LawrenceH

I have to say I laughed out loud when I read the first post in this thread. You want a well-balanced tone, without dominant guitars, and you want a good stage sound, without bleed into FoH, and you're using 4x12" guitar cabs with a loud drummer and you're gigging in pubs...you want the moon on a stick! Or else a magic box which sucks sound out of the air... Even if you're playing awkward, long rooms full of obstructions then a better set-up would be to use delay lines or an array. Seriously, you can't just keep adding more and more volume from different sources to balance things out. People's ears just start shutting down at a certain threshold, the more sound you add the worse it gets. Less volume and you will hear yourselves better and your ear damage will also be less severe. If, as seems likely given the kit they're using, some band members already have deficiency in their hearing, then they need to get used to using in ears. Too late to save their hearing but it'll save everyone else's and you'll get a better sound. Ironically the one rig that I consider worth having a bit more power for is the bass (and maybe kick drum monitor) simply because those frequencies require such a lot more power and physical space to produce. With your set-up I'd say you'd have trouble getting enough bottom end even with a 500w 4x10", but that would be the least of the band's problems. If all else fails in terms of persuasion, then if you can lug around some heavy stage cloth and hang it in loose folds behind the drummer it will help absorb a lot of the early reflections which will make things significantly less dreadful. For the guitarists, powersoaks on the amps so they can crank them to get the tone. If they just want the sheer volume, then in ears again are the only way they can have this without absolutely ruining front of house sound at 9 out of 10 gigs. As an aside I just can't understand drummers with bad technique (and if they can't play quietly they don't have good technique) who then buy loud drums, WHY??? You sit RIGHT NEXT TO THEM when you're playing them, how loud do you think they need to be?! I sometimes wonder if they understand the concept of the microphone-amplifier-loudspeaker system.

[quote name='Musicman20' post='714948' date='Jan 16 2010, 04:00 PM']Thanks for all the info guys. Im thinking MAYBE a Spector...but I dont know what their string spacing and necks are like. [/quote] For a Fender vintage jazz tone? I'd have thought a Fender jazz might do that better...

+1 to the S1 switch. Reversible, simple, cheap, awesome. Do you mind modding the bass? I put Nordy Big Singles in my Ibanez and the bottom off them is very solid indeed with a lot of definition. You could go for the fat stacks, but you'd have to route larger cavities. Otherwise given the shape of J-bass pups, you probably want noiseless with overwinding.

[quote name='BassBunny' post='712841' date='Jan 14 2010, 06:16 PM']That's interesting. the SB 300 series Bass I bought last week has now turned out to be an SB405. I only found out when doing a Clean Up/Set-Up/Re String and needed to shim the neck. When I detached it there is a Lot Number and SB405 stamped in the neck pocket. I guess that is the definative way to identify the model, take the neck off. I will have a look for the switch, but I am going to have to replace the pre-amp, (yes I know it's heresy, but I will keep the original in case i ever decide to sell. Very unlikely). The Bass/Treble controls do very little and when panned to the rear pick-up, there is very little output. I suspected it might be a pick-up problem so to attampt to prove it i metered them and they are identical. I then swopped the pick-up wires around on the Blend board and it behaves in exactly the same way, ie the blend seems to have a mind of it's own. Anyway before I remove it, i will try and figure out what it does. Is there any way you could take a picture of all the connections on the board with the serial number? Mine has definately had some "re-wiring" and that may explain the problems i am experiencing. The other bonus is a beautiful Brass Nut. Not sure if that is normal.[/quote] As I think I mentioned before, there is a little trim pot on the pre-amp which solved exactly this problem for me

Each to their own, but the body and scratchplate look like they were cut out by a five-year-old using special child-friendly plastic scissors. Fine if that's your look though.

[quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='694683' date='Dec 28 2009, 08:49 AM']I had one when they first came out. As Alex mentioned, the stock pickups aren't up to a deal, but that's an easy one to solve. The newer Classic Vibe Jazz is a much better proposition all round, though. It has tons of output & the quality is up there with the best.[/quote] Do the pickups make it sound more like a jazz though? Because acoustically, the one I tried just didn't have the warmth of the VMJ, which in the case of the latter definitely translated to the plugged-in tone. (Didn't get to try the CV plugged in) [quote]Art Digital MPA tube pre-amp[/quote] This will make a noticeable difference

[quote name='umph' post='694528' date='Dec 27 2009, 09:14 PM']you had a v6 for your kick drum rig? wow[/quote] Evidently so...I had to look up the amp because it was a fair while back but the v6 looks about right. It was the bass rig as well, of course, and we just whacked the kick through it as an experiment to see if we could get a bit more oomph. But I can confidently say that headroom was NOT an issue with that amp! The sound was, in technical parlance, phat.

