jensenmann

Flight 13 duplication in my hometown Karlsruhe, Germany: https://www.flight13-duplication.com/en/starting-point They have the last ever made Neumann VMS80 cutting lathe, the Rolls Royce of vinyl cutting and run their own pressing plant. And they are definitely into punkrock...

My last holidays without bass were 21 years ago. That was a 2 month trecking tour in Patagonia. Other than that I always find space in the trunk of the car to fit a bass inside. It would not be holidays if I had no bass around.

Some more racks, this time from my control room:

I think I can keep up with that:

I´ve never drawn a complete circuit diagram. But let me search my HDs for the schematics I have everything stolen from 😉

My FET Bassman is not what the name suggests. It consists of a FET-transistor input stage, followed by a modified API 553 inductor EQ. The three switchable frequencies for each band are adapted to my taste and work very well with my Wal fretless. It doesn´t sound like a Fender Bassman at all. My Peavey is closer to a Bassman than the FET pre. Here´s some internal p*rn:

My bass rack: Peavey Alpha tube Bass Preamp (used for fretted basses) Selfmade Preamp for my Wal fretless TC2290 Delay/Looper KMT DC5 poweramp Currently not installed due to repair is a Yamaha SPX990 multieffect which sits in the stereo effect loop of the TC2290. I´m using it for reverb with the fretless Bass.

My alltime favourite is Pete Townsend Give Blood:

You´ll buy twice. The best ist the enemy of the good.... You can use even the lousiest microphone if the situation requires exactly this sound (e.g. SM57 on guitar cabs). In other circumstances it will sound lousy, though (e.g. SM57 on violin). With improving hearing abilities and monitoring situation you´ll realize the strengths and weaknesses of your microphones, esp. if you compare them to other mics.

Just edited my above post while you were posting.... So which mics did you buy?

For recording basscabs I usually use a Beyerdynamic Opus99 for it´s fat lowend without the usual lowmid dip which most bassdrum mics do have. Occasionally it might be a AKG D12 (sounds oldschool), EV RE20 (neutral) or Neumann U89 (very detailed with exceptionally controlled lowend). If the bassound is distorted, then it´s a SM57. For acoustic bass it´s a U47fet or U89. For ambience I use Neumann CMV563, SM69fet, U87, Shure VP88, Beyerdynamic M160, depending on what I want to achieve and where the mics are placed in the room. Looking at the other thread you posted about interfaces it seems that you you´re asking for a mic to record the roomsound of your bass. In 30yrs of recording I never had the desire to do so. But maybe I should give it a try. In an acoustically untreated room the result could be disappointing due to standing waves messing with your lowend. If you have a room with a properly designed acoustic then you could get predictible and useful results. I´d use U87/89/47fet in that case. A man cannot have enough microphones. But don´t tell missus....

I have a vintage B15 for recording and couldn´t be happier with it. At some point I´m sure that I want to compare it to the new PF20/50 amps. But it´s a keeper anyway. The last amp I will sell. I´ve recorded all types of basses through it, be it Precision, Jazz, Thunderbird, Stingray, Wal fretted and fretless, ... All of them sounded great. No issues from active electronics. For live sessions I always wrap it in absorbers to have less bleed with other open mics. But it doesn´t need to be played loud for a great sound, anyway. But unfortunately there´s quite a monetary difference between PF heads and B15s.

Now that´s a car. Tasty and classic. Never seen or heard of this.

What do you mean with FF? Sorry, I´m german, not a native speaker...

You may want to contact Tim at https://www.studiosystems.co.uk

Any realworld experience with the BQ250 available?

I´m using a KMT DC5 poweramp together with a Peavey Alpha tube bass preamp as well as a selfmade preamp for my fretless. Those KMT amps (or relabeled as Red Rock) are wide spread among german bassist. They are very reliable, sound great and not too expensive. Inside there´s a linear supply, not switchmode like most modern amps. This raises it´s weight to 9kg compared to a few kg less with switchmode amps. The powersupply in poweramps makes all the difference for me. I still have to find a good sounding amp with switchmode supply. If you´re used to your oldschool Marshall with tons of headroom then be aware of the powersupply problem when you replace it.

