How do you use an active preamp?

[EJWW]

I've a super duper Mayones super Jazz bass. It has an East Uni preamp which can be bypassed. I love this bass. 

 

But I've been playing for nearly 30 years, countless different types of basses, and I've come to the conclusion I just don't 'get' active preamps on basses. 

 

I think the East preamp is a good one, and the Nordstrand pickups and bass in general is just excellent. But I only run the bass passive because it's just simpler, particularly on gigs. The Uni has got a traditional passive tone control and a blend. This seems to be just fine. So what am I missing out on by not using the active bit?

 

How do you get the most out of using an on board preamp? How not to keep messing around with the variable mid control? 

 

I guess what I want to know is how to get the most from this terrific instrument. It has a great natural, passive sound but by not utilising the preamp am I missing out on an even better aspect of it?

 

All tips and opinions appreciated 👍

 

[itu]

Start from the hi-Z (high impedance) sound. Then try to achieve the same with the preamp. If you love the hi-Z sound, you can tweak it with lo-Z (low impedance, "active") settings, like adding some more bass, or enhancing mids. 

 

Play with the settings! Mark King said in one magazine interview that he doesn't know what the adjustments do, he just turns them to the max. (Sure he knows, but the story was fun and a good reminder that do whatever you like.) 

 

Another reminder: 

If your amp or effects love one (hi-Z) or the other (lo-Z) output, use the one that works better. I have said it many times here that especially fuzz/OD/dist as well as some compressors work in a different way depending on the output impedance of the bass. Use your ears. 

Edited yesterday at 07:35 by itu

[Doctor J]

I tend to run no EQ on the amp so start with everything flat and adjust to taste for what I'm playing, with no preconceptions of how it "should" be set. It depends on the room, my mood and the song. I use as little as possible to get the sound I'm after and I'm as open to cutting frequencies as I am to boosting. I have a few 2-band EQs on basses, often I will cut both low and high to accentuate the mids.

 

If the bass sounds great with everything flat, you win, just leave it alone. If it doesn't, then the EQ is there to help you win. In short, let your ears guide you to the sound you're after and don't think you need to boost the bejesus out of everything just because you can.

Edited yesterday at 07:56 by Doctor J

[RichT]

Lots of people appear to think that the starting point for active controls is that they should be maxed out, and that seems to be why Stingrays for example have a reputation in some quarters as being ridiculously bright and trebley. They're only ridiculously bright if you turn the treble up to a ridiculous setting! 

 

You should always start with the controls centred and work slowly from there. In practice I usually end up with a slight bass boost, then on a 2 band eq I'll use the treble like a tone control to brighten/darken to suit the song. This often means my treble ends up below centre in a 'cut' poisition. 

 

If you have a 3 band then the Mid control is your "poke through the mix" control. Turn the mids up to be more prominent in the mix, turn them back to sit back inside it. Nothing wrong in changing that from song to song either. When I have a 3 band I do tend more to set the treble once and then leave it alone, and then the Mid becomes my 'tone' control instead. No point in making things unnecessarily complicated. 

 

 

[JapanAxe]

4 minutes ago, RichT said:

… start with the controls centred and work slowly from there. In practice I usually end up with a slight bass boost, then on a 2 band eq I'll use the treble like a tone control to brighten/darken to suit the song. This often means my treble ends up below centre in a 'cut' poisition. 

 

If you have a 3 band then the Mid control is your "poke through the mix" control. Turn the mids up to be more prominent in the mix, turn them back to sit back inside it. Nothing wrong in changing that from song to song either. When I have a 3 band I do tend more to set the treble once and then leave it alone, and then the Mid becomes my 'tone' control instead. No point in making things unnecessarily complicated. 

 

 

This is pretty much what I do on my one active bass. I tend to prefer passives but this approach works for me.

[Jack]

It's really useful to have a volume control that doesn't affect the tone. 

[gjones]

I have a John East J-Retro fitted to my Jazz Bass. 

