Cab Dilemma

[DaveMuadDib]

Ok guys, now that I've got my Orange Terror Bass head (and I'm loving it!) I'm finding myself at a bit of a loss for what cabs to go for for my all purpose rig. I'm very inexperienced, have little means of trying stuff out, and I would GREATLY appreciate your wealth of knowledge with this one!

At the moment, I want a TC Electronic 2x10 to go with my 2x12 and the way I see it, 90 times out of a hundred, I'll gig with the 2x10 on its own, and if I need to backline or am playing a particularly large venue, I can use the double whammy and it's job done.

But that got me thinking - should I sell the 2x12 and get the nice little 1x12 instead? This will give me the flexibility of a dinky matching cab, and if I'm not mistaken, if it's added on to the 2x10 it'll still give me all the power I'll conceivably need.

But now my buddy Gaf is playing around with small, loud and very TCesque sounding (to my ears, anyway!) Barefaced cabs, I'm thinking that maybe the Compact/Midget combo is the way to go!

But now that I'm using an Orange head, I'm also tempted to go the whole hog - maybe down the isobaric cab route. The 2x10 looks awesome and some of you guys have raved about it, but I'm worried that it'll be way too vintage sounding for my liking (at the moment, I've got a nice "hybrid" of vintage and modern with the TC 2x12) not to mention that it's just so TINY! Could I really use that little thing as my full gigging rig??? Or if I wanted to augment this little cab (maybe with the orange 2x12 isobaric? or another 2x10) would THAT even be enough to compare with my proposed modular TC rig?

I've had 3 hernias, so I need to keep things as light as possible, so 4x10s etc are kinda outta the question. Bare in mind that I'm soon to become a poor student, so this rig kinda needs to be "the one" if possible What do youse guys reckon?

Edited July 15, 2010 by DaveMuadDib

[dannybuoy]

How does it sound with the RS212? I would have thought the Terror with one of those would be plenty loud enough and pretty easy to carry?

[Musicman20]

Stick to the TC. If you went Orange I'd suggest 2x (2x12).

[chris_b]

Isobaric cabs are so good that no one's ever bought one! And they are very heavy.

I reckon that unless you're playing a gig with your granny on drums you need 2 cabs, unless....

….you get a Compact. It's is the best sounding cab you listed (and only 26lbs) so I'd get one of those. A Compact on its own is great and one sounded fantastic with my AE210 so it would probably work really well with your 212.

Just my 2p!!

[pete.young]

[quote name='chris_b' post='896123' date='Jul 15 2010, 11:52 PM']A Compact on its own is great and one sounded fantastic with my AE210 so it would probably work really well with your 212.[/quote]
Unless the 2x12 is 4 Ohm, like most of the 2x12s I've come across.

If the TC 2x12 is anything like as good as my EBS 2x12, I wouldn't bother looking for another cab.

[Musicman20]

One thing I will add is that I've gigged the Compact and the TC cabs, and for me the TCs just work. More punch, more vintage meets modern, lightish and fairly easy to move due to their size.

The Orange cabs are super light, small and punchy but more vintage voiced.

The Compact was light with a lot of low end but not enough definition in the highs for me (just not as punchy...I don't like lots of high end but I like to hear it as well as feel it).

[gafbass02]

Interesting ....

[allighatt0r]

MY personal recommendation will be to go for TC. Get a 210 or another 212, then we you need both you can have them stacked up straight to near your ear level, and you'll have two happily matching cabs. Like peas in a pod!

[Low End Bee]

I'm gigging the Terror with an RS210 and an RS112 underneath as a mini stack.
I'm in a very noisy (so our PA man tells me) 3 piece. There's more than ample racket coming out of this set up. I don't think I've ever gone past 4/10 on the volume. I could easily get away with just the 210 but the 112 gives a bit of height and adds a little boom.

I worry about the head falling off so I run a strip of gaffa through the carry handles over the top of the Orange to keep it in place. Classy.

[Prime_BASS]

I'm gigging with the bass terror and the barraged compact:

It's so light that I can carry the cab the head my guitar and effects bag and cable spares bag no problem. And if you look at the size of my wrists (avatar pic) you can see I'm no beef cake.

It's loud, I mean seriously loud. You haven't heard loud until you've stood 4 ft away from this with the terror on half volume and the gain not even at 9 o clock. You'll blow not only yourself away but every body standing within a good 20 ft away. This is excellent for those non PA equipped gigs. It drowns drums out.