1. Wal Mk2 5string fretted 2. Wal Mk2 5string fretless 3. Wal Mk2 4string Midibass 4. Fender Jazzbass 1962 5. Fender Jazzbass 1992 MIJ 6. Fender Precision 1974 7. Greco TB-70 Thunderbird 8. Spirit/Steinberger XT-25

Thrust is a patented circuit in API 2500 compressors. It´s basically a sidechain highpassfilter which causes the compressor to react less on LF signals than on HF. https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-what-does-api-2500-compressors-thrust-control-do Let´s wait and see if there will be a patent violation lawsuit....

If I understand you right you´re looking for a remix with bass muted? You should be able to do this in Logic X, too. But if you don´t have any Logic at all then drop me a line, I can do that for you.

In my early days many bassplayers in my area used Trace heads. Whenever I tried one I hated them. They were not made for me and that stuck in my mind longtime. >10 years later I was using a SWR SM400 which died at a gig. I went to a Musicshop to have it checked and had to rent another head for the gig this day. They only had a Trace head available, everything else was already out. I was a bit grumpy because I didn´t like the idea of doing a rock gig with a Trace amp but there was no way out, I had to. Surprisingly I got along very very well with it or lets say I never before heard myself as good on stage. When my SWR was back in business I sold it as fast as possible and bought the Trace. It´s an AH600SMX which I still play 18 years later at gigs and rehearsals - not for recording though. The SMX series is something special and different to my ears than the earlier transistor-only heads. The tube really does the trick for me. It´s always fully on.

I finally made it to see Iron Maiden last weekend in Freiburg, Germany. What really impressed me is with how much energy those guys are playing after all those decades.

Now that´s a fine collection. Congrats! How do those early Bassman amps compare to the 59 and blackface?

+1 Definitely keep at least one of your Ps. You´d regret it later on.

Wow, that´s along story. Here we go: Passive pickups can be seen as a mixed circuit which consists of resistance, inductance and capacity, hence creating a resonant peak at a certain frequency above which the frequency response is going downwards. This resonant peak is highly important for the sound of the instrument because it sits in the presence area of our hearing range. Now if you plug such a PU into an amp then the amp´s input impedance will interfere with this resonant point, usually lowering and eventually broadening the peak as well as lowering the frequency. We´re used to that and we want to hear our passive instrument like that to a certain degree. To make things worse the cable has it´s impact, too, as it sits between amp and PU. That´s why some people like cables of a certain length. Now there comes the DI with it´s own input impedance, typically 50kOhm for a passive DI and 1MOhm for an active DI. This again will interfere with the PU resonance and alter the sound. And things get more difficult if you go through the DI unbuffered into an amp because that will increase the load on the pickup and the resonance point will go lower again. Technically spoken both input impedances are parallel to the pickup giving an even lower impedance than each single one of DI and amp. For historical reason most bassamps have an input impedance of 220kOhm (many exceptions, though) while guitar amps typically have 1MOhm. To have a proper matching between output impedance of a PU and input impedance of an amp/DI the later one should be x10 of the source impedance. Pickups of passive basses have worst-case output impedances of 17kOhm, hence there should be a load of at least 170kOhm. Passive DIs cannot deliver such high impedances. They are the wrong choice. You´re better off with an active DI. Active basses have worst case output impedances of a few hundred Ohms. Here both passive and active DIs are fine regarding impedance matching. The PU resonances are already buffered by the active electronic inside the bass in a way that both DI and amp cannot have an influence on that. For the studio nerd there´s more to check out: if we have micpres with variable input impedance then this will be the next parameter to look for in a chain of passive bass, passive DI + amp. A lower input impedance setting of the micpre (e.g. certain vintage Neve preamps have this possibility) will be reflected through the transformer of the DI. That means the DI seems to have a lower input impedance than it´s nominal value (wrt 1,2-1,5kOhm input impedance of the micpre) and will load the pickup even more down, eating the treble range even more. Historically this problem has been recognized in times when there were no active basses around. The solution were active DIs, back then made with tubes. All that is theory. You will not destroy either bass, amp or DI with the technically wrong choice. It does influence sound, but if you like it then all is good. If not, then see above.