Al Krow

I do 😜

Here you go

£11.50 from Amazon

4 hours ago, krispn said:

@Al Krow @CameronJ

Do you guys know where the BB734/5 has it’s eq points? I was asking earlier in the thread but not sure if it got lost? You guys seem to know yer Yamaha’s!

Short answer 'no'.

Seems to be the sort of information that Yammy (and pretty much all bass makers?) keep close to their chest!

And the boys that really know their Yammys e.g.@hookys6stringbass, @hypercarrots and @pete.young I don't believe have ventured into the x34/5 series.

At least with the Ibanez 3 band EQ you get to select the mids centre point - a welcome feature not available on the 734/5 as you know. 

Well done Mr C! Looking good! 

You'll be making basses from scratch soon, at this rate! 

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

IMO "dead air time" is far worse in an originals band where a lot of the songs might be unfamiliar to the audience and the band need to keep them engaged all the way through the performance without having a set list full of guaranteed crowd pleasers to fall back on. If I had my way, pauses between songs would be the minimum required for some applause, and a brief announcement of what the next song is called.

And with programmable multi-effects I have all the sounds in need for the next song at the push of a footswitch. There is no need to be fiddling about with the controls on my bass.

You have applause time between songs? Luxury! 😂

These, for me, are still the best two posts on compressors on any thread I've read in several years on this forum and IMO worth digging up and sharing once every while!

(1) COMPRESSORS AND PUB BANDS

What are transparent compressors good for in a pub band?

Not about to try and teach anyone to suck eggs, if you know this stuff, sorry for the post, if you are not really interested please skip it, if you want to know why a compressor might help you in a live situation when it apparently 'does nothing' or 'kills my dynamics' then feel free to have  a read. It's like a very cut down compressor 101 chat I gave once, which some of you are still scarred by.....

Originally compression was supposed to be a transparent tool to prevent an engineer from having to ride a fader throughout a take or a mix. All it was supposed to do was keep that level more even - as often as not by just slightly modifying the envelope of the input sound, hence the attack and release control. And with VCA compressors they pretty much achieved it. But before VCA compressors there were Vari-mu compressors (real tube compressors), Optical compressors and FET compressors.

All these types have pluses and minuses, they all have different attack and release curves all of which do more than just transparently alter volume and help out an engineer.

On top of these types of compressor there is tape compression and and amp/driver compression - no driver is completely compression free when you push it hard, no amp is compression free when you push it hard, all overdrives and distortions and fuzzes are also compressors, just totally not transparent ones. The best ever compressor you will ever experience is the pair you have strapped on to the side of your head all day. Yes your ears/brain are simply the most powerful compressor you can buy. The quietest sound you can hear is equivalent to your ear drum moving the width or a single molecule apparently, whilst the loudest sound you can hear before deafening yourself pretty much instantly is hundreds of thousands of times louder (you need to look into the way sound pressure level measured in micro pascals and decibels work as units of measurement).

That amazing set of compressors on the side of your head has an unfortunate side effect, without a direct reference you are almost totally volume blind, small changes in volume are beyond you to describe, you can not reliably perceive them. Unless they are compared to a level that has not changed and is not changing. Obviously bigger differences are easy to perceive but the differences that can make or break a mix, if you aren't listening to the the mix happening at the time, nope, not  a hope.

So a deliberately transparent compressor you can't hear working on your signal in isolation, until you are doing way to much with it, and that's about when you feel your dynamics disappearing, because you are doing huge amount of compression in order to hear anything much at all. In a mix way less compression would be 'enough' to change the envelope of your signal to make your instrument be easier to hear, but you aren't in a mix so in order to hear anything at all you put way too much compression on.

Thing is, a studio engineer has the time and choice to select the right type of compressor for the particular part of a track he/she wants it for and then set it up just so.

What it does to an instrument in a  mix then is help prevent 'masking', this is where the envelope of the signal drops in such a way, either because of the player's technique or their instrument or their preferred tonal choices that some other instrument makes it hard to hear when it plays at the same time. Near the end of a mix when two instruments are masking each other I have found that a change of as little as 0.1dB can sometimes make a real difference to the way a pair of instruments sound in a mix.

