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Osiris

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Posts posted by Osiris

  1. Compression is very much a misunderstood concept, you really need to understand compression to get the most from it and to apply it correctly. That cannot be overstated.

     

    When done properly it's often invisible, in so far as it's not obvious, although it can be.  The subject has been covered many times on BC already so it's worth doing a search if you want to know more, although there is some ongoing misconceptions that keep cropping up. Better still, take a look at sound engineering sites online as you'll get a more objective overview. 

     

    I've never heard of compression reducing overtones before, I'm not sure that's true. Compression is for controlling the overall waveform as well as signal spikes on the signal, including but not always the transients. 

     

    As for the guy on YouTube with his acoustic guitar, it sounds like he didn't know what he was doing 🤷‍♂️

    • Like 11
  2. 4 hours ago, Merton said:

    @mortware - what are your EQ settings?

     

    That's what I was wondering too. Are you going for that scooped mid range sound, i.e. lots of lows and highs but with not a lot going on in between? If you are then I suspect that's where the problem lies. While a scooped sound can sound great when it's just the bass playing it's often the last thing you actually need to get the bass to be heard in a band context. Most of the audible frequencies of the bass are in the mids, so that's where you need to shape your sound. IME the sounds that work best with the band are not usually very exciting on their own but you need to be able to sit in the mix with the other instruments for the bass to work as part of the whole. And from memory - so I'm happy to be corrected - the bass control on the Tone Hammer is centred at 40Hz which is a very low frequency, and if you're boosting the bass control lots all you are doing is putting a big strain on the speakers, especially a single 2x10, and not really getting anything audible, or of much use, out of the speakers.  

    • Like 3
  3. 1 hour ago, Tmg said:

    This is the first time I've sold anything on Bass Chat, but you can check my previous feedback out on Ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/fdbk/feedback_profile/tonysotb

     

    Cheers

     

    Tony 

     

    I've known Tony for many years and can vouch for him as being true to his word.

     

    I've got tons of feedback on here to show that you can take my word for it 😃

    • Like 2
  4. It's obvious difficult, if not impossible, to know what's going on without actually hearing your setup. But a couple of hints in the above post reinforce my suspicion that the BDI is the problem i.e. backing off the bass off and running the treble flat out as well as getting a more usable sound from a different amp. 

     

    There are other ways of getting a top end bite to your tone without a massive mid scoop (which again is what I suspect the problem is). But if you really want to use that sound then you might just have to learn to live with it. 

     

    You can use multi band compression as a sort of EQ, I have done this in the past with the TC Hypergravity. But this is where you need to understand the ins and outs of compression to set it up so it works for you. If you were to go down that road you could compress and boost your highs while using separate bands for the lows and mids. What it would sound like on the other hand...

     

    Again I'm second guessing here so could be way off the mark but it might be better to set up a bass sound, regardless of compression, that works with the other instruments you play with, rather than having "your sound". It might not sound great on its own but it'll fit in and make the whole band sound right. And yes, I speak from experience here 😃

  5. On 18/08/2022 at 06:01, matybigfro said:

    After an age of never really getting with a compressor I've been really enjoying my Seymour Duncan Double Back Compressor especially as I'm switching between fingers, pick and slap in the set with my current band. I really like how the clean blend function in the Duncan allows some of the natural responsiveness and feel to stay in my sound but increases my sustain and also how it helps keep the volume level close when kicking in fuzz and dirt pedals. 

     

    There are a few areas that I've been finding it lacking that have me looking at other options (namely at the moment the TC Spectracomp)

     

     

    I've always struggled with the classic OC-2 -1 octave only setting not sounding loud enough, I've even done the part mod clipping one of the legs of the dry pot for a increase which made a slight difference but I feel like with the compressor on after the oc-2 the volume drop is more pronounced, I'm assuming because the compressor see's the gain breeching the threshold when the oc-2 is on. 

     

    The other issue is balancing the level across strings, I currently have the eq on my BDI21 pre amp set with the treble maxed and bass cut slightly to achieve the texted/tone that I'm after however I find this makes my D and G strings sound louder than the E and A especially when playing around the 10th fret and upwards. I was wondering if a multi-band compressor after he pre-amp, would perhaps address this level difference across the strings whilst leaving the overall tone/texture that I'm going from across the strings more in tact

     

     

    Is it a compressor that you're looking for? The short answer is possibly. 

     

    The long answer is more complex. Skipping over the OC-2 issue for the most part, it sounds like the make up gain from your SD compressor is helping to compensate for the volume drop there. I don't have an OC-2 and haven't used on for 25 odd years so can't really help any further with that. 

