Fraktal

I have tried several different pods and always found that for my best bass sound I had to unplug them. Its sad that they suck so much tone, but not having a true bypass... Thats not only sad: Thats capital crime!

I have had very good experiences with the Sabine FBX series. Never tried any other brands, though. Anyway the best option to control feedback is in-ear monitoring. Some vocalists hate them but in my experience thats because they use crappy in-ear headphones. Its a very good idea to try several headphones with a in-ear monitoring system, the difference in frequency response between different brands and models is huge, and sometimes vocalists prefer the headphones with more mid frequencies boost, even though they arent the best quality ones, because those help them hear the voice much better. You also save a lot of weight and space to carry when gigging, and you also clear the onstage noise and volume levels, something mixing engineers would kill for!

Got 2 sets of hartke strings and broke twice the B string while tuning it up to B (and no, I didnt tune them past B ). They broke at the tuning peg 3 semitones before they reached the B. Gave the other 4 strings to a friend that plays a 4stringer and wont buy that crap anymore.

2 years ago I ordered a 5 string Line6. Played with it for more than a week and ended up returning it to the music shop. A pity cos I was in need of its versatility BADLY, but I had a lot of annoyances. The most problematic one was that the neck/bridge pickup simulation was FAR from being decent, as if the only difference between the sound of the 2 simulated pickups was equalization, but no difference of character in the tone. That bugged me so much I simply couldnt stand it. Maybe I could have lived with the heavy weight, the wide string separation, the weird nasal resonances on some simulated models or the non adjustable noise gate on a few simulated models, but the lack of a real bridge pickup tone character was too much for me.

Ive heard they suffer of horrible neck-dive due to the 2 steel bars they use to reinforce the neck. A pity cos they look gorgeous!

Ian 'chopthebass' Sirius basses, any of them! Even better, all of them!

Most pedals are designed to work plugged between the instrument and the amp, the effects loop would most likely overload their input. Placing a compressor before or after another effect will change the final sound, but in this case, it is better to experiment by yourself.

[quote name='hoytbasses' post='262681' date='Aug 14 2008, 09:16 PM']and no wars started by me....... I'm (was) a lover not a fighter :-)[/quote] I had such a feeling just by reading your past and present professions. People like you are welcomed warmly everywhere you go, be here also!

Thanks a lot Alex, I was always curious about that fat condenser. Maybe going out of topic here, but worth asking I suppose since its still related to high frequency drivers and might be an interesting read for Protium also. What would be an efficent, reliable, small and high quality solution to improve the high frequency sound on a 2x10" and tweeter cab? Such as my Markbass cmd 102p combo? Its HF quality is very poor when compared to my Alesis M1 active MKII monitors. I know this may sound as apple to potatoes comparison here, since the markbass combo is a single amp with ceramic tweeter and the Alesis monitors are biamped, crossovered and have silk dome tweeters, but still, I would KILL to have that Alesis high frequency sound in a bass amp. Smooth and creamy highs at any volume without hurting your ears! Would Protium do better buying something different to the piezo driver sound? Maybe adding a passive 2way filter? Maybe a different material HF driver?

Oh, I forgot to say I use the bass frequently to record tracks at a friend's PC and the sound is absolutely clean and very powerful, using only a BSS DI box and nothing else, not even plugins! The same can be said about my previous 'dinosaur like' rig, wich was a Trace Elliot rack preamp using the built in crossover at 250hz into 2 Altair bipolar rack power amps (350w+1100w) and a Warwick Terminator 1000w cabinet, again, no distortion at all on loud note attacks or clicks during a sustained note, even running the preamp on max gain and output and also both power amps at max knob setting. Damn, that amp was too heavy for me... It was a logistical nightmare when carrying to a gig: Around 100lbs just the rack flight case alone, and about 150lbs the cabinet inside its tailored flightcase. Wont argue on its tone, though!

Alex, I have seen lots of manufacturers adding a huge condenser in the tweeter cables. Is it working as a high pass filter? As a fuse to protect the tweeter from overloading?

You can clone both markbassfilters in the studio using very simple tools. The VLE is just a LPF (Low Pass Filter) with a fancy name, the higher you set up the VLE the lower frequency the LPF is set to. And the VPF is a combination of 3 parametric EQs centered at 35hz, 380 hz and 10khz, when increasing the VPF knob you increase gain on 35hz and 10khz and decrease on 380hz. Instead of using fashionable names they could just give us a Low Pass Filter called the way its meant to be and 3 parametric EQs. That would be much more reliable IMHO.

