welcome to Talkbass members

Now that the Flex series is finalized R&D is going to take a little break ... NOT !

Check this out: First production 110 and new prototype 4646

Do you guys mind if I throw that pic up over at TB for the guys?

3rdcurve wrote:Do you guys mind if I throw that pic up over at TB for the guys?

By all means, yes. Thanks for asking. Maybe just credit the source?

will do

Hey Mike,

Just wanted to let you know that I'm on here now too, and looking forward to hearing some of your new designs in person soon.

Steve Regier wrote:
Welcome! We look forward to your review.

I received the new Clarus+ earlier this week.  This thing matches up with the MAS45 really well.  It's a very quiet, flat amp and does a great job controlling the low frequencies through this cab.  I had it really cranked and there was no sign of stress from the amp or cab.  The preamp does a great job with pickups like the Full Circle, Lifeline, and Ehrlund and the new EQ is way more functional than earlier models.  

I've already spoken to Mike about adding a 2x5 for modularity.   

Here is a clip of my bass through the Ehrlund, Clarus, MAS45

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Thanks for the report and recording.
 

'Just spoke with Mike. He is buried under a mountain of wire assembling a 210Flex. Thank goodness for Bluetooth. Hopefully he will have some photos to share soon. The 210 is quite a wiring project. Mike's comment was,"...there can't be much more wiring in an amp!" He might be right.

Steve Regier wrote:'Just spoke with Mike. He is buried under a mountain of wire assembling a 210Flex. Thank goodness for Bluetooth. Hopefully he will have some photos to share soon. The 210 is quite a wiring project. Mike's comment was,"...there can't be much more wiring in an amp!" He might be right.

... and here are those photos

Mike and I are in touch on a regular basis. He is once again buried under moutains of loudspeaker parts. We both have the flu. Unlike me sitting at home. Mike is tireless in his efforts. For those of you waiting on cabinets he is working furiously to complete every order. He is also working on the final development of the 6" lineup to round out the product line. To compound all that he has been testing cabinets in his work area and has dispatched several mice with the test tones. So now he is buried in work, sick, and dealing with dead mouse odor. THAT'S DEDICATION! Mike is promising photos later today. 

We had a mouse issue at BigE HQ and tried Mike's strategy. It seems that about 70Hz projected by an MVW loudspeaker is as effective as D-Con. I'm gonna bring a big MVW subwoofer to my home at give it a treatment if we get mice this year. Living out in the country has its issues.

I little bird told me that Mike has rounded out his product line and did a head to head shootout with all his finalized offerings with the intent to get a linecard and website ready.  Mike, care to comment?

It looks like the first look inside the MVW will be in the upcoming issue #14 of Bassgear Magazine. If you aren't a subscriber now might be a good time.

Hey, JGR checkin in! Mike, that red 210 Flex is SICK!!!

3rdcurve wrote:

mikearnopol wrote:To me the Monique is essentially a one tone preamp--I find that the tone controls don't do much. It's one of the greatest sounds on the planet, though.

I'd go  with the JGR. The tone controls are much more useful and JGR's gone out of his way to address issues like subsonics and other problems.I feel that JGR's is a more finished product

We are looking into an internal high powered digital amp in the future.(in  the speakers) Possibly one with DSP. There is a Danish company that looks really good---great quality and good prices. They make a module that's small and light and uses a digital power supply but a class AB output.Kindof like the early Markbass---but much more audiophile quality. I  liked these early Markbass amps more than the ones with the digital power output section.

I'd bug JGR about an all tube amp.I bet it would be the best on the planet. I've never liked tubes with bass but the Big E's are so focused that they do really well with tubes.

Not that I'd carry it around but when Tom Bowlus plugged in the Reeves and then plugged in my Tecamp it was a bit of a letdown. I think that the Tecamp is the best digital amp on the planet but that Reeves was the best thing I'd ever heard.

Thanks Mike, I have definitely tried nudging him into the full tube realm.

Hey fellas, thanks for the vote of confidence!  I mentioned all this to Mike in a PM the other day on TB, but I'll repost here since I just joined if thats OK...

