mazdah

1 hour ago, Mornats said:

I have the Behringer copy of this that I got mainly for guitar. What settings work well for you on bass? I've not really set it up for bass yet.

CS-2 or CS-3 copy? They are quite different. 

I have Sustain at 2 o'lock, Attack on max, level to unity gain - Juan Alderete settings

For me  it would be a Boss CS-2 Compression Sustainer.

For 20 years of bassplaying I hated compressors, never used them, never needed, never liked how they affect the sound and the feel of the instrument. Until CS-2. WOW. 

My number two would be Xotic Bass BB Preamp. My favorite OD combined with my number three - analog Boss CEB-3. 

It's an older version (first half of the nineties most likely) of current 500W SVT-410HE. It has four speakers of an old 400W SVT-810E, just like the modern one has four speakers of modernSVT-810E

I wouldn't dare to gig with a 7-PRO thru this cab, but I do with SVT III Non Pro and the cab works fantastic and sounds great. It is a perfect match for SVT-III and should be as good with 3-PRO. 

EDIT: 
It is quite heavy since like all Ampeg cabs from the first half of the nineties it is not made of plywood. But the sound IS there and I dare to say - it sounds little bit nicer than the newer version. 

Whoa I'm in deep shock.

I had EBMM SR 5, EBMM SUB5 and I currently have EBMM Sterling Classic 4.  And all of them gave me the same big problem - they do have THE PUNCH. They are LOUD. They are FAT. I had to fight them all the time - no matter how light I touch the strings I hear and feel EVERY note up in front, like a kick in the face.

Whey I play my P-bass I'm sitting great in the mix, giving the solid foundation to the band. With the Music Man bass... me and the drummer are the band, the guitars are lost. 

I use SVT III non pro with older 200W version of SVT-410HE. I really like this setup, plenty loud, sits great in the band mix. 

I also liked 3PRO, but III is more focused and not as dirty. 

Here is the manual. 

https://ampeg.com/support/files/Discontinued User Manuals/SVT-III/SVT-III Manual.pdf

There is one in Poland for sale.

http://ampbroker.pl/en/head/712-ampeg-svt-iip.html?search_query=ampeg+svt&results=48

The Marshall website no longer has  Eden listed as a brand.

Looks like they quietly pulled the plug.

I think there is SOMETHING going on, since Warwick Gnome is essentially THE SAME amp as Elf. 

On 06/11/2020 at 14:57, 4&5 String said:

I agree I think all of the Thunderfunk models were great. Made extremely well.  The 420 were the early one's. He continued the AMP Gibson who bought out AMP in 88 I think. When thunderfunk bought them out around 2000. He made them better and improved the sound. AMP was a few members from SWR who designed it so it had a little bit of SWR in it. And a lot of EDEN. SWR and EDEN never liked each other when SWR pulled away from EDEN who was making their cabinets. That's why EDEN came out with the David series while SWR had the Goliath. Get the resemblance? David and Goliath. Sorry for getting away to far from the amps. But again I really liked Thunderfunk.

I know that story To be honest, I was so hooked up by that when I got my AMP few years ago, that I end up with corresponding stack: 

AMP-BH-420
SWR PB-200 - first SWR model, unfortunately mine is a little older - from 1987
Eden D-410T - "original David" - unfortunately newer one - with golden horn and plastic recessed handles. There is one older - looking just like Goliath - dirt cheap nearby, but the thing is so damn heavy, that I won't be able to take two to the gigs
SWR Goliath JR II - I'm afraid not many original " Made by Eden Goliaths I" survived to this day. 

This setup made me ultra happy and ultra worried at the same time. The amps are perfectly serviceable nowadays, but there is no way to find replacement speakers or recone parts so I must be careful   

No gigs in the future because of the covid outbreak, so I took them all home, to make neighbors mad...
Dragging 40,5kg Eden to the fourth floor almost killed me. 

100% Solid stare: AMP BH-420, which is also the best solid state amp ever created (Thunderfunk I consider as the same amp, with tweaks).

hybrid: I think I loved my SVT-3PRO, my ABM300 and currently I love my SWR PB-200. 

After many years with Ampeg and brief affair with Ashdown I went nuts and got myself an SWR amp with ancient Eden d410t (original David) cabinet. 
 

Couldn’t be happier! Want more SWRs!!!

I’d go for Vietnamese, or older than 1999 USA: us made Ampeg cabs from 1999 to 2006 were from osb board; Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean are true plywood. 

12 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Really? SM57 isn't the best mic in the world for a bass cab. It's got a peak at 6kHz where there is little baas guitar and drops off quite steeply after 200Hz which does include some of the bass energy you would probably want to capture. Also unless the stage area is big the fewer mics being used, the more controllable the FoH sound is.