I am going to disagree with everyone here and say it is sometimes worth putting the bass drum through the bass rig. We used to do this with a 4x12" 300w valve Trace Elliot way back in my first band. Punched better than any PA I've tried that didn't have separate subs, and better than many smaller subs too. We didn't try and exaggerate the click of the beater or anything but we got a solid, well-damped thump that really helped lay a groove. You might try putting a bit of the LOW end of the snare through as well, it's surprising how important sub-500Hz region can be for giving punch in certain styles. It doesn't need much, or it indeed starts to have undesirable effects. But in my experience putting drums through inadequate PA tops will compromise vocals much more than you'll compromise bass in this method. 450w is a decent amount of headroom to be working with. Plus if you and the drummer are tight, having the kick from the same sound source really helps create a solid sound, almost like the beat of the kick is the beginning of your bass note. And yes, before I get piled into for saying this, I HAVE done a fair bit of live sound with a fair few different small and medium systems, inc off the top of my head JBL, EV, Nexo, Martin Audio, RCF etc so although I'm by no means a pro I am at least able to make a meaningful comparison.

[quote name='jezzaboy' post='694458' date='Dec 27 2009, 07:06 PM']I want a Jazz. Don`t bloomin need one but the yearning is there. I`ve had a few Mexican ones and while they are okay, I always fancied a 75 re-issue. Now, not having the spondoolies for one, I was thinking of getting one of the Squires (not much differance eh?). I just like the natural finish. Could someone whose got one tell me what it`s like? Is it gigable the way it is? If I keep it for a while I might upgrade it. Cheers for any info. Jez[/quote] Tried one in Mansons the other day...way better than the Classic Vibe acoustically but the pickups are a little lo-fi sounding, lacking bandwidth. Frets were not very well dressed and the neck was a bit chipped on the binding I'd say they're very decent if you can choose a good one, can spend the extra to swap out the pickups and can put up with the extra weight...they're not light.

[quote name='Paul S' post='692374' date='Dec 23 2009, 03:02 PM']I was secretly hoping for a Squier of some sort but every single one (I tried about 6 of various sorts) fell short of the mark compared to a USA jazz or, what I ended up with, my MIJ Jaguar. Since then I have acquired a Squier VMJ fretless and it is really good... but still not as good as the Jag. But then it is a lot cheaper.[/quote] I'm not really getting the Squier CV love - they look pretty cool, but the two I've tried in shops have been badly set up and sounded rubbish acoustically compared to a US or the Mex Classic 70s jazz. I know that's not the whole story but I do think when looking for a classic jazz bass sound the wood is an important contributor, and basswood or agathis don't really do it. I think these are alright basses but no better than budget offerings from Yamaha, Ibanez etc. The VM 70s, though, sounded much more like it. Tone plugged in was nice and growly but rather restricted in bandwidth, so my conclusion was that with a pickup upgrade it could be a very good sounding bass. However, again I tried two and both suffered nasty fret buzz and had poor finishing on the necks, though the bookmatching on the body was lovely. If you can live with the weight (heavy) and find one with a decent neck, then these are the most 'jazzy' sounding budget basses I've heard - and therefore IMO the best! *But not as good as a US.