For what its worth, I have several all-tube designs laying around from 100 up to maybe 500 watts - finding the time and really the money to build proto's is tough, but I will someday!  I have five big custom chassis that I had made several years ago now waiting for big tube builds.  I did manage to get another proto of my high gain guitar head done a little while back, and it's fun to play with tube power again - I would love to try the Big E guitar cabs - I'm using some unconventional speakers (for guitar) that really slay, and I bet they would sound great in the cabs you guys are doing.  I'm also doing some additions to my Box-O-Tone preamp/DI (effects loop, pass-thru, maybe some tonal options), and have another bass preamp design I'm itching to try using a fully inductor driven four band EQ with a combination of 6SL7 and 12ax7 tubes.  Also made some additional tweaks to the current 6SL7/12ax7 designs so the mid EQ is even more powerful and better voiced.    

I'm really intrigued by all the Big E technology and enjoyed reading the different patents - it's good to feed your head!  Our new baby daughter is slated to arrive any day now, so I'll mostly be designing and building in my head for a while, but I'm excited to watch all of this technology evolve and look forward to test driving some of it at some point!

Cheers!

JR

We are still working on guitar loudspeakers as loud is not the only tone. Trying to increase dispersion and heft of notes. Seem to project a bit more than is ideal. Work in progress. Let us know when the little one shows up and hope all will be just awesome. Good Luck.

Just now made it over. No wonder why it has been so quiet over "there". From what I read it looks like the MAS112 is another option for me, but we'll see what other creations surface while I'm waiting for my ship to come in. Looking forward to more education here.

Eric Rasmussen

Another TalkBass guy here. I have one of JGR's original tube pre-amps. I was running it into a Crest CA9 with one fEARful 15/6. I just picked up a tube power-amp, a Mesa Coliseum 300. It's two channels, each channel driven by 6- 6L6GC tubes. Sort of a modernized version of their old Strategy 400 Stereo power-amp. It's 1994 vintage I believe, Mesa only made about 90 of these. Since I have one cab, one channel running sounds decent. I did parallel the outputs (using the 16 ohm taps) to send all 12- 6L6 tubes into my one cab, and it really rocked. I only did the test for a short time, not sure how much heat paralleling will create.

I could definitely see a cab with two separate driver chambers driven by two separate inputs so I could keep that amp in standard two channel mode. A flex + the sub is out of my budget unfortunately, and I'm an old 1970's rocker anyway. A dual 12 based the MA112 perhaps? That would really rock and look killer as well!

I think one of the new 12's would be right up your alley John!

A new MA112 would be great, but I do not know if it will out perform my 15/6. I was looking into 2 cabs or 1 cab with dual woofers/inputs to be able use both channels separately without having to bridge the Crest, or parallel the Mesa. I built a pair of 15/6 Tubes, but they simply took up too much pack space, and it's almost to big of a stack, so I sold off one of them. In hindsight, a pair of the 12/6's would have been the wiser investment. My 15/6 with one channel of the Mesa is impressive though. Surprisingly, the 6L6 tubes have a neat tone when pushed/saturated despite what people say about 6L6's and Mesa. I think it is a great match to your pre! Much more character than running it through the Crest.

Perhaps the only way to use both my amps channels is to get a pair of MA109's or a pair of MA112's, and stack them up in their horizontal orientation. I thought I read something about doing it that way here.

coolhandjjl wrote:

Perhaps the only way to use both my amps channels is to get a pair of MA109's or a pair of MA112's, and stack them up in their horizontal orientation. I thought I read something about doing it that way here.

Right on, man; and welcome to them forum! The MAS-112 (Eighteensound loaded) should keep up with a 15/6 and outrun it at distance. If you want a two channel solution two cabinets would be right on the money. There is a dual 15" prototype in the works. It will be big at 22"Wx48"Hx18"ish(depth is not set yet) and about 90#. It would probably be easier to transport two MAS-112s and the 215 will not be cheap.

Two MA112 Essentials laying on their side, stacked on top the other. And with red interior and black bikini grill. It will look somewhat similar that Flex210 I saw on the TB forums but without the mid/high section a top.
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That would be the bass cab to end all bass cabs!

Reading the many posts here for electric bass, the Flex210 and MA112 have different feel to the low bass, with the MA112 better suited to rockers. Aside from the nifty MVW mid/high component of the flex system, does the bass differ partly because one MA112 is vertical (port horns top & bottom) and the two flex bass units are horizontal (port horns left & right) or does that have nothing to do with the feel of the low bass?