     

    But my stock answer regarding compressors and their use is, if you don't know much already, do your homework. I cannot emphasise that enough, there's a lot of misunderstanding and misconceptions about them as well as some outright nonsense written about them - even on Basschat unfortunately. But to get the best out of a compressor you need to understand what they do and how to best apply compression. And that takes time as compression is (mostly) subtle. The impression I get is that a lot of people treat a compression pedal as an effect because it's a stomp box, right? But they make much more sense when thought of in terms of shaping your sound, so more in line with using tools like EQ , high pass filtering rather than an effect that will dazzle or impress anyone like a filter or synth pedal. Someone far more clued up than me on compression said that you need to think like a sound engineer rather than a bass player to use them properly, and that perfectly sums it up!

     

    Having got that out of the way...

     

    What do you feel is lacking from the SD? That might help identify potential replacements. If you're just looking for a volume leveler you might be better off with a limiter, for example. The Spectracamp is a great little pedal and infinitely configurable, off the top of my head there's something like 48 individual parameters to tweak. And if you have the understanding they are incredibly powerful. There's also the new Source Audio Atlas that is making me all moist around the nether regions, if nobody else! 

     

    But being brutally honest, I suspect the inconsistency between your strings is down to the BDI21. Like the Sansamp Bass Driver it rips off it has a baked in huge void in the mid range which sounds sexy when the bass is played in isolation but is pretty much the last thing you actually need to get the bass to sit in the mix. The audible frequency range of the bass guitar is predominantly in the mid range frequencies and scooping them, especially as extremely as the BDI21 does, is in essence turning much - but not all - of the instrument down. As well as the absent mid range I also find the inherent sound of the pedal is too overly compressed anyway, certainly for my taste, so adding even more compression on top is unlikely to help. My suggestion would be to switch the DBI off and kill it with fire to see how things sound. If you still want that edge to your sound try something like the TC Electronic Spark Booster, the 4 knob version not the mini one. That way you can add some grit to the sound without completely f@cking it up making the sound difficult to work with. All IMO, of course 😃

    • Like 5
  6. 52 minutes ago, lee650 said:

    My first ever bass was a short scale Arbiter SG type, I didn't keep it long 🤣 recent problems with Carpal Tunnel, has forced me to look into one, to continue playing. I tried a couple in my local music shop (Fender Player Mustang and Sterling stingray) and was very impressed by the sound quality (although I had issues with the Sterlings build quality for a bass costing in the region of £800)

     

    After lots of research online,I decided to take a gamble on the sire U5! What a great sounding and well built little bass!  I restrung it through the body with normal scale Dunlop superbrights and it sounds huge. It has the deep bass that  shortscales are known for, but the maple board and 70s position back pickup give it a lot of bite. Its definitely redefined my thoughts in short scales, however I personally struggle playing past the 12th fret with an octave pedal, the frets are so dinky🤣 so long term, when I eventually get my operation and hopefully recover, I'm not sure I'll continue using it. Mind you both my daughters have fallen in love with it and now want to play, so they'll have a much better first bass, then I did 😁

    20220824_152242.jpg

    20220824_152222.jpg

     

    Ooh, I keep looking at those Sire shorties and this is the only colour I like them in, bagsie first dibs if you (and if the girls let you of course!) ever decide to move it on 😁😎

  7. FWIW I use 34" scale strings on all 3 of my short scales and have never had any issues stringing them that way over the past few years. That's both on my string through body Mustang as well as through bridge stringed basses. Yes, you in variably have an extra winding or 2 around the post on the machine head of the E sting but I've never had any intonation issues or had a string snap when I've taken them off to clean the fretboard. There's no other reason for doing this than I've got a stockpile of D'Addario 34" strings from when they were on offer a few years back! No doubt someone will be along shortly to tell us why loads of fluffy kittens and polar bears will die because of me doing this but it works for me and has done for several years B|

    • Like 4
    • Haha 1
  8. 44 minutes ago, OliverBlackman said:

    One thing to note, Mark is taking a battering on his personality here in this thread. I dont know him and have never met him, but part of me hopes that he doesn’t read it, because for some people taking this level of criticism can lead to mental health illness. 

     

    Having had a number of dealings with Mark over the years, in person, over the phone and by email, I can't see him being too concerned about anything that has been said in this thread, he's very forthright and also has a very strong I know best attitude. That's just my opinion of him and I'm happy to be corrected on it. If you agree with him then all is well, if not...

     

    Nobody can deny that he's done really well for himself and that BD is possibly the most successful bass specialist shop in the UK right now. But it's clear from this thread that he has lost several sales over the years because of his attitude. Pre-covid this may not have been too much of a worry for him and he could perhaps have easily swallow those 'loses' for want of a better word.