[quote name='bigfatbass' post='681635' date='Dec 11 2009, 07:33 PM']I am sure he has. I am not sure he has played an Ampeg SVT/8x10 in real life Real life has a habit of mucking up computer models and measurements in acoustically neutral environments. I always gig with 2 basses, 3 if I want to make a pig of myself (fretless, flats, halfs). They all have similar outputs but at real gigs one will be louder than the other, but not always the same one. You cant model that ![/quote] But if you take that exact argument and apply it to cabs, rather than basses, then you end up saying that you can't make a meaningful comparison between two cabs that isn't specific to a given context. That's not really very useful and it's clearly not true in the majority of cases. I think one of the problems in discussions of these types is the issue of vocabulary. 'Volume' means different things to different people. Perceived volume, which differs depending on so many factors - an individual's hearing across the frequency range, whether a sound is heard in isolation or with others, distortion etc etc. Then there's more easily measurable values like SPL which behave consistently and predictably, and THAT's what an engineer like Alex is talking about. The idea that all this stuff is theoretical is ignoring the fact that published driver parameters are derived from measurement. Assuming a cab is sufficiently stiff and not an awful shape then the cab only really contributes based on it's volume and the port tuning, which govern low frequency extension. And that is accurately predictable. Perceived loudness variations above a couple of hundred Hz or so are going to depend on the driver frequency response curve (e.g. peaks or troughs in key regions for bass guitar) and the dispersion characteristics which as far as I understand are largely governed by the cone diameter and number/spacing arrangement of cones. The dispersion characteristics of e.g. an 8x10 are going to be quite different from a 2x12. In a way that will cause big differences in perceived volume in different environments, but it is STILL something that can be modelled - this is what loudspeaker systems designers for large PA work do all the time. Btw I see where Alex says he hasn't gigged an SVT/8x10 on the post linked by EBS. But I'm pretty sure he'll have heard them along with most people who've been to a gig ever! And probably played them, since old forum posts indicate he seemed to spend ages obsessively searching for the Ultimate cab before getting narked off and building one! The real issue with BF cabs is going to be whether the tone of the Eminence drivers suits a particular bass voicing.

[quote name='bigfatbass' post='679729' date='Dec 9 2009, 11:29 PM']Dont you mean: The vast majority of Compact owners are using a single cab as with the right amp my cab modelling software predicts it'll play as loud as most 4x10"s and 2x12"s. My cab modelling software predicts a pair will be SVT/810 loud.[/quote] I'd have thought Mr Claber has built enough compacts by now to have an idea of how loud they'll go in real life. I've ordered a Deltalite II, bought some 12mm poplar ply and am going to have a go at a BFM Jack 110 over the Christmas period. Ideally I'll also try the driver in a conventional ported box for comparison. I'll let people know how it performs.

[quote name='Néal Zheimer' post='679993' date='Dec 10 2009, 10:32 AM']I didn't take it for rehearsal because the action is REALLY low it's buzzing way too much for me and I need to get used to the extra string. The jack outlet cracks a little when the jack moves (I don't know what I can do about it) and I have yet to found what all the pots are for... If someone could give me a clue about the function of the pots (I think I found the volume ), it would be greatly appreciated.[/quote] Hi Neal, Lovely looking bass! I have an SB330. The pots on that from L-R as you look down at the bass when playing are volume, pickup balance, bass, treble - I guess yours is the same. I had to replace the jack socket on mine when I bought it (secondhand) as the connection was intermittent, it is a barrel-type unit where all the connections are contained. Doesn't cost too much. Some contact cleaner might do the job for you though.

I started off with a Yamaha RB170, as bog-standard as you can get. It was a GREAT bass to learn on, with a P/J pickup combination that gives you a good basic understanding of 'trad' bass tones. I've never played a yamaha that felt bad, in my opinion these or the Ibanez ranges are the safest options for beginners. I tried some Squiers the other day and was seriously unimpressed with the normal range, though the Vintage Modified sounded good. Not as nicely finished on the neck as a Yamaha though and twice the price. I wouldn't spend any more than you need to on a first bass, so you can get to grips with the instrument and learn more about what you're after before sinking £300 plus into something you may find doesn't match your developing tastes. My view on active v passive: at the LOW end of the market, I find I feel more 'connected' to my instrument with a passive, it seems to respond more to my fingers where a lot of cheap pre-amps choke the sound. This helps develop good technique where your fingers do the work rather than dialling in a tone with EQ and is a good thing for the future. Once you know how to control your tone with your fingers, THEN active basses become useful. Good luck

