Getting good bass tones

[grindonomicon]

Setting the Hartke cab on fire will drastically improve things. Those are the worst sounding bass speakers I've ever heard. You be better off with the terrible matching Crate cab. What are the speakers rated at? If the rating is way higher than the old amps, you probably aren't pushing them as much as they can handle, and you're running out of power / headroom to push bass and clarity - the clipping you're creating somewhere is turning the sound to mush. In any event, the Hartke cab is made for pop and funk bass. The lack of range is killing your overall sound. Borrow a decent cab from a pal and you'll see an improvement straight off.

An old Peavey Firebass 700 would have the power and punch you need for Gardens. Probably most SWR and Genz Benz heads too. All have more power and clarity and bass if you need it. My Genz combo sounds killer with punchy hardcore-punk sounds all the way to Megalith-fueled doom bass. Firebass is a close second, it's better with overdrives than massive fuzz.

[BoatRich]

One, Gardens is rad as fuck. I listen to the S/T on a weekly basis at least. Two, can the Peavey run both cabs? The way you're running the Preamp out is putting the preamps in series/running one into the other so you're probably getting some weird clipping from that. Also cutting bass and boosting low mids is the best way to get loud punchy bass in a mix.

[Paul_C]

I used to run a pair of 15" cabs with a Markbass head (500w) and changed to a Markbass 3 x10 combo (the amp was essentially the same as the head I'd used before but due to the three speakers it could only run at around 400w) and the difference was spectacular - I also used to stand it on an Auralex Gramma Pad which isolated it from the floor.

I later tried a couple of 1 x12" cabs with another Markbass head and they were a little softer sounding, so my suggestion would be to try some smaller speakers (4x10s) to tighten your sound.

[waltdogg]

That Peavey head should be loud af on it's own. And they have a very good EQ and produce plenty of low end at high volumes. Speaker phase and filter combing of mismatched speakers all firing on axis sound like your issue to me. Like, a 200 watt head is PLENTY if it's a good one.

[daseb]

am I the only person in the world that finds Peavey MK heads SUPER underpowered? It's like you turn it up to 6, it compresses everything, all the bottom drops out of the sound and there's absolutely nowhere to go from there.

[crochambeau]

am I the only person in the world that finds Peavey MK heads SUPER underpowered? It's like you turn it up to 6, it compresses everything, all the bottom drops out of the sound and there's absolutely nowhere to go from there.

No, you're not. I think the compression circuit starts to put the clamp on way too soon. I have a 400BH I can put head to head with more primitive solid state amps which claim roughly half the output power but sound louder because the dynamics aren't hosed. Granted, those amps will go into thermal shut-down while the Peavey keeps chugging, but still, I have never believed the part about 210 watts into 4 ohms.

[rfurtkamp]

Old Peavey stuff radically overstated the delivered wattage.

I've never been fond of it.

[WORMDIRT]

As a blanket reply, it seems that maybe both amps were messing with each other, frequency wise / running the crate from the preamp out was fucking the sound up pretty bad. I cut the bass on the PV to just a hair over zero and ran both amps from a stereo pedal, and BAM clarity came back in a dramatic way. IBefore, as I turned it up, the bass freqs went to shit. I suck at bass tones. When I was a younger dude, I used a friends ampeg 8x10 and a rackmount SVT pro in a band, and it just sounded fucking awesome, so I never had to try and figure shit out

I got objectively listen to the rig today, when the new gardens bassist used it, and it sounded much better, not perfect, but at least the bass was there.

The PV might be loud enough for a band, so I'm going to run it by itself at our next show, with both cabs, and see what happens.

And yes the Hartkes are garbage.
Yes the PV wattage has to be overrated.

And its good to hear that people like the S/T. I think we tried to be a little to breakdowny but it came out pretty good anyway.