bassman7755

26 minutes ago, thodrik said:

True. 

For my own current situation (live band, heavy rock loud drummer, two guitarists with valve amps, often minimal on stage monitoring) having an amp and cab (or just a combo) on stage at least gives me a chance of enabling the rest of the band on stage to hear what I am playing even if the onstage monitoring is non-existent and/or useless. 

I still use my amp/cab on stage for that same reason (among others) , its just that I dont hear it (much) as I'm using my own IEM feed.

5 hours ago, thodrik said:

I like to have an amp and cab so that I can at least be sure that I will be able to hear myself. 

You can also do that providing your own IEM feed via a small mixer with inputs for your own di/line and house mix and/or an ambient mike. It may sound like a faff but I keep it all packed away pre-wired. 

.

2 hours ago, Jamescullum said:

So do you see an amp as a way for you to hear yourself or a way for the audience to hear the bass? 
 

Every gig I do the bass is going through the PA system so in theory the amp is there only for my listening pleasure. So in reality any amp will do. 
 

Do you see the value in a nice amp or is it a vanity thing? 

I use IEMs on stage, the stack is there for 1) aesthetics/vanity 2) the rest of the band to hear 3) the audience to hear if they are right in front of the stage. Even wearing the IEMs I do like feeling the rumble of it though so I guess thats 4).

I take an IEM feed from my own amp and get FOH to give me an everything-except-bass feed and I then balance the two myself. If playing without FOH or at rehearsal I use a reference mic to give me some ambient. Could never go back to trying hear myself at high volume through ear plugs, IEMs are such massive improvement.

Previously a big fan but the Cory Wong collaborations do nothing for me, distinctly average guitar playing, dumbed down chord progressions (compared to previous stuff). Seems to be just fairly bland funk now.   

19 hours ago, WinterMute said:

Depends if you go series or parallel of course, in series it's 16 ohms, in parallel 4 ohms.

Dual connectors on the amp or speaker are pretty much universally parallel connections though.

53 minutes ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

 

And while you're at it, drop anything else by Status Quo. 

I'm happy to play absolutely any song except ...

Dirging (Rocking) in the Free World, and anything by Oasis.

On 29/09/2021 at 07:43, Phil Starr said:

Welcome to Basschat

 

This is my practice set up too, I use a Zoom B1ON which has been updated and is now the B1-Four Zoom B1 FOUR Bass Multi-Effects Pedal at Gear4music 

 

It has many amp emulations and bass effects, metronome and drum machine, an input for audio devices so you can play along and a decent headphone amp all for £65. A lot of people here use the same set up of Zoom+Headphones. I find the drum machine particularly useful for tightening up my playing and learning tricky pieces. You can play it slowly and speed it up gradually but mainly it sounds great and that makes me want to practice. Some things are just 'right' and this is one of them.

 

I'm not a big fan of practice amps, it's quite hard to make a tiny speaker sound really good for bass and 'proper' bass amps can always be turned down. There are things like the Phil Jones amps but they are really proper gear miniaturised and are really quite pricey. If you want to save space and money and also have a great sound go for the Zoom.

For practice I put my bass and guitar through my computer into either headphones or a pair of fairly hefty floor standers. Theres a really nifty prog called Cantible https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/ which is basically just a pure VST host without all the usually DAW guff so with one click I can get a VST effects and modelling chain loaded and running.

You do need a decent low latency audio interface to do this though, I use a zoom UAC-2.  VST effects wise for bass I normally just run the free sansamp clone https://masters-of-music.com/tse-bod-v3-0-released-free-sansamp-bass-plugin/.

On 27/09/2021 at 21:19, paddy109 said:

I think your hearing the effects as less prominent through the amp/speaker because your losing some highs compared to with headphones. Also I don't know if the paradriver has that baked in speaker sim like a lot of tech21 stuff so that might be losing more highs still.

24 minutes ago, BassAdder27 said:

Ashdown RM800 EVO II

Orange Little Bass Thing 

Both look decent amps, I would get cranking the low end up and see what happens.

19 minutes ago, BassAdder27 said:

I do wonder if a larger cab with 12” drivers would have more thump and depth if that makes sense 

It might, but for any pub/club gig band situation I can imagine you are likely well inside the performance envelope of your current cabs is what I'm saying - you could almost certainly just EQ the difference so long you have ample headroom in the amp. Be interesting to know what amp you have actually.

BTW I assumed you already had 2 ashdown cabs. If you only have one and the choice is between another ashdown and going to BF then thats a more nuanced choice. The general rule of thumb still applies though - if you like the basic sound of the cab you already have and just want more volume then just a second one ...

3 minutes ago, BassAdder27 said:

Thanks that makes sense .. the two Ashdown cabs are loud enough for what I need right now. Probably equivalent to running a 4x10 so two cabs should be ample really.

 

I don’t need higher volume so maybe it’s not a necessity to upgrade at all !

It seems I always seem to end up asking people the same question - what problem are you trying to solve ? (other than satisfying your desire to buy a shiny new toy that is).

1 hour ago, BassAdder27 said:

Question .. would a BF SuperTwin blow my new Ashdown ABM 210 Pro Neo cabs x 2 away ?

 

Just curious if the BF is a fuller deeper sounding cab that would handle a 500w or larger amp and better suited to rock ?

 

Huge price ticket so interested to know if really that much better than say £350 each Ashdown cabs ? 

In my view if you have got 2 half decent 2x10 cabs (you've got grands worth of cabs there after all) and you cant get the volume and / or depth you want then the problem is probably not the speakers, and I say that as a BF user and fan.

