Barefaced Bass

NB: The '69er has been discontinued and replaced by the Retro Six10 (or Retro Two10).

The '69er stands apart from all the other Barefaced models, as rather than being designed for minimum colouration it's instead designed to emulate the sound of a particular cab - the original sealed 8x10" as launched in 1969. Being such an old and heavily gigged design there aren't many of these in working order with the original drivers, so it would make sense just to design a clone. But being Barefaced we wanted to go one better (louder?)

So if it isn't a retro clone, how does it differ in performance?

• much greater power handling
• much better polar (off-axis) response
• slightly smaller size
• far lower weight

And how does it achieve this?

• five mid-bass drivers specifically chosen to match well with valve/tube amplifiers
• one full-range driver with low moving mass and voice coil inductance to match the treble extension of the original guitar drivers in the '69 8x10"
• unique crossover to split power and frequencies for optimum polar response and power handling

But I thought you shouldn't use side-by-side drivers?

Well spotted! When you put two 10" drivers side-by-side and run them full-range the resulting interactions causes the off-axis response to start narrowing an octave lower, and the frequency response becomes full of bumps and dips due to the phase differences between the signals at the listening position. So what's the Barefaced solution? Only run half the drivers full-range, lowpass the rest so they only put out lower mids and lows. The sensitivity of a big group of drivers but the dispersion of a narrow column of them, without having to make the cab impractically tall and skinny. Neat.

And how can you mix and match different 10"s within the same cab, surely that shouldn't work?

Yet more crossover trickery and cunning enclosure design. The proof is in the pudding - the clarity, punch and attack of a great guitar driver but the bottom, thickness and air-moving capabilities of real bass drivers.

This is where it might get a bit techy...

Valve* amps are nothing like solidstate amps. Getting maximum power out of them relies on matching the output transformer tap's impedance with the cab's impedance as closely as possible. However, a 4 ohm or 8 ohm cab is actually only nominally 4 or 8 ohm. The actual impedance varies hugely across the frequency range. The more this varies from the nominal impedance, the harder a time your valve amp has producing its full power. It may even shorten the life of the power valves. So with the '69er one of our goals has been to get the actual impedance to more closely match the nominal impedance, through careful driver selection, crossover design and enclosure alignment and damping.

* Valves (UK) = Tubes (US)