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I'm going to regret this, but, erm...what is meant by "Heft"...?


lou24d53

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9 hours ago, lou24d53 said:

Ok, I think I've got it and I think it's pretty much what I imagined it to be before I ask...so, next question...

If say I'd just purchased a Quilter BB800...which I have...and I decided to pair this with, say a Barefaced Super Twin...which I am currently mulling over...one would imagine that pairing capable of rather considerable Heft......or would that offer considerable Oooomph (Umph!) instead......or is "Heft" greater or lesser than or equal to "Oooomph / Umph"...?!

It's all too confusing, I think we need a chart to define such terms. 

 

I have a similar setup - Quilter thru a couple of Big Babys. It'll do it for you.....

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11 hours ago, lou24d53 said:

Ok, I think I've got it and I think it's pretty much what I imagined it to be before I ask...so, next question...

 

Whoa!

You don’t think you’re getting away with that, do you?

Don’t think you can wander in with your contentious questions and then swan off, satisfied, while the debate’s still raging.

We’ll get another week out of this at least.

Right then. 

You asked us to help define heft and you’re going to bloody well sit there while we define it for you at least three hundred different ways.

Then you can ask your follow up.

And that better be “and is ‘heft’ any good for metal?”....

 

Lol 😆 

 

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Oh, and the best thing for heft isn’t an Ampeg SVT and 8x10.

Turns out it’s a Kirby vacuum cleaner*

Who’d a thunk it, eh?

 

 

*this might make more sense if you’ve been following the whole Dyson-in-his-own-adverts thread.

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11 hours ago, Teebs said:

 

Heft - heft is very much like making love to a beautiful woman. You've got to feel it in your gentleman's region. Breathe softly and gently. And give every inch of it your loving thrust. And make sure you've got a nice wet sponge.

Swiss Toni

Exactly. Heft = Weight in the trousers. Like having a lob-on.

"Oh baby, you so FINE an' hefty today!"

 

Gonna try to git that in the urban dictionary...

Edited by Ricky 4000
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15 minutes ago, Skinnyman said:

Wow.

”like having a lob-on”?

Aren't you just a silver-tongued cavalier.......? 😀

I'm having a weekend of talking jive. Not like the BeeGees. More like, authentic.

I admit "lob-on" was a bit of a slipup. Must try harder [oo err]. 💪

 

 

Jiveass m*****f***** disrespectin' me an sheet...

Edited by Ricky 4000
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here's my take - you cannot get or have 'heft' without shifting serious volumes of air. Lots of punchy mid-tone doesn't get you 'heft'. Top never gets it. And it's not about super-lows either. Just shift big air with pitch to it - so it has note values, not just a big breeze. That, to me, is heft.

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It’s a propensity for a signal path from bass to cabinet to support or accentuate the 60hz to 200hz region of the audio spectrum. Either by boosting these frequencies or by dipping out other higher frequencies. (Sometimes attenuating areas of the audio spectrum gives rise to the perception of boost elsewhere)

An amplifier and cabinets ability to deliver powerful sound in the 60hz region will certain help to accentuate the effect. Some think that the ability for an amplifier  to deliver sub-30hz is where heft is, but considering the Ampeg 810 is considered a ‘hefty’ (lol) cabinet - it doesn’t really produce much below 50hz.

I like to think of it as the slam you get from a mic’d up kick drum, whose fundamentals tend to be around the 100hz region (though lower frequencies exist in the sound)

Another consideration is that SFX’s Thumpinator that removes all frequencies below 30hz doesn’t remove perceived ‘heft’.

So, given you have an amplifier that is capable of delivering powerful transients in that audio region and a cabinet that helps to accentuate said region you will perceive heft.

Finally my though for the day.. EQ on amps. Ever noticed that some will have centres that are like 40hz, 500hz, 1khz, 4khz etc? Well yes there is over lap, but for me so many amplifiers don’t focus in on what I feel is a very important region; that of the 100hz to 3-400hz region where our important 2nd harmonics live and also that all needed weight in the sound.

Parametric EQ is where it’s at for me! I can add heft to a bass sound without an amp or cabinet.

For the “D Class is evil” folk, I’ve always thought that a lot of these amplifiers appear to sound clearer and more aggressive in the higher mids and lower treble frequencies. Given my point above, I wonder if this is one of the reasons that certain D Class amps are perceived as “less hefty”. The heft is there, more it’s being masked - our ears work logarithmically and are way more sensitive to treble frequencies.

