Basson Sound B310SC Sub Contrabass Cabinet

I play the bass in church. I play some traditional and some contemporary worship music. I have also gradually stepped up into the world of ERB's (Extended Range Basses - basses with 6 more strings). I have a 7 string and will hopefully get a 9 or 10 string built soon.

My cabinet was ordered on April 25th and it is just the 4th one built by Basson. This cabinet is a specialty bass speaker cabinet designed for covering the sonic range of basses with 7 strings or more. This is a full range cabinet loaded with three 10 inch speakers and a tweeter. The cabinet has a three way crossover in it. The tweeter covers the highs, the mid mounted 10 inch speaker covers the mid range and the two bottom 10 inch speakers reproduce the bass frequencies. The cabinet is approximately the size of a 4x12 guitar cabinet, but deeper (27" x 29" x 18.5"). Due to the heavy speaker magnets, (which are 12.5 pounds each) and the medium density fiber board that the cabinet is built from, the cabinet is pretty heavy: about 125 pounds. Fortunately the cabinet has some very nice 3 inch ball bearing style casters that make moving the cabinet pretty easy. Also the casters are not the pull out style casters. They actually slide sideways into lockable metal brackets mounted on the bottom of the cabinet - very nice. There are deep set metal handles on either side of the cab to make lifting it easy (for two people). I have taken it out of my mini van by myself and it is a chore because of the size and weight.

I ordered my cabinet with the gray grill cloth, and it looks sharp against the black ozite covering. I also ordered mine with speakon style connectors to handle the power that is needed to drive the cabinet. It has an impedance of 4 ohms and is rated at 750 watts. This IS a power hungry cabinet! Shawn Greene who works for Basson strongly suggested that I run at least 750 watts minimum into this cab. After playing through it I can see why and I agree with his suggestion. (This cabinet needs that kind of power to reproduce the extremely low frequencies of the Low F# and C# strings - 23 and 17 Hertz respectively!) The tweeter does not have an adjustable altenuator but a off/on rocker switch mounted on the side near the front of the cab. This is also a very handy feature if you want to cut the highs out easily or turn them back on.

When describing bass tone with words I don't typically think of using phrases like "bone crushing" or "kick ass", but I can use these words to describe this cab. This thing has a tone that is flat out SOLID. When trying this out I used my Bill Dickens Signature model 7 string bass (tuned low B to high F). I used my Eden D210XLT Metro combo as a pre amp running into a QSC RMX 1450 power amp running 1400 watts bridged into 4 ohms. (I used so much power so that I would have plenty of headroom.) HOLY COW does this thing have low end! I generally run my Metro with the eq flat and with the enhance knob at about 1:00. Not with this cab. I actually had to cut the bass and turn down the enhance some to reduce some of the fullness of the low end. It has a solid low end and good low midrange punch. Just to test the low end of this cabinet out I tuned my low B string down to low F# (23 hertz) and played it. This cabinet handled it with ease. It didn't even give the slightest hint of farting out and the volume didn't drop off like it was falling off a cliff. Unreal!

The high end seemed a bit brittle to me at first, but my Bill Dickens bass is a very bright bass. I also thought the high end might be a little harsh since I was using a PA style power amp with a very flat responce. So I run my Metro straight into the cab to check out the tone (being careful not to clip the signal from being underpowered). My Metro is rated at 400 watts into 4 ohms - this is NOT enough power to get those two bottom bass speakers to put out the low end. But the high end was very smooth with out being too bright or shrill. My next step is to either get an Eden power amp with the built in tone controls or a high power Eden head, this should give me an awesomely sweet tone. The cabinet does a nice job of covering the sonic range of a seven string bass.

Well I have had this cabinet for about a month. As stated before I play in church and I plan on leaving my Basson parked there. This cabinet should last me a long time. I'm not really hard on equipment so it should be fine.

This thing is built tough though. A touring musician should get good service out of a cab like this. It's built for the road. The rocker switch for the tweeter is made out of plastic, but it is recessed into the side of the amp and should be fine as long as it is not turned off and on excessively. It is probably a set and forget switch anyway. The cabinet just has grill cloth over the speakers instead of some form of metal grating. Care should be taken to not rip the grill cloth.

Basson is a fairly small company, but they take care of you. Shawn Greene has answered everyone of my e-mails promptly. I have even called by phone and talked to Victor Basson himself on two occasions. How is that for customer service, talk to the owner of the company.

My cab was shipped by freight truck from California to my work place in Virginia. The place I work has a forklift and loading dock. (The cabinet is too big and bulky to ship by UPS.) When it come in it was in a box shrink wrapped on a pallet, but the entire cabinet was shrink wrapped before it was put it in the box also. They make sure your cabinet will get to you in prime condition.

If you have problems with your equipment you have a Five year warranty on any factory defects.

I have been playing in church for 19 years. I currently own several basses ranging from 4 to 7 strings. When I get a 9 or 10 string bass there is no doubt in my mind that I got the ideal cabinet to handle the range of multistring bass in a (relatively) small and convenient package.

If this cab were stolen, the man who stole it would hurt his back lifting it. I would replace it also. It is a good sounding sharp looking cabinet. I had never heard a Basson cabinet before and talked to a couple of pro Extended Range Bass Players (Jauqo III-X and Garry Goodman) who have the B510SC 5x10" version of this cab. (Garry also has the prototype B310SC.) They have both been very pleased with their Basson cabinets. So I took a leap of faith, purchased one, and have been rewarded.