     

    However, with everything going on in the world right now (and without getting sidetracked into what and why etc) and with the cost of pretty much everything going up peoples disposable incomes are going down proportionally. At a guess a significant percentage of his customers are hobbyist players (rather than pros who earn a fortune from music) and it's the hobbyists that are perhaps being, or more likely to the ones who have to prioritise where their disposable income is going. While he may currently be king of the hill there are other options out there, which from what I understand are offering a consistent, higher level of customer service. There are several people on this thread who have already said that they will no longer buy from BD, myself included. 

     

    With all this in mind, I do wonder how sustainable his business model is and how it's likely to fare over the next few years.  

    But I can't realistically see anything changing any time soon. 

    • Like 3
  9. There's nothing up, it's how they operate, unfortunately. To put it politely their customer service is variable from excellent to downright obnoxious. 

     

    My first visit there more than 10 years ago the owner said something offensive, I can't remember what now, to the guy I was with who was looking to spend 2 grand on a new bass. My mate walked out saying something along the lines of "I'm not giving that arrogant c**t a penny of my money" without buying anything even though something had caught his eye. But even so I bought a few things from them over the next few years including 2 or 3 basses, an amp plus smaller odds and sods without any issues. But around 5 years ago I had an issue with a commission sale through them that they made no effort to remedy nor offer an apology, their attitude was one of total apathy, an attitude that I have repaid in kind by not using them since. 

    • Like 1
    • Sad 2
  10. 7 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

    One of the stock sounds is a great normal drive sound. A bit tubey in character, but without the woofy-ness that some valve amps get in the lows.

    I was really surprised by it - I bought it for the silly sounds, but it is now my main drive pedal too.

     

    That's what I was hoping to here. There's not too many videos on YouTube showing the pedal off, and those that do tend to focus on some of the more off the wall sounds the pedal can produce, which are pretty cool but not really of a lot of practical use for me. But if it can do a capable valve-like drive then along with the other options on tap it becomes a very attractive option 🤔

  11. How are you guys that are using these finding it for basic, non-sci-fi type drive sounds? 

     

    I'm not really an effects guy as such but this has caught my eye - although mainly for the utilitarian stuff like the flexible compressor, various EQ options as well as high and low pass filtering, and I could probably make use of a couple of the more synthy type sounds for some of the 80's synth pop numbers my band plays (I appreciate that it's not a synth pedal as such, and I have no real interest in those) But I was wondering how well it can cop 'normal' drive tones, more your low gain touch of drive thing rather than balls out distortion? 

     

    There's a big thread on talkbass about the pedal and as usual, there's a host of conflicting opinions as to how well the Ultrawave can deliver more traditional drive sounds. If it can pull them off - and from what I can make out it's more down to how well the user crafts them rather than starting with a usable~ish drive tone and fine tuning it to taste - then it covers a lot of ground in one pedal, and that's what appeals. 

  12. 4 minutes ago, meterman said:

    I’m probably behind the curve on this one, but why are the basses named after Lionel Ritchie?

     

    And if they are, why isn’t the retail price £15?

     

    (Cockney rhyming slang - a Lionel is £15. Lionel Ritchie was in The Commodores, they had a hit with “Three Times A Lady”, a ‘Lady’ refers to Lady Godiva - a fiver, £5.00 - so a Lionel is 3x a ‘Lady’)

     

    Yes, I may have been at the French equivalent of Special Brew, but still. I’ve wondered about this for a while now. I apologize in advance...

     

    Mine's named after Lionel Blair. 

     

    Hope this helps 👍

    • Haha 1
  13. 8 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

    There's a Lionel on ebay at the moment at a good starting price.

     

    I don't know the seller.

     

    If I hadn't already ordered a new one (8 months to go!) I'd be all over this.

     

     

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175380368113?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11021.m43.l3160&mkcid=7&ch=osgood&euid=ccdce764b5e443c19f2f458ac74c8cc2&bu=43119054589&ut=RU&exe=0&ext=0&osub=-1~1&crd=20220811070706&segname=11021

     

     

    It's a shame that it's in turdburst otherwise I might have been tempted to buy it for the all maple neck to swap out with my all black Lionel and had this as a(nother) backup, but I couldn't live with that finish. 

  14. 6 hours ago, ViVino said:

    The Boss LMB3 is just such a tone suck it's ridiculous. It sounds like it also has a low pass filter built in! I'm assuming the MXR is nothing like this. From looking around I really can't justify double the money for the Cali. The MXR will definitely do what I need it to do and I like the idea of visible metering.  

     

    Some interesting comments on the Boss LMB-3 there 😀 For balance, I have had 3 different ones over the years* and none of them have had any tone suck. My old Boss TU-2 started to suck tone but it was some 20 years old so I assume a component was on the way out, a similar thing could be happening with your LMB-3, perhaps?

     

    *I've been gigging them on and off for 20 odd years but I keep selling them on thinking that oh it's only a Boss, I'll get something 'better' i.e. more expensive, but I eventually end up back with another LMB!

