Re: EWI amp rack takes a beating
Okay perhaps not totally correct physics or acoustics here but real life experience.
That 4 foot tall "W bin" with an 18 inch woofer in it produced more of the bottom most frequencies than most other bass amps of that era could. But it did not produce much "presence" in the way that the 8x10 inch Ampeg SVTs and eventually "nearly everyone" 4x10 and tweeter horn speakers did in the years to come.
The player in front of an original Acoustic 360 would not hear the actual amount of the lowest frequencies that speaker configuration was putting out unless they were able to stand at least 15 feet in front of the cabinet. That wasn't possible on any club stage and very few theaters either. The result was a lot of 100 to 160 Hz "rumble" (a rough estimate) in the audience that the player on stage didn't fully experience.
Still they were popular because they were "loud enough" to compete with double stacks of 4x12s on the guitar side. They didn't "fart" like the Marshall bass amps (listen to any live Cream recording with Jack Bruce). The contemporary pre SVT bass amps, the solid state Standells and the Sunn 100 series all SOUNDED better but were not anywhere near as loud in that "the backline HAS to fill the venue era.
