Boodang

Funny you should start this thread as had a similar thing with bass bros recently. Nothing dramatic mind, just a slight lack of communication. 
Saw a Warwick on their site a few weeks ago, emailed an enquiry then noticed it disappeared from their website. Eventually called them and had a nice chat, but didn’t get a reply by email. Not really an issue but I can’t imagine their inbox is that inundated (I could be wrong). And for those that say ‘just pick up the phone’, I live half a world away, so not as easy 

10 minutes ago, lidl e said:

I put a picture!

…. I mentioned no names!!

Lots of good recommendations and advice on what to get but bear in mind the OP asked ‘how’ it all works not ‘what’ to get! 

Two things here…

DI (direct inject) is where you electronically match a high impedance unbalanced signal (typically your guitar) to a low impedance balanced signal so you can plug it into the mic input on a mixing desk or interface. 
Put simply it’s a box where you plug in your jack lead and the output is an xlr mic lead. Used for live to get it to the desk or in the studio. The reason; if you plug high impedance (your guitar if it doesn’t have fancy electronics built in) into low impedance all the top end drops out. Also a good way of tapping into your signal at a gig or when recording. 
DAW is something different and is just your software / hardware interface for recording. Your interface to the daw will take your analogue signal and turn it into digital so the software can process it. Quite often you’ll use a DI box to get your guitar signal connected to the interface (especially if it doesn’t have a high z input. 

On 04/03/2024 at 22:11, tayste_2000 said:

Walrus Audio Slo, does the hold feature of the Freeze with added reverb

I’ve got one of these. Ambient is the only way to describe it! Great pedal. 

31 minutes ago, LiturghianPope said:

 

There's a lot of stuff i didn't know and in order to understand some of it I need to make more research. This is definitely not the kind of stuff you can understand in a day.

 

And yes, I am trying to rely on the actual sound because that's after all, the whole point.

 

However, one of the underlying aspects of the question, besides wanting to better understand what's going on beneath the casing, was whether passive pickups would allow greater flexibility and the ability to try various different external preamps and hearing major differences, as opposed to active pickups which already use a preamp which has a certain profile.

 

I mean I'd like to try various pedals especially some darkglass ones since they're very popular for metal bass tones and I was wondering if the weight of those pedals in the whole signal chain doesn't diminish if a preamp is already there (the pickup premp). 

 

Meaning, maybe, I'll keep trying various pedals but there's something I won't like in the tone and that might be the preamp in the active pickups. Alternatively, changing the pickup preamps is highly inconvenient - I mean sure I'd like to try three or four preamp pedals, but I wouldn't change the pickup preamp three times. 

 

Am I being too theoretical and hypotethical here? Am I imagining some cause-effect relationships that don't really translate down in engineering/physics? Just trying to figure out if I should get active pickups or not, I'm currently playing on schecter diamond series and it took me a while to come to the conclusion that I don't like them. 

So, if anything, active pickups have less of a profile than passive pickups in the sense of their response. An active pup will generally have a wider bandwidth (especially top end) and have a flatter response than a passive pup which will have less above 3Khz. If you want flexibility, then active pups is the way to go as they have the greater frequency response. 

You can use an active preamp with either passive or active pups. For the greatest possibly flexibility use active pups with an active preamp. All you have to do now is try out / listen to the almost infinite combination of both available to you, especially if you decide to add some kind of pedal as well!

You could play it safe and go for EMG active pups and Aguilar active preamp as a good starting point. In terms of preamp pedals, well, there's as many opinions as to what to get as there are pedals, so good luck! Personally, in terms of eq shaping I just use a compressor pedal (just please don't ask what compressor pedal to get as you'll end up starting 'that' thread again!).

I did have lots of basses but that was because I hadn’t found ‘the one’. Then, not long ago, I accidentally had a custom made (long story!) and that was it. Now I’ve lost interest in buying new basses. 
However, gas obviously hadn’t left the building as I started playing drums but I haven’t found ‘that kit’. So I’m back where I started except drum kits are larger and along with the infinite cymbals I obvious need, it seems more expensive. 

Buy a B6 and ditch everything?!