     

    For the record, I have been through quite a few different compressors, from a couple of rack units to numerous pedal comps both analogue and digital, and have done the whole multi-band and parallel compression thing too. But there's just something about the Boss that works for me - although it may not work for everyone. It's the punchiest compressor that I have ever used, it's not totally transparent but not overly coloured either but it's that punch that it delivers that I have never been able to replicate with any other compressor. They're cheap as chips, simple to use and, IME, sound great in the context of a live mix. And certainly no noticeable tone suck from any of the units that I have owned! 

     

    As a few others have already said, the Cali is the holy grail of comp pedals and is arguably in a different league to the LMB, but that doesn't immediately make the Boss, the MXR or any other comp not worth bothering with. Having used a Cali, it really is a fantastic pedal but is very coloured, something you may or may not want from a compressor. The only reason I didn't end up with one is that I didn't like the colour of the Cali when combined with my pre-amp pedal, and having been through a shed load of pre-amps over the years the one I have now is the absolutely perfect so I'm loathed to go though the perfect pre-amp pedal merry go round to compliment the Cali! But on its own, the tonal magic of the Cali is part of its appeal. But the Cali is also a more complex pedal and you really need to understand the principles of compression to get the best out of it. 

    • Like 2
  15. I'd like to give a big shout out to Sandberg for their awesome customer service. Earlier in the year I bought a B stock Lionel in none more black finish from Thomann and it wasn't until I'd had it a while that I noticed that it was missing the 4 dots in a square logo on the front of the body, kinda their trademark I guess. It didn't really worry me and I assumed that it was maybe because the bass was a B stock. Anyway, curiosity eventually got the better of me so I emailed them and asked if they were missing because of the bass being a B stock and if it was possible to buy a set of dots to retrofit myself. A day or so later I get an apology from one of the Sandberg guys and the promise that he'd send me some free of charge! I emailed back to say that would be great but as I'm in the UK I'd be more than happy to cover costs as it's hardly economical shipping something so small from Germany, but they wouldn't have it! The postman has just delivered an envelope containing 2 sets of silver dots. I appreciate that in the grand scheme of things this is trivial, but how's that for customer service? 

    • Like 3
  16. 5 hours ago, ots said:

    Having sold my baby stingray, and my Electra VS I'm sat here waiting for my Sandberg California II VS4 Lionel to be delivered by ParcelForce

     

    Here are a couple of pictures from the ad.

     

     

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    hitzbhfglnqiekrtly61.webp

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    v54qqdwm8fkef7faryfn.webp

     

    That's a beauty. I was originally after a maple fretboard but I managed to pick mine up for a steal so couldn't refuse, it's all black with a black scratch plate and matching headstock. But @Stub Mandrel will be relieved to hear that mine came sans the 4 dot stickers on the body, although Sandberg have promised to send me some so I'll have to post some before and after shots! 

    • Haha 2
  17. 3 hours ago, hamfist said:

    OK, I do appreciate this is a pretty nich topic, and I am a bit of a compression nerd, but in all my experience with compressors I have discovered that what I am personally looking for ultimately in a bass comp is one that lets my natural attack come through pretty much unaltered and then balances and adds some extra sustain to the decay of the sound. I find in the context of a band mix it makes me sound the same but just "better" and better integrated with the rest of the instruments.  For the purposes of completeness I will add that 98% of my playing is fingerstyle and the other 2% is with a pick. I never slap.

     

    So ..... the essence of this thread is that I have found that I want an attack time of at least 70ms minimum (and for me, I am looking for this on lower frequencies, leaving the top end mostly untouched). I find anything less than 70ms just artificially affects my note attack. However, when I look at the attack times of some very successful and well-loved pedals such as the Empress (up to 50ms), Seymour Duncan (up to 27ms), MXR M87 (only 0.8ms !!!!)  etc. they simply don't offer those attack times.

     

    A lot of comps seem to have fixed attack times or have adjustable attack times but do not quote the actual times (very frustrating).

     

    I can't find definitive info on the Darkglass SS, Boss BC-1X, OE Cali 76, Markbass Compressore, Keeley Bassist etc.

     

    Am I just weird or are there others like me ?    I think possibly a lot of bassists are just looking for limiting and not really "musical compression" as such, hence their appreciation of such quick attack times, which is what one is looking for in a limiter.

     

    Really, the longer I play around with this stuff, the more I realise how different the effects we are looking for from our compression.

     

    Have you tried either the TC Electronic Hyper Gravity or Spectracomp pedals? The free editing software for each pedal (as far as I'm aware, they're pretty much identical in terms of the firmware they use) has something like 48 individually editable parameters so there's a huge amount of customisation available, but whether you can configure the slow attack times you want...

     

    But I'd suggest taking a look if only to rule them out. 

    • Like 1
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