Yeah, the light works, but to light it up I need to set the gain up to full, then strike all 5 strings at once very violently, then I can see the blue led lighting up for a fraction of second. Nothing new here, my previously owned Trace Elliot GP12X preamp behaved exactly the same, its just my bass, it has lower signal output than average, and also passive. So no, I dont think there is a chance I can overload that Markbass preamp stage with my bass. Then, setting the master at anything above the first dot will make it distort the initial attack of almost every loud note, quickly engaging (just a tenth of second after or so) what I think might be the built in power stage limiter. Mind that I never use compression, just a bass, cable and amp, to allow dinamics to be as natural as possible. This is something I cant really understand, ok, the thingie is loud, but I have never heard such kind of slow reacting limiter on any other decently priced and regarded bass amp. As an example, warwick combos usually have a built in limiter, but you will never notice it activating after a loud note attack, even though they are cheaper and less powerful than the markbass. Then there are also those annoying high frequency clicks when sustaining a note, but as said here before, that noise might be caused by dirty contacts. I'll meet a friend this sunday and will try his Alembic on my amp, to see if any of these problems dissapear. Im just afraid the built in limiter might be too slow for my taste.

I had 3 HH bass amps and I badly regret selling them. The first one I bought was a 100w head + 15" matching cabinet, not retroiluminated, black color, my technicians progressively destroyed the cabinet while loading/unloading it from the truck until it can barely keep itself in one piece and I could feel the air coming out of the wood joints while playing. The second one was a 100w head with back green glow, I used it with the biamp output paired with the former head and a home made cabinet 2x15" + 2x6", It was the first amp I had that could match the volume of a loud drummer and a guitarist marshall halfstack. The last one I had was a 250w combo with 1x15", the speaker blew up shortly after and I replaced it with a 250w Beyma speaker that gave the combo an incredibly powerful and rich sound. It was huge and heavy, and all my fellow band members were terrified whenever we had to move it. All of them were previously used, and I sold them all to buy my first new amp, a 350w+350w hartke head with a 4x10" XL cab and 2x15" celestion home made cab. I almost cried when I realized after a few days I couldnt get a tone as good as with my HHs and I hate Hartke since then, haha!

I recently bought a third hand MB CMD102P and Im having some sound issues. I'll describe them the best I can so hopefully some of you MB owners out there can advise me. I set the gain pot to full, since my passive bass cant light up the clip led, it has fairly low signal output (MEC soapbar passive pickups), so I assume Im doing right. All EQ at 12 o'clock save for the VPF filter wich is turned off. Then, with master pot set barely above first dot, the amp will distort for a fraction of second with every loud note attack, as if the limiter was reacting a bit late. Sure, it has a fair volume, but still, for such an state of the art 500w amp I was expecting more headroom and/or a faster reacting limiter. The higher I set the master pot, the more "compression" gets added, and I also hear a few high frequency clicks while sustaining a note, kinda similar to electrostatic sparks noise. Lowering the gain pot and raising the master doesnt seem to change anything. I thought these amps were supposed to have a very clean sound? Have you guys ever noticed these things with your MB combos? Thanks a lot!

Well, here you go the 80mm model: [url="http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=9&lng=en"]http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=product...id=9&lng=en[/url] Even less noisy, rated at only 17dB top spinning speed. Cutting the molex connector and soldering 2 cables is piss easy! Surely you can find Noctua fans at overclockers.co.uk or any other similar specialized PC e-shop

Correct me if I am wrong, but isnt that a 120mm fan? If you find the fan noise too annoying you can replace the internal fan with this one: [url="http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=12&lng=en"]http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=product...d=12&lng=en[/url] Its only 19dB and moves a lot more air than conventional fans. Chances are you wont hear it at all once its installed inside.

Oh, BTW, this seems to be a nice solution to heavy basses, sold at thomann.de, has anyone ever tried it?

The only 1RU amplifier I know of (worth the money) is Markbass F1, it has a preamp but I suppose you can bypass it by plugging your Alembic preamp output into the F1 effects loop return jack. Beware of 1RU power amps, all decent power amps I know of have a 2-3RU format.

Still, whats the point of buying a quad core, expensiver, hotter, powerhungry processor if your applications cant take advantage of 4 cores parallel processing? Its not only the initial cost of the processor, its also the electricity bill. A quad core processor will consume roghly double the power than a dual core processor. Lets think about the environment, also? A direct comparison would be to buy a 4 tons 4x4 instead of a classical car... Are you gonna drive offroad? 99% of 4x4 owners use their polluting beasts to bring kids to school and go to the supermarket... Such a waste of power!

