garethfriend

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1338559831' post='1676370'] Don't worry about it. You haven't read my previous comments and so you've missed the point of this comment. [/quote] Apologies chris b, your original post read like "people who use EQ are trying to compensate for having bought the wrong gear", looking again today it reads more like you just prefer not having to use it. I have encountered that attitude from some people though, sorry if I've lumped you in with that crowd by accident, my comments are not directed at you specifically.

Yeah you can get all pedantic about whether "flat" eq even exists in bass gear if you wanted too. All you are actually doing is changing a value of resistance in your signal chain when you turn an eq knob. Just because you don't have or don't use control of that resistance doesn't mean it isn't there shaping the signal. the current preamp I'm building has no centre positions on the pots so there is no "flat" only too much or too little, the way it should be imo - eq with the ears not the knob

The "EQ is a fix for having bought the wrong gear" argument is rubbish. For a start so long as you can get the sound you want out of a setup any and all approaches are equally valid, at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the sound that comes out of the speaker, the position of a few knobs matters not one little bit. Secondly the "it sounds right with no EQ" approach is fine until you want versatility. I have long suspected the "EQ is cheating crowd" sit in one of two camps - don't know how to use it properly or only use one or two sounds. Nowt wrong with having one or two sounds but if you use many different sounds plenty of EQ might actually mean you've bought the right bass after all.

on my SBMM SB14 I tend to crank the treble all the way and bring up the bass until it sounds a little fuller (but not a massive boost). The amp and cab I have are fairly dark but respond well to EQ so this ends up getting it about right in the room. Although my amp has fancy parametric EQ on it I find this is better for tweaking the exact contour of the mids and I leave myself with "on bass" control over the top and bottom end. The OLP 5 string I am doing some work on is having a classic 2 band musicman clone preamp put in it. No redundant mid knob and all that malarkey and just have what I actually use. When I had an Orange Terror Bass head I found combining both EQs (bass and amp) cleverly to add or cut frequencies before and after the tube preamp section to be a powerful tone shaping tool too. Bass boosted after the tube sounds really different to before.

ha ha! I never knew they had a youtube channel. some of those videos are hilarious.

winner! cheers guys, some things to have a play with there I think.

see my understanding was that playing with the input and output caps would change the amount of bass being filtered out, this would work fine if I wanted to send the bass frequencies through the effect rather than round it. The buffer idea sounds like where my thoughts were going but reading up on this was where I hit the conversations on phasing issues (albeit in an only vaugley related application hence the question). If anyone has actually done this for bass it would be good to hear if you encountered this problem or if it is only theoretical.

I've been wanting to try modifying a few circuits for guitar effects recently to work with bass and build some pedals. A recurring thing that I am wanting to do with a lot of them is to have the low end of the signal bypass the effect-creating bit of the circuit and be blended in at the output. How do I go about doing this? from what I have read depending on the effect there can be phase issues. Anyone got any experience doing this? what should I be putting in before and after the effect part of the circuit? Cheers

Lack of Ibanez's popularity has always boggled my mind. Some of the best instruments in the world IME. Massively regret selling my BTB.

[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' timestamp='1337858799' post='1666443'] Whenever I suggest GKs to people their biggest problem is finding somewhere to try them [/quote] yeah, that's another brand I was looking at but wrote off for that very reason

[quote name='Rattle&Drum' timestamp='1337808709' post='1665940'] While I'm here, I'd be very interested in you guys' thoughts on amps - Ashdown is our main amp brand right now, along with a few other bits and bobs. If we were to add a second brand in depth what would you like to see? [/quote] Last time I was looking at amps I was really interested in Hartke stuff but couldn't find anyone even a remotely sensible drive away with anything other than the budget combos in stock. I heard a while ago you were due to start stocking ampeg stuff, what happened there?

LM4250 arrived Friday, got that bad-boy in there and soldered the ground wires to the pots today. Should get the bass back this week I think so looking forward to cracking on with this.

well I guess I'll just go with it for now and see what the reaction is when we release them, I have a feeling the recording process is just taking it's toll and I'll snap out of it when we gig.

[quote name='Len_derby' timestamp='1337625058' post='1663053'] Hey Gareth is that [url="http://www.leicestershire-luthier.co.uk/index.html"]http://www.leicester...o.uk/index.html[/url] out at Thringstone? I've found them to be a top quality outfit. [/quote] That's the one.

sounds about right. They are a decent bunch in there though to be fair, considering buying my next bass from there, for a real world shop I have found them to compete reasonably well with web prices on new stuff compared to many shops. No experience of their repair tech though as anything I can't do myself goes to a luthier in Leicester.

Bit of a dilemma here regarding some original songs my band plays. Background is that about 18 months ago our drummer quit in a memorable (childish) fashion and the remaining members of the band all agreed to start again fresh because they had been doing the same set for years. Fine. Got a new drummer, better than the first, and got to work writing new material. Everything was going well and then the singer and guitarists both had kids, at this point practice began to get patchy and it has been pretty hard for the last year as we have been unable to string more than two or three weekly practices together regularly. Fair enough, kids are difficult. To make the best use of the time we started recording the tracks we had written, that way if one or two members couldn't make it the rest could work on the recordings so things would at least progress. Thing is that backfired because knowing that the others could just record various people started slacking off practice for increasingly pathetic reasons. Finally this came to a head and we have now decided that we should be putting practice first and aiming to start gigging again soon. So now we seem to be getting a bit of momentum back and things are heading in the right direction. Brilliant. Only problem now is that by taking 18 months to work on 6 songs I am already feeling like they have been done to death and we haven't even gigged them yet. The one song that is furthest along in the recording process and is just about ready to go out I have heard that many times that I think I actually hate it. It has got to the point where I am wondering if the songs are actually any good anyway. My question then: how do you know if your songs are rubbish or you have just heard them on a loop too many times? Gig them and see would be the obvious answer. Not sure if I like the idea of getting on stage with songs you don't believe in though. What you think?

words can't even describe how much I want that.

[quote name='janmaat' timestamp='1337026377' post='1654347'] BC's own Higgie made a MM-2-band for me, which does a perfect job in my OLP MM3. That said, I believe he's playing the bass on a cruise ship right now... [/quote] That's encouraging, worth it then? Big difference or subtle? Did you keep the stock pickup? I think if it gives me back control over the bass and treble without having to turn around and fiddle with the amp on stage it will be worth it for me.

Yeah, only used that as it was althe local shop had in, there were about three different op amps listed in the schematic so I socketed it so I could try different ones. Recommendations welcome.

yeah my SBMM doesn't either it's just massively more substantial, might just get away without