 

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5 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

@Dood thanks buddy. Excellent (as usual). 

Lots of great EQ wisdom there, too, to mull on. I may need to buy @dave_bass5 's Q/Strip after all! :)

The @Tech21NYC Q/Strip would be an excellent choice as I found in my own review I was able to add that kick drum slam to my slap bass notes. I still want one. 

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Then we have speakers themselves. Some have again the “perception” of extra low end, yet it is either a ‘bump’ in the low mid or bass frequencies or a dip in the upper midrange. I actually found that my now favourite cabinet isn’t as ‘flat response’ as some I have owned (which were in no doubt exceptional) but it was actually the accentuated low mids I was looking for on stage. But I didn’t want to dial in the extra bump earlier in my signal chain with EQ as it went direct to PA. (That’s for FOH to deal with).

YMMV depending on signal path etc etc

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The other immediate action point for me is to change the EQ centre on my DG M900 for the low mids to 250 Hz or alternatively move the mids selector switch on my Ibby SR bass from 750 Hz to 250 Hz, so that I’ve got this key range you’ve identified covered by one or the other. Looking forward to giving that a try out when I’m back ‘at the ranch’ next week.

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I seen it written by folks on here when some advice is given about sound and mix and the reply was I’m a bass player not a sound engineer but having an understanding of what works in a mix for your instrument at least, will reap dividends. If you take this a step further and as @Dood says understanding the space in and around the kick drum frequency will help with the bass on a live mix for oomph/heft/thump etc  

A quick aside... I was laughed at in one of my bands for having a wee quick reference chart for helping manage feedback/resonance issues and lo and behold following a quite important gig and two sound men arguing over what the issue was I walk up and whip out my wee chart, diagnose problem and the issue was mitigated. My band now have a new found respect for my wee bit of laminated paper and when things aren’t going right in a sound check they all give me ‘the look’ and a nod. 

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Edited by krispn
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2 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

As much as I can in the woolly world of describing heft...

When I play a note, it feels tangible. It has a solid core.

Yes, that sounds ridiculous... but I don’t care.

Ok thanks. I was hoping it was "more than a feeling" to quote Boston... 

I do like the rationality of Dood's explanation; it has the solid core of being testable / replicable and on such fundamentals has humanity's progress been built these past four centuries. 

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3 hours ago, Al Krow said:

@Dood thanks buddy. Excellent (as usual). 

Lots of great EQ wisdom there, too, to mull on. I may need to buy @dave_bass5 's Q/Strip after all! :)

Haha my love hate pedal. Never has a pedal complicated my life so much. It can do amazing things with tone, but the problem is that it can only really do one at a time. I’m still trying to get my head around this. Think I’m getting there with it though. A small adjustment makes a big difference. 

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6 hours ago, Soledad said:

here's my take - you cannot get or have 'heft' without shifting serious volumes of air. Lots of punchy mid-tone doesn't get you 'heft'. Top never gets it. And it's not about super-lows either. Just shift big air with pitch to it - so it has note values, not just a big breeze. That, to me, is heft.

What about on recordings? Headphones etc? 

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21 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Ok thanks. I was hoping it was "more than a feeling" to quote Boston... 

I do like the rationality of Dood's explanation; it has the solid core of being testable / replicable and on such fundamentals has humanity's progress been built these past four centuries. 

It might, but it doesn’t fit my particular bill.

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2 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

As much as I can in the woolly world of describing heft...

When I play a note, it feels tangible. It has a solid core.

Yes, that sounds ridiculous... but I don’t care.

Not ridiculous at all. I played through an amp at a rehearsal space only this week and, reference my post above, it simply felt like it was choking my notes. It felt like the compressor was stuck on. No matter what I did, everything lacked kick. Yes it could do loud, but no real grunt. Hence my nod towards amplifiers actually being able to reproduce those important frequencies with some sort of gusto. The expense I suppose in creating said amplification is the attention to detail in not only the poweramp section but most definitely in a power supply that can provide for large transients  and recover very quickly to continue providing. Small lunchbox amplifiers with little space for heatsinking and suitable power supplies are up against physics in order to provide such heft! So, I agree.

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