Certainly it’s not the best, but it’s way better (for me) than  AKG D112 - since this microphone and my bass cab are both a little mid-shy. I use flatwound strings, lots of drives and fuzz, so I never reach above 3kHz and my cab is quite heavy on the lows (Ampeg SVT410Hlf) so the mic compensates a little. Apart from low-end loss, SM57 has quite flat characteristics in spectrum that interests me the most. 

Of course they are WAY better microphones for bass, but I consider SM57 as a “Swiss knife” - good enough for guitar, vocals (Tito and Tarantula singer uses 57 instead of 58), bass and even kick-drum (seriously!). For live applications, where there is no need for details and no need for bass-heavy sound I think SM57 is great. 

if the stage is small - in most clubs - I get better sound and Better overall mix with band without FoH at all. 

21 hours ago, BigRedX said:

The reason to go FRFR (or as close to that as current economical designs allow) is so that you are EQ'ing just for your sound and not partly to compensate for the shortcomings of your traditional bass cabs. 

Unless you have no PA support for the bass, then the contribution your cabs make to what the audience hears will be close to zero - after all when was the last time you saw a bass cab on stage mic'd up and knew 100% that the microphone was the only source of bass guitar in the PA? 

If you give the PA a post-EQ DI feed from your amp in order to have some benefit from the tone of the amp (or valve drive etc.) then much of the FoH EQ being applied will be a mixture of trying to replicate the sound of the cans on stage against fighting the amp's EQ setting to deliver a decent bass guitar sound FoH.

If you DI pre-EQ or even before the amp itself then all your expensive bass rig is doing as acting as a personal monitor.

Well I always wonder why they always insist using DI and after few minutes of struggle I say Once again “hey, try putting SM57 in front of my cab” - and after that the only knobs FoH engineer has to turn are gain and volume on their mixing desk… 

Helix, Kemper, Fractal, Line6, Zoom .... I've heard that before. When Zoom multiFX were relased (I rememver 505/506 models) the predictions were the same. And everyone was saying, that the quality of amp sims from those effects were so close and so great to the original, that you won't need an amp anymore. 

They are convenient, having many good and useable sounds in single, lightweight unit saves space, money, energy and time. But when it comes to PURE sound quality, richness and dynamics I guess we need another 10-20 years of intensive R&D development to get close to an old, beaten up, 30 years old SWR amp. For overdriven tube amps like SVT, Mesa D180/400 or B-15 I'd say another 10-15. 

23 minutes ago, stewblack said:

As you say let's leave it here, I can't debate with someone who can publicly say something this silly. Unless it's a joke in which case 😂😂😂

No joke here. For the price of HB instrument you can buy 4 packs of strings. Or 2 packs of strings and 2 instrument cables. Or nice octave pedal by Boss, MXR or Valeton with pack of strings. 
That’s good value for money.
  

11 hours ago, stewblack said:

Interesting reading the above how differently we can all see similar things. I still see cheap or modern lightweight stuff denigrated and treated with contempt often by folk who don't actually use it. Yet the last post speaks of Harley Benton hype! 

I would love these quality, inexpensive instruments to get the recognition they deserve. Price tags don't interest me unless something is astonishingly good or astonishingly poor value for money. 

Anyway I don't sacrifice anything to get the sound I want, but I have made decisions which take into account weight and size. As a working musician I have no choice but to use the cheapest possible car. So my three cab Trace Elliot stack had to go. 

There is no quality in Harley Benton instruments other than low quality and poorest value for money.

I was curious enough to buy their 51 precision and had to bypass the volume and tone pots to get some kind of low and thin signal pass through from the weak pickup. The fretwork was poor, the body had two sets of holes for pickguard. I also tried their JB and it looked and felt like a Squier VM but before “final touch” - sanding and smoothing the curves of the wood. Terrible. Maybe I had bad luck, twice. But I wouldn’t buy that as a tool and expect others to pay me for the “job done“. It’s like serving premade microwaved dishes in the restaurant.

But we are drifting away from the topic, so we either end here or move to bass or food section  

4 hours ago, mcnach said:

I get it, but I would not put Valeton as the AliExpress of the pedal world.

Some cheap pedals are just cheap. Some cheap pedals are actually quite alright, and Valeton seems good enough to me. I've got the OC-10 and the envelope filter... Katfish I think it's called, and I can't fault them... I'm not too poor to have to worry about the price of pedals, but the Valeton OC-10 does a great job with a small footprint and that's what I needed, not a specific label.

