jensenmann

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.

Sometimes convenience and a fast workflow are more important than sound. Depending on the situation I grab what´s next just to make it work fast. Musicians are mostly not interested in minute details of sound, they just want to play. As an engineer I don´t want to get in their way. While I can hear and know the difference in tonality between all my DIs I can get along with each of them. There´s no bad DI amongst them. For my classes I have a few crappy DIs which I´d never use on a real session, just to show my students (with lesser trained ears) that there are relevant differences. Even more important is to know when to use active and passive DIs.

I frequently do a lot of proaudio gear shootouts with my students, the obvious DI comparison amongst many others (I teach audio engineering). My personal conclusion is that the simple and not too expensive BSS DI box is pretty good on an absolute level and unbeaten in it´s pricerange. You´d need to pay x4 the price to get a clear improvement. The above mentioned Bo Hansen DI (it´s a DIY project, not available prebuilt) is better that the BSS, but it depends a lot on the parts used for it. I made eight of them for myself in several versions and each of them cost me app. 100€. If you occasionally need to use the DI for piezo pickups (e.g. double bass PUs, classical guitar, etc.) then the Radial PZ DI is the best option. It offers a 10MOhm input impedance which 5-10x higher than all the other DIs. That makes all the difference for piezo PUs. There´s no better option available in this application. In case you want to chase the last 3% of sound quality, then there are other options. Many people rate the Avalon U5 in this league, but I don´t. On occasions it sounded great, on others it has been beaten by the BSS, Bo Hansen, or a few others in my tests, even by a cheapo passive DOD DI. But it has a few advantages which should be mentioned: It has a preset EQ (if you´re into that - I´m not, I have better options) which may be helpful if you want to track with EQ, it looks expensive since it is expensive which helps half-educated people to nod their head and say "wow, an Avalon DI" while ignoring what they are hearing, it has a line-level output (you won´t need a micpreamp to amplify the signal from mic-level at the DI output to line-level while (the sound of most DIs depend a lot on which micpreamp will amplify their signal). The king and unbeaten DI in my book is the Gyraf G9 tube microphone preamp. Unfortunately it´s stereo, so if you want only one DI then you have another one left over. But since it´s a micpre after all you can use the second channel to mic your bassamp. The micpres are some of the best ever made and cheap compared to other offerings in the same quality range. They beat my Siemens V72 preamps and many others lefthanded all day long. And that´s a statement... http://gyraf.dk/product/g9/

My Ampeg B15 has a ported cab and still is sonic heaven. Who knows if it´s because or despite the port.

At some point in the mid 90s I was fed up with my Wal and tried to sell it. Luckily nobody bought it, so it stayed with me, sitting unused in the corner. Three years and a Musicman and Precision later I rediscovered the Wal and play it as my main bass ever since. So my advice is that if you think everything feels right with your Wal then go cheating, but keep it.

I´d chose alder for the sound. There´s quite an audible difference to ash. In fact all my Jazz and Precisions are alder. Check the Fender Customshop videos at youtube:

Jaco Pastorius playing on Ian Hunter´s (Mott the Hoople) solo record:

AFAIK that´s the company who supplied Wal Basses with the Midibass system which has been released in the 80s.

If you say interface/mixer with FW then I suspect that you have a Midas Venice F. If so make sure you run your Macbook on OS 10.11, not 10.12. The latest Midas drivers only work upto 10.11. There seems to be no support for higher OS since Behringer took over Midas. If you have a different interface then ignore this commen (didn´t read all posts, sorry).

I have a ´74 Precision in mocha. It looks like derrière but sounds killer. If I find a non mocha P that sounds as good I´ll happily get rid of that insult for my eyes. But it didn´t happen upto now. It easily rivals my buddy´s 61 Precision. Chances are high that I will have to live with it for quite some more time, yuk.

If you like the SWR sound then check a Baby Blue out.

Congrats, mate. It´s one of the best sounding bassamps ever.

Not really. Working or recording in a good studio sets the bar for a beginner to know what is considered to be a good or bad sounding track/performance. Of course you can get there with a DIY approach, but this includes a lot of effort, time and fails. Using the expierience of great studio engineers lets you move on much faster. E.g. the singer of my current band was interested in audio and booked online classes here in Germany. That took him money, time and effort. When he later joined the band we went straight into my studio and started recording. That was something else for him. He later on admitted that most of the stuff he´d learned in these classes were meaningless because in the end it always comes down to judging sounds and performance. Obviously something he hadn´t been taught in his classes. I´m with BigRedX, get your hands dirty, use whatever you have and make it sound good. That will bring you further. (Though I still think that listening in a good designed room with hi-resolution monitoring will get you further a lot faster and gives your judgment a more reliable basis).

Why don´t people just go to a studio with a seriously good engineer, good mics and rooms? Everybody thinks he can DIY what others learn in decades of a professional life as recording engineer. I don´t get that. You don´t repair the brakes of your car by looking at youtube videos, do you?

If the cab has new speakers then the problem is in there. We have a pretty new Ampeg 8x10" cab in our rehearsal space from the other band using the room. It sounds like arse. Compared to my 1970 cab it has not even the slightest sonic relation with what you think of an Ampeg should sound like.

At some point I sold my Trace SMX600 + 2x Boogie 2x10" rig for money reason, but it´s back here now. Hopefully I don´t have to part with it again. Last week I bought a Peavey Alpha Tube Bass Preamp. Around 1990 it was part of my first serious bass rig, together with a Peavey CS800 poweramp. I have a different poweramp now (KMT DC5), but I still like the preamp a lot. I can clearly understand why I bought it back then. The one thing that bugs me the most amongst all the gear I sold is my ´64 Gibson Thunderbird IV in metallic green which was a custom colour. Damned, I miss that bass so much.

[url="http://www.rattles.de"]http://www.rattles.de[/url] [url="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rattles"]https://de.wikipedia...iki/The_Rattles[/url] They had a few hits in the 70s and since then changed musicians a lot. They still seem to exist. I mixed one of their shows back in the 90s. I thought their musicianship was quite ok, with a tight rythm section. One could hear their many gigs and experience

My Wal 5 string is 28 years with me. I bought it new back then. With a few exceptions it´s my main bass ever since.

[quote name='frankzelf' timestamp='1507715606' post='3387369'] too much.. [attachment=255373:_D3C8919.JPG] [/quote] Did you ever play all of them at once? Full power?

The history part of this video has quite a few wrong informations. EMT plates have a steel plate inside, not aluminium. They weight 180kg, depending on the version ( I have two of them and had to carry them several times, ouch). The first digital reverb came from EMT in 1976, four years before the AMS RMX16 (which was released in 1980, not ´82). It was called EMT250. Their next model was released in 1980 (EMT 251). It also had a nonlinear program, more or less at the same time as the AMS.

I used to play a SM400 which has been replaced by a SM400S for some years in the 90s. On top of that I had a baby blue head as practicing amp at home and for small gigs. I never like the SWR cabs, though.

I never cared much for TE amps until the series 6 SMX heads appeared. They were a game changer for me. I still play the SMX600 head I bought in 2000, though I´d never use it for recording. But for giging they are the weapon.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1488023396' post='3245095'] No, IMO, I think it's more like, " they don't make them like they use to." Blue [/quote] Same experience here. Nothing comes close to the old 70s versions, be it amp or cab. We have a new SVT 8x10 in our rehearsal room which I tried once. I felt very sorry for the poor bloke who bought that pile of crap. It´s nothing like the 70s 8x10.

SSDs all day long, better use two (1x system, 1x audio) like mentioned above. Don´t look back...

http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/8pre