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Bi-amping

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whyachi

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I''ve polled and questioned and tested (finally) and I'm set on a GK 700RB-II head. My question is about the bi-amping, 50W to the horn. I'd ask GK themselves but their forum got hacked over a month ago and its still down.

I am 98% certain that Low Down Sound will be building my cab, a tweeterless / hornless 4 ohm 212. Which means that 50W to horn is going unused. Any ideas if it would be possible, somehow, to run that 50W to another cab? Say like a stage monitor or something? If I could run the 4ohm cab at the full 480W and have, say, a matching 108 cab to go with it, would I be able to use that power for the monitor?

Or something I just thought of, maybe the head splits the signal up before it goes out and the 50W is only for high frequencies?


Does anyone know how this works?
 
As a general rule, you use a crossover to seperate highs from lows (or highs from mids from lows).  In a PA system, this seperation happens after the mixer, but before the amplifiers.

Now, I've never used the GK amp that you're refering to, but I've never heard of a crossover that takes an amplified signal, then splits it before it gets to the speaker cabs.

If you really want to take advantage of bi-amping a bass rig, you need to buy a preamp, plug the output of that into a crossover, then from the crossover into 2 amps ... one for highs and one for lows.
 
AndyG said:
As a general rule, you use a crossover to seperate highs from lows (or highs from mids from lows).  In a PA system, this seperation happens after the mixer, but before the amplifiers.

Now, I've never used the GK amp that you're refering to, but I've never heard of a crossover that takes an amplified signal, then splits it before it gets to the speaker cabs.

If you really want to take advantage of bi-amping a bass rig, you need to buy a preamp, plug the output of that into a crossover, then from the crossover into 2 amps ... one for highs and one for lows.

I don't need anywhere near that much power, so two amps really isn't an option. The only reason I was looking into this is that some Gallien Krueger amps have bi-amping built in. For example, the 700RB-II runs at 480W (4ohm) + 50W to the horn, through one special cable they include with the amp. They call it bi-amping.

I'm trying to figure out if its possible to have the 480W run into the main 212 4ohm box and divert that 50W to a stage monitor. I don't see why not, as when its plugged into a GK 212 cab the same thing happens - 480W goes to the two 12's, and 50W goes to the horn. The amp would connect to the cab with the one normal cable, but maybe I could run a cable out of the cab as a line out for the 50W instead of hooking it into a horn?


:help:
 
To make any sense whatsoever, it should work like a crossover, and the 50 watts should be just the high mids/highs.  It's just stupid to have a full range, 50 watt signal for bass.
 
I'm just curious what put you off of the MB210? I've been absolutely loving mine, and my band loves it too. I tried out a 115 extension cab and it just muddied up the sound, I preferred it (and it was plenty loud) with just the 210.
 
knucklehead G said:
I'm trying to figure out if its possible to have the 480W run into the main 212 4ohm box and divert that 50W to a stage monitor. I don't see why not, as when its plugged into a GK 212 cab the same thing happens - 480W goes to the two 12's, and 50W goes to the horn. The amp would connect to the cab with the one normal cable, but maybe I could run a cable out of the cab as a line out for the 50W instead of hooking it into a horn?

From what I can tell from the product documentation, the 50W "tweeter amp" is only intended for use with a horn tweeter, and gets the signal after it passes through a high-pass filter at 5KHz.  When bi-amping is disabled, I don't think the 50W amp receives any signal.

The special cable you mentioned is merely a 4-conductor version of a NL4 "SpeakOn" cable, which uses one pair of conductors for the woofer and the other pair for the tweeter.  Carvin combo amps of recent years used a similar configuration.

So no, you aren't going to be able to use the 50W amp with a stage monitor to get a full-range signal.
 
@dude - 50W full range was just intended for use as a possible monitor.

@tfarny - I'm scared to get a combo since in the past I don't stick with amps too long. If I get a head and cab I'll have more room to change things up.

@tubby - Bummer, it seemed like a really great idea.
 
All of the RB-series heads send 50W to the horn, minus I think the 2001RB which does 100W and the 800RB which just has tw channels, 300W & 100W.
 
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