bass distortion and blowing speakers

[Graham]

i use alot of distortion with my bass and im worried i might blow a speaker on my amp. is there anything i can do (apart from use less distortion) to help prevent that happening or am i not that likely to blow a speaker? does using compression help? i normally have the volume on my amp at 12 o'clock and the input at 9 o'clock, the cab i use is an ashdown 4x10 and i have an ashdown head.

also, when im using alot of distortion the little arrow dial thing on my ashdown head is always in the red bit, is bad for my amp or is it just telling me my signal is distorted? its not so bad when i have the input level low but if i turn it any lower i don't really like the sound i get.

[stuartmaxwell]

could be possible if you are overloading the amp head with too much distortion and too much bass on your amp settings, saying that, speakers or amps often blow because people do silly things like use crap speaker cales, get the ohm balance wrong, turn on the amp head with no load, etc etc you usually have to be stupid loud to bust speakers on recently purchased stuff

good experiment is to put all of your tone controls at 12 o clock, all of your controls on your pedal at 12 o clock and work from there to see what suits your amp the best. if you are constantly in the red the amp or the speakers wont last very long.

id also say that bass technique goes a long way to looking after your amp and getting the very best out of it. this is a big downfall for me.

[Graham]

cheers for that! will give the setting my amp and pedals at 12 o'clock a try and see what happens.

[Huw]

the only reason i blew my amp is because i am a tool and forgot to turn down the gain on my distortion when it was on full. Bye bye tweeter.

i think when your amp is red it is 'peaking'. your cab usually has 2 power ratings RMS (root mean square?) and peak. the peak figure is usually a HEAP higher then the RMS figure so as long as you only are really hitting red when your strumming/plucking/picking strings then i think its fine. at least thats the way i understand it. if your always in the red you probably want to tone it down a wee bit. since your amp and cab are matched your pretty safe with gain as long as your not putting through any dodgy frequencies.

a compressor woul;d probably do your distortion a bit of good, take out any unwanted high end i think. Tuner first though.... Boss TU-2, do it now. Sell one of your distortions!

[stuartmaxwell]

i have a boss tu2 and a korg floor tuner

both very good, and I dont need both

i suppose I could sell one

[TR!ΔNGL€ T€€TH]

Only a mad man would sell a TU-2.

[stuartmaxwell]

you say that, i actually prefer the korg to the tu2

but having just bought a custom made pedal board/box i may have to use the tu2. bah

[soundian]

i use alot of distortion with my bass and im worried i might blow a speaker on my amp. is there anything i can do (apart from use less distortion) to help prevent that happening or am i not that likely to blow a speaker? does using compression help? i normally have the volume on my amp at 12 o'clock and the input at 9 o'clock, the cab i use is an ashdown 4x10 and i have an ashdown head.

also, when im using alot of distortion the little arrow dial thing on my ashdown head is always in the red bit, is bad for my amp or is it just telling me my signal is distorted? its not so bad when i have the input level low but if i turn it any lower i don't really like the sound i get.

The speakers should be ok since your output is only 50% but be aware that distortion is hard work for speakers, you need a bit of "headroom" to be safe and that compression would drive down the available headroom.

I don't know how ashdown calibrate their vu scales (the little arrow dial thing) but I imagine that bringing the average (RMS if you like) input down past the red so that any peaks (transients at the start of each note, that bit where you accidentally hit it too hard, dodgy cables etc) are within the capabilities of the amp would be a sensible idea.

If your amp starts to distort on the pre-amp stage (input) that's more likely to blow your speakers than anything else even at relatively low output volumes so if there really is a difference with the sound when you turn the input down and the output up to compensate you may already be pushing the amp past the limit it's designed to sustain.

Solution: get a distortion that sounds good at a lower input level.