Baloney Balderdash
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Everything posted by Baloney Balderdash
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Homo Rainbow (by Ween)
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That's still largely how I approach dialing in tones and producing/mixing/mastering tracks, even if I over the years have developed a much better idea of how exactly different effects work and what exactly the different parameters/controls on them do, which helps a lot with shortening the adding/subtracting effects and dialing in parameters, trial and error, adapting and adjusting while listening, procedure considerably. The only right way to do it as far as I am concerned, what works works, regardless of what in theory works or whatever you might otherwise think works or not. There are no rules in music, only guidelines which works best if you don't follow them fanatically and blindly (deafly?). Experiment and always trust and follow your ears whenever you are dealing with music.
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Largely depends on how you have it dialed in. I need to be able to go from very quiet when picking softly to full on punchy and snappy when digging in, and everything in between, and too much compression makes that impossible, as you mentioned making everything more or less having the same volume, regardless of your picking intensity, or at least decreasing the dynamic range considerably. Compression can be used with the purpose you mention in mind, to equal out the signal volume wise, but in my case, using a quite subtle compression, it really has a fairly minimal influence on the dynamic range of my signal, and rather just smooth out the frequency balance of my bass signal slightly, as well as it emphasis the attack a bit, making my bass sound a bit tighter and a bit more focused and articulate, which becomes particularly apparent when using my high gain, quite fuzzy and heavy, distortion setup. I guess it is a fairly subtle effect, but for me even relatively small differences in my tone can be quite essential, which I guess might stem from me having produced, mixed and mastered my own music for years, developing my focus on and sense for the more subtle tonal details.
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I recently bought a TC Electronic SpetraComp, and, while I can see how it could be a really great compressor in certain contexts, after fiddling with the Toneprint editor quite a bit I went back to using the 160 Comp model of the DBX 160A compressor in my Zoom G1Xon, concluding that for my use it gave me just about the absolute perfect compression, mind on a fairly subtle compression setting (Threshold: -7 / Ratio: 2.5 / Gain: 7 / Knee: Hard / Level: 50 (which happens to be unity)). I got mine placed towards the end of my signal chain too, before my reverb effects, which I am also using the Zoom G1Xon for, but before my EHX Black Finger, tube driven optical compressor, which is set to a really subtle compression with a quite high threshold and fairly slow attack time, really functioning more as my tube preamp stage than as an actual compressor, then followed by my EQ stage, which is taken care of by my Zoom MS-70 CDR, using 6 of the 2 band fully parametric bass equalizer models, 2 of them (as in 4 bands) used to shape a LPF that starts to cut off from just about 4kHz with a downward slope of about 9 dB/Oct, and then a Behringer BEQ700 Bass Graphic Equalizer, which is also working as a volume control, since it after that goes directly into the Effects Return, poweramp input, of my Peavey Solo Special 112, 160W solid state guitar amp, with it's build in 12" guitar speaker unit disconnected and the amp instead hooked up to a SWR Triad I 400W bass cab.
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So guess the explanation on how the "lumped" strings work is part of the explanation why the somewhat controversial Ray Ross Bridge is in fact an improvement over conventional design, as claimed by the designer of it : https://rayrossbridge.com/
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So how hard is it to defret a bass ?
Baloney Balderdash replied to ChrisF's topic in Repairs and Technical
Jaco allegedly did it with a butter knife, so how hard can it be? I wouldn't recommend using a butter knife to do it though, even if Jaco did it. -
What are you listening to right now?
Baloney Balderdash replied to Sarah5string's topic in General Discussion
The Mothers of Invention : -
Flower Punk (by The Mothers of Invention)
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What are you listening to right now?
Baloney Balderdash replied to Sarah5string's topic in General Discussion
Crispin Glover - "Clowny Clown Clown" : -
Both phaser pedals were faulty. The TC Electronic phaser sucked tone, even if it is supposed to be true bypass, and when engaged there was a noticeable volume drop as well as both a high end and bottom end suck, making it sound really thin, weak and anemic. The NUX mutes the signal if you plug the jack plug all the way into the input jack socket of the pedal, like you are supposed to, though that can be fixed by pulling it slightly out again, but engaged it sucked high end and seemed to boost the bass as well, resulting in an extremely muddy signal, and on top of that it hardly produced any phaser effect, even on max settings. So returning both and getting a TC Electronic Helix phaser instead. Placing my order on Friday on that, as well as a Harley Benton SpaceShip 40 pedal board, to mount all my pedals on, and patch cables with extremely flat plugs, for a tight fit.
