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[quote name='alexclaber' post='384952' date='Jan 19 2009, 01:55 PM']You can borrow the one I'm currently building once it's done - give me a few weeks!

Alex[/quote]


Cheers chap, definitely take you up on that!

Replacement LH500 turned up Friday.

Major hassle getting it - Coda music struggled to get a replacement since apparently the distributor changed (Korg now?) or someone was pulling my leg. To be fair Coda's communication was excellent throughout, and they tried their best to offer a whole host of solutions before I got a refund and bought the last one from Absolute.

Plugged in turned on, first diff was start up time - knackered one took 15 seconds, new one about 3 to click into life. Sweets. EQ pots are now noise free (result). Tone is also better (bit fuller I think). This thing is really really loud too!

Its a real beast thru the ae410, wow! Not as refined as the MB sa450, have to be very careful to tame the highs, but that seems to be my lack of experience wiuth this tone stack - I agree its a very very musical thing though. Easily the best amp I've heard to date for that money (not that I've looked at that price range for years so that probably doesnt mean a lot). Struggle to know if it has a 'built-in' tone really sonce the tone stack is from another world to me, really weird idea that one.

Son number one really likes it - he's well and truly made up. His Ibanez BTB sounds great through it - very nice indeed. Now he's really on the look out for a cab to run with it - so Alex when can we have a listen to your compact 15 then mate!!!

Billy Sheehan does a lot of his in one of his instructional vids, if you can get over the hair and clothes long enough to stop laughing and watch the playing (he's interviewed by the most annoying c*ck rock wanna-be throughout - its a dreadful vid)

Always called it tapped harmonics myself, one of those techniques that really comes to life with a nice bit of compression and plenty of bridge pickup with sparkly new strings Alex - surprised you'd ever noticed it Alex

Practicing techniques/feel/time/groove?

Get a metronome, start of with 4/4 quarter notes, 8th notes, 16th notes at a sensible bpm (70ish)

Just a single note, absolutely on the button. Now alternate staccato, legato through the above. Now reverse so you are going legato, staccato. Try to do this for 1 minute without losing the feel at all. This is unbelievably zen like, you should really concentrate.

Now halve the speed of the metronome. Repeat all the exercises exactly as before, except the metronome only clicks on 1 & 3.

Now the real deal, repeat as before except the metronome clicks on 2 & 4.

Now go back to the beginning and do the same with an arpeggio or chord, try repeating each pitch twice, before changing to the next (dont forget the staccato legatto variations either.

About now you (probably a good couple of hours after you started) may want to kill me, but now play a couple of your favourite groove to that click. You are now about a million times more accurate than you were.

Now repeat all the above but at different dynamic levels, use crescendos etc etc, explore playing against a rigid time measure such that you provide all the groove and feel.

And now we repeat with slapping.

Want to make it hard? Slow the metronome down, slower is harder with time keeping.

Wnat to write some tracks/noodle about?

Start up the drum machine and waste 4 hours playing at programming it, then play 5 notes on your bass having been uninspired by the weakness of the beats you've programmed.....

[quote name='Mr.T' post='380002' date='Jan 14 2009, 09:40 AM']Simon...
Thanks for some sound advice (pardon the pun).
I agree that 'cutting' is the way forward, as I think that what I am trying to do with my sound is iron out a mid hump in my neo cab.
I know that most people seem to mainly use the two filters to get their sound, and that is Ok... but not doing it for me.

I have found that the VPF filter (which cuts at 380hz) is taking out clarity in a band setting with my cabs, and that I need to cut a little higher at about 500hz (I am guessing) to get my sound more balanced and even.

My band never have the luxury of a sound check and rarely rehearse, so it is important for me to really get to know my new amp/cabs so I that I don't spend half the gig 'faffing about' getting my gear set-up.

I have read that neo drivers have mid humps.... does anyone know at rougly what frequency?[/quote]

Pleasure mate.

The cab is as much to do with the mid hump as the driver, so I think the question is does anyone know what the mid hump frequency is for cab blah - which I dont.

My suggestion for how to go forward would be as follows:-

Get to your next gig first and set up your rig.

Plug in turn on tune up.

Set your input gain with the master on 0 (usual stuff, play some hard 8th notes bring up the gain till you see the blue light and back off until you dont)

Bring up the master until the cab is running but not too loud, so as not to unduly annoy the clientelle.

Apply ~6-9dB (ie a healthy dose) of cut in the lo mid. Set the frequency as high as it will go for now.

Play straight 8ths and sweep back through the frequencies (should take around 4 or 5 seconds to complete the sweep all the way through the frequencies). Take a mental note where the cabs stop have the mid hump, return the frequency to where it just sounded best then adjust the gain to taste. When you get really practiced you'll just go a little past the best point and then track straight back to it, which is even quicker!

