Aguilar Amplification

In The Field with Tully Kennedy - And the Aguilar DB 412 cabinets

		Country music has certainly ‘amped itself up’ since the early 1990’s with the likes of Garth Brooks, Keith Urban and more recent chart busters such as Brad Paisley embarking on massive arena/stadium tours. Whereas a few small, combo amps and fiddles were commonplace, now huge, multi-amps setups, which would look at home on Metallica’s stage set, are the standard. Enter Jason Aldean, who with the success of his sophomore album, Relentless, has hit the road this year to rave reviews. Aldean is part of this new wave of Country Music, which is bringing the genre forward by referencing the past while bending in rock and pop influences. Aldean’s bassist Tully Kennedy uses four DB 412 cabinets and four DB 115 cabinets! The ever-jovial Tully recently wrote in to tell us how his Aguilar DB 412 cabinets are helping him to bring Country Music to the masses.
		DB 412

I started using Aguilar products in 2003. I originally used the GS 412 cabinets but recently switched to the DB 412 in my stage rig and I tell you, they’re perfect. What I love most about them is that they are big and fat but with enough midrange growl. For my personal tastes, the DB 412 gives a little more bottom-end especially when I use my 5-string, that low B just rumbles! It’s the best cab, hands down, that I’ve ever used – it has really spoiled me! In the past I always felt like there were things getting in the way of the tone that was coming off of my fingers. The best thing about the Aguilar DB 412 is that it supports the natural bass tone, I feel like I can hear the wood and hear the string and hear the natural tone of my fingers versus a bunch of stuff getting in the way before that has a chance to happen. It’s hard to explain that but I can plug into the Aguilar rig completely ‘flat’, without doing anything to it and sounds like my bass! Whatever your bass sounds like, that’s what’s going to come out of those speakers, which is the best thing.

Jason’s band has always been a small group, we’re a five-piece, and what we do is sparse but big so the bottom-end has to be there. I play big, fat, low notes; “footballs”, and it’s got to be thunderous! And that’s what the DB 412 is, thunderous but with the right amount of clarity. I crank it up pretty loud too; I mean I really use those 412’s! And no matter how big the venue is, we’re doing an amphitheater tour right now but even in the arenas it’s the same thing, the notes are so round and well defined.

Our front of house guy, Chris Torri, loves the sound of my rig as well. He does a great job of blending what he’s getting off the stage with the direct signal from my Aguilar DB 900 D.I. He basically mikes up one of the DB 412 cabinets and blends that with the signal from the DI and it works great. It’s so simple but it is easily the best stage tone I’ve ever had!

I grew up playing the classic rigs for years but, in many ways, Aguilar is a newer, better version of those classics. One of my favorite features of the head is that it’s got four or five knobs including bass, mid, treble. I’m a player, I don’t know enough about EQ to sit there and dial in frequencies! I just like the way it sounds, plug it in, turn it on, perfect. Every time. And with the venues, it’s the same every night. Before I started playing in huge venues, I played clubs for years and you would take a rig into a club which would sound great one night and then you would go to a slightly bigger club the next night and it would sound completely different! Whereas Aguilar is very consistent in the way it reproduces the sound naturally. I don’t know what I’d do without it. When I first discovered Aguilar, it was an eye opener, I was like “wow, it sounds like bass guitar!”
I can get all the low-end I need without ever getting muddy. At the end of the day, it really is the best stuff.