ASK PHIL JONES
Why Does The Sound Of My Amp Change In Different Venues? By Phil Jones
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Phil Jones is the founder and president of Phil Jones Bass, a leading manufacturer of bass amplifiers and cabinets. Check out PJB’s product line at pjbworld.com.
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obody has to fight room acoustics in venues like bass players. The primary reason is that the acoustic waves produced from a bass guitar start at one inch in length for snappy high-end overtones all the way up to 37 feet for an open B string. If you go even lower, the sound waves are massive — 65 feet in length for the C# fundamental below open B. Personally, I feel that maybe A0 (the A one octave below the open A string) is the lowest note that works in amplified music, as any frequency lower than that almost becomes low-end noise, as in thunder, waterfalls, and earthquakes. Almost no commercially available bass rigs can produce these subsonic fundamentals, anyway. The thing that makes your sound, the loudspeaker, is physically tiny in comparison to the size of the sound waves, and this is one reason why it is so hard to get rich, deep bass economically. The better-quality bass sound you want, the more it will cost you. My goal here is to help you get the most from what you have (or what you intend to pay for) by understanding, in simple terms, how sound waves work and how your amp interfaces with the acoustics of a venue.
WHY GOOD SOUND GOES BAD
In the mid ’70s I was a full-time bassist, and one thing that constantly frustrated me was that my sound would change from venue to venue, and even in the same venue depending on the number of people in it. (It seemed to improve if I added some alcohol to the mix!) On some nights, my bass would sound thin, and
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no matter how much I boosted the low end, I could never get that weight I wanted. On other occasions, the bottom end was muddy and bloated, or the vocalist would tell me to turn down, even though I could hardly hear myself. Bass playing is what really got me into learning about acoustics; I wanted to understand and control my own tone, regardless of where I played. If this has happened to you, it’s not your fault or maybe not even your gear’s fault. As soon as those sound waves leave your cabinet, they are airborne and at the mercy of the environment they happen to be in. You spend your hard-earned dollars on a beautiful bass and get the best amp for your needs, but after that, everything goes out of your hands. I will explain why and tell you what is going on and some possible solutions to fix or at least improve your bad sound. So, let’s talk about what makes good sound go bad. First, every room you play in has its own sonic signature. Complicating matters, things change depending on where the sound source is and where the listeners are; the sound is different from the front to the back and also side to side. One example from my own experience: I was touring the U.K. with the legendary Chuck Rainey. We were doing a clinic in Cardiff, Wales (both Pino Palladino’s and my home town). Chuck had set up his bass and amp, and standing next to him, I could hear he was getting that rich, smooth “Chuck Rainey tone.” I went to the back of the hall to greet Marc Palladino (a drummer friend of mine and Pino’s brother), and some other bassist friends standing around asked me, “Phil, what happened to Chuck’s tone?” I noticed that it