3 hours ago, Waddycall said:

I’m in the market for a new cab. I play in a newly formed covers band doing some of the usual pub covers. We’ve two guitarists. I’ve been using a rumble 115 cab in previous bands that rehearsed in decent studios with good acoustics and always DI’d or mic’d at gigs. It always seemed fine. The hall this band rehearses in sounds horrible and I’m having problems hearing myself.

No speaker is going to fix the awful acoustics of your average wooden floored village hall. That said I wouldnt want to discourage what looks like a significant upgrade to an ST which certainly isn't going to hurt. A more radical solution would be to consider taking the DI out of your amp into IEMs (might need a mixed to buffer it) which will solve the problem of you hearing yourself at least, in a noisy hall youl also probably get enough bleed through of the rest of the band.

On 26/09/2021 at 11:19, stewblack said:

Just started doing this.

I am spectacularly bad at it.

Look at it this way - worse you are at it the more beneficial it will be.

What material are you studying ?. 

Back in the day I did part one of David Burges relative pitch course which was hard work but very beneficial. If I was doing something now I would probably go for Rick Beato's ear training course https://beatoeartraining.com/

I also highly recommend studying some so-called "functional" (or sometimes "contextual") ear training which focusses on relating everything you hear to a tonal centre.

To explain the difference: classic ear training teaches to hear the sequence C - A - G as a 6th up followed by a 2nd down whereas functional training teaches you to hear it as a tonic then 6th followed by a 5th (relative to the the assumed tonic C). Bruce Arnold has lots of good material in this vein  https://muse-eek.com/category/ear-training/

EDIT: I wrote this assuming you are taking about actual ear training and not transcription (learning or analysing a song by listening to it) which is a completely different thing.

37 minutes ago, bob_atherton said:

It's not quite how it works in my rig.

The signal is split at the end of all EQ, compression, LPF, etc. The top amp is set to a more mid punch tone, not much low end. The bottom amp feeds the lower cab which give a fat low end sound without much mid punch.

I wouldn't feel comfortable being at a gig with only one amp and only one cab, so I might as well use two of each in a very versatile rig.

Ah fair enough, so it looks like your not doing parallel clean+low / OD+highs as I assumed but more like bi-amping your basic tone.

I'm currently investigating various means of doing clean low / OD highs "live" at the moment (without using 2 amps ...)  as its what I use for recording, been looking at the likes of the BF machinist and Darkglass microtubes 7. Probably a discussion for the effects forum though.

On 16/09/2021 at 06:58, Maude said:

I can't hear what you're hearing so can't say for sure, but maybe your just don't like the sound of a standard P bass. 

This probably, the single centre position pickup gives a natural mid emphasis which trades off some bite on lower notes.  

On 24/09/2021 at 03:33, dangoose said:

And crucially, one bigger older and heavier MAG 4 ohm 2x10 that doesn't weigh a great deal more has replaced my two lightweight thin wall compact sealed cabs that weighed more together.  And all at a fraction of the cost of buying lighter modern stuff. 

Yes but with two light cabs vs one heavier one you can carry them one at a time, or maybe just use one for rehearsals or smaller gigs. Plus 2 vertically stacked smaller cabs will generally give better dispersion characteristics and auditability at ear level that a single cab on the floor.

Quote

  I predict as cab offerings evolve, more manufacturers will offer single slightly larger 4 ohm cab solutions that may be a little heavier and physically larger but ultimately will suit players who no longer want to hump multiple 8 ohm cabs around, even if they are lightweight😁 I think larger cabs are here to stay and folks could do worse than re-inventing existing cabs meantime with newer modern drivers to get a good single cab solution.  

Not convinced by this. Modern amps generally have a massive surplus of power so 8 vs 4 ohm is somewhat moot.

2 hours ago, whave said:

 

Well I don't know if my bass has a "weird guitar-ish sound" since I have never heard a Rumble for comparison, basically don't know if the two amps would sound the same via headphones, or if a bass would sound better on a bass combo instead of a guitar combo? Maybe someone tried both.

A bass amp is generally a fairly straight forward beast and doesn't really do anything magic with the sound, with the EQ set flat your amp will sound pretty much the same as a bass amp setup similarly especially through headphones. The EQ / tone controls on your guitar amp wont work very well for bass though as they are aimed a different set of frequencies. I think its probably worth getting a rumble and selling your amp, as they both go for similar money you would probably not be out of pocket if you bought second hand, just don't expect a miraculous change in sound, mainly just a more useful set of tone controls.

On 06/09/2021 at 10:15, fretmeister said:

So 2 outputs from the bass, or a splitter box then into different paths.

 

1: The drives and FX into an amp with some of the low end rolled off. Loads of mids and high end clank.

2: Into a different amp & cab with the treble and some of the mids rolled off. Like a reggae dub sort of thing.

This is exactly what the Barefaced Machinist pedal does isn't it ? (not the cab part obviously)

What is it that you perceive as the deficiency or limitation with your current setup ? 

1 hour ago, Doddy said:

What about checking out the transcription threads posted in the forum? There are tons of great melodic ideas in there.

What I'm trying to develop/refine is the ability to instantly play any arbitrary sequence of notes that I hear, as opposed to learning and retaining actual melodic ideas (if that makes sense). 

On 15/09/2021 at 17:56, dannybuoy said:

Lots of amps have one built in anyway, but it’s not easy to discover which ones. I recall a thread on Talkbass with Agedhorse, a designer of Genz Benz amps talking along the lines that all their amps had such a filter but they never marketed the fact.

This nicely demonstrates what I've said elsewhere - that movement that you can see, you cant hear so its just wasted energy an wear and tear on your speakers. 

Not so much a thing nowadays but guitarists tuning by harmonics used to grind my gears, thing is youre just on to a looser trying to educate someone on the spot about intricacies of natural harmonics vs the even tempered scale.