bassman7755

On 21/05/2024 at 19:40, stevie said:

There are two camps on this issue. The first sees the bass as an electric guitar, where the speaker is responsible in part for the electric guitar's sound. The second believes that the bass guitar has more in common with the double bass, which needs an accurate, uncoloured reproduction system when amplified.

I think the first camp in exists large part because in times past (say 20 to 30 years ago) it was the only economically viable one for most people unless you were going to say import some Acme LowB's at eye watering cost. Of course some people like the sound of "bass" speakers (the intended audience of the BF 10 range) but I'm not one of them, I want my bass to sound like it does though headphone or my computer/studio setup floor standers which I use when practicing.

The other point is that many people who think they need the bass speaker sound probably don't once they have heard a properly setup and EQed FRFR type setup and there are a whole bunch of advantages that come with this such as your DI (and thus monitors and FoH) having the same tone as what you are hearing.

10 hours ago, agedhorse said:

You are putting a lot of faith into numbers that can be totally made up, or perhaps mean nothing.

Well its £25 so not the end of the world if true. Also the caps in the pics of the unit are 63v so it would be a pretty elaborate scam.

4 hours ago, nekomatic said:

 

Yeah, each time I've gone through the thought process of 'build my own power amp' I've ended up at this conclusion, and buying from the UK dealer with the cable set, VAT and delivery you're looking at at least £150, then you need to put it in a box with connectors and so on, and hope that your thermal design is OK, and by the time you've done all that then unless you cost your time and effort at zero you might as well just buy a Baby Sumo, or if you don't mind fan cooling then a BH250 or Gnome i-pro or something.

Yes in practical terms this is very true, I've just been looking for an excuse to have a tinker trying to build my own as cheaply as possible. I think the thing is theres a certain satisfaction you get from doing something yourself even if it doesn't make economic sense, for example I bought a complete set of re-fretting tools including a gizmo to pre bend fret wire to the right radius all to be able to re-fret (one partially, one completely) two basses, probably cost me far more than paying someone to do it. 

On 26/05/2024 at 17:39, Chienmortbb said:

If you do decide to go the TI module route, remember that the powers quoted are often at much I have voltages then you can get easily from a laptop brick type power supply and even if you did have the high voltages available that many of the modules sold will not stand the higher voltages. For example, many of the TPA 3255 modules, are only guaranteed to work at 36V dc. If you d use a power supply of 48-50 volts, you may find you run out of current before getting anywhere near the quoted power.

Yeah been watching a few youtube vids of people bench testing various modules, the worst offenders seem to be blessed with fake voltage regulators which over heat and marginally specced caps (50v). I've pulled the trigger on a module with 60v caps so now I just have to wait for the boat from china ... 

On 25/05/2024 at 22:27, paul_5 said:

amp SVP-Pro - needs a power amp, but still great sounding piece of kit, like a real Ampeg but with added 'drive' control for filth!

The tune tone control on the RH450 does much the same job - adds a grittiness through the whole dynamic range. I'm pretty sure thats what they modelled it from (having previously owned an SVP pro ...).

TC RH450 - does both types of music: rock AND roll. Seriously though its essentially an SVT soundalike in a small formfactor with a great compressor and tuner built in. Its  a bit of one trick pony though, doesn't do clean / hifi at all.

4 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

Yeah I think that is realistic, and remember this is only using one amp on the chip.

Seems a lot of the boards have a bridging option but reading between the lines this seems to involve running both channels in parallel to be able to go down to 2 ohm rather than the more usual opposite phase setup, still I guess it doesn't do any harm.

On 23/05/2024 at 21:53, Phil Starr said:

 

This is all true. The best thing you can do to get a real picture is to go to the chip manufacturers data sheets TPA3255

The 1% THD graph shows you can get 100w and change into 8ohm at 48v which would probably translate to a decently useful pedal board amp for monitoring / rehearsal perhaps paired with a PSU something like this https://docs.rs-online.com/2729/A700000007590264.pdf. With a higher current PSU you would have to option of running 2 speakers and probably getting gigable level output.

On 19/05/2024 at 10:28, nekomatic said:

Interesting, as it looks suspiciously similar to something like 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/283964862682?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=SsSiHyWXTLi&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=O0J6pgZgSC6&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY which I had considered at in the past as a possible mini power amp - but a lot more expensive. I wonder how long these can sustain their rated output without overheating but as you say, if Eich are prepared to put their name on it one assumes it performs. 
 

