Epifani 1x12s, as discussed elsewhere, to get my rig even smaller, but each of the 1x12s cost more than the Peavey 4x10.)

[Ryan Griffith]

Hey all, thanks for all the great replies! I'm an admitted cheapskate, and I thought I could afford to get away with just a combo, but perhaps that's not so. It's so for now, as my band only plays small & medium size clubs. Looks like I'd better start tucking away some bucks for a head/cabs. I like the idea of hybrid amps, and teh SWR 350 looks good n' not complicated. I go for the ol' parametric EQ... not a big fan of graphic. I like to be able to make a quick change in my sound. Greenboy, I've considered the Carvin heads before too. However, the latest incarnation has a "tube emulation circuit"... what's up with that? Anyone know if such a thing actually sounds like a tube? Also on the list is the Hartke 3500 which sounds good, but has a mainly graphic EQ. Anyway, I appreciate all the info & feedback on the combo vs. big rig issue here!

[cornbread_medhotmail.com]

I sat in on an outdoor gig last night with a 150-watt Peavey combo. I could not hear myself at all. My normal rig is a 500-watt Mesa through an 8x10, so maybe I'm a little spoiled to hearing myself. I never trust the sound guy and I never assume that he will be able to run the bass through the monitors or even have monitors. If I know the sound guy well and know his equipment, I get with him before I pack up for the gig to find out what I will need for the gig. That has saved a lot of unnecessary frustration and labor. But, I am from the school of thought that says it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

[g.]

McGryff,

 

The Carvin R-series heads I've played through were prior to the tube emulation circuit. Even then, for tighter low end I blended mostly toward the solid-state side unless I wanted some grunge for a particular tune.

 

So I haven't played their emu circuit. But there are at least a couple of them out there by different companies -- I'm talking guitar gear here too BTW -- that while they may not sound totally authentic, do have pleasing and useful qualities of their own, in some ways leaving behind some tube problems. It's strange that people will accept similar circuitry that is often less flexible in stomp boxes but balk at it when incorporated into heads or preamps.

 

I hung out at the Carvin site for awhile but really never got a good idea what the circuit was capable of. I have no idea if it can go into a rich overdrive or just make some grunge. It seemed like most people who talked about it there were the types who didn't have much experience to draw from to make adequate comparisons or adjustments, or to hear subtle details that are in the end so[/] important. That may have changed since last I was there...

 

(Not to paint everybody ther as clueless: there were some real smart people there -- they just weren't the ones I saw posting about the tube emu.)

 

Anyway, the solid state side of the Carvin head sounds great and the tone-shaping is extensive. I set my basic tone using the 3-band with semi parametric mid, then set up another tone on top of that with the graphic, which was footswitchable. That allowed a form of channel switching for specific application --- say for slap tone. On top of that one could apply the pre-shaping with the three contour buttons.

 

Like many heads, the volume controls tend to bloom fairly early into their travel. It's as if the manufacturers all want to convince us their amps are louder than others... after all, the master volume is only on 3, eh? ; }

 

<-- greenboy ---<<<<    so imagine what it does on 11 ; }

[SlimT]

I just love this board!

 

 

Ya know, I just experienced something over the weekend. I got a new 210 and was playing with it with my small gig head (Acoustic Image Clarus). It was pumping 120 watts in the new cab and it sounded really nice. However, I also wanted to play around with the amp I would need for last Sunday's gig, so I set it up with my SWR bass 750.

 

 

What a difference in the quality of sound! Both heads do a great job of being very clean. However, pumping more power into the cab made quite a difference in sound quality when at the same volume levels. When I played the gig, I had the 210 matched with a 1 x 15. I really enjoyed the tone and enjoyed the gig.

 

So, do you need a big amp? If you're being heard on stage by everyone, then your amp has enough power. If you don't/can't run through the PA, you'll know soon enough in your gigging experiences if the bass isn't heard.

[The Fonz]

my attitude is that you never know what kind of shit the guitar player is going to pull at any given moment and NEVER try to compete with a drummer for volume. it's like trying to outrace a sax player.

 

for one thing, did you ever wonder why realy loud guitar amps only push about 100w while comparably loud bass amps push 400w? H E A D R O O M! your guitar player can jack out his jcm 800 and get his "amazing" tone, but whewre does that leave you? unless you're playing a huge venue (which i'm wagering few of us are), no p.a. in the world will save you. i played a show with an asshole who thought he could get closer to that "steve albini tone" by putting 4 3" piezo speakers into one of his cabinets. once you got six feet from his amp you couldn't hear anything but a loud screach. i was playing through a 350w ampeg at the time and no one in the place heard me.

 

p.a. systems can help you to an extent, but when you're competing with a guitar player who has to crank his amp to get his tone, you need something to produce enough signal to compete. never leave it up to the engineer to get it right because he's never heard your band before and figures you WANT to sound like korn.

 

anyways, i look really kewl standing in front of a rig thats taller than i am.