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Not enough controls! That's a bit too much, not to say way, way too much, even for me who otherwise visually quite like basses with a lot of knobs and switches, even though my current main P/J bass only got two dummy knobs, as the J pickup has been disconnected and the P pickup is wired directly to the output jack socket. For me it's either completely minimal, 1 knob, or over the top, think 60's/70's sci-fi spaceship control board, amount of knobs and switches, ideally in all sort of different shapes and colors.
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Because it is semi hollow, and I am wondering if the center block of wood it got inside the hollow body construction goes all through the middle of the bass and covers the width of the bridge.
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Yeah, maybe what you need is really an effect combining delay and reverb, sometimes marketed as an echo effect, though that term is also often used interchangeably for a regular delay effect. I know the EHX Cathedral pedal got a mode called echo which does exactly what you are looking for. Though of course you could achieve pretty much the same by combining your delay and reverb effect if using the right settings.
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Actually 100ms is in fact quite a lot of pre-delay for a reverb effect, almost gets into echo/delay territory, in comparison your typical build in spring reverb in an amp will have almost no pre-delay and react almost immediately. And a lot of reverb effect pedals will even not have any pre-delay at all and almost response immediately. If you imagine the reverb coming from a room, as in acoustic reverb, it would have to be a pretty darn big room for the reflections to have that much delay. Sound travel with about 343 meter per second, and 100ms is a 1/10 of a whole second, which means at 100ms, if you sit in the midle of a room playing, that the walls of that room would be 17m away all around you, since 1/10 of 334m is 34m, and the sound will need to travel forward to the walls and then back again, and 2/34m = 17m. I will typically use just about 10ms of pre-delay on my main always on subtle plate reverb. The trick for your clean bass tone to not be drowned in reverb is having the right mix of the reverbed and clean signal and to use HP and LP filters on the reverbed signal, so that it doesn't effect the full frequency spectrum of the clean bass signal, a real acoustic reverb of a room wouldn't either, and then of course also make sure not to have crazy decay times that will stretch long over each pick and keep adding up as you play, making it all quickly turn into a mush of reverb.
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So I ponder on buying a Danelectro Longhorn bass, as I once owned the high end Jerry Jones clone of these basses and loved it (which unfortunately I was stupid enough to sell, they are out of production and I can't afford a used one, since these were pretty expensive basses, about 1200$ new, and are pretty rare to find for sale too), and actually quite like the tone the Denelctros got judging from YouTube videos. However I am not too crazy about the one piece wood saddle, so I was wondering if the area beneath the bridge is covered by the solid block of wood, and I would be able to replace the stock bridge with 4 mono rail bridge pieces, as the string spacing is a couple of milimeters closer together than the standard 19mm? I will properly also wire the two lipstick tube pickups in series, since the Jerry Jones I owned got that option on the pickup selector from stock and it was the only pickup setting I ever used.
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Awaiting a NUX Mini Core SE Phaser, which is the same as the Koko Mini Phaser, a digital emulation of the MXR Phase 90, just with an added depth and mix control, beside the speed control of the original, as well as a TC Electronic Blood Moon phaser, which is analog, and likely to be a clone of the Boss PH-1r, both should arive with the mail service tomorrow. One of those is going to replace the Xvive V6 Phaser King that I previously used, parallelly mixed with a flanger via my Boss LS-2, since I discovered that the Xvive sucked the high end out of my signal badly. Also concluded that I don't need a compressor first in my chain, beside my EHX Black Finger, that is placed towards the end of it, the TC Electronic SpectraComp is still an amazing compressor pedal though, I just have any use of it currently, but will keep it anyway.
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Thank you. Well, my economical situation is not nearly as good as it was back then, so as it is now I can't really afford to have something like that build. But if I ever get the money it require then yes, I will definitely have something similar made again.
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- ltd b4 jr
- mikro bass
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Well, not a head, but the amp in my Trace Elliot GP7SM, 130W, combo. Sounded no short of amazing, awesomely full and rich, yet still very clear and punchy, and with just the build in single 15" speaker unit it was loud enough to keep up with a drummer and guitarist in a loud stoner rock/metal -esque band at rehearsals without issues, in fact the master volume was only set to about 10/11 o'clock or so at all times.