To suggest that those who like them just don't have discerning enough ears is a little funny, but whatever makes you happy.

I admit, maybe I overreacted since I'm getting kind of frustraded seeing that a lot of players sacrifice the quality and tone for pure convinience. Today I got Peterson tuner for the price you could get a beaten-up Boss TU-2 few years ago.

I see pro SWR or Eden gear people are unable to sell for pennies, just because the amp weights 10-15kg not 2-5kg when indirect comparison those amps will deliver way better tone through cabiet and most of the time through DI than most modern lightweights.

I stupidly tried to sell my AMP BH-420 dirt cheap - without any succes - and I know I can put it against any modern produced solid state amp and deliver clearer tone, better dynamics, better headroom and less noise (mechanical since it is passive cooled and electrical). 

I see a lot of great instruments people are unable to sell, just because there is Sire or Harley-Benton hype. 

We should aim for delivering the best, not the easiest  

4 hours ago, Al Krow said:

And exactly how do you know it has poor quality and lacks durability? It's just a ridiculous statement to be making, unless you are basing it on your own or others' actual experience. 

In fact the octave pedal with the worst reputation of the three you mentioned (Boss, MXR, Valeton) is the MXR. It was well known for being noisy and it seems to me a big reason for the release of the latest model to deal with that particular issue.

Oh look here's another noisy MXR pedal...

https://www.sevenstring.org/threads/mxr-10-band-eq-is-making-tons-of-noise-and-popping-sounds.332880/

It's been replaced with a more recent (silver version) "and it’s been upgraded with noise-reduction circuitry,"

Please don't assume that just because you pay less for bass gear, it's automatically going to be worse!

As I stated above, my reaction might not be totally fair. But I've never had any problems with MXR products and while it's not my favorite brand, I consider them solid and high quality.

Also - many problems with effect pedals are caused by poor and cheap power supplies - especially those without transformers inside (the ones that look like phone chargers) or daisy-chaining. Maybe I'm just lucky, because my main dirt pedal for now is Pro Co Juggernaut, well known for being the worst and most problematic dirt pedal ever created for bass - and mine is dead quiet in operation and switching (most problems other people had with loud pop when switching). 

But I also use some cheap gear - like my Behringer monitors - without any issues.

I also have some riddiculously overpriced and very low quality gear like Sovtek Big Muff (black russian - I paid about 50 pounds 10 years ago for brand new and it was a fair price, sold it for 35 and got it back for 100 recently) or Sovtek BassBalls which I love but I don't use because of quality issues. 

In conclusion - my apologies if I offended anyone. As mentioned above - I just thing we should not sacrifice tone and quality for convenience - and money saving    

2 hours ago, mcnach said:

 

So Valeton's copy is a rip-off but MXR's copy isn't... ok, got it.

 

I was referring to the quality rather than being a copy. 

For example you have many version of Jazz Bass: vintage Fender (old Boss), modern build Lakland (MXR) and of course you can buy from aliexpress (valeton) - for the price of 5 packs of strings  

it’s up to you whether you can hear the difference and pay for the quality and durability or choose cheap (even good sounding) gear. 
 

for me - I’m too poor to buy cheap. 

MXR M280 Vintage Bass Octave is made as a copy of vintage, MIJ BOSS OC-2 borrowed from Janek Gwizdala. 

I'd rather choose MXR rather than cheap, chinese Valeton OC-2 rip-off. 

My friend is selling here his Euro 5, god how I love this bass. 

He is a metal guy, so we are both surprised every time I play this Spector I get instant "80's Pink Floyd sound"

I highly recommend this bass.

Great condition, amazing possibilities, lots of additional stuff. 

I really liked greasebucket in Am. Special P I had at home for a few days. Can't see anything wrong in it.

I have vintage spec. P with .1 cap and it's unusable mud city when tone knob is closed for more than 1/3 of range - with a lot of volume loss. I've modified it to more modern specification (.47) and was much better, but eventually few months ago got back to original - I love this bass just as it is  I use it with 10-years old LaBellas 760 FL. 

But removing sould be fairly easy - just throw away everything that is not a pot or cable and put .47 cap in the right place

The capacitor costs less than a single bubble gum, you can buy a few and experiment  

Jap Fenders are tricky. 

Their build quality is always top notch, but sometimes you can find a bass with basswod body - especially in their 62 and 57 reissues with small tuners. What can I say - basswood is OK, but in my opinion a little dull sounding in classic P or J.

It's also lighweight to the point where bass looses it's ballance on strap (getting neck heavy) - that's why they used lighweight tunning keys. 

Best sounding modern all tube Amepg Amp.