Mark King to Markbass

[EBS_freak]

16 hours ago, la bam said:

For those of you who cut at 45hz etc, whilst being fine on stage, how does it affect the foh sound when using subs etc? I'm just curious whether below 45hz is needed for pa purposes?

Get a sine generator and listen to 45 Hz and see what you think. Now consider that live music generally doesn't utilise things as nice as sinewaves. Imagine a smearing of sub between 30 and 50 hz coming out of the foh mixing with all the rest of the complex harmonics that is going on. It's kind of akin to mashing your left hand on the bottom octave of a piano whilst trying to pick out individual pitches that aren't clashing with everything else that band is playing...

[Chienmortbb]

14 hours ago, Al Krow said:

In my experience FOH sound engineers will start cutting the bass** at 120 Hz given half a chance! My preference would be for them not to be cutting the bass above 60Hz (1st fundamental of low B) or above 80 Hz for 4 string basses (= 1st fundamental of low E).

Thumpinator cuts at 28Hz and below, so is literally just removing sub sonic crud that no one hears. If you put at the start of your chain (as recommended by the maker) it also means that your compressor, if you're using one, is not needing to expend effort dealing with compressing high energy bottom end. Nice little piece of "always on" kit on my pedal board.

Btw your DG M900 has a built in hpf - but no details from what frequency it is cutting or the steepness of the cut.

** as opposed to the kick drum

I tried a thumpinator and saw considerable cone movement that suggests to me that  the -3db point is set too low. I have only modelled it but to me 35 Hz and up works best.

As for built in HPF, ant manufacturer should  disclose the frequency and slope of the HPF. 

[BigRedX]

6 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Bingo. Music no. Jurassic Park in the cinema, hell yes. (Although wouldn't want it in the theme tune either).

IME maybe not in the cinema either, or at least not when there is dialogue too. I find that excessive low bass tends to swamp everything and make it really difficult for me to tell what the actors are saying a lot of the time. 

On the other hand with the generally terrible standard of most modern film scripts, maybe we should just sit back and enjoy the audio visual spectacle and not worry about what the actors are saying. Pretty soon it'll be like the original silent films with caption cards, so we can get the finer points of the plot.

[krispn]

It does feel like there can be a misconception about lows and low end the boosting in is a good thing but it’s such a powerful thing. The singer and default sound man (I refer to him as a volume guy not sound guy for reasons which would be apparent in the room!!) and he will later in a gig start to nudge the bass into the sub in the regular venue we play and I’ve had a word that it ruins the sound.  I’ve tried to suggest some more useful eq nudges that might ‘punch’ rather than swamp the bass/low end 

[franzbassist]

Some serious thread derailment has occurred.....😯

[Cuzzie]

6 minutes ago, franzbassist said:

Some serious thread derailment has occurred.....😯

True, but we established early on that neither Mark is an oil painting so we moved on

[EBS_freak]

40 minutes ago, franzbassist said:

Some serious thread derailment has occurred.....😯

Little Mark Vintage -

center frequency 68 Hz; level ±16 dB

So, no shelving, no word of Q or slope... can't really tell if it's muddy or not... but interesting to see the if you are cut the bass on this amp, it's certainly way above the sub range!

 

Back on track?

 

EDIT: Does Mark King actually use bass (let a lone sub bass?)? He's more in the staplegun frequency range...?

Edited August 1, 2019 by EBS_freak

[Al Krow]

Thread summary

The new Little Mark Vintage is an improvement on the old LM3 in terms of EQ centre points, but is not as good as the new Marcus Limited range (which really does nail the EQ including providing semi-para mids).

Mark King's only real influence on the Vintage amp is likely to be getting a cheque. But hey, why not? Which of us would turn that down. Or to have been one of the most influential bassists of our generation?  

Some folk see red (and gold) when they look at Markbass gear.

HPF can be a very good thing.

[EBS_freak]

Other pretty amp candidates...?

Markbass F1

Phil Jones Bass D200

 

Yay/nay?

[Cuzzie]

PJB - always pretty

[stewblack]

31 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Thread summary

The new Little Mark Vintage is an improvement on the old LM3 in terms of EQ centre points, but is not as good as the new Marcus Limited range (which really does nail the EQ including providing semi-para mids).

Mark King's only real influence on the Vintage amp is likely to be getting a cheque. But hey, why not? Which of us would turn that down. Or to have been one of the most influential bassists of our generation?  

