bassman7755

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 ...

22 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Any high pass filter you can practically make as near as dammit infinite attenuation at DC.

Although if you are talking of thuds when your sound card wakes, they clearly aren't DC, or you wouldn't hear them!

The thuds arnt very loud but you can see the cone leap alarmingly like you get when you connect a 9v batter to a speaker, but yes obviously what is actually being heard is the audible overtones of the transients. Thing is I'm not trying to filter out the sound completely - just get rid of the DC (or near DC) component which is causing the extreme speaker excursion.

Zoom B1x4 seems like a no brainer for change from £80. Even it you don't do looping the loop is really useful for being to tweak the effects while having a riff played back at you. Super intuitive to use generally and very good variety and quality of effects, the amp models are a bit meh but the OD emulations (sansamp / darkglass etc) are really good. Oh and another thing about the Zoom is it has no processing latency (that I can detect anyway and I'm very sensitive to this on bass).

So I've been looking at designing a very crude HPF, not for bass use as it happens but to filter out some nasty DC thuds that my computer sound card generates when it wakes from sleep.

Playing around with http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/Articles/High-pass-filter-calculator.php#answer1  I was looking for an RC that would do the job with a couple of common components and using 22uf / 1kohm gives a 3db point of 7 ish Hz so would seem to do the job. Am I right in assuming that pretty much any single pole RC HPF gives (at least theoretically) infinite attenuation at DC ?.

Still like most of the stuff I liked as a teenager, metal and whatnot mostly. I do hear it differently now though through the lens of paying guitar and bass to a reasonable standard for a few decades, example: I listen mostly to the bass now when listening to Van Halen because MA is a just a relentless groove machine who I didn't appreciate before. I did have a phase of being really into Raven era Stranglers but hearing it now leaves me cold. Hopefully if I ever turn into a jazz bore someone will shoot me (disclaimer - Larry Carlton is the greatest player of all time, that as jazzy as I will ever get).

On 24/12/2020 at 10:48, chris_b said:

No. I play everything on the same bass. IMO it's not worth trying to sound like your heroes. Chasing their tone and sound rarely works. Sound like you.

I think there are often hidden factors at play here, aside from the obvious tone-in-the-fingers stuff I think many classic guitar and bass tones owe a lot to how it was recorded, e.g. mic setup, effects EQ compression etc applied at the desk as much as they do to the bass and amp.

I thing I've only once ever bought any kit because some artist used it, way back in the day when I bought a marshall 50w master volume stack because thats what micheal shenker used. Certainly never been a factor in any bass gear I've bought, although the thing that been closest to tempting me is the tech 21 geddy lee signature pedal.

15 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Because they generally don’t have an incompetent in the chain that loves pushing things until they feedback.

But generally you arnt taking a direct feed from the main mixer to power your IEMs - there will some local preamp or mixer where you control the final volume. What I do is have a small mixer which I mix my local DI with a "rest of the band" signal from the FoH mixer, but even without that there will usually be some other volume control in the chain e.g the volume on the radio link if your going wireless.

On 02/01/2022 at 22:49, Downunderwonder said:

Anyone else scared pantsless by the chances of blowing out hearing with one mistake via in ear speakers?

No, why should I be any more scared of doing this than say via headphones or earphones plugged into my hifi / computer /  phone / etc ?.

Never liked them myself but before slagging them off i felt I had a duty to have a quick listen so had a quick skim through a greatest hits collection on youtube (taking one for the team here ...).

My observations: I dont think anyone in the band has ever heard of a rest - bass / guitar / piano / whatever just drone on and on, its a constant wall of noise with no dynamics or rhythmic content and this probably why they seemingly dont have many fans in the bass playing circles. The singer wandering in and out of falsetto all the time really irritates me. A small minority of their songs are above averagely catchy but I thinks its the singers distinctive slow motion yodelling vocal style more than any actual tune that make them memorable (for better or worse depending on whether you like it or not).