14 minutes ago, SimonK said:

I use Stingrays with active pickups, and have just thought it was to do with the designers preference for how they want the pickup to sound, coupled with the convenience of being able to boost frequencies directly on the guitar (rather than just cut).

Active pickups or passive pickups with an active preamp?

A lot of manufacturers install active preamps as it gives you a lot of tone sculpting power. 

13 hours ago, LiturghianPope said:

Are active pickups designed different knowing they will be marketed and sold followed by a preamp? Or are they just regular pickups and the whole 'active' pickup thing is just the (optional) addition of a preamp?

 

A quick note regarding pre-amps... these are completely separate to active pickups and you can use an active preamp with a passive or active pup*. A passive preamp can only cut frequencies (typically treble roll off), whereas an active preamp will also be able to boost frequency bands and possible have a line driver as well to reduce the line impedance. An active preamp can be quite useful as you can install one that works well with a specific bass. However you can just use an external preamp (on your amp, pedal or rack) to do the same job. 

* There are some exceptions; active pups have an op amp so they are buffered. This means that you could blend two active pups in parallel but you can't put them in series. So you can't install a series/parallel switch on a bass with active pups. Also, there are a few preamps that have pickup impedance loading options but again, as an active pup is buffered you can't do that either. 

Also, ‘the trapdoor’ toneprint is worth a punt as it’s a full on aggressive comp. 

As to which pickups I favour… it used to be active emg’s but I just ended up rolling off the treble. Now I only use passive pups, I get custom ones made to get as close to the tone I’m after straight out. So for my P the response is very mid heavy and cuts thru, for my jazz it’s alnico2 magnets on the bridge for more mids, and alnico5 on the neck for more bass. 
Pickup design is a rabbit hole. Different magnets, magnet size/shape, windings and wire diameter… there’s an endless combination. But nothing I like more than discussing a new custom pickup design and then seeing what the results are like. 

The mechanics; the more windings on a pickup the higher the output but narrower the bandwidth. So a passive pickup will have enough windings for a usable output but not much response above 4k. To get around this an active pickup will have few windings, a full bandwidth and to get over the very low output, a built in op-amp to boost the signal (hence the need for a battery). 
passive pups also have an output impedance fixed by the number of windings (usually around 10k ohms) whereas active pups have an output impedance set by the op-amp which can be 10k or as low as 600/300 ohms, in which case it’s a line driver and the capacitance of the cable will not effect the top end (ie roll off treble).

In practice it means active pups tend to have more top end and are brighter. There’s a good YouTube vid where someone goes through multiple types of replacement pups on a jazz, as soon as he plays the emg’s it’s a bright tone. If you want that bright hi-fi tone then actives are the way to go as no amount of boosting the top end will get what you want from a passive pup as it doesn’t have the bandwidth. Of course you can still eq an active pup but you might find a passive one does that for you. 
‘Organic’ is a phrase often used for the tone of a passive pup but that’s basically because it’s applying its own eq by virtue of a limited bandwidth. 

Try the captain east tone print, I use this on my fretless. It’s not too aggressive and just seems to solidify the core tone. Having said that, if you want infinite sustain it might be too subtle, in which case edit the tone print and increase the blend from 39% to something much higher. 

5 hours ago, tvickey said:

I think that about 40 people showed up and when it was our turn to play, I soon realized that I could not hear myself very well on stage.  I backed up against the bass cabinet, which helped somewhat, however it wasn't quite loud enough for me.  I usually have problems hearing our guitarist on stage, but now both guitar and vox seemed super loud through the monitors.  I probably should have commented to the sound guy, but I was afraid of losing the guitar feed in my monitor so I just carried on.

As monitoring is everything to the band we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands. So when we have a foh engineer, we feed two di’s, one to the foh desk and another to our own stage box which feeds our iem’s which we are in control of. We even get the stage monitors turned off because we don’t need them, which also helps keep feedback issues at bay. It’s definitely made a difference to the our playing. 
BTW love it that your son is selling merch! Does he also play?
 