Total time to set the eq should be about 20 seconds - really. Even quicker when you really get the hang of it. Too much cut and you will affect that 380Hz area you like a bit too much. In which case cut less.

Turn up to 'gigging grunt' master level.

It wont hurt to run through the procedure a few times at home to familiarise yourself with it.

Should be done before the drummer has his snare stand out of the coffin

I also never seem to get a soundcheck and rehearsals are clearly for other people too, so I know exactly where you are coming from. Its a lot of the reason why I ended up investing as much as I have in my rig. I just dont have the luxury of tweaking with it when I do get to play out, in fact I even have to rush when recording and if I'm going to mic the righ for that purpose it needs to be almost spot on from the very start. These MB heads really help in that eqing a semi-parametric is so much faster than a graphic IMO.

Coming from a recording engineer background, and having an sa450 too, I'd definitely suggest you go with a (slight) variation on the boost it, twist it suggestion. SInce that is the ethos behind almost all mixing desk channel eqs.

My variation is dont boost to max, since that is soooo much that it can make to very hard to hear anything useful. You want a good 6 to 9dB of boost and then sweep until you find a frequency you like, then back the boost right off. Play a bit more then gradually bring on the boost (otherwise you tend to over egg the pudding). Once you get the hang of it you will almost certainly find that semi parametric eqs are far more intuitive, easier to use and accurate than a graphic for tone setting.

A useful piece of advice is cut first. Really, boosting an eq tends to accentuate the noise of that eq circuit, it also increases the chance of overloading things further down the chain (poweramp's limiter section in this case) which can be a bad thing!

Definitely use your ears, since this isnt your Trace amp the 'same' eq settings (even if you really could get exactly the same eq settings) will _not_ give the same result anyway. It is a completely different amp design after all.

IME of the sa450 I would think the eq is easily powerful enough to achieve whatever you need, and it sounds cool just about anywhere you might try it (some settings are seriously not for the faint hearted though!!)

Also if you like the sound of your bass then you will probably find (as I did to my surprise) that I was using less and less eq as time went by with the MB stuff. Just a touch of Low or Lo-Mid is about it now, after carefully setting up my tweeter attenuater. It just sounds so darned nice

Last point, and I know its been said again and again, but it is always worth a mention to anyone trying out MB stuff, the two 'magic' filters (VPF and VLE) are only off when rotated fully counter clockwise, whereas the eq gains are off at noon. Not trying to teach nan to suck eggs - promise!

Enjoy finding _your_ sound again!

Just in case anyone is in doubt The Big One wont fit in a 10 yr old BMW 3 series boot, in case it makes any diff to you
Just about goes thru the back door to fit on the back seat though.

Mind you not a lot of bass gear does!!

The two frequency plots are very revealing, proof my ears aren't entirely shot then

Cant wait to hear this with the new Xover Alex, I think it'll be staggeringly good for its weight.

[quote name='dave_bass5' post='374181' date='Jan 8 2009, 04:21 PM']I think Ken likes a middy sound and so i can understand him not having the VPF up too much but ive used it at 12 o'clock on a few songs and it works very well.

I agree though, its best used in moderation unless you are after a specific sound.[/quote]

Well that fits my point, live if you want to cut through you need mids. Sure you can eq anyway you like, I dont care mate , but if you suck all the mids out you'll move furniture but no one will hear a note you play.

KJung has always said he likes a hi-fi(ish) sound, very balanced, with plenty of extension (as long as its in 'useable' realms).

I dont like overcooking the bottom end cos you need megawattage to do it and then, as I said, no one can hear a note.

Also I dont like a really clacky scratchy top and thats the other thing thats left.

So you'd probably think I had a very middly sound (esp since I use an ae410), I think I have 'enough' bottom and not too much zing, with loads of definition and punch.

Horses for courses.

It would be interesting to see if we've got the measure of each other though eh

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='374433' date='Jan 8 2009, 09:00 PM']Just FYI there are a couple of online stores doing these for £172 inc. VAT.

Haven't checked your other "NEW" prices but that one's £40 on the high side.[/quote]

Turnkey do it for £149.99 in fact .

Sorry......

[quote name='Mr.T' post='372653' date='Jan 7 2009, 12:24 AM']Yep, that makes sense.

On my old Trace I dropped out about 2 notches of mids (about 6db?)... any more and it would sound great solo but get 'lost' with the band.
I am not sure how much gets cut on the SA450 at 10 o'clock on the VPF filter, but I have a feeling it was more.

