JPJ

Calling @Blartfactor10 a man with the necessary skills to rebuild him

When I was working in Holland I had a black Harley Benton 5 string acoustic out there and it was a very good instrument especially for the price. A few rough fret ends and a high saddle but easy fixes that made for a really playable squeeze.

Right, straight off I should say I love acoustic basses. I currently own two, although one - my Tanglewood 4 string is currently for sale on here, as my recently defretted Warwick Rock Bass Alien 5 string is my main acoustic squeeze and having recently moved into double bass ownership, I need the space. Acoustic basses vary greatly. At the lower end of the market you are getting basically an acoustic guitar with a longer neck so don’t be surprised if it can’t keep up with a couple of aggressively strummed acoustic guitars. The more you pay, the better they become. There will always be those happy exceptions and I remember playing and being very impressed by a parlour sized short scale Ibanez a few years ago. Most come with an adequate pickup and/or preamp. Higher end models like the German-built Warwicks and the legendary Takamine B10 are a thing of musical beauty and something I aspire to. Strings-wise, I cannot abide those phosphor bronze strings that acoustic bass manufacturers use. I have always swapped these out for flat wounds as soon as I could and I find that the La Bella low tension flats work great on acoustic bass. Don’t be put off by the neigh-sayers, acoustic bass guitars have their place. Buy one and enjoy it.

I think it’s more of an issue when manufacturers do not keep their software up to date for current products. There have been a few instances of Behringer’s native apps for the X-Air series mixers not working on the latest versions of iOS that have taken Behringer way too long to address (yes I know, Mixing Station, Android etc etc).

Thanks for sharing, as a relative newby to the world of double bass I found this fascinating 🙏

Don’t forget, if you go Behringer you have the option of using Ultranet for your monitor mixes saving all those aux outs for other uses. Yes it means more outlay to buy the P16 personal mixers but it gives each band member a physical control of their IEM stereo mix.

I use the TC Electronics BG250 208 combo with acoustic bass guitar, EUB, and double bass. Very competent little combo that’s more than giggable and they pop up on here cheap as chips.

Those of you mixing live sound will have no doubt heard of or used the Abbey Road technique when applying reverb. If you haven’t, the technique is basically to use both an hpf and and lpf on the signal sent to the reverb to chop off the low and high ends and then blend the reverb back in with the original full range signal. This stops the reverb becoming muddy or shrill and works really well with bass guitar, sounding much more natural. As I have a penchant for a bit of reverb, especially on fretless bass, is there a pedal out there that allows you to replicate the Abbey Road technique?

I’m really not sure. My Original is 36”, I’ve never been clear whether the Original and C names aren’t interchangeable

My understanding is mainly body shape, neck through vs bolt on, wood specs, and hardware. For example the Progress and the Perception are very similar body shapes but the Progress is neck through, and the Perception bolt-on. The Original series body shape is the blend of a Thunderbird with a Precision originally designed for one John Entwistle. Early models of all basses used various pickups such as Kent Armstrong and John East electronics, whereas the later series have Overwater branded pickups, circuits, bridges etc.

My original series 5’er has the XLR out. As @snorkie635 says, the XLR is only active when there is a jack plug in the jack socket. For live work, you just run a jack lead like normal. If you want to take the bass straight to FOH you can, but that means two cables. But having chatted with Chris May, the XLR is intended for studio work rather than live, so in the studio, you plug a jack into the jack socket and take the XLR to the desk. In this scenario, the jack lead doesn’t have to be connected to anything at the other end.

Welcome @MarkOnTyne to the forum, and it’s good to have another northern user join the fray. However, I must call you out on your username. Berwick-upon-Tweed is a good way north of my beloved river Tyne, surely MarkOnTweed would have been more geographically appropriate 😂

The arrangement looks identical to the EBS Stanley Clarke pre. When I opened mine to set the tuner mini switch to off, I had to align the bottom of the unit on that connector at about 45 degrees then sort of hinge it down into position. My case screw holes lined up perfectly and I could feel the connector seating correctly.

I love my Sansamp for fretless, I start with the “Fat Tube” recommended settings from the manual and then dial the drive back until it’s just breaking up as I really dig in. Lovely tone, or at least I think so 😂 Apologies, I’m not trying to dissuade you from buying another preamp, GAS is an awful affliction

With Mrs JPJ off out for the evening, I've had a good play around on the old GarageBand recording my bass. Tracks included: 1) the J-Tone big twin direct into my interface (Behringer UMC202HD); 2) bass recorded with an SM58 again direct into the interface; 3) the J-Tones via my EBS Stanley Clarke DI; 4) the J-Tones via the EBS and the SushiboxFX Finally DI; and er finally 5) and thanks to @Burns-bass, my bass using a Realist Copperhead via the EBS/SushiboxFX combination. Pre-gig yesterday I'd spent quite a bit of time gain staging my setup (so EBS, Sushibox, Behringer X-Air) and also eq'ing and I had a great sound last night even though I was monitoring via FOH so from behind. Some knowledgable punters commented how full my bass sounded and how it sat in the mix - no doubt down to the time spent gain staging. As I said at the outset, I wasn't totally unhappy with the sound of the J-Tones but they did lack something and could easily end up sounding like a fretless bass guitar. The Copperhead however is a huge step up. Firstly I needed to back the bass off on the EBS and use the HPF, secondly I was able to open the treble up too and still not get the nasally sound piezo's can exhibit at times. So, all is well that ends well. I'm off to do some more faffing about before Mrs JPJ gets home. Thanks all for your input and help, and for the record, I did like the SM58 recording so a microphone might well be in my future but for now, I think I'm going to be happy with the Copperhead.

I've recorded quite a few gigs now using USB from the Behringer X-Air XR18 into an old MacBook running GarageBand. Simple no faff setup as @Owen says, but I wish there was a simple USB recorder device I could plug in and forget and still get multi-track recording. Lately, I've been recording a stereo mix using the headphone out into my Zoom H4n Pro, which is a great little device, but I'd love the opportunity to remix the audio post gig without having to carry a laptop with me.

I was back up in deepest darkest Northumberland in the Coquet valley with our acoustic Americana trio. Lovely old pub, very cramped but packed with locals and friends of the band, and a thoroughly enjoyable night. The drive to/from the gig was challenging due to the rain, flooded roads, and fog - thank the heavens for four wheel drive. This is the sort of gig this trio was created for, and last night didn’t disappoint. Oh and my double bass fumblings received praise from a couple of audience members who are also musicians, and we were rebooked for what will be our third gig there this year. Job done 😎

If it’s just for back up and you intend carrying it to every gig, then the ultra small form factor amps such as the TC Bam, Warwick Gnome, and Trace Elliot Elf get a lot of love on here.

Yes it does 😎

Pro bassist and tutor Phillip Mann has been making some noise recently about the Genzler preamp pedal that he’s currently gigging. He knows his onions so it might be worth checking out?

As I used to double on fretless bass and EUB the Stanley Clarke was the obvious choice for me, especially as I’m gigging more frequently without any form of backline and using IEM’s. Price isn’t too bad compared with other boutique pedal board preamp pedals, especially those with a full two channels.

So the musical style is Americana/Country - female fronted acoustic trio. I guess what I’m looking for is an accurate reproduction of the acoustic sound of my bass rather than sounding like a fretless bass. I can get a good enough sound with the J-Tone’s and the Stanley Clarke but it just lacks what I misdescribe as the acoustic ‘air’