JPJ

So second gig of the weekend at the glorious Old Fox in Felling (on the Gateshead side of the river Tyne close to Newcastle for those born in the south). This is a proper music venue pub, with live music on four or five times a week. The Sunday afternoon slot is a coveted slot because you are almost guaranteed a full pub, and a full pub of music lovers. This could not have been more different to our Friday night gig, and we all played so much better. Our usual eclectic mix of country, Americana, and blues went down a storm with the enthusiastic crowd. Gear-wise, my trusty old Ashdown ABM 1x15 Neo combo, EBS Stanley Clarke, MicroThumpinator, and my fretless Tony Franklin Precision and NS NXT EUB. More compliments on the sound so I must finally be getting to grips with the old PA malarkey (I’ve only been doing it for twenty plus years 😂). A busy three gigs in eight days have bedded new guitarist Steve in nicely (for a band that only plays around 20 gigs a year).

I’m on the journey towards no backline. As I’ve said on here I’ve gone from a 1500W amp and two 4x10’s down to a 400W 1x15 Neo equipped combo. I now let the PA do the work and the combo is there just as my personal monitor. Its taken me a long time and a lot of experimentation to get a FOH bass sound I’m happy with, and I’m just about there with my IEM feed sound too, so I’m not far away from going no amp. That said, both of my bands have guitarists who are wedded to their small all valve combos so it probably won’t happen anytime soon. As to whether I would I ever sell all my amps, that’s a definite no. As others have said, the minute I did Sod’s Law says I'd get the offer of an interesting gig/dep that required decent backline.

So it turns out that USPS are indeed the ba$tard love child of ParcelForce and Evri. Tracking history so far: 24-May-24 17:30 USPS in possession of item Dundee, Illinois 24-May-24 20:33 arrived at Chicago, Illinois regional origin centre 25-May-24 18:04 arrived at Chicago, Illinois international distribution centre 26-May-24 in transit to next facility 27-May-24 14:28 arrived at Chicago, Illinois international distribution centre 28-May-24 08:17 processed through Chicago, Illinois international distribution centre 29-May-24 09:21 Arrived Chicago, United States 30-May-24 06:31 Departed Chicago, United States 01-Jun-24 07:47 Departed Chicago, United States 01-Jun-24 10:34 Departed Guangzhou, China Looks like it’s going to be very well travelled before it reaches me 😂

And the calm is restored, along with my faith in the EBS Stanley Clarke. After watching a couple of videos on YouTube by recognised pro recording engineers, and conversing with you lovely people on here, I came to the conclusion that, alongside the aforementioned series/parallel loop issue, I was really running to much additive tone on both the SC and the Ashdown. So I went back to first principles, turned all the tone controls to their zero position, and started from scratch using subtractive rather than additive tone changes, just as I would when mixing FOH. The result, the best tone I’ve had across fretless P and EUB both ‘on stage’ and FOH in a long long time. Still got a rare flash of the post peak LED on the SC, but it was literally that, a rare flash. I’m sitting here typing this feeling slightly stupid. When running FOH sound this is my go to technique, and I seldom need more than a 3db cut to tame any wild frequency. But playing bass, It’s so easy to keep adding and adding more and more tone boosts across the frequency spectrum until all you’ve actually achieved is a very loud obnoxious mush. Going back to first principles has opened up my sound and by subtraction, rather than addition, I’ve retained all of the positives with none of the negatives.

Tonight’s gig, social club, lounge, typical social club crowd. But tonight I finally had a tone I was happy with both on stage and FOH with both the fretless and the EUB. Spent a bit of time last night tuning my FOH tone and it paid off. Lots of compliments on the mix too so I’m off to my bed a happy lad. Obligatory rig shot 😎

This has been my experience too on certain stages and yes, it’s almost certainly down to using universal fit IEM’s, whereas my ear plugs are custom moulds

I don’t disagree, but if you don’t gain stage correctly at each point in your signal chain you will eventually run into trouble (something I learned early on running PA for various bands). With the EBS, I feel/felt like I had too little gain at the start of my chain and that the peak light was almost permanently on even at moderate settings despite the output sounding ‘weak’. I also learned that, despite what EBS support told me, if you drive the preamp to the point where both the pre and post peak LED’s are flashing away, you suffer a signal drop similar to a hard compression (I could see this on the input VU of my Ashdown amp). I suppose this is better than a really awful square wave distortion but it’s still not very nice when you experience it for the first time. As I said above, I will be re-wiring my pedal board soon so I will play around with the order of my pedals to see which gives the best results.

Boom! By Jove I think you’ve cracked it! I was indeed running the effects loop in parallel. Just tried it now with my Lindy Fralin equipped Lakland P (a reasonably high output passive bass). In parallel mode, input gain was around 8 o’clock and still an occasional flash of the input peak light. In serial mode, I could crank the input gain to almost 12 o’clock before the input peak light flashed. The loop has the TC Plethora X3 and a Sansamp v2 (so EBS > TC Plethora > Sansamp > EBS) and all effects were off. I’ve a new toy arriving (hopefully) very soon that will require a rewire of my board, so I will do more extensive testing to work out the best signal path.

Five days later and my pedal has made it as far as Chicago O’Hare airport. USPS seem to work at the same speed as Parcelfarce on this side of the pond.

