Bi-amping suggestions, comparisons, benefits and methods

[toddharris]

Hi, Over the next few weeks, I plan to post a series of videos documenting my findings as I explore different speaker combinations, amps and settings, and roundwound and flatwound strings on my stereo Stanley Clarke Brown Bass. Hearing is believing! I'll be using GK amps and speakers, Genzler Speakers , JBL speakers and as soon as I receive it, the new Phil Jones 450 lightweight combo amp used as the neck pickup cabinet. It may be the perfect combo amp to use in many situations as a stand-alone and also as my bridge pickkup amp in the stereo setups.  In the end, there are trade-offs in terms of size, weight, rooms we are playing and many more variables.

What I am working to demonstrate is that in order to hear more than just the fundamental note played, to hear the overtones and harmonics created above the fundamental, using more than a single sized speaker will enable players and audience members a greater palette of sounds than with just one speaker size. Most bass speaker cabinets contain 1 or more 15, 12” or 10” speakers but not combinations. If they do, using an internal frequency bandwidth splitter, a crossover,, they send highs to a smaller speaker and lows to a larger one but you don’t get to fine tune either.Overtone” is a term generally applied to any higher-frequency standing wave, whereas the term harmonic is reserved for those cases in which the frequencies of the overtones are integral multiples of the frequency of the fundamental. One benefit of bi-amping will be that I can add effects like chorus or an envelope follower to just the treble pickup and amp leaving the bass pickup and speaker unaffected and cutting through.

Overtones or harmonics are also called resonances. An added benefit of bi-amping using two lightweight cabinets and two heads is that it provides redundancy at gigs in the event you have issues with tube preamps or speakers or both.

The bass I am using in this demo is a 2004 Stanley Clarke Brown Bass with Signature Electronics which are stereo output with a toggle that switches from Stereo to Mono. The Brown Basses are Walnut veneers front and back over a mahogany core and the neck is mahogany with maple stringers. The bass was strung yesterday with D’Addario 45-105 roundwound strings.Stay tuned! My first foray into creating demo and instructional videos.

Click the Youtube link below to access the video.
https://youtu.be/9mfOMMm9H-A

[OJ Dorson]

Thanks for doing this! I'm looking forward to following along.

I run two Genzler arrays in stereo, too. A 15" SLT for the neck pickup and a 2x10" SLT for the bridge pickup, powered by a Wayne Jones two-channel amp, WJBAII.

[toddharris]

I really wish I’d gotten the Genzler 15 and may yet. The only 15” speaker cab I have left is my 1980s JBL 140 in the Cabaret all wood bottom.  Killer sound but 90 lbs!!!

[toddharris]

Here is Stanley Clarke explaining his own Bi-Amped setup.  The idea I am going for is the miniature, lightweight version without the roadies!

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[bigredbass]

I look forward to your results.

For me personally, over my time I've played the usual suspects all the way to PA bins back in the rack days, biamped, the whole nine yards.

For me, single 12 or 15 cabinets work best.  Often with multiple mixed drivers, I don't like the sound. 

[toddharris]

Thanks BigRed, I’m with you on a single good cabinet. All my attempts involving numerous pre-amps and tone creation devices were frustrating in that they made it hard to control my choices at a single place but thus far, doing away with pedals to split signals and keeping amps in play that have control panels that are simple 5 band tone options with boost pedals or channel switching for distortion, I have found a clear and wonderful difference in the bi-amped configs.  Will post better audio and with multiple speaker options keeping all else equal. This initial video is meant to simply explain the options I plan to use in future demos.  I aim for simplicity, lightweight, components we all understand and are familiar with a broadened array of tonal options.

[gtrguy]

I am not the expert. I do know that for guitar you often have to make one amp or the other sound 'worse' in order to get the overall sound to be better. I started out with a stereo Gibson guitar way back in the 70's and naturally tried to get my 2 amps to sound individually the best one at a time and then turned them both on. This often did not sound that great even though I had the phase OK between the amps.

I think I needed to scoop out frequencies in one amp and have them stand out in the other to get the best sound. Of course, this was for guitar and not bass. I look forward to learning more.