Maik Keller, bass player of the German Deep Purple Tribute Band “Demon’s Eye” already played together with Jon Lord and Ian Paice (Deep Purple). Maik plays a vintage Ampeg SVT stack with 8×10 cabinet. Throughout the last couple of years he tried various positions and setups on stages with varying dimensions.

His sound is slightly overdriven with corresponding higher frequencies – according to his bass-player idols Glenn Hughes und Roger Glover. Maik would like to hear the punch and precision of his sound beyond the sweet spot. Also he would like to reduce the overall volume on stage.

A bass players forum in the internet pointed Maik to the Deeflexx systems – and he started to reach his goals step by step…

“Firstly, I tried to play with 2 AURAs which I positioned in front of the upright cabinet. I immediately recognized improved higher frequencies standing in front of the cabinet but also moving sidewards. However, with increasing distance to the cabinet the volume of the beam from the upper 4 speakers also increased. This leads to an inconsistent bass sound along various positions on stage. Playing the bass still leads to an indirect playing experience missing the immediate tonal response.”

Several years ago, Maik toured together with Jon Lord and symphony orchestra playing the legendary “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”. Maik did not want to frighten the other musicians because of the dimensions of the bass cabinet and he intuitively turned the 8×10 cabinet on its side. This automatically led to a better punch and Maik was able to reduce the stage volume. However, now the higher frequencies were missing since the speakers were no longer in the scope of his ears. When I tilted the cabinet I lost the bass punch and so I had to increase again volume and bass of the amp – so this wasn’t really an improvement of my monitoring situation !