My bass has a pretty powerful EQ, so I am not overly worried about gigging with my new rig... although a run through at rehearsal would have been nice as I like to concentrate on my playing at gigs, not my sound.
I used Trace for about 20 years, so was always dialed in by the end of the first tune.[/quote]


Generally speaking setting the filters over 9 O clock is getting into overkill territory (yup I mean 9 O clock, dey is powerful juju!).

Thats both IMO & IME and also judging by the vast majority of posts on TB (esp by KJung who knows his stuff).

Might sound OK on its own but as soon as you go into a band setting you'll struggle.

The only exception to this IME is if you are going for a really old skewl tone and want to knock off more top (more VLE), but then you are going to be even more reliant on the mids to get heard.

Just a guide....

[quote name='Merton' post='361763' date='Dec 23 2008, 10:25 AM']The N8 is a great practice amp, but that is all. Not enough power for gigs IME.[/quote]

+1

sa450 here, into an ae410 (tweeter set at about 25% to 30%), everything pretty much flat, except if I'm going for all kinds of bridge pup burp, in which case I generally add either some lo-mid at around 100Hz or some lo (centered at 40Hz).

I've played with the filters verses the eq and at the end of the day with my rig it does all sound good (guess thats why I'm broke ), just as people have said using VPF tends to bury you in the mix a bit more, and VLE above 9 O'clock is too far from what I want to hear.

Big caveat is obviously that if the room sounds poo then you could be twiddling them knobs till dawn and you wont fix it with any of the eq available on those amps. My BP-8 has a programmeable sweepable notch filter you set up once, just put it in that mode and sweep the expression pedal till the boom drops out of the room), its can really help with a room that has dreadful acoustic boom. Best thing about it, wish someone would make a floorstanding unit to do just that though!

If you want to get some acoustic control happening in that nice big live room, after bass traps a really good idea is floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with varying sized books on the biggest wall, it really soaks up alot of reverb in a vaery natural way and is often much cheaper than a full set of diffusers etc etc.

The many varying sizes of book is the important bit!

Seen this done in a fair few studios with decent sized live rooms, the before and after effect is really amazing!

OK, I admit it, I am probably responsible for making Alex go through the crossover redesign. Sorry Alex

He lent me his Big One (ooo-er) to try out before xmas and I found it to have a peak around 1KHz to my ears.

Not trying to detract from it at all chaps, I was comparing it to my ae410 and using my sa450 flat (just switching the speakon from one to the other) and found that a dip of several dB was required at around 1KHz on the (not very scientifically marked) sa450 to lessen the peak there, it was just way too bright for my ears.

Once the mid peak was eq-ed out it is a phenominal sounding cab IMO, and I couldnt stress it out for want of trying (oh how my neighbours enjoyed that afternoon!). It does go very deep, it is stupidly light for such a loud thing, and it will be worth the money IMO. It doesnt do zing a la a really good tweeter/crossover (like the ae410 and not a lot else). It isnt really designed to I think, but it does offer immense articulation and no super bright tweeter hell (err Eden anyone).

Turns out that Alex took my thoughts on the chin, and went off to get hold of a bunch of better test equiptment to figure out what was going on. Proper engineer stylee!

I didn't post before because I didnt know what Alex intended to do about it - I didnt expect a full on crossover redesign but thats what Alex has decided is necessary to alleviate the issue.

In fairness Alex goes for a very full deep sound with muddy skanky old strings (yuck!) etc, I am a polar opposite, I like it all super punchy and so have much much newer strings, this meant that Alex didnt hear this peak and I did. Since he is designing this as a cab for anyone not just himself I think its really impressive that he has taken a step back, redesigned his crossover and added some toggles to allow the built in mid presence to shine if it helps you achieve your tone goal (more likely because he likes it himself I reckon!).

I hope to get another listen once the crossover is rebuilt!

He also mentioned testing the ae410 to see why its so good, we'll see about doing that later in the year maybe (when the weather wont freeze me solid whilst he assaults my cab with pink noise and test mics).

Got one on of these from Coda and the EQ was faulty

Lots of crackley nonsense and dropouts/thuds whenever the pots were sweeped, initially thought it was dirt but it got worse, rather than better with lots of sweepage.

Waiting for a replacement. It was supposed to be a crimbo pressy for my son so not too pleased really!

What I heard was very loud and clean though, should be really nice as a first 'proper' amp.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='352882' date='Dec 12 2008, 04:36 PM']Or maybe you're just a nutter!

I should have added a caveat regarding tapping - I'd forgetten it exists... It would be interesting to hear other examples of where compression works an an effective tool in a live situation (other than for bodging a fix for my nemesis 'Mr Poor Dynamics').

Alex[/quote]

Well tapping does in fact exist, and in the case of a rock track with a mix of fingerstyle and tapping where you dont want the fingerstyle to be buried a well set up compressor can do absolute wonders - honest! Especially live as you cant ride faders like you can in a studio (well thats what compressors were designed to deal with anyway).

