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I have a quick question. Is there any reason that a bass guitar cab cannot be used in a subwoofer type of application in a PA system??

I have just noticed that good bass guitar cabs are more inexpensive than dedicated subwoofers, and I am not particularly looking to add more frequency to my system with the lower freqs that a dedicated sub offers, but I want to compliment the existing freqs in my system.

Could I do this by adding like a 2x15 bass cab to my system?

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C Mc
KJ, FL

Bass Guitar cabs are made for bass guitar.  They have lower continious input ratings than subs. The program on a bass cab will be around 400 watts 800 peak where a good sun will be 1000 watts program 1500 watts peak. They just are simply designed for different applications a true sub shouldn't be albe to produce over 200 to 300hz a bass cab will produce up to 4khz

Topher,  I'm thinking as long as you follow Ohm's law,  you wouldn't hurt much,  the most you might do is either muddy up your sound, or enhance it. Bass cabinets have woofers. A subwoofer will go to a much lower frequency then a woofer but it wont be as versatile. For a PA,  I'd think a bass cab would be fine... For bass drum range that's a different story.  If you want to feel "thunderous thumping" that is, you'd want the sub...Depending how large the bass cab is, you might find it's not tuned to compliment your existing cabs.. Another consideration of course would be balancing your cabs.... Subwoofer frequencies aren't directional.... Bass cabs are.
So it likely would balance if you have your left 15 inch 3-way speaker cab sitting on a 2X15 ampeg V-4B cab, and nothing under your right 15 inch 3 way PA speaker cab.... wouldn't balance..

Lonman, Karyoker, or Keith would know possible dangers of doing this if there are in fact any. Yet when I play bass I'm mixing and matching cabs with different configs constantly,  some cabs have a piezo tweeter, other's don't...yet always mixing and matching. as long as I follow ohms law, I think I'm safe, assuming handling power of speakers is similar too I suppose... I just would think the only ramification of adding bottom that isn't tuned or voiced to your current cabs might be you loose some of the tightness in your sound that you get with balanced midrange, and tweeters, you just get a looser sloppier bottom, and lose alot of  your midrange...Some would get into importance of matched speaker voicing .. So I think what you want to do is done,  can be done,  but for the more intricate aspects of this,  not sure.....

Personally, what I'd do, is if I had a JBL 3-way PA cab,   and didn't want to spend big bucks on a tuneable adjustable subwoofer that you can blend in with your current cabs... I'd probably call JBL and ask them what bass cabs if any could be used, and than purchase a used pair of perhaps bass cabs with JBL K 15's in them...

Or if you have Peavey blackwidow 3-way PA speakers, you can purchase 2 Peavey 115BX BW ported bass guitar cabs for about 100-150 per cab used... Yet doubt they will handle over 300 watts peak each @ 8 ohms

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".