The external power supply brick slightly detracts from the ultra-mini aesthetic though, which will be why they don’t show it in any of the photos 😁

I think all these "ebay special" mini amps are based on single chip switched mode amps like TPA3255 as @Phil Starr says, they perform very decently according to various reviews I've read with the limiting factor being the power supply rather than the amp itself. Very tempted to give one a go.

Another decent looking one is this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/355582766811?itmmeta=01HYFTFC2VWKW18NHKQN7HRDAK

On 21/11/2023 at 18:29, warwickhunt said:

 

I spent 4 hrs today with another bassist who has also recently started down the road of Kemper Profiling and between us we profiled, tested and compared a variety of permutations.  I came to the conclusion that yes I probably don't care much for these sims/IRs/profiles et al. and it pretty much renders my original question as pointless!  LOL

I dont think you mentioned what amp it is that your actually trying to capture ?

There isnt much I grew up on that I dont like anymore. If anything listening to old classics often reveals riches I didnt appreciate at the time e.g. Micheal Anthony's bass playing on early van halen albums, or the bluesyness of Angus Youngs playing to name some random ones.

5 hours ago, neepheid said:

I've got a different problem - being stuck in a rut of listening to the same stuff I've always listened to.  So it's not that I can't listen to stuff I used to like anymore, it's that I can't stop listening to stuff I used to like (and continue to do so) at the expense of new stuff.

Noone is handing out medals for forcing yourself to listen to stuff you dont like. I've been through phases where I felt I ought to be listening to things will more cultural significance (Bowie etc) and/or musical sophistication (Jazz), but at some point I thought sod that and went back to AC/DC ...

23 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

So do we, which is why "All right now" is still in the list (although it doesn't seem to get into the set these days).

All right now is one of my favourite songs ever to play, original bass work on it is superb (sadly the vast majority of people I see cover this song have obviously never sat down and really listened to it to do it justice ...).

On 12/11/2023 at 10:53, clauster said:

I'm in the same boat.  I have the Boss GT-1000 Core and am barely scratching the surface.  90% of the time I'm on a patch with comp and preamp only.  The other 10% has some fuzz.  I keep thinking I should sell it to someone who'd make better use of its capabilities and replace with discreet pedals, pedalboard, PSU etc.  But then, it's going to cost a lot more than I'd get for it even if I just replace with the Boss comp, tuner and Pre. 

I get the sense of underutilisation of a multi effects but it is irrational because the marginal cost of adding extra effects to a digital unit is tiny so of course they are going to thow in everything they think anyone might concievably want just like most phones and computer come with loads of stuff on them that most people never use. Digital units that do just one effect are actually the illogical choice because they will have generic DSP hardware internally anyway - just running one effect instead of many. I realise the OP was talking about analogue seperates but I see no reason to use analogue audio processing in this day and age (with the possible exception of valve power amps, but even there its getting iffy).

4 hours ago, isteen said:

The tiny Harley Benton power amp, will that work on bass too?

Would fit nice on a board along with a Zoom multifx.

It will work and gets good reviews from guitarists BUT ... guitar needs a lot less power amp headroom than bass so there is a question mark around whether it would be loud enough for live band bass applications (if thats what you had in mind).

2 hours ago, EssexBuccaneer said:

Broadening this topic, because that’s what my brain does to everything - what importance does an identity have to covers band? We could play all the generic hits all the time, and probably please a large number of people whilst also alienating a chunk of the public who loathe pop music, and also probably playing a load of stuff that the band itself don’t like.

 

Or alternatively play niche material that appeals to a smaller fanbase which will potentially be more loyal and travel to see you. Would probably be a more fulfilling/satisfying band to play in, but at the risk of fewer gigs.

 

Personally speaking I don’t think I could play in a wedding/functions band - it’s just not my thing, regardless of how good the pay is or how solid the summer bookings are. It’d just drive me nuts to play a load of stuff that I don’t enjoy.

This is why I like playing in tribute bands - it solves this inherent tension between what people want to play and what people want to hear on a night out. Everyone is there to play and listen with a shared love of whatever band it is, you also generally a lot of leeway with more obsure song choices.

There very few songs on my "no way in hell" list, actually Dirging in the Free World is about the only one. Happy to play Mustang Sally et al.

On 24/10/2023 at 10:21, Barking Spiders said:

I'm only a hobbyist so it's never been my aim to become proficient across a wide range of genres. I've really only stuck to the styles of playing in genres I enjoy listening to i.e funk, Stax, disco, 80s post punk, Dub and House. I've learned to play, not by practising scales etc, but by learning basslines from songs. Put me in a band playing metal, rock, country, jazz, opera and I'm lost. 