Not an ignorant question, yes I could, but I actually feel like I’m missing some gain in my signal so turning down would just make the problem worse.

I have a TC Plethora X3 in the loop, but I struggle with the peak signal flashing constantly with the gain set at about 11 o’clock with a passive P bass, whether there are effects engaged or not. I’d have expected the loop to only show on the post peak?

I’ve checked the A/B switch and it’s definitely ‘out’. When you are running your basses, where is the gain control set at, I struggle to get above 11 o’clock with any electric bass passive or active?

Thanks, but I should have been clearer. All my active/passive basses are ‘too hot’ to have the input gain on the SC at anything more than ‘just on’.

So after a year and a half of using the SC I have another question. Is there a simple way to modify the input resistance of one channel (like an external load box)? I know that the input resistance of the SC is 10 meg ohm which is designed for piezo style pickups. As I’ve said before, I use the SC as my preamp with both NS EUB, and a selection of passive and active bass guitars. My passive Tony Franklin P bass appears so hot on the input of the SC that the channel gain is hardly on, and even a small amount of EQ boost has the post LED flashing away. I feel that the gain is so low that I’m actually missing something from my tone. I’m about to receive a SushiBox ‘Finally with bass in mind’ valve pre that I want to use for my bass guitar side of things and I’m worried sticking an active pre in front of the SC is only going to make things even worse.

Absolutely shocking, only 20 years 😤😂

Well where to start. They are both SWR, they both have a aural enhancer (although you can switch it off on the MM), so they are both capable of that glassy SWR tone, but after that they are very different. Starting with the older Grand Prix, I defy you to get a bad sound out of this box. The valve gives a warmth to the tone but you’re not going to be able to get it dirty or even to the point of breakup. The EQ is simple and logical, logical that is once you’ve learned that most bass tone is in the lower mids. If you want a clean fat sound this box will supply it all day and still come back for more. The Marcus Miller (‘MM’) however is a very different beast. It’s still got the classic SWR sound despite being from what many consider to be the inferior ‘Fender era’. After that, well it’s basically your Swiss Army knife of tone options. The feature set is very similar to the behemoth SM1500 (that I also own) but obviously in a much lighter package. Having the five band eq with low, mid, and high semi-parametric mids takes a bit of getting used to, but I’ve found that less is definitely more with this setup. Having a fully featured compressor onboard is a bonus but in truth I prefer the multi band compression in my TC Plethora these days. The bass intensifier circuit is a great addition, but hard to describe, it fattens up the bottom end and adds ‘width’ to your tone. Recording, I’ll tend to start with the Grand Prix and only switch to the MM if I need something I can’t get out of the Grand Prix. Live, if I’m using this rack then it’ll be the MM as it punches through the mix better to my old ears, using the SWR amplite 400 racked below the MM.

Hard to pigeon hole us, it’s a pretty broad mix of country, Americana, a few popular tunes done differently. The main artists we cover are Buddy & Julie Miller, Shawn Colvin, Lucinda Williams, Martina McBride, Thea Gilmore, Kasey Chambers, with a bit of Sheryl Crowe, KT Tunstall, and even Tom Petty thrown in. The NS covers the slower rootsie stuff beatifully.

I’m just in from an afternoon slot at a really well attended local multi-band event. Great gig, excellent onstage and FOH sound, and we blooded our new guitarist who played a blinder despite only having three weeks to get up to speed with our set.

I have these two, both SWR, both very different. The Grand Prix is a relatively simple valve pre. It’s still clean SWR and has the aural enhancer, but it’s warmer than most other SWR gear I’ve owned/tried/used. The Marcus Miller is about a full featured pre as you can get.

I’ve had the MXR but found it to be very sterile. I’m currently selling a Darkglass Harmonic Booster pedal on here that is a similar three band eq preamp but with the addition of a character control. It’s a clean preamp but it’s a lot warmer than the MXR.

Sorry to hear about your loss, losing a parent is never easy, but in this case it sounds like it was quite a shock. Good on you for getting back out there and doing what we all love to do.

My top three (and I own them all so I’m biased) 1) SWR SM1500 - 1500W, bridged, biamp, or stereo, full feature compressor, two channels of tone setup, bass intensifier, boost, and of course the most misunderstood and maligned aural enhancer. If you know the meaning of heft, then this amp has it in spades. Headroom to die for, and it’s capable of going stupidly ‘stadium’ loud if you need it to. The only downside is the enormous weight. 2) Ashdown Geezer Butler Head of Doom. The most all-valve like hybrid I’ve played. This thing has heft, and that ‘bounce’ or ‘spring’ that valve amps have. It can go as dirty as you would like, but excels at that ‘just breaking up’ tone. Oh and even racked in a flight case, it’s still a one-hand lift. 3) Ashdown ABM. I use the term generically as irrespective of power output, they all use the same preamp. I used to hate these amps with a passion, until a quick post on here explained the secrets of pushing a good tone out of this preamp (biggest tip being the ‘reverse’ wiring of the pre shape switch). Probably one of the most versatile preamps once you get to know it, and as others have said, the best after sales support in any realm.

Just received the email to say my ‘finally’ is with UPS for its journey across the Atlantic. Exciting times, can’t wait to get my hands on it 😎

I’m happy to help @orangepeelneil but suspect I might be at the other end of the country from you?