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Looks awesome.... And no, it's fine, I suppose basses with a from about 25" scale length and up to 28,6" scale length or so will be fine for this thread (changed the title and the OP to accommodate that). Just had the couple of basses currently in production at just about 28,6", and for the ESP 28,5", scale length in mind when I created the thread. By the way before I even was aware of the existence of the Mikro Bass I had this 28 5/8" scale bass build out of Warmoth baritone parts, with a humbuker Seymour Duncan Rickenbacker Neck replacement pickup in the neck position and a humbucker Seymour Duncan Hot Rails Strat guitar pickup in the bridge position (I designed the headstock myself, but might have gone a little too far with that ) : It sounded absolutely awesome, very clear, almost piano like, but unfortunately I was stupid enough to sell it, which I still regret.
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Valve Amp - who’s still using them?
Baloney Balderdash replied to SamPlaysBass's topic in Amps and Cabs
I used to own an Ampeg B-15S, 60W tube amp, that actually was loud enough for band rehearsals and small gigs without PA support, but unfortunately I was stupid enough to sell it, which I regret much. When that is said, even if the B-15 sounded awesome, I do actually prefer the tone you get from solid state amps, though I use an EHX Black Finger, tube driven optical compresor, with it's 2 preamp tubes run at proper high 300V voltage, as much for a light compression as as a tube preamp stage, which actually beautifully give me a nice touch of that characteristic tube warmth and flavor, and, with the the input gain dialed up to just before the tubes starts to break up when I dig in, an ever so slight touch of tube breakup grid. -
You know Ashdown does in fact make a tube preamp pedal, I am quite sure with a DI too, right? Though no cab sim, as far as I know, and not exactly anywhere near a budget price tag. I'd personally like a Trace Elliot-esque preamp. Of course I could just get the new Trace Elliot Transit B preamp, or cheaper, but with less tweaking options, a full functioning, but tiny, 200W amp, namely the Trace Elliot ELF amp head, and use it as a preamp, if that was what I wanted, it actually being both smaller and lighter than the Transit B preamp. Both supposed to get really close to the classic Trace Elliot tone, but again neither exactly being budget pieces of gear.
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I'm not Mike from Penarth, and I am nowhere near Cardiff. I think you dialed the wrong number.
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Well, it's still a bit cheaper than the EHX Mel9 pedal, got more sounds in it, and will, at least for bass, track much better.
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Edit/Update!!! : Seems like the sources for my claim about the EHX 9 serries of pedals not tracking properly beyond open A of a 4 string bass tuned in E standard tuning were inaccurate, as it has been confirmed that they will in fact track decently all the way down to the low D, as in 2 half steps bellow open E. My apologies for giving off misleading information. The only thing I really know is that the EHX 9 series pedals only are designed to track properly down to the low A, as in the open A string, of a 4 string bass, which explains the dodgy tracking of your B9. A shame really, cause judging from the demos they are amazing sounding pedals with really good tracking otherwise. I simply don't understand why they would not let the pedals track properly down to at least the low E of a 4 string bass, can't see any obvious advantage to that limitation, neither from a production perspective, it is not like it would be impossible, the Boss SY-1 is a testament of that, as good as flawless tracking, and in the full range of a bass too, and even if it possibly would have meant slightly higher production costs (no idea if that in fact is actually the case, but can't imagine it would have made the production noteworthy more expensive if it was), I would think that would be balanced out with these pedals that way being more attractive to bass players. In my opinion EHX made a mistake by designing the 9 series that way, potentially losing a part of the potential market. I know that I personally at least would have been interested in most of the pedals in that series, had they been capable of tracking properly down to the low E of a bass, even if that perhaps would have meant them being slightly more expensive, but as they work now I have no interest in them. ' If this is an issue to you perhaps you should try to look into the Boss SY-1, even though it won't do exactly what the Mel9 does I believe it can get somewhat in the same ballpark, plus having a load additional sounds in it, actually being capable of getting quite close to a lot of different sounds similar to the EHX 9 series, that you otherwise would need several of the 9 series pedals to be able to do.
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I am kind of curious about how the DiMarzio Split P pickup sounds with the two halves wired in parallel, since they are basically functioning as 2 individual humbucker pickups, but the only clip I have been able to find is a YouTube video where it's demonstrated in a just 10 seconds or so clip with slap bass, so that is basically totally useless to me. So my question is if any of you got an audio clip or video featuring the DiMarzio Split P wired in parallel, ideally playing with a pick, and with as little as possible other effects or editing done to it?