The difference in bass is more the driver/cabinet combination. The orientation does matter, but it acts like more of a bass control. Horizontal yields more floor coupling and more low end.We envisioned the 112 as stacking two horizontally. I think that one 112 on the floor horizontally is too big in the low end but 2 stacked horizontally will be HUGE in the low end, but pretty balanced.

The 110 based cabs have a slightly tighter/leaner low bass but a bit of a bump in the upper bass. This gives a fast low end nicely set off a warmer upper bass.. The 112's have more low to mid bass but don't have the upper bass hump. Very strong, balanced bass.

A 112 will go louder, lower, and have MUCH better low end control than a 15/6. I'm not that fond of the Kappalite 3015lf. I've built Fearful 15/6's and fearless f 115's. As well as Thunderchild 15's.
All use the 3015lf.
I always felt that the 3015lf based cabs were too loose and diffuse in the low end. Woofers that are good for reflex boxes typically have a QTS of .30 to .35. The higher the number, the less damping, or control over the cone movement. In a reflex box, too high will be too little cone control---and a looser low end.

The 3015lf was originally listed as a QTS of .34 I think. They have revised that figure to .46. This IMO is way too high for a reflex box. It kindof validated my perception---it didn't sound like a .34 QTS. Way too diffuse.

The only reason I'm mentioning this is that the 112's will have much more focused low end than the 3015lf based cabs. And go louder.

After revisions (by Duke) to the crossover I have to revise my saying that the MAS112 is more of a rock cabinet. It's actually now a very balanced cab that does rock really well but is equally good at other styles. I was surprised that it was an excellent upright cab, too.

My 15/6 certainly has a different feel comparing my Crest CA9 ss power amp against my Mesa Coliseum tube power amp. The Crest has an obscenely high damping factor of 700:1, and uses every bit of that to keep the woofer steady. The tube amp obviously struggles with the 3015LF as it has a tendency to get flabbier when pushed with the tube amp. This seems to bear out with what you are telling me. The 3015LF loaded 15/6 is a great cab no doubt, but there is always that part of me that wants to do better.

Let's see if I got this right here:

MAS112- One Eminence or Eighteen Sound 12" driver and four 4" drivers. Additional mid or tweet options. Your flagship Signature Series electric bass rock cab.

MA112- One Eminence or Eighteen Sound 12" driver and four 3" drivers

MA112 Essential- One Eighteen Sound 12" driver naturally rolling off before 3kHz, perhaps more vintage-like in its presentation of the highs as a result.

My second post here.  I joined these fora a little while back, but hadn't kept up with them (figured spending too much time on one internet forum was enough, and there was plenty of Big E discussion on TB).  Plan to do so a little more now, particularly as it seems some of the more in-depth technical discussion might take place here and I've found some answers here to questions I asked there.  I don't want to engage in cab tribalism -- I'm not here to slag on anyone and hope I can ask questions openly -- but I've been more than a little interested in these cabs for a long time.  

Anyway, hello!  Two pertinent facts: I picked up a 2nd generation (sans mids) 66 a few months back and I post on TB under the same name.
-Mark

P.S. Given the penchant for the occasional armament-themed names given to cabs, etc., is there, in addition to Tom being "Big E", an association with the "Big E" company name and the U.S.S. Enterprise (the WWII aircraft carrier, known also as the "Big E", not the starship -- though I confess more familiarity with the latter)?

Welcome to the BigE forum. Yes, you will find more in depth answers here. Tom and I try to be very accessible here for Q&A rather then trying to scurry all over the web on multiple forums. We also set the rules here to foster open discussion.
Tom and I both bring a military mindset to our ventures. Tom was given the moniker "Big E" by MM1(SW) Ranada because of the E in his last name as well as a reference to The Enterprise CVN-65 while serving aboard USS Independence CV-62. The logo was conceived by Tom while serving in Yokosuka Japan. It is comprised of the Kanji representing the word "big" with a capital letter E superimposed. Later the calligraphy for the Big E Loudspeakers logo was drawn by my mother who was born near Shanghai China.