Jack

I'm not an Ampeg aficionado, is there anything special about that one?

Really? I was under the impression that it's mostly under0the-hood type stuff? I know there's a Sansamp coming...

Yeah man, that. Unless both amps have a proper effects loop an AB pedal is the only decent way. I still question the usefulness of putting a 25W amp with a 1x8" speaker next to a drummer.

You can absolutely use a passive DI with passive bass, but it's not always optimal. The problem is that a passive DI is literally a transformer with a certain ratio (in order to get from high impedance to low) and so the input impedance of a passive DI can be relatively low. As any double bass player will attest to, plugging something really high impedance into a low impedance input will result in a weak, trebly, almost out-of-phase type sound. The thing is, that depends far too much on your bass and DI box to be all sweeping and generalising about it. One thing is pretty much a given though, a good passive box and a good active box will be equally good but a cheap active box is usually WAY better than a cheap passive. The only component in a passive DI is a transformer and you can tell a cheap one by how it handles (or doesn't handle) low frequencies. If the box is always in a mixer rack (and you're always running the mixer) then phantom power shouldn't be a problem should it? If that's the case then you can use pretty much whatever you want. For active, I love the Countryman Type 85 and the bigger Orchid, as the smaller one is phantom only and doesn't have a pass through. In this one circumstance that wouldn't be a problem but why limit yourself down the line! If you can definitely get away with passive then I think it's hard to beat the £70 or so you'll pay for a radial stagebug 2. That's what I ended up with in the back of my rack wired into my Line 6 Helix. Great DI, and tiny. What's wrong with getting fancy though? That BDI21 is decent enough DI. There are plenty more bass-specific preamps out there like that as I'm sure you know. The great thing about something like a Sansamp is that you've got the choice of phantom, 9V battery or standard boss power, making it a lot more versatile. Sorry for waffling, it occurred to me about a week ago that I've got something like 15 different DI boxes if you include pure DIs, preamps, bass pedals with DIs, etc. They're useful and interesting and I've been hooked ever since I got my first MXR M80 and realised that an amp can be optional!

Probably, what are the amps? The real question though, is why would you bother? I can't imagine that the 25W amp is going to add much, probably worth just using the 100W.

Are you sure the jack inputs aren't balanced? Most pro gear should be.

I'm not sure how much output my bass has below around 80Hz, so depending on the FOH system I'm probably not in the subs that much anyway. I can see why reggae players or whatever might feel differently. Either way I really don't want that stuff on stage. Something that loud and low will likely do nothing useful apart from rattle mic stands and woof into every open channel.

What cables? 😀

My previous rig was any one or two from a Compact and two Midgets (one a Midget T). My current rig is one or two FR800s, which are essentially a BB2 with a 600W amp built in. I'd say the BB2 is maybe slightly bassier than the original compact, but there's not much in it. I've played a Super Compact loud but not gigged it, but my impression is that it was maybe between the BB2 and the original compact. It's essentially a BB2 but in a slightly shallower (front to back) box. (Yes, with no tweeter, but that doesn't affect the lows) There's really not much in it and I think the SC is slightly bassier than the compact, but not by much. All 3 have pretty similar lows, certainly more similar than they are different. I'd also say that any from the compact, super compact and BB2/FR800 are one cab solutions for most people. Yes, I've also got a stack just like you, and yes that can sometimes serve to fill out the sound a little more and make it a bit more effortless but I know that I could do all of my gigs with one FR800 if I really had to.

Hey man, no worries! It's in my signature, and here too.

Yes I know that's one way to do it, I saw your first post. I asked how hartke do it. If you don't know that's fine.

It seems as though Hartke don't get the same vitriol, so I've always assumed that their speakers do actually switch (unlike the Accugroove). Is this true? If so, how do they accomplish what Accugroove couldn't?

The Accuswitch on Accugroove cabinets turned out to be snake oil as I recall. Something about switching in a capacitor to fool a multimeter possibly? Not saying that's true of Hartke, but certainly with Accugroove it was a scam.

