Bass cabs: hit or shit

[gnomethrone]

So I've been getting more into playing bass lately and am starting to think about a better rig. I have a little ampeg 1x10 combo at home and my drummer bro has a newer acoustic 100 watt combo that gets the job done when we jam at his place. I've read a few threads on here about bass gear reccomendations but I want to post some of the stuff I'm looking at and see if you guys would hit it or shit on it.

First up:

Kustom 3x15 for $150 with CTS speakers.

Would this rearrange my guts at a cellular level or would those old speakers just turn to dust when I blast them with fuzz? Also I live up two flights of stairs. Tell me I'm dumb and don't need this.

[crochambeau]

Keep in mind that classic cabs come from an era of very different amplifier availability to the pedestrian user.

I'd guess that cab is built to support a solid state amplifier with a 100-150 watt range. Probably sounds good inside of its range, but that range might fall short of gut rearranging...


..unless you're playing bedroom/low level recording purpose volumes.

Just a shooting from the hip take. I've probably killed about a dozen 15 inch drivers in classic cabinet configurations, modern speakers can take deeper hits for sure.

[odontophobia]

my band killed a pair of 15s in an old peavey cab. they were probably some old cts style magnets. sucked. just ordered some eminence delta 15lfa to replace those old peavey drivers.

[resincum]

dude those kustom cabs fucking rock. my friend has a couple of them and they sound GREAT. fwiw they're loaded with the og speakers

[The Eristic]

My friends and I have had several of those because they're cheap and look cool, but they always become little more than furniture after a while. Highly prone to getting toasted by a modern bass amp at volume, especially if you're clipping shit hard, usually don't go very low or get all that loud vs newer stuff due to the relative inefficiency of both the speakers themselves and the cab designs. Can be fun with a guitar in C, though.

If you don't want to go the modern neo route (which is the way to go if you can, honestly - my old 150 lb 4x10"s had nothing on my 29 lb 1x12" and 40 lb 1x15"), look for stuff like old Mesa Diesel cabs with EVs. They're tanks, sound fantastic, can handle power and can be found really affordably without too much effort.

[frigid midget]

Hit. Looks cool and it's cheap, cheap enought that you could upgrade the speakers when/if you indeed end up frying the original ones.

[actual]

3x15 is fucking badass, holy shit

[gnomethrone]

hmm I wanna bring the fuzzed out lowlows so maybe i should go with something more modern

are these sunn cabs any good?

SUNN 2x15 with re-coned speakers for $400



emperor 2x15 with eminence commonwealths for $750. more than I want to spend, but this is my favorite so far.

hit or shit?

[The Eristic]

Emperor cabs are nice, but Commonwealths are guitar speakers. They have way too little Xmax to use safely with bass at volume.

That Sunn looks like a later one which Fender eventually rebadged as the first version of the Bassman 215 Pro. Should be pretty decent depending on which speakers are in it.

[AndyBassist]

dnt get to hung up on the speaker size giving the lows, a nice 410 can produce nice lows and has a better high end response.

Andy

[Strange Tales]

If you can get a Peavey 2x15 with Black Widow speakers get that shit. Got mine for $100 and now half of South Jersey can feel my bass or synths when I play.

[D.o.S.]

I have one of those Peavey 2x15's. My guitarist used it. It was/is rowdy as hell.

I gotta agree with AndyB, though: speaker size isn't as important as a lot of people make it out to be. They sound different, not better or worse or "lower", per say (I swear by my OR115/TL-606 though).

[popvulture]

I had an Aguilar fridge for a while and vastly preferred a friend's 2x12 to it (think it was an Eden). Something about those 10s didn't have enough low focus for me. So yep, I'll chime in alongside the fans of 12s and 15s.

[D.o.S.]

That said people who don't like the ampeg fridge can eat shit and die that's a great sounding piece of kit for non-"soulful yak" bass tones.

[waltdogg]

That said people who don't like the ampeg fridge can eat shit and die that's a great sounding piece of kit for non-"soulful yak" bass tones.

and with that. you can find beatup ampeg 8x10s for as cheap as ~$300.