Bi-Amping

For a period of time I ran a dual head setup into a Hartke VX410.  Purely from a tone perspective it was the best sound I ever had up to that point.  The two amps I ran were a Hartke HA2500 and an Acoustic B200H.

I had modified the Hartke VX410 so that two speakers were driven by the Hartke head and the two other speakers were driven by the Acoustic head.  I fabricated special short length speaker cables to keep things clean and organized.  The Hartke head provide my cut, grit, and clank while the Acoustic head gave my tone some warmth.  The two in combination were as close to perfect as I had ever gotten.






Feeding a signal to both heads was accomplished using a passive Radial  ABY pedal which took the incoming signal from my bass and split it into the two heads.  For the most part the Radial ABY pedal was silent unless I switched from both heads to alternating the heads.  The switch did make an undesirable click when stepped on.  I later upgraded to the powered Radial Bones Twin City ABY with optical switches.  A bit pricey but WOW the switches are absolutely silent.

The cabinet I used was a modified Hartke VX410 with the crossover and tweeter removed.  I built a custom four jack input plate in order to accommodate the two outputs from each head.  In retrospect I probably could have gone with just two inputs but at the time four was more and more was "better."

The speakers were wired cross-wise so that one amp ran the top right and bottom left speakers while the other amp ran the top left and bottom right speakers.  For me it was the best of both words and one of the few times I could actually hear myself in a live setting.  Transporting this get up was not too bad although the heads were heavy and took up a lot of space compared to what I run now.

Currently I run two Mesa/Boogie Subway 112 cabinets and a Bugera Veyron M BV1001M bass head and I love the compact and lightweight characteristics of this rig.  I am entertaining the notion of getting a second Bugera head, perhaps the tube version, and running another bi-amped rig.