RouterOS, the operating system that all of the mikrotik stuff runs, is utterly customisable and frankly unfathomable unless you have a PhD in computer networking. I most certainly don't! However one of the first menu options is called something like 'quick set profiles' and has a few of the most common use cases set up and ready to run. What you want is 'wireless bridge'. Then you'll need to type in your wifi password and plug a cat5 cable into the middle or bottom port of the router.

Basically, yes. Not to confuse you even further but obviously a cab isn't really a thing, it's speakers n a box, right? So the speakers inside each cab are wired in either series or parallel too (or both), so what would actually happen if you broke a speaker is the total impedance of one cab (and so the whole system) would change. The electrons flying around the cables don't really know or care that there are even two separate cabs, it's just one load created by all of the individual speaker drivers. Clear as mud? 🙂 The easiest way to hook up two speaker cabinets in series is to use a series wiring box. It's a pretty simple DIY project, and if you can't do it I'm sure a local university student reading electronics would do it for beer money. In a mathematically perfect you wouldn't need to do this, as the 3dB increase you get from doubling speaker area would be cancelled out by the 3dB loss you have from halving amp power. So (again, in a perfect world) you amp with 500W into one of your cabs is the same as running into 8R with 2 cabinets. It normally isn't that simple though.... Yes. This is why I made the point above about it being thought of as a total load rather than the cabs being thought of as being discreet. Do you theoretically have 2 cabinets, each 8R with 1x12" speaker each, or one 2x12" cabinet that's a total of 8R as the two speakers in it are wired in parallel? It doesn't matter! Either way there's 2 drivers, 8R each, so 4R total. 4 of those DB112s cabs is a total load of 2R, just as if it was one massive 4x12" cabinet.

That's definitely a 2R load then, and that's definitely below the rated safe impedance for your head. I just quickly checked the manual on my lunch break and it says: 'DO NOT connect amp to a load of less than 4ohms, outputs are wired in parallel'. Good question. I dunno, both? neither? one then the other? As I said before, most safety ratings are overly cautious, there may in fact be no repercussions at all. The speed rating on my car tyres is V, which is 149mph. What will happen if I go over 149mph? They might be fine, they might wear out faster and not last as long, or they might catastrophically fail and explode. The same is true of your amp. It's a bad idea.

I often use the Markbass Amp Wedge.

It wasn't meant to be condescending, sorry if you took it that way. Yes, the head is only safely rated down to 4R (as far as I know) so giving it a 2R load is outside of its rated safety specs and potentially dangerous. Like any safety spec, there may well be no long term consequences to running the head at 2R. Most safety specs have a margin of error and the amp will have safety features, so it might be fine. Just like if you put 510kg on a crane rated for 500kg you might well be safe, however that spec is what it is for a reason. Best case, all is fine. Worst case, amp fails catastrophically and explodes in a fireball. There are a lot of very possible scenarios in between those two examples, most of which aren't much fun.

Yes, daisy chaining 2 4R cabs is a 2R load whether they're both linked to the head or whether it's one cab into the other. Either way they're still wired in parallel. There are some misconceptions in your post though, the amp is still 600W, so split between the two cabs they're only getting around 300W each, the amp doesn't magically double in power to 1200W just 'cos there are more cabinets on it, it's still a 600W amp. The cabs couldn't care less, the cabs are and will always be 4R each, the problem is your amp which I don't think is supposed to go down to 2R. It's the amp that stands to be damaged by this, not the cabs.

Yeah. We went from an 8-channel Yamaha board that only ran vocals into two tops (5 xlr cables), to the XR18 that has everything through it with tops and subs (16 xlr). Going digital and wireless gave us...more wires.

It can and to be honest it's cheap enough but there are simpler devices that can do the same job. What's the ethernet only device? If it's a PC then there are USB adaptors or PCI card adaptors. If it's a dumber device like say a media player then you might need something like the hap to fake a 'proper' ethernet connection.