I personally dont care at all about weight, as long as the bass has a perfect balance. If the balance is perfect then the weight gets distributed more evenly and my spine is positioned on a very straight way that allows me to stand a heavy bass without problems. So far the only bass I have played that had a perfect balance was a Hohner Jack Bass Custom, headless. I had it for years and it was a dream to play with (save some cheap electronics and pickups, those 'EMG select' pickups are pure crap), unfortunately the intensive gigging and road life screwed its electronics, frets and trussrod badly, and I had to let it go. Now Im pestering Ian 'Chopthebass' to craft one his Sirius basses for me, since every headed bass I have had/tried tended to pull the neck down, even if only slightly, but enough to force me trying to push it up, slowing my left hand, moving my shoulders out of balance and bending my spine, causing pain at the end of the night. If you would like to experience the perfect balance of a headless bass, I suggest to contact Ian 'Chopthebass'. He is a member of these forums and will surely be kind enough to let you have a ride on his Sirius bass. He is also accepting orders and his prices are so cheap Im still shocked! you can also check the looks of his basses on his avatar pic.

Thanks a lot for your insight, Alex, always good to learn new things. Unfortunately I think Im having a hard time to understand your response, do you have any graphics? Maybe it would be easier with a picture or 2...

Quad cores run hot, and since you need to remove all that heat from the processor, their fan+heatsinks are usually very noisy, wich is something I cant accept in a DAW system. You better check for your recording software and plugins, see if they are optimized for quad cores. Most likely they wont cos programmers are the laziest human beings only surpassed by bassists. If so, I would recommend a dual core, the E8400 has some raving reviews, runs cooler, cheaper and faster than a quad core unless, as I said, your applications are optimized for quad cores. I only know of a handful apps optimized for quad cores, very VERY few. Parallel processing is a nightmare for programmers. If you, like me, are concerned about noisy PCs in your studio environment I highly suggest you: 1-This PC case wich will soak up a big deal of noise from all the fans inside: [url="http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=09182"]http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=09182[/url] Its stylish and incredibly silent since its panels are made of multiple layers to dampen the noise from fans and hard disk drives inside, also a very smart air flow. its also HUGE, assembling your PC, working inside, replacing components, connecting cables, etc its all a breeze and a pleasure cos you have loads of space to work in. It even has routing for cables so they dont annoy you or screw the air flow. 2-Replace all fans inside your PC case, power supply unit and heatsinks with 120mm Noctua Fans: [url="http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=start"]http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=start[/url] By far the most technologically advanced fans with computer designed profiles to minimize air turbulences improving airflow and reducing noise. Their fans are rated between 6dB and 19dB, depending on the model and operational speed. They also include rubber silent blocks for mounting so vibrations wont transfer to your PC case and their bearings are magnetically centered and surrounded by oil, they keep spinning silently even after years of use. 3-Western Digital, Hitachi or Samsung hard disk drives, they are highly regarded by DAW gurus all around the world as the most silent HDDs. Some of these brands have silent drives series, whose are even less noisy. 4-Passively cooled graphic card, there are loads of models and any of them above 80 pounds or so will work flawlessly with your DAW. Avoid mainboard integrated graphics, they will eat up all your precious RAM that you badly need for libraries and plugins. My PC is built with that Antec P182 case, 2 Western Digital HDDs, 4 Noctua fans 800rpm 120mm mounted on the case and one Noctua 1300rpm 120mm for the processor. I live in the countryside on a very VERY quiet area and I cant hear any PC noise, not even by the nights, and it sits just 1.5 meters away from my bed.

This is pure speculation cos Im no sound engineer, but I suppose the hardest work you can ask a speaker for would be a "perfect" square wave at full power (very unlikely to happen) since it will probably force the speaker to violent movements, shifting the cone between the limits of its excursion violently and fast... Though the physical limitations of a speaker are likely to "round the edges". If that assumption is true, then I would also imagine that a distorting valve amplifier would be less dangerous than a solid state one, since valves "round the edges" the closer they are to their maximum headroom. Thats one of the reasons we find valve distortion much more pleasant and musical than solid state distortion, valves boost even harmonics while solid state boost uneven ones. Duh, I should really try to find an english technical dictionary, LOL!