First gig of year for us! What with a change in vocalists and 2nd guitar, it’s not been a productive start but we’re up and running now. New guitarist is quite versatile (1st guitar off stage at this point in the gig enjoying his new wireless freedom!) and a change to female lead vocals has meant a more ‘lounge’ oriented set but it went down well. Played at an embassy club, there’s not much of a live scene here in Islamabad so you always get an enthusiastic crowd as they’re just grateful someone is playing, so you’re never quite sure if they’re applauding your musical performance or just the fact you turned up! 

Maybe take a timeout. Also, what I’ve found to be a tonic, is to take up another instrument. Feeling a lack of motivation for bass, I took up drums and now I split duties. 
And if you don’t fancy an instrument then maybe something different… in a complete moment of non musicality I took up photography. 

45 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

 

Atari.

 

They haven't bought out a decent console since 1987. Dead in the water.

You don’t need to release a new console, just wait 50 years!

I used a 5 string fretless strung high C in a folk rock band for a number of years, and I would say that would work well for your needs. I didn't feel the need to go high F but then that's a personal preference. However, one thing to consider if you did go 6 string is the width of the neck as it does, to me, feel a step too far. As for low B, I've never been a fan, mostly because the string itself feels like a different beast than the rest and to my ears is just too low. I know lots of people here will disagree, but you've got to get a well sorted bass to make a low B even vaguely workable (and that's before we take into account that most cabs struggle to reproduce a low E let alone a B).

11 hours ago, binky_bass said:

So many pointless questions... can we get a spam filter on basschat? 🙄

In fairness to the op's original question, whilst not being the least trivial, it is about bass and he is inviting you to chat about it.... one might say it's bass-chat.

But to answer the not entirely pointless question, I own what could be the worlds worse bass guitar. A Jedson from the 60/70s which is basically a cheap guitar with 4 strings on. Truly hideous to play but... with nylon strings and an MM pickup sounds huge! So yeah, I hate the bass but i can't give it up. 

Apple. I had a lovely iPod (the one that looked like an iPhone but isn’t) and I’d loaded it with tons of music apps which were quite cool and I used them often. As it was getting old I kept the thing in flight mode to stop it from connecting and doing a weird update as it was ticking along nicely. Then one day it refused to boot up and displayed a message saying unless I did an update it wouldn’t work anymore. Did the update and it wiped ALL my apps as they now unsupported. Most of the apps don’t exist anymore and I can’t get them back. Gits! 

10 hours ago, Shambo said:

Also Currys. About twenty years ago I went into a Dixons store to buy a laptop. They asked me at the counter for my name and address. When I declined they insisted I must provide my address, so I told them I'll just spend my money elsewhere... which changed their minds and they sold me the laptop, without extended warranty and me giving them my personal details. The next week I started receiving junk email, special offers and extended warranty offers, addressed to me, from Dixons/Currys/Carphone Warehouse group... they had to have taken my personal details from the debit card I used to buy the laptop and updated their marketing lists regardless.

So now, I won't ever buy from them again.

It seems a lot of places do this now, so I have fun with it and give my address as 1 Made Up Rd, Made Up City, Nowhereland (in fairness I am a Nowherian citizen but as it is/was a rock floating in the North Sea I’ve never been there), and I give an email address as [email protected]

2 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

 

You just can't help yourself, can you?  Are you even reading our input, or just using any excuse to berate bolt on construction?  Just rename the thread to "I hate bolt on construction and I think anyone who owns one is an idiot" and be done with it, because that's all I'm getting from this thread now.

 

Cool story bro.  I'm out.

Sorry, just can't help myself!! Actually did a 'bolt on necks suck' thread last year, so I guess this is just a rehash in disguise! However, quite happy to rein it in for some genuine thoughts on 5K Fender CS basses.

10 minutes ago, lozkerr said:

Not for me, even though my go-to bass is a Fender. I'd buy a Sandberg or a Sei and drink whatever was left over.

Ah, Sei basses are cool... and another opportunity to show off how to join a neck to a body properly... or more precisely body wings to a long neck in this case...

3 hours ago, Cato said:

I definitely woudn't say that.

 

Any design that has no only remained in production for as long as Leo Fender's guitars and basses but actually still retains it's place as a market leader must be something a bit special 

But, getting back to the original premise, if you had 5k to spend on a bass, would you buy Fender CS or look elsewhere?