acoustic 360 bass .. miking that sucker??

h20melonman · Post by **h20melonman** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 8:24 am

hey friends.. I just recently turned on to a acoustic bass 360 rig ( early 70's / in great shape ).. the speaker is a backwards folded 18.. i've been rocking it at gigs, but the sound guys always complain about miking it and how it's going to sound bad. blah blah blah.. It is one of the bst sounding amps i've ever used.; This is an old hat.. I'm sure someone out there has some experience miking these kind of amps/cabs?? If you unscrew the top face cloth you can sorta wedge a mike back in there..
but.. If anyone could share some knowledge of miking these rigs ... many thanks!!

biasvoltage · Post by **biasvoltage** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 12:38 pm

These folded horn cabinets (like the Ampeg V4B ones) seem to do a form of ventriloquism; like the acoustic energy produced by them is focused a good 20' away from the front of the cabinet. I had a 360 and was always being told to turn it down. It sounded fine onstage, but was obscenely loud out in the audience. I never got it to sound good mic'd up.

I always wanted to mount a 57 or something inside the cabinet, pointed right at the driver, and wire up an XLR output but it got stolen before I got around to it.

Gebo · Post by **Gebo** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 12:57 pm

Are you talking about miking for a live situation or for recording? For recording, you could always find the point in the room where it sounds full and put a condenser there, than run a DI to blend with it so its not super "roomy". Live, im not sure about though...

sonic dogg · Post by **sonic dogg** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 1:05 pm

Sorry....It cannot be done accurately. Consider the physics involved. This is a 'folded' horn. The cab is doing all the work. I have owned one of these and several other folded horn designs. Theres no answer other than a DI for onstage and off.

That being said....a moving coil mic with a limited range is yer best bet. Take the black grill panel off the top section of the cabinet. An AKG D12 is a good choice here, but there will NEVER be a nice, tight, focused sound at the mic. BTW....'Top' is suggested because the amp is in the bottom half.

I do love these for live...I still have a Cerwin-Vega B36MF I use from time to time. My Acoustic 360 came from Shelter Records (back in the day) there's a picture of it inside the 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' record cover. It was Carl Radles' ...rip...

h20melonman · Post by **h20melonman** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 6:07 pm

Thanks for the suggestions.. I was refering to both live and studio.. live it doesn't seem to be too much of a problem, although i am playing pretty good sized venues .. we used a di and a 57..

Studio was more of a problem.. Never tried recording this amp.... I did find a note .. pearl jam cites used one but with an ampeg power amp and an swr cab.. I think i'll go that route next time. I ended up using 2 amps to get a tighter signal..

If anyone still has any suggestions for live/studio miking of this bad boy I still luv to hear em.

Cheers.

Uncle Dub · Post by **Uncle Dub** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 9:59 am

Here we go rejuvenating an old thread. I have the same issue here, a bass player, who plays with large amounts of feedback (it's a fuzzy 70's rock kind of band), and uses a folded horn (an EV T-18 ) which seems essential to his playing style.

I can get a decent signal from the DI out from the amp, and not mic the speaker atall, but it feels like I'm cheating, how about a dynamic with a large diaphragm further out, or a PZM maybe? The other problem of course is how to isolate it, it's bleeding into everything.

0-it-hz · Post by **0-it-hz** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:08 pm

PZM or maybe a PCC-160 would ROCK in the right room, especially blended in with the DI.

For giggles you might want to try an M/S pair (my fav is an Oktava ML-52 and a Beyer M500 for super lofi) and see if that adds some "air" to go with your "hair".

The problem with these folded horn designs is they're just all over the place... walk in front of the Cab and you feel yourself walking in and out of the beam...they just make lumpy sound all over. A big space would probably help you...or stick it in a tight ISO booth and hope it all cancels out.

Uncle Dub · Post by **Uncle Dub** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:34 pm

I had thought maybe a PZM on a large board in a 'sweet spot' a few feet in front and ask the bass player to stand out the way if he could?

emrr · Post by **emrr** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:40 am

I had some best results with a PZM on mine. These things are extremely tough to use. They put out such a large fundamental that you invariably get large amounts of room interactions, and corresponding variations on volume from note to note. And the sound really does come together about 20 feet in front of them. You need a very large space to get good consistent stuff out of them. Hell, try a shotgun mic at 20 feet. Never tried that.

Now if possible, hook up two of the cabs to a single head, which is how they were meant to be run. THAT is a sound.

casey campbell · Post by **casey campbell** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:42 am

beta91 mounted inside the cab

bigbassape · Post by **bigbassape** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:54 am

Hey all, First off I'm new here and howdy! Second, I used an acoustic folded 18 back in high school, when I played bass in a reggae band. The rig belonged to the band, and if memory serves, they had an old EV RE-20 Mounted inside the cabinet (behind the speaker). I assume they ran this with the phase reversed to FOH. But it did sound great.

cheers
g

Uncle Dub · Post by **Uncle Dub** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:00 am

Don't know how much of a difference it will make, the Acoustic Cab is a W-Bin design, whereas the T-18 is an compact scoop, so the rear of the driver is accessible, it hangs down in front of the horn. Does that alter any of your ideas for a mic technique?

Generic pic follows:

the finger genius · Post by **the finger genius** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:42 am

Uncle Dub wrote:Here we go rejuvenating an old thread. I have the same issue here, a bass player, who plays with large amounts of feedback (it's a fuzzy 70's rock kind of band), and uses a folded horn (an EV T-18 ) which seems essential to his playing style.

I can get a decent signal from the DI out from the amp, and not mic the speaker atall, but it feels like I'm cheating, how about a dynamic with a large diaphragm further out, or a PZM maybe? The other problem of course is how to isolate it, it's bleeding into everything.

I would recommend using just a DI during initial tracking, you can feed that into everyone's headphones. Then reamp it later, getting the sound from farther away (where it actually sounds good) probably using a SDC. This will depend somehwat on having a decent room. You can then blend the DI and Amp sound to taste.

Brett Siler · Post by **Brett Siler** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 7:10 pm

the finger genius wrote:I would recommend using just a DI during initial tracking, you can feed that into everyone's headphones. Then reamp it later, getting the sound from farther away (where it actually sounds good) probably using a SDC. This will depend somehwat on having a decent room. You can then blend the DI and Amp sound to taste.

+1

If I did sound for you at the venue I work at I would just D.I. ya and be done with it, instead of bitchin about it.

Uncle Dub · Post by **Uncle Dub** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 11:51 am

I'm sure that could be arranged, which venue do you work at, and how do they get in contact? They're looking for places to play.

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acoustic 360 bass .. miking that sucker??

acoustic 360 bass .. miking that sucker??

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