You're sorted now, but for the future those really tasty Sire basses come in identical fretted and fretless.

Totally. I'd still use a router anyway so you've got seamless tablet or laptop use, whichever is best for the gig. That's why my router is wired in backwards, so that there's easy access to the ports when we use a laptop. I have a 50cm ethernet extension on my helix, I really should get one for the router. If you're buying a router just for this then I can't recommend the mikrotik stuff enough, one of my other hobbies is computing and those routers really are the business. There's rack mount options too. Thanks, I'm a real cabling nerd! You should see my other rack... One of the advantages of going digital was to have an easier setup, so I didn't see much point plugging everything in every gig. Unfortunately the rack ears don't have a hole in as standard, you can still see evidence of my cack-handed attempt at cutting the hole before I wimped out and asked our guitarist to do it as he's a machinist in his day job. There are now cad files online of xr18 rack ears with either holes or proper neutrik punch sockets if you can be bothered to find a 3d printer.

You can control it via the ethernet port, so if your tablet (unlikely) or laptop (very likely) has an ethernet port then you don't need the wireless. I have the XR18 and it's beautiful piece of kit. Digital mixers are as much of a revolution in gigs as class D amps or neodymium cabinets IME. They save time at soundcheck (as 90% of the levels and eq are the same, there's just tweaking for the room to do), they are smaller than most analogue mixers, not to mention they can replace about 50 rack units worth of outboard gear aside from the mixer itself. I use mine in two bands, each band is saved as a scene so when I get to a gig I just pick which band it is and everything is just as it was left last time. I have the mixer in a 4-space shallow rack with a media player and it's wired into a Mikrotik hap mini. I'd like a 5GHz router as 2.4GHz gets increasingly congested, but honestly I've never in hundreds of gigs had a dropout with the Miktotik and (perhaps crucially) I already had it sitting around the house. The mixer can also be a wireless router itself but then I did experience dropouts. An extra side benefit of the mixer having it's own wifi is that, when at home, you can switch the mixer using the front panel switch to being a wifi client and then it automatically connects to the home wifi. In one band we have a soundman. The drummer met her boyfriend at music college and he's damned fine soundman, so that's that. He tends to bring his laptop and then runs a very long ethernet cord from the router in the mixer rack (which is always beside the drums as that's where the most mics are) to where he sits on a table in the venue. Sometimes that's a proper FOH position, sometimes it's just a pub table where the audience are. The other band we don't have a soundman. I walk the room with the tablet during soundcheck (whilst sporadically playing bass, which isn't ideal). For changes after that during the set, the guitarist's gf has the app on her phone and she's only allowed to move faders if someone is far too loud or too quiet. Control: tablet control works very well. With both bands we set everything up in a room for the first time and sat with a laptop for ages as typing and controlling will always be easier on a laptop but we only did that once. You can do everything on a tablet and they're fine for quick tweaks at every gig. Having said that, if someone is static at a camera position then maybe laptop would be better? They have bigger batteries, bigger screens and ethernet ports compared to tablets. If you go for a tablet then any second hand Android tablet would do, and I do believe there's a third party (unofficial, no idea how good it is) on the Amazon store so you could use it on a £30 Kindle Fire. I have (because I already had) a Samsung Galaxy 10 that I use. The one thing to note is that, for the Behringer mixers, there's Android phone and tablet apps, and an ipad app, but crucially there's no iphone app. An example brand new XR18 setup like mine costs: XR18 £340 (they've come down SO MUCH, I paid £450 for mine second hand when they were £550+ new!) Kindle Fire £30 Rack £50 Mikrotik router £15 Power strip £20 So that's around £450 give or take for a full setup. I think if I was buying again I'd have the A&H Q-USB as it records proper multi track to a USB memory stick, but I'm in no hurry. Being a Behringer I keep expecting the XR18 to crap out on me, but it hasn't happened yet...

Nee botha hin. I don't know how big (for lack of a better word) your band is. If those venues are too large or too expensive then I can name about a million pubs and clubs that have live bands on.