Separate pre/poweramp bass amp advice needed

[bronzetalon]

I'm thinking of building a bass amp since my duties are moving more and more in the bass spectrum. I need help with a good starting point for a bass cab and amp...I was really pondering going some kind of power amp and using my rusty box as a pre. Would this work? Would this sound good? I have no idea what brands to go for for the speaker and amp but I figured I would try to find a old peavey if I could find one.

[excane]

Lots of options for this. What's the budget?

[bigchiefbc]

If the Rusty Box is going to be your tone shaper, then yeah a clean power amp would be fine. I think Behndy used/uses that set up actually. Check out QSC, both the RMX and GX lines are good powerful amps and they're very clean. Our PA is all QSC amps, and we use an RMX1450 for our subs.

[D.o.S.]

You can also defeat the preamp on most amplifiers with the Rusty Box, so you shouldn't limit yourself to only looking at slaves.

Cab choice seems to come mostly down to mobility concerns.

[DannDubbleEwe]

Rusty Box as a preamp to power amp is phenomenal sounding. Just sayin' it's way possible and entirely wicked.

[Bassboar]

The other guys have pretty much hit the nail on the head.
QSC is definitely a good place to look for power amps, but they can be a bit much in terms of power for simple bass cabs.
Don't be afraid to look for a nice used power amp, they're always on CL for almost nothing these days.

[bronzetalon]

Thanks for the replies... I am keeping an eye out for a good used power amp. I got more replies over on talkbass and they walked me down the path of building my own fEARful 15/6 cab and eventually building a second and going stereo. I figured this setup will sound better with guitar than my guitar setup ever did with bass. The more good brands I can look at for power amps the better though.

[excane]

QSC is a great choice for power amps. I've also used Mackie and Crown.

As said above if you can find a used bass head, you can go from Rusty directly into the power section (via FX return if it has a loop)