Some folk see red (and gold) when they look at Markbass gear.

HPF can be a very good thing.

I think everyone who contributed to the thread ought also to contribute a paragraph or two to the thread summary so people like me get a more balanced view of what's been said. 

Maybe a pro rata arrangement based on the number of words each has added to the thread itself. 

[lemmywinks]

Markbass F1 is a great looking amp, I wanted one purely based on the looks (and slight size/weight loss). I wonder what the limited edition version would look like with gold knobs?

Edited August 1, 2019 by lemmywinks

[Cuzzie]

OK

To get a decent sound, you have to know your environment, use your ears, or someone else’s if yours are rubbish, and tweak dependent on this and not numbers.

To get some form of signature or endorsing deal, you have to be bloody good, and if you want there is no harm in taking what is offered, it puts dinner on the table.

Markbass look like pavement pizza after a night of jäger bombs, absinth and a dodgy kebab.

(Disclaimer - I think I am beautiful but have a face for radio, even my mum said that)

[EBS_freak]

3 minutes ago, lemmywinks said:

Markbass F1 is a great looking amp, I wanted one purely based on the looks (and slight size/weight loss). I wonder what the limited edition version would look like with gold knobs?

That's the one I was thinking of - more so trying to prove that just because an amp is red, doesn't immediately make it ugly!

You can keep the gold knobs though!

[EBS_freak]

1 minute ago, Cuzzie said:

To get some form of signature or endorsing deal, you have to be bloody good, and if you want there is no harm in taking what is offered, it puts dinner on the table.

Would disagree with this... you don't have to be bloody good - you just have to have some sort of notoriety. There's plenty of players that can hardly string two notes together (but that's another thread... or maybe not given the directions this one seems to take!) but have a signature xyz. 

[EBS_freak]

16 minutes ago, Cuzzie said:

PJB - always pretty

Umm.... not for me.

[Al Krow]

2 hours ago, lemmywinks said:

Markbass F1 is a great looking amp, I wanted one purely based on the looks (and slight size/weight loss). I wonder what the limited edition version would look like with gold knobs?

I see a trade coming on. @fretmeister was looking to replace the gold knobs on his 'Iron Man' MB amp.

He assures me that it is nothing to do with group peer pressure. Honest guv.

Edited August 1, 2019 by Al Krow

[Cuzzie]

16 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Would disagree with this... you don't have to be bloody good - you just have to have some sort of notoriety. There's plenty of players that can hardly string two notes together (but that's another thread... or maybe not given the directions this one seems to take!) but have a signature xyz. 

‘Good’ doesn’t have to be playing, could be good at marketing yourself, image, persona etc. As you have eluded to

[Cuzzie]

15 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Umm.... not for me.

Cross between Tron and the millennium falcon and Moss Isley

Love it

[EBS_freak]

Oh and I always appreciated the design of the SWR Headlite and Amplite (shame they didn’t really deliver the goods)

[EBS_freak]

52 minutes ago, Cuzzie said:

Cross between Tron and the millennium falcon and Moss Isley

Love it

Looks like it was thrown together from components from the parts bin (the 70s parts bin at that). But I guess some people may appreciate that kinda thing.

[Cuzzie]

6 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Looks like it was thrown together from components from the parts bin (the 70s parts bin at that). But I guess some people may appreciate that kinda thing.

Like the old Ford Cortina or Vauxhall’s chevette estate the family used to have

Edited August 1, 2019 by Cuzzie

[EBS_freak]

Just out of interest, what amp (guitar or bass) is an absolute work of art, visuals wise?

For me, the THD Bivalve was always the one to beat... I know the Jules Birdcage amp follows a similar vibe... but it just doesn’t tick the boxes.

For bass, and admittedly it’s a combo - but the earlier B15s really are a work of art imho.

They both go away from the whole steel folded box vibe so I guess that’s why they largely appeal. It’s otherwise difficult to make such a functional thing look damn cool... but it’s the choice of mulled aluminium from Darkglass (clearly somewhat Apple inspired) that really bucks the trend for me.

 

[EBS_freak]

2 minutes ago, Cuzzie said:

Like the old Ford Cortina or Vauxhall’s chevette estate the family used to have

How fitting that it’s got the vinyl roof too.

[EBS_freak]

If you zoom in on the side... I'm sure thats a PJB vent on the C pillar.