[quote name='parker_muse' post='674526' date='Dec 4 2009, 09:48 PM']They're 12.99 big ones, i can't really tell you more then that! So is it probably the headphones not the amp?[/quote] Hi parker_muse Short answer: it is probably both the headphones and the amp, but don't worry, it's not a fault. Long answer: I don't know if you saw my reply to this in the other superfly thread. But if you are trying to drive headphones from a line-level output that is not designed to double as a headphone amp then you can expect clipping. The line-out is designed to drive a line-level desk input, which will typically 'show' a very high impedance to the line-out on your amp in comparison to a pair of headphones. Looking at the manual, your superfly has an output impedance of 600ohms. A typical desk input is about 10-50 thousand ohms. Typical headphone impedances are 150 ohms or less. Broadly speaking, driving a low impedance input with a higher impedance output results in signal degradation. This is what is likely happening here. Apart from the sound quality I would also be wary of doing this in case it put too much stress on the superfly and you end up knackering the line out (someone else correct me if in practice this is not going to be a problem?). The other aspect is the headphones. It is really difficulty to get cheap headphones that will accurately reproduce the raw sound of a bass guitar at a high level without distorting/generally sounding horrible. You'd need to run the bass through EQ and a compressor to get a more controlled signal level like that you hear on a decent recording. A cheap headphone amp is probably the solution for you, Behringer do one that runs off a line out for about £25 or you could get one that has a dedicated guitar input, though you'd probably want to avoid those which have amp modelling/distortion built in. Alternatively if you have a hi-fi with a spare input (tape, CD or aux) then just buy a cable that connects the line-out of your superfly to that and use the headphone out from the hi-fi. If you do this and it still sounds crap, that is the point at which new headphones with better bass handling become necessary. You're probably looking at £50 there. Hope that helps! Lawrence

My ibby sr500 sounds very thick - have had to work hard to get away from that, even with single coils it has a monstrous lower midrange! Much 'fatter' than a Fender. I think it's the wood combinations used. Consider trying some basses made of that asian mahogany as it seems to have the tone you're after. Lots of the Jap actives have a thicker lower-mid punch than the trad Fender tones.

[quote name='parker_muse' post='674412' date='Dec 4 2009, 06:17 PM']I've just taken delivery of a superfly too, infact my laptop is on it now as i type! I'm playing through headphones from the line out and it's clipping quite a bit - is this normal? i'm a total noob with amps i'm afraid.[/quote] Unless a line-out is designed to double as a headphone out then this is normal - it's a different signal level/impedance.

[quote name='xverminate2' post='674372' date='Dec 4 2009, 05:38 PM']Many thanks for this help pete, I tend to use only 3 of my collection , Fender PB OR Jazz + Status s1, It's the status I'm using tonight. Any custom settings would be of help Thinking about the editing, It seems pointless to have the laptop to edit when it's only benifit is to alter the para and comp?I would eq to the gig, Am I right Greg[/quote] I don't have the Superfly but a 7-band should be pretty handy on its own. I'd say parametrics can be really useful for a particular bass/amp/cab combo regardless of room, e.g. I nearly always like a broad boost centred around 2.5k on my Nordstrand-fitted Ibanez to bring out the single coil tone, and often a particular cab will boom at a characteristic frequency that will be more or less extreme depending on the room. I would expect that you could make 3 separate presets, each with a couple of bands devoted to the bass' raw tone, another one or two for particular cab combinations and spread the rest around a la a conventional 3-way EQ.

[quote name='dangerboy' post='674177' date='Dec 4 2009, 01:59 PM']But then I've never found a Hartke I liked. It's a very subjective thing.[/quote] I was trying some j-basses out the other day and the shop demo amp was a Hartke 4x10 combo. I was looking for the classic jazz growl, all I could hear was the Hartke. Every bass I tried through it sounded exactly the same - absolutely nothing in the mids, and that was with the amp set completely flat, all eq/shape options out. It was a good sound for some stuff, but it was the only sound the amp seemed capable of making and nowhere near what I am after. I ended up switching to a Marshall practice amp and at least I could hear the different characters of the different basses in their mid voicings. So I'd go GK by default! EDIT - just noticed the OP is going for separate heads and cabs. In that case I'd probably think about the Hartke LH500 and pairing it up with a more neutral-sounding cab, since those heads seem to have a very good rep here for a clear sound. I suspect it was the drivers that were responsible for most/all of the deficiencies in what I was hearing

[quote name='bigthumb' post='669672' date='Nov 30 2009, 12:27 AM']Cheers Lawrence. I remember going to Aston university (I think) when I was a kid to be assessed, doing all kinds of tests etc. Long time ago now so I cannot remember much but what I do remember and will never forget was being called thick by a teacher at primary school. Also my parents anguish about having a 'slow' son. Still hopefully times have moved on now and kids can get better help and more understanding from their teachers. Thank God for spell checker! [/quote] There is some interesting research about the possible positive aspects of dyslexia - correlations with particular types of creative thinking. My wife is amazing at linking together apparently disparate concepts, I definitely wouldn't call her slow! I hope attitudes like that of your teacher, presumably born out of ignorance, are a thing of the past among the teaching profession at least. One thing I've encountered is that people aren't always very appreciative that dyslexia, like many other things, varies in its severity. And this can colour their attitude towards an individual depending on what they've encountered before.