Back to live then.

• If you are trying to use a compressor to help you be heard in a mix you need very very little for it to make a difference.
• If you are using compression for a definite effect then you may need bucket loads.
• If you like your tone as it is but feel you sometimes 'disappear' in the mix and are constantly turning up, then a transparent compressor, set just right, could be the answer to the fight.

But you need good critical listening skills, you need to do this 'in the mix' unless you have great metering on the pedal to help you out otherwise you probably will put too much compression on the sound in order to hear it happening.

Compression is difficult to master when you are in the safe space of a mix down with no distractions and lots of time to experiment. In order to make it 'easier' to use many pedals have no 'confusing' metering and not all the required parameters to really control the compression. This is a double edged sword, no metering and 'doing it by ear' are nigh on impossible with a transparent compressor unless you are setting it up in situ in the mix. On the other hand a full featured compressor is waaay to complex for an average bassist to get the best out of, and also remember that little detail about setting it right for a particular song? Well you can't with an always on compressor, so you have to set it to help you a little bit all the time, and that's another skill.

Ultra low ratio (1.5 to 1 even), very low threshold, slow-ish attack (50 to 80 ms) and fast release (less than 30ms) giving not more than 3dB total compression on the loudest parts is probably a good target for a general touch of compression type of setting on bass live IME. No you can't really hear or feel it if you are just playing solo (don't be concerned if when playing normally the 3dB light doesn't light up at all, you are still getting some compression if your threshold is set right). In the mix you will be easier to hear, whether you are a loud or quiet band. Not because of tonnes of compression but because your individual note envelopes are changed just a smidge so that the post transient part of the note envelope is a touch louder than before.

(2) COMPRESSION SETTINGS: AN INTRODUCTION

Right, compressor talk 102 in short then (if you know this stuff, skip it etc etc etc):-

OK so there are 5 not 4 parameters, and they are as follows:-

THRESHOLD LEVEL (level above which the compressor starts compressing)

ATTACK TIME (time taken to reach n% of your total compression ratio, this is complicated by the fact that different circuits do this with different curves and get closer to 100% of the ratio by this time)

RELEASE TIME (time to turn the ratio back down to 1:1 after the signal drops below the threshold)

RATIO (slope) (amount that the compressor prevents the sound getting as loud as it would otherwise, i.e. 4:1 means the output is 1/4 of what it would have been)

MAKE UP GAIN (level) (amount of gain to apply to the signal after compression, its always on though, not only when the threshold is exceeded)

If you are looking to add a little 'something' extra to your bass tone, but don't have hella ears/metering/experience then I suggest this process:-

Initial set up (this is actually all about setting the threshold level very accurately):-

Set the attack to about 20ms, the release to 200ms the ratio to max (at least 10:1), make up gain leave at unity (0)dB

Then playing at a quietish level on the A string lower the threshold slowly until either you first meter light (3dB) lights up or you hear it start to squeeze the volume.

OK, this is entirely unusable right now, except from now on pretty much every note you play normally will start to compress (oh my God, think of the poor dynamics!!!)

Second stage to set up:-

• So, we now set the ratio way back down to as low as it goes (1.5 to 1, or 2:1 are good)
• Set the attack back to about 50ms
• Set the release to about 45ms

Play normal stuff. Turn the compressor off, and on, try and equalise the volume with the make up gain so that the volume is consistent whether the compressor is off or on.

Now if you need a bit more 'bite' to your tone open up the attack a little, if the initial transient peak is too loud, or you want to hear the compression happen when you dig in then speed up the attack (faster than 25ms will getting very frustrating dynamics freaks!)

If you feel your playing is choked by this lower the ratio, if you feel its not doing enough in the mix try raising the ratio very slightly (2.5:1 would be an absolute maximum)

If you play streams of notes one after another legato and the attack of the first note is loud compared to the following notes' transients shorten the release even more (10ms is fine), I play a lot of 16th note lines, my release time is very very short 

Don't worry if you only see the 3dB light when you slam the strings as hard as you can, you know you are always compressing, just slightly, and just the meat of the note, after the initial transient peak.

There you go you've effectively emulated a tube channel that is creeping in to saturation, on the meat of the note but left your transients untouched, and you aren't distorting.

