Bass Guitar System

For a long time i've been inspired by the heavy sound of reggae scoop bins. Commercial bass guitar cabs don't make this type of bass. I built a reflex 18inch box from the rog mogale site that absolutely smashes everything for reggae, but not tonal enough. I like the idea of a 'tall boy' style cab for projection. I need to be able to put it in a car also to get to gigs.

I want to try experimenting with either a scoop bin with extended mind and tweeter (up to 6k ish) (that was a tad smaller) and maybe a two box set up -i.e bandpass/horn box for sub and then a mid box on top.

How can I design these acoustic boxes? How can I make my own horn design? Or does know any designers or has anybody tried a similar idea?

this site is awesome!


Here's me too if you ever need any bass : )

www.jameswiltshire.co.uk

Dig your tunes, man; thanks for sharing.
I like your idea of tuned speaker enclosures for the bass guitar & specific music styles.
I have similar interests for bass guitar systems. At my day job, I make high performance instrumentation amplifiers; I've always wanted to apply this technology to audio pre-amps and amps. A system-wide revamp is of high interest to me; pickups>pre-amp>amp>speakers>enclosures.
Starting with pickups, I was wondering what type/make of bass guitar pickups you use or prefer.
Thanks.

thanks mate.

It's interesting that's your day job. I had a thought at the beginning of last year to try and get an amp and bass cab designed and built. I had an electronics wizard who was up for helping but i completely neglected the magnitude of the project.

I was thinking that because of the new trend in super small and light but high powered bass amps (like my genz benz shuttle 6) why not build some active bass cabs that are crossed over? Commercial cabinets arent for some reason. They could be bi or tr-amped and properly crossed over. the Head could be like a quality but lightweight pre amp???? Was I thought I had a little while ago.

Bass-wise im using a 5tring Tobias with Bartolini's and a Thru-Neck which is good for the super subby/jheavyweight music and modern sound. The motown stuff Ive been using a friends vintage Fender P Bass with foam under the bridge. Part of me loves the minimal no frills ethic of this. Great presence in the mix.

Ive been using a home made reflex bin (from speakerplans.co.uk) which was half a G sub with a PD 184 in it. That sounds monstrous for reggae and hip hop, much better than any commercial cab that Ive used. Doesnt work for poppy/rock/soul stuff at all tho : )

what sort of amps can you build?

Most of my experience has been in pre-amp level signal conditioning, as well active low-pass, band-pass, and high-pass filtering. At the day job, I design & build amplifiers and signal conditioners for water analysis instruments; mainly for pH and ORP measurement. The pH & ORP grade amplifiers (or what we call 'instrumentation grade' amplifiers) and signal conditioners are many times more accurate than audio pre-amps and active crossovers; but fortunately, they share a similar architecture.
I have only ever built one guitar/audio power-amp (about 10 years ago, so kinda rusty on the high-power amps). It was a hybrid of similar instrumentation grade amplifiers that yielded some interesting results: very responsive & accurate.