Bass cab making 'whoofing' sound. Specs included. What am I doing wrong?

[sleesaw]

I have a hartke head and a 18" ampeg speaker cab. I'm guessing the problem lies in the specs between the two pieces of equipment (even though the problem just started happening recently and I hadn't had any problems for quite a long time).
Please assist in any way possible to figure out the problem.

After playing the setup for several minutes, the amp makes a whoofing sound as Im playing. It's considerably louder than what the volume is set at. I've been using the set up for awhile and nothings ever happened until now. I thought I fixed the problem several weeks ago because it stopped doing it for a day or so, then came back.

Hartke Model 3500 Amp Head
350 watts
with two 8 Ohms speaker outputs
8 Ohms at 240 watts
4 Ohms at 350 watts

Ampeg SVT18 Speaker Cab
Handling: 500 watts
1000 watts peak
Impedance: 4 Ohms

Thanks!!

[Jazz P Bass]

You really do need to cut the problem in half.
Is it the amp or the cabinet?

[Enzo]

It has nothig to do with the specs. If there was some sort of basic incompatibility, it would have been doing this the entire life of the pair, and it certainly wouldn;t stop doing it for a day or so.

What Jazz said, does this amp do this through a different speaker cab? Does this speaker cab do this powered by a different head?


Two things come to mind. One is an air leak in the cab, and when playing loud, air can whoosh through a space and make noise. The other is something has become sensitive to vibration in the Hartke head.

While powered up and ready to play, ball up your fist and whack the top of the amp head. Does that cause any sound out the speaker? It should not. If it does, you have a loose connection inside. Also, the Hartke has a tube/solid-state blend control on the front, does its setting matter? In other words turn on all tube, noise? Now turn on all solid-state, noise?

[sleesaw]

You really do need to cut the problem in half.
Is it the amp or the cabinet?

I have no clue which one is it. Im guessing the amp or a mixture of both

[sleesaw]

Ill give it a shot and let you know!