Hi. I just wanted to chip in here as it's something close to my heart. I'm sure people haven't meant any harm responding with jokey misspelled text. But consider how incredibly confusing a text-based medium like the internet can be for people who suffer this problem - particularly given that text-based searching is really the only means yet available for using the internet effectively. Then consider how much the internet has permeated society and how being excluded, particularly for younger people, could hamper their ability to participate fully in modern society. Dyslexia was simply not an issue in the past as it is now, because on average our lives are far more text-dominated than at any other point in history. I don't have dyslexia and I used to be a bit of a spelling Nazi when I was younger, much to my shame. Misspelled words irritated me, slowing my reading. But being married to someone who has dyslexia, as do most others in her family, has transformed my understanding. We have had many conversations about how the letters seem to shift around on the page/screen - how when I read, I take in whole phrases in a glance but she has to decipher each word one at a time, sometimes letter by letter. My wife worked incredibly hard on her reading and writing skills and is actually doing very well as an academic (she has degrees from Cambridge, Exeter and Edinburgh). But it's important to understand that whilst (very) hard work allows people to improve these skills, dyslexia can't be completely overcome. It's lifelong so you have to cut some slack. The mental effort my wife expends when concentrating on getting it right is significant, if she's tired or trying to hurry her accuracy drops considerably. And whilst internet search functions have started to include spelling suggestions these don't always work with some of her more creative attempts at a difficult word. An issue if you're working in obscure academic subjects with their own special jargon! I do believe correct spelling where possible is a useful thing for everyone, but I find it incredibly irritating when people have a go at others based on their spelling rather than their argument, despite the fact that they've understood the words. Or if they lord it over them based on spelling. That's just pathetic. Anyway a bit of a rambling rant and not intended to have a go at anyone, just wanted to try and help people who've not got much experience with this condition to look at it from a more informed perspective. Cheers and apologies if this sounds a bit preachy.

[quote name='NickH' post='669598' date='Nov 29 2009, 11:00 PM']A sneaky trick I learnt from a very wise man. Instead of one big vocal foldback speaker, get two cheapies. Make sure they have a phasing option. Put one out of phase with the other. If you're running one active monitor with a slave cab which has no phase option, custom-wire yourself a phased speaker cable. Mark it clearly as the phased one though! Ditto with two active cabe fed from XLR's from the mixer, or if one has a signal out XLR (As will be the case with the Mackie SM450 mentioned) - solder up a phased XLR lead and use that between the out of the first cab and the input of the second. Set them up a distance apart, both toed in towards your signer. This should nicely point them into opposite back corners of the stage or thereabouts. The trick works because a mic is a single sound-receiving source whereas your signer has two ears a distance apart which can work very well independently. The mic receives two signals from the monitors in antiphase which means it feeds back very little.[/quote] I know it sometimes gets touted but my experience of phase reverse-type tricks has not been good. Your monitor/mic/singer positioning has to be accurate and remain constant. And although common sense says it shouldn't matter, I've had early reflections from multiple speakers apparently stuff things right up. End result is things on stage have sounded freaky and wrong in a way that's hard to get to grips with. It's useful having a phase-reverse switch built into a monitor system as something to try, but it's going to be very case-by-case. But if you've had experience otherwise, then of course I respect that and I'm glad it works for you

[quote name='TheButler' post='668323' date='Nov 28 2009, 02:49 PM']I've had crap both, can't say there is any correlation between gender and sound engineer goodness.[/quote] I've very rarely encountered them. Each time they've been very good. I assume this is because for women, they have to be pretty keen/competent to make it in a male-dominated arena. One could also argue that traditional 'female' skills, like good verbal communication and empathy, are pretty useful for the job in hand! Of course there'll always be men who're great at that and women who are lousy.