I dont hink its much of a loss because I think you have to like a genre to be good at it beyond a certain level otherwise how are you able to judge what is a great line vs merely a good one ? - music (yes even jazz) is about taste not formulas telling you what notes to play so if you dont like a genre how can you apply taste to your playing ?. Ive been in a couple of blues bands for example but am very "meh" about the genre so I could never be a great blue bass player, merely a competent one.

On 05/10/2023 at 14:10, Lfalex v1.1 said:

Without wishing to cloud the issue,  it IS possible to run a big amp into a cabinet with a lower power rating IF YOU ARE CAREFUL.

 

I've used a QSC PLX 1202 bridged into a Trace Elliot 2103H. 

 

That's ~600w @ 8 Ohms into an 8 Ohm cabinet that's good for ~160w.

 

In fairness,  I had the QSC's HPF on, and only "kept up" with the rest of the band, but it worked fine. 

Back in the day my setup was a QSC PLX bridged with a rated output of 1600 watts rms into cab rated 750 watts. Thats playing rock/metal with a 5 string in a loud band. Realistically I was probably only ever using 2 or 3 hundred watts as that is pretty loud through any reasonably effecient cab, the surplus power is only there to keep the transients clean.

55 minutes ago, LITTLEWING said:

Every room at every gig is different and it’s always fun (NOT!) EQ-ing for 15 mins or more. 

What’s everyone’s ’start from scratch’ strategy? I personally put everything on flat and turn the bass knob nearly all the way down and get the best tone with my bass with small adjustments of mids and trebles and then adjust bass and stage volume accordingly during a couple of complete band soundchecks. I seem to find too much bass ruins everything and simply swamps everything with boomy mush.

Adjusting the amount of bass using on stage sound is likely very missleading, suggest a radio/long lead/looper to hear what its like out in the room.

Hes my simple as possible common sense advice:

Dont worry about complex calculations and using juggling impedences to extract the maximum power from an amp, any of the following will do just fine:

A single 4 ohm cab.

A single 8 ohm cab.

Two 8 ohm cabs in parallel (the default wiring scheme for amps and cabs with multiple connectors).

Yes two 4 oms in series technically works as well but ... why would you ? its fiddly needing custom cables an less effecient than 2x8 in parralel.

Dont obsess over driver size, the design and quality of the cab is much more important, any good 10 or 12 loaded cab can produce the necessary frequency range.

All other things being equal more speaker cone area moves more air using less amplifier power irrespective of whether this is achieved withing the same cab or multiple cabs stacked. 2 * 10/12 drivers should enough to get a decent volume with a mid powered amp like yours.

Dont worry about over powering the cabs, really just dont so long as your using one of the configs listed, actually damaging any half decent bass cab with a mid powered amp is very hard in practice unless you are deliberately setting out to abuse it (and if you are abusing it having an amp with a lower nominal rating than the speaker is not an absolute gurantee than you wont do any damage).

3 hours ago, Lfalex v1.1 said:

Are the drivers all identical? They may not be. And how are they wired to achieve a workable impedance for the amp section? (I presume it's a minimum of 4 Ohms, but you never know)

 

These factors may conspire to preclude the use of 3x1x10..

3x10s are often 3 x 16 ohm in parallel giving 5.2 ohm and thus work decently as single cabs with most amps.

This is quite an expensive unit (even though its discontinued), I  would suggest selling it and getting seperate amps and cab(s). If you hack it about you risk a) not getting anything usable at the end of it and b) not having anything with any residual resale value.

51 minutes ago, Chewie said:

Good morning groovers,

 

I have a fantastic Markbass CMD 103H in my garage.  I never use it nowadays and it certainly can’t go in the house…..!!!

 

I’d like to take the Markbass II out of the combo and connect it to a 1 x 10” cab and see how that works in the house.

 

 

Is there anyone in the Swindon area, or south west, who’d lend me a cab for a few days so I could have tinker.  I’m a very clean and careful cat so you wouldn’t have to worry.

 

Nice bottle of wine or a slab of beers coming your way if you fancy it.

 

Big love to all,

 

 

 

Im in swindon and Ive got some barefaced cabs, a old 1x12 midget (which is better/smaller than pretty much any 1x10) and a 1x15 compact (smaller than a 2x10) you can potentialy have a play with. 

18 hours ago, ern500evo said:

Charles Berthoud playing ability blows me away 

 

Guy is a monster player for sure, also entertaining with it ...