The bad thing is it's so loud that it's hard to use on stage with a PA. To get "tone" volume out of it is easy but once you have it, it's too loud. I try and practice with this and I've broken about 6 light bulbs down stairs, and just this morning I've had to re-fit some light fittings.

The bass terror is very bassy as it is and adding a 15 (compact) is increasing that. (only when you are squeezing the air pressure in your head does the EQ start to flatten out) this is bad unless you can really open the taps as the bass can turn into that in-audible low end mush when you play with fingers.

In my personal experience it's good for funk, slap, punk(with a pick) as it's dry fat sounding and full, but the more I play with fingers the more I notice the boomy ness.


Of course you can alway EQ out the bass a bit, and up the treble and ass the OTB has a subtle EQ it won't drastically alter your "tone"

Besides it's negatives I really love it, it'll cut through and still be low down in any mix, I've used this rig against a heavy hitting drummer 2 4x12 stacks in along high ceilinged hall, and the sound was immense, just helps the drummer if they have a monitor for every things else as behind it all you hear is low end mush.

In the future I'm either gonna switch to the TC RH450 or classic, get a midget, or sell the compact and get two of the isobaric 2x12s. But this is of course how I'm feeling with my rig aswell.

Obviously this is all IME, IMO.

[gafbass02]

The thing that's worrying me about using the compact is the fact that if I'm adding treble on the EQ with a little mark two that's fixed post DI that treble boost is just gonna come out the foh

[chris_b]

[quote name='gafbass02' post='896307' date='Jul 16 2010, 10:13 AM']....The thing that's worrying me about using the compact is the fact that if I'm adding treble on the EQ with a little mark two that's fixed post DI that treble boost is just gonna come out the foh....[/quote]
What you send to FOH can be EQ'ed way beyond what you can do via the amp. So any imbalance should be easily sorted out.

When I go through FOH I always ask for a mike on the cab as well as the DI. Most sound guys are OK with that.

Edited July 16, 2010 by chris_b

[gafbass02]

True, assuming the engineer isn't one of 'those' engineers, you know the ones .. (a discussion for another place lol) Still not had a chance to really crank my compact yet but I'm def warming to the tone.

[JTUK]

The TC set-up makes the most sense to me. Small, powerful and modular. Will stack better and not look like a dogs dinner of cabs

[gafbass02]

Dave and I are going to be having a bit of a cab-off with a barefaced/markbass/tc thing going on. Maybe we should think about making it a sort of mini-bash? But with guitar n drums so we get the whole cutting through a mix thing?

Edited July 16, 2010 by gafbass02

[dannybuoy]

[quote name='gafbass02' post='896307' date='Jul 16 2010, 10:13 AM']The thing that's worrying me about using the compact is the fact that if I'm adding treble on the EQ with a little mark two that's fixed post DI that treble boost is just gonna come out the foh[/quote]

If you open up the LMII there's a jumper inside to set the DI to pre or post EQ.

[Prime_BASS]

Well like I said my OTB is bass heavy, on any cab, I got it used and the guy left the setting on and the bass was cut significantly and he used 2 4x10s.

Just to explain my boomyness, I'm using a jag mainly and it's in series mode, OTB has a flat EQ. At many gigs I've used it and it's been fine no boom, but I'm too in-experiennced to EQ it out or no where to place it in relation to the room or whatever.

When I use it with my newly acquired musicman sub (thanks basslondon) the sound is a lot better, as in not boomy. Web at those low volumes where it's not driving the speaker a great deal.

I must say you can get an out-board pre-amp and hook it into the OTB effects return (cut out the pre-amp) and you can notice the difference. The OTB pre-ampm is definatly bass heavy.

I've also used the compact with a SVT 3 pro and the sound was nice an phat for me, but I had to upgrade for more watts!

[gafbass02]

Yeah i knew about the jumpers, I just dint tryst anyone around here (me included) to go fiddling around my insides

[DaveMuadDib]

Thanks for all the advices guys! I'm in a rush now but I'll take this all in and digest over the next few days, but I think it's a safe bet sticking with the TC avenue. I want a 2x10, but my main dilemma now is whether to stick with the 2x12 or get a 1x12 instead... I'm thinking the full 4 driver stack is the one though, even though it's uber overkill

[machinehead]

All I would say to the OP is stick with either all Barefaced or all TC. And preferably identical cabs unless they are designed specifically to use together.

Although I'd be surprised if your 2 x12 wouldn't be more than enough on its own?

Frank.