Hope this helps someone.

[Source: @51m0n Dec 2017]

Sounds like you've pretty much ended up where I did, with your tone-quest.

My solution was to trade in my Berg with its Delanos (it was actually a rather lovely TM4) and get an Ibby SR Premium with big Nord single pups and on-board 3 band EQ to deliver that typical Warwick punch / edge - and as a former Warwick German $$ 5er owner I know exactly what you're referring to!  

I suspect it's the pups rather than the EQ that you need to swap out if you want that Warwick growl. I'll need to defer to other Berg owners if they can recommend pups that can be swapped in, ideally without needing to gouge out your bass, and which can deliver the tone you're after. 

4 hours ago, fretmeister said:

I need to save up.

400 beer tokens is a lot, but I think I need it. 

What price fun? 😀

1 hour ago, 51m0n said:

Reason this is a great pedal comp to learn with? Look at that lovely Gain Reduction meter. Oh my, what a beauty! That and a ratio variable from 0 to infinite. With a similar threshold range. Christ  you can even play with the knee and the attack release curves!

Just to clarify which model are you referring to? The mini pro

or the Stella?

2 hours ago, Cuzzie said:

Yep

1 swallow makes a summer.....

Depends on what your favourite cider is I guess. May take a few gulps to fully feel that summer has arrived. 

😂

'Jon, in your considered view, do we need to give much thought to the woods you would use from a tone perspective, or is this much more about the look, feel and weight of the bass?' 

There, easy question to ask him. 

Have you still got your Shuker? If so, pic please! 

15 minutes ago, Opticaleye said:

I was hoping that it would be with me today but nothing yet 😐

I'm not expecting that this would immediately appeal to someone new to compression given the number of options to twiddle with.

But if you're already at one knob (with the TC Spectracomp aka 'spawn of the devil' according to @51m0n), then this would seem as good as any as a next step on. Why bother spending more money on something less good? 

8 hours ago, 51m0n said:

The bigger version really floats my boat though, because I like having proper control of attack and release (honestly once you 'get' compression you start to realise that the real power is in the attack/release curves).

It actually seems better configured than the Cali 76 CB, would you agree? Which is regarded by many (correctly or not I don't know) as the gold standard for pedal compressors. And this also costs less than the Cali, although still a punchy nearly £200 for the Stella. 

Looking forward to getting @Opticaleye's feedback on this and if it's half as good as we are all hoping, I could see this as being a really good way of getting to grips with compression. 

I actually rate Mark from Talking Bass as one of the best YouTube bass tutors out there and if he's endorsing this pedal, then that's also a pretty big recommendation in my books. 

2 hours ago, 51m0n said:

derrière!
There I was happy to have determined that I need to be getting an ovnifx smoothie to replace my rack comp moving forward.

Now the bigger one of these really does look rather like my personal wet dream of a compressor (if only it was optical, that would be it, kidney selling time)....

Although I might not regard you as a leading light on D class amp choice 😂 when it comes to comps, that's another matter entirely.

Very unhelpful (on my wallet) to see you getting so excited about this piece of kit!

1 hour ago, Muzz said:

The only thing I'll say about the cork-sniffing of a zillion types of wood is that luthiers make a premium product and it's hardly in their interest to say "We made this out of the most easily sourced and most easily worked wood we could find, tonally the wood isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.". Exotic woods look exotic and expensive, and we buy basses by sight as much as anything (more in my case).

Active EQs need to be learnt, and once you've learnt what they do, then they can be set and forget, until you need adjustment. I had an ACG filter EQ once, and didn't like it because I never took the time to learn it. My fault entirely. Same with amps - some people like extensive EQs (GB Shuttle 12, anyone?), others are happy with a two-knob Bass and Treble. I like mids; mids are my friend, and the East U-Retro with sweepable mids even more so.

Find myself in total agreement with everything you've just said! 

That East U-Retro definitely looks like a really good piece of kit, in particular the sweepable mids. Thanks for the tip-off on that one. 

I've had some really interesting conversations with Jon Shuker, who knows a thing or two about making basses. We've talked about a lot of stuff, including on board EQs and pups.

