Small Bass Cabinets

[jbass]

I was killing time on the Internet tonight when I ran across the very cool Markbass Micromark (http://www.markbass.it/products.php?lin ... =3&vedi=77) once again. There's just something about this little combo that I find very appealing...until I look at the price. Has anyone had any success building a small bass cabinet along these lines that functions well enough to be used for small gigs and rehearsals where even a single J110 is too much?

[Harley]

Has anyone had any success building a small bass cabinet along these lines that functions well enough to be used for small gigs and rehearsals where even a single J110 is too much?

I just use my J110 and the volume knob on my amp when the J110 is 'too much' The J110 tone is something I prefer not to do without at small gigs.

[AntonZ]

Not DIY, but I have a pair of Midget cabs that work well when I want smaller than O10.5



Not as articulate as the BFM's, but quite a bit better than the average commercial cab. No huge bottom end, no stellar efficiency. Then again these are as small as a single 10" can be. Fine for small gigs and rehearsals.

[jbass]

I just use my J110 and the volume knob on my amp when the J110 is 'too much' The J110 tone is something I prefer not to do without at small gigs.

I agree with you in principle, but I'm thinking more about hauling as little gear as possible than about having too much stage volume. I've done a lot of gigs with a 30 watt/10" practice amp that made plenty of noise and that's sometimes been too much to carry (especially when the weather and parking situation collude to make things as unpleasant as possible). With the new crop of lightweight amps available now it's really appealing to have a small-but-capable cabinet that can be easily transported. Yeah, I'm getting lazy these days.

[jbass]

Not DIY, but I have a pair of Midget cabs that work well when I want smaller than O10.5

Very cool! My first thought when I saw the brandname was "eggs."

[loupey]

I may be mistaken, but small bass cabs are prone to mid-bass hump, and the slew of small boxes are demand-driven products with big tradeoffs. I wish I could remember where Bill commented on that (IIRC). It only confirmed what I knew had to be the problem, and why I ended up building J110's. I carried around this Carvin amp, the PB150, for years as a cute practice/backup amp:

http://carvinmuseum.com/decade/92-bassamps.html

I played a couple gigs with it and the volume was there, but tone was not (nobody could tell except me). This particular design (around a 10" driver) has some awful ~200-ish hump/resonance that could not be removed no matter what I did, even replacing it with a neo speaker (I'm more ejimukaytd now). Trying to record from it was was not good either. That's what convinced me, at least, to avoid small boxes. I still have that box (minus airhead) and it just does not sound right next to a J110. Makes for a good stool, though.

Try some out but bring a J110 with you for a baseline.

[wounded horse]

I built a BFM omni 212 because I drew the conclusion that you need box size and horn loading to trade toe to toe with a drummer, keys and 2 guitars. You can't do it with a 10" reflex box. Sure a diddly 10" practice amp can be heard in a rehearsal but it sounds like a diddly 10" 25watt practice amp, the speaker of which will flap like a flag in a hurricane. Commercial cabs are the size they are due to transport and weight considerations. I particularly don't like commercial 4 X 10s. They port them and tell you it's for big bottom end but to me the sound is not fundamental. I accepted the gear lugging trade offs years ago as a debit for being a bass player. The 5 of us in the band all help each other on load ins and outs. And dollies, every band should have 2 or 3 dollies. Wheels, that is, although women too are good. Ever felt the weight of a drummers fittings case? That's a 2 man lift. These days we try to take bookings not up stairs. A guy I know gigs in a 9 piece soul covers band with a Peavey 2 x 10 and it sounds bad. Real bad. You can hear it but it has no authority in the band mix. The sound dies before it reaches the edge of the stage. You can see him pulling the strings hard on his 4 string.
Now, with the omni 212 I have a 75lb cab, a manageable lift for 2, that will see off an 8 x 10 and 2 x 15 at half the weight.
Probably a jack 1X12 for rehearsals next though.

[Tom Smit]

Now, with the omni 212 I have a 75lb cab, a manageable lift for 2, that will see off an 8 x 10 and 2 x 15 at half the weight.
Probably a jack 1X12 for rehearsals next though.

Or....an Omni112....so that you can stack for.....? (best of three worlds)

[loupey]

Had the camera out and thought I'd show the leftovers of my combo amp. That's an Eminence CA2010 Basslite. Actually sounds better for guitar than bass with that mid-bass hump (the box's fault, not the speaker)!

[AntonZ]

Mine doesn't seem to have a huge mid-range bump, it's balanced for a small reflex box. But the lows are not authorative indeed. No flapping, there is one serious 10" driver in there. Don;t know what it is, but the box is about half the size of my O10.5 (J110), 1/2" ply, yet weighs quite a bit more than the Omni. Takes all the power I can throw at it graciously rather than flappily (the amp I usually bring can do about 250W into 8 ohm).

[jbass]

OK, let me back things up a bit and clarify my question. My primary bass rig consists of two J110s powered by a 500 watt lightweight head, and I use one or both cabinets depending upon the gig. However, on occasion I play acoustic gigs for which even a single Jack is too much to carry, so I'm asking about the feasibility of building a small and easily portable bass cabinet along the lines of the very-cool-but-very-pricey Markbass Micromark. Is there any hope of getting a useful amount of bass out of a box this small if the right driver can be found?

[jbass]

Now that I've had some time to consider this, here are my design specs:

Minimal box size (ported or sealed) no larger than 1.5 ft^3
100+ watts power handling
2x6.5" or 1x8" woofer
8 ohms
Minimal cost (if possible)

To be honest, this is mostly a proof of concept project for me. What I'm trying to build is a head/cabinet mini rig that lies somewhere between a practice amp and a single J110 and which will offer reasonable low end performance against acoustic instruments (perhaps even low volume drums). To that end I suspect I'll end up going with an 8" driver, but I'm really interested to see if 6.5s will work.

Can anyone suggest appropriate drivers for this project? I've checked PE, but most of the drivers they offer in the sizes I need seem to fall in the "home speaker" category or are simply too expensive to justify the cost. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

EDIT: I should add that the 100+ watt power rating stems from the fact that my smallest head outputs 100 watts into an 8-ohm load. I don't intend to use this cabinet to that extreme.

[Mikey]

This little Pioneer wizzy is a decent replacement speaker for little "student" bass amps (10-25w). Whether it would be enough for your application, I dunno, but I wouldn't hit it with more than 25w for bass guitar. It sounds real good, but it aint loud. An appropriate cab would be 1.5 cu ft tuned to 37hz.

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdet ... er=290-045

[jbass]

Mikey, thanks for the tip. I'll check that out.

On my way home from work tonight I stopped at our storage unit to drag out a "failed experiment" 9x5 cabinet I built a few years ago (yes, I was trying to clone a PJB box). At the time I built it I wasn't at all impressed with the sound, but that was because it didn't give me the bass rumble I was used to with my old rig. Now that I've heard this box again after using my J110s for several months it suddenly sounds pretty darned good. In fact, it even handles the B string with respectable authority. So, now I have a plan. I'm going to pull out eight of the 5" drivers and drop them into two ~1.5 ft^3 boxes. This should give me the portability I want as well as reasonable low end and 200 watts of power handling per cabinet. The worst that can happen is another "failure."