[sdiy] bass pedals? How low is too low?

[harrybissell]

Hi Med...

The lowest note of Bass Guitar is 40Hz... organ pedals (the super long pipe
organ
style ... 32') can go to 20Hz.

Almost no speaker can reproduce 20Hz reliably.  Before anyone JUMPS my bones...
let me say that those bllsh!t "bandpass boxes" do not count in my book, unless
you are
willing to build one for each note.  The extreme "Q" of these systems makes them
suitable
for shaking nearby buildings from a car, but not reproducing anything like
'fidelity'

You would be looking at really massive speakers to go much lower than 40Hz.  I
think some
folks have used servo amplifiers driving huge diaphrams (made of plywood sheets
for cones)...

Folded horn designs like the Klipshorn (sp?) that use the room walls as the
final 'mouth' of the
horn might do well also...

my two cents is 40Hz is practical, portable and affordable (but awful heavy)

H^) harry

MED wrote:

> Hey group, I've got tons of newbie questions about a possible future
> project:
> I'm thinking of hacking the two-octave bass pedals off of my organ and
> building a stand-alone Taurus-style device. What kind of input
> voltage/resistor ladder should I use to get a 1v/oct response?
> Also, I am wondering where the bass range of a VCO stops and a LFO begins.
> Obviously a reference I could use is the E1 of a bass guitar, and simply go
> to the C that is lower than that. But I *really* like low-frequency bass.
> (but not in the range of "can't even hear it but it still sends you
> reeling")
> So what note should I decide upon as the threshold of hearing? A0? C0?
> That's around the 20hz limit... Would, for instance, the ASM-1 oscillator
> remain 1v/oct in that area, while still leaving me the option to switch the
> oscillator as high as, say, C5 or C6? I assume that I would need a fairly
> large charging capacitor. What other things would I have to change/should I
> look out for?
> (i can imagine this being a pain to tune at such low frequencies.)
>
> In addition to that, what's the lowest note that I could consistently send
> through an amplifier and speaker cabinet (possibly also home-built if need
> be) at a volume that is audible (and at the best concert-acceptable) and not
> completely destroy them due to it looking like DC?
> Obviously this is different for tube amps and the various solid-state amps.
> Maybe i'll have to do separate amplifiers for the different frequency
> ranges. But that comes after I've already got this stuff all figured out.
>
> -MED, who keeps thinking up questions, but it'll wait until after this gets
> sorted out...