Yellowstone bass guitar rig

Back in the summer of 1999 I built these ones. I'm still proud of them to this day! I named them Yellowstone 112. All speakers are from the Monarch series by Monacor. The 12" woofers (SPH-300KE in a 85 liter enclosure) and the 5" mids (SPH-135KEP in a 2 liter enclosure) have Kevlar fiber cones, the mids have a solid aluminium phase plug in the center, the tweeters (DT-101AG) have a gold coloured, aluminium alloy dome and can be level adjusted or switched off. The angled reflex tubes (2 per cab, MBR-85 at max length) extend to the far back behind and below the woofer, tuning the enclosure at 30 Hz. The crossovers are Linkwitz-Riley 2nd order, 600 Hz and 5000 Hz. The cabs each have a cover panel, which locks into the front (note the lock plates on the top cab), protecting the speakers during transport.

Construction picture. This pic was taken just before I started building the second cab (note the midrange's phase plug).

I'll try to describe what these speaker cabs sound like. First of all, low end beyond belief. As you can read from the specs, the frequency response starts to drop below as low as 28 Hz. That means every root frequency and every harmonic (tone) of every note you play falls well within the evenly balanced response graph. For a low B this means an earth-shaking rumble, which is not even slightly booming or pressive sounding. For higher notes, it means a crystal clear punchy sound. If you ever played on really large studio monitors, you know what I mean. However, you can't compare them too much to studio monitors, as their response curves are not measured and adjusted. I intend to do that some time, but having moved on to other cabs in the mean time, I doubt that's ever gonna happen.

One big disadvantage of these cabinets is their sluggishness. I employed the woofers in an "extended bass shelf" setup, causing a large group delay, making sub bass frequencies "come late". And there are a few more remarks. To drive these speakers, I use a Yamaha P1600 PA amplifier, which puts out 160 watts to each (8 ohms) cab. For a rehearsal I need every single watt out of the amp to hear myself. On stage, I have to stay a bit close to it, because it hardly keeps up. But the low end makes up for that. I may have a hard time hearing myself over the band, I sure as hell get underneith everything! The downside is: stage technicians like to have control, which is exactly what I'm not giving them. Which is unintentional, by the way.

UPDATE (Aug-2006): In the past few years I've been playing increasingly more extreme music, making cabinets like these useless, unfortunately. The Blackstones are much more suited for this task. As a result, I have dismantled the Yellowstones and used the speakers for another (future) project.

Head: 4 height unit rack case with (top to bottom):

  • Homebuilt tuner / power meter / power suppy / patch bay
  • Digitech Studio Quad 4-in 4-out digital multi effects processor/equalizer/preamp
  • Yamaha P1600 power amp. 2x160 watts @ 2x8 ohms, 2x240 watts @ 2x4 ohms

Cabs: 2 x Boulder Yellowstone 112. 200 W each, frequency range 28-20,000 Hz (-3dB)

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