The subject of woods has so far come up precisely... nil.  Maybe I should raise with him? He certainly hasn't felt it important enough to bring up as an issue on his part. 

2 hours ago, Paul S said:

I play as if I have wooden fingers.

So it seems we are all agreed this would be very important as it combines both wood and fingers in one action. 

😂

19 minutes ago, HazBeen said:

If that were the case you would not see luthiers combine woods to achieve certain tonal charactaristics. Take the same pup, pre and strings but with different wood/combinations and you get different tones.

A pickup and pre basically just “translate” the vibration of string/wood, maybe adding some flavour. The pup and pre therefore are the dessert, with the main being the wood with a side of string.

Nice hypothesis. I'm a long way from being convinced.

1. Choose a Fender P bass in different woods and tell me they sound considerably different to one another in a blind test?

2. Replace the P pup with a J on the same bass and tell me you can't hear a significant difference in a blind test?

3. Then swap the strings from round to flats (conclusion = 2) 

4. And finally swap from passive EQ with the tone dialled off to active with mids boosted and treble set back to neutral (conclusion again = 2)

38 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Ironically, for someone that only plays active preamps, I virtually never adjust the levels, so I am not that fussy on what preamp I have, they all basically work reasonably well, and there is hardly anything in them. Even the really fancy ones only have a few quid of components in them.

Well you happen to play a lot of Ibanez SRs and they have a pretty darned good active 3 band EQ with adjustable mid centre points. So good, in fact, that I'm almost never tempted to play in passive mode on my Ibbys either.

28 minutes ago, HazBeen said:

That would be a rather long (and time consuming) affair, so I will just give some basic thoughts for consideration.

A swamp ash body has a naturally scooped character. Sticking in an East J Retro (not the flat response one) into a Swamp Ash body will not work for most (unless an extremely scooped tone is your thing).

Mahogany has quite a pronounced mid heavy character so you would generally choose pickups and a pre that aren’t too mid heavy.

Alder has strong low mids, but still breathes (upper mids) so a 2 band EQ would probably work well enough.

The pickups either soften or strengthen the tonal qualities of the wood (depends on what you are trying to achieve) and the preamp completes the circle so to speak. As a result an OBP3 sounds excellent in one, horrible in another instrument. 

And whilst not wanting to go down a tone-wood rabbit hole, that's actually a really interesting and neat summary - you give a lot more weight (excuse my mixed metaphors) to the woods than I would (wood?) have done.

I've always been a believer that type of wood has only a marginal impact on bass tone and its effect is swamped by:

1) pups

2) strings

3) EQ 

(very possibly in that order)

If we said that the above 3 account for 90% of bass tone, that would leave just 10% for the impact of the choice of wood.

(And while I'm on the subject please everyone steer very well clear of the 'Carlonea' wood that Warwick use in their cheaper mass-produced-in-China Rockbasses. It's just a fancy name for 'pine'!)

25 minutes ago, HazBeen said:

I find that pickups and wood have a big impact on what preamp works well and even certain pickup/pre combinations work better than others. @Al Krow do you have a certain bass in mind you want to upgrade? Might help zoom in.

The opposite in fact i.e. have the potential to mix and match. I appreciate that's not helpful!

Please do share your thoughts on what combinations, based on your experience, have worked well.

This thread is definitely not just about / for me and I'm sure that a lot of folk will be keen to learn from the wisdom of others on this topic.

Here's my general rule of thumb:

Tuner --> HPF --> Compressor  --> Octave --> Synths --> Distortion --> Filter (for funk) --> Modulation --> Delay / Reverb --> Preamp(s)

Just now, AndyTravis said:

Er...(facetious post)

OMG Andy, I hope that's not permanent ink you were using there?

(facetious follow up).

16 minutes ago, krispn said:

One good tone will see you through most gigs with a bit of judicious hand placement for good measure. 

I'd completely agree we don't want to be p*ssing about twiddling our knobs throughout a gig!

But I'd go just one further and say having the choice of two good tones + hand placement would get me through most gigs and being able to move quickly and easily between them is a bonus.

Anything more in terms of tonal variation i.e. dirt / filter / octave / modulation / synth and you're into pedal territory.