I've experienced this, I used to play in a pretty fast avante garde rock/punk/funk band and we did a track with a ridiculously fast ostinato for the verse b-line that was tapped that went into a fingerstyle chorus. The band comprised of two drummers (one was more of a percussionist, but tended to use a lot of found percussion including an oil drum and aluminium base ball bat ) , two guitarists, and a singer/flutist lady. It was very very very loud, and very fast, and the dynamics were 'loud', 'louder', 'loudest known thing in the universe'. The only way to get the tapping part to work was using some compression, otherwise it just disappeared. I've got a very poor recording of a gig in about '96 at the Concorde (I) in Brighton somewhere. If I can find it I'll try and figure out how to post a bit (unless it is too dreadful to admit too ) Its pretty in your face stuff though!

I disagree Alex.

I have pretty good technique - not the best but I dont have the time I once had. Dynamics are no problem, however I like to use alot of different techniques in the same groove/song etc, and certain techniques, no matter how strong your hands are, are quieter than others.

For instance if you go from slapping to tapping to fingerstyle, the tapping is almost guaranteed to appear quietest, part of it is the fact you struggle to generate the same amount of string movement, and part of it is the nature of the envelope of the sound - the attack is nowhere near as great, so there is a psychoacoustic part to this as well.

A well set up compressor can even this out just enough for you live to always be heard in a mix without destroying your dynamics, even a cheap old two knob DOD compressor will manage that. Compressors will also allow you to modify the envelope to a certain extent bringing out the attack of the tapping more. Followed by a limiter you can prevent the greater attack of the more ferocius techniques (slapping etc) from totally overpowering everything.

Getting a compressor set up just right to cover this gamut of techiques is a proper tricky task if you rely on it too much, but if you take the approach that its to help you, and you practice largely without the crutch it can seriously help get the message across to an audience...

Maybe I'm just a nutter for using such disparate techniques in a single groove though

In answer to the OP, if you are in anyway using overdrive then the compressor may be unnesessary since overdrive itself compresses dynamics.

On the other hand a really good compressor set up well for the player/song/style can really help either to level the output or to thicken up and add gobs of puch - entirely dependant on settings. Otherwise they wouldnt get used in studios.

Live is the same deal, used as an effect to add plenty of grunt you cant quite get that sound with eq or overdrive, used as a leveler you might well find you are helping out FOH, but the reasons for FOH compressing bass apply equally to stage volumes.

As for the speed you play making a compressor not work, thats just not the right speed of attack and release on the comp, a lot of pedal comps take a very average view of these settings in an effort to minimise the amount of controls, but frankly that just means that unless you play 'average' you arent going to get what you want from the pedal IMO and IME.

I recently got hold of a Focusrite Compounder for £150 inc P&P, and its a ridiculously good bit of kit for that money. I guarantee it could be set up to add masses of punch or just level out your signal a bit, regardless of how fast you're picking. Of course the downside its you need to know what you are doing to get it set up right....

Play lighter and turn your amp up....

Yeah thats what I said to ALex when he told me too

You are in for quite a journey getting that down mate you really are!!!!!

Best of luck with it though :wacko:

NWR is the British Rocco Prestia IMO, then again in alot of ways the Blockheads are are very British take on the whole Tower of Power sound.

TOP have the more overtly astounding horn section - not detracting from the Blockheads at all, they are fantastic too! - But I like the more laid back Blockheads rhythm section feel more.

But I really do rate NWR on form as every bit as good as Rocco - who is about as funky as fingerstyle can get IMO....

And yeah I've been working on this forever, on a really good day my version sounds pretty spot on to my ears, on an average day I despair though

I use a slightly different fingering to DK though (staying up high for the whole verse bit rather than wanderign around as much), dont know which is better, do know he plays it brilliantly tho. Swine

+1 My son has one, it sounds fantastic for a practice amp!

Whats the fan noise like - it looks like there are two of the little blighters in that there empty cavenous resonant box after all!

Very interested in one of these for my youngster now.

alexclaber, how would this pair up with your cabs do you think?

My bass is on a wall hanger by the bed. I have two kids (4 and 14) and the elder is a bassist and violininst. He gets to practice a lot more than me!

I find practicing very calming, but rarely get to do more than grab 5 or 10 mins whenever I get a chance to stand by my bass. Helps stop me go totally rusty.

My partner loves having me play bass, I just rarely get to plug it in (its a PIA to set my rig up for anything less than a full practice session IMO)

A long time ago practicing and not being able to get something right used to drive me into a rage, now I'm just happy to be playing!

PM'ed