 

I love a bit of low mid, which I feel gives punch and definition. When I go through a, front of house, PA I will turn up the low mids on my Jazz to prevent the sound engineer giving me a muddy sound out front.

 

Of course I could change the whole character of my bass, with various options available with the J-Retro, but I mostly keep things pretty simple.

 

I also like the ability to walk out into the room, while the band is playing, and change my tone to suit the room, without touching my amp controls.

[lemmywinks]

If you are happy without it then leave it bypassed, the Uni Pre is pretty transparent (think there's a jumper on the board which can change it to a pre shape so check this first) so it should be a very similar sound without cutting/boosting.

 

With it engaged you can just do all your EQing on the bass itself which is my preference, the Uni Pre does have extra internal jog wheels so you can set the individual pickup gains, upper and lower bass frequencies and how high the treble frequency goes. Basically you can boost bass without adding boominess and boost treble without it sounding too thin. Once you have those set it's a very comprehensive preamp and offers some incredible sounds so definitely worth spending some time getting used to it.

[Delberthot]

I begin with volume all the way up, balance slightly towards the bridge and bass & treble centered. I then set my preamp pedal to how I like it.

 

The EQ on the bass is just used to make small adjustments.

[Mrbigstuff]

12 hours ago, EJWW said:

by not utilising the preamp am I missing out on an even better aspect of it?

Nope

[Jolltax]

I love my active basses with all the whiz-bang controls but every time I travel/ move with my bass(es) and set up somewhere new it sounds nothing like it did at home.  I then spend ages fiddling with all the buttons and switches and getting annoyed with myself because I can't make it sound right. 

 

Halfway through the session everyone else in the band turns up the volume and are playing so loud that I can't hear myself playing anyway so my 'tone' obsession is a bit irrelevant

 

 

 

 

 

[HeadlessBassist]

I run both passive and active basses, and I have to say, even after thirty-five years of playing active basses, setting up passive basses has taught me how to eq my sound into an amplifier a lot more. So that's where I start - I set 'my' sound on the amplifier, then adjust the gain between passive and active instruments. On an active bass like my Elite Jazz, I'll only add a smidge of boost above centre on the treble and bass on the preamp, leaving the mids centered.

 

You really only need to play with preamp mids if the mids are missing from your sound. If you've ever played on a Sire bass, the sound is almost too 'scooped', so the cure is to boost the mids just a touch and do the opposite with the mids frequency. Very small adjustments can make a significant difference to your sound. Remember, adding mids can make it easier for you to hear yourself, but the more mids you add, the harsher it sounds to the audience.

 

And as Jolltax mentioned, it's all academic anyway, because once you've added two singers, two acoustic guitars, a digital piano, an electric guitar and drums, your sound is buried anyway, so it really doesn't matter! Also, ask even the most experienced pro performer in your band/show about your sound who's not a bass player and you'll always get the answer, "it sounds like a bass."

Edited 5 hours ago by HeadlessBassist

[EJWW]

23 minutes ago, HeadlessBassist said:

And as Jolltax mentioned, it's all academic anyway, because once you've added two singers, two acoustic guitars, a digital piano, an electric guitar and drums, your sound is buried anyway, so it really doesn't matter! Also, ask even the most experienced pro performer in your band/show about your sound who's not a bass player and you'll always get the answer, "it sounds like a bass."

This is what motivates my preference to using passive, and my comfort in using my P bass as well. Once everything is turned up I feel like all the knobs just 'make' me fiddle with them!

 

The Stingray I previously used really confused me as well, with no centre detents available on the eq knobs I genuinely didn't know where 'normal' was. 

 

I guess I'm just trying to avoid being a bass-luddite and want to get the best out of my gear but I suspect I'll probably be keeping the passive mode selected in the long run.

[Jack]

2 minutes ago, EJWW said:

The Stingray I previously used really confused me as well, with no centre detents available on the eq knobs I genuinely didn't know where 'normal' was. 

Why does that matter? 😉

[HeadlessBassist]

Agreed re your Stingray, EJWW. The lack of a centre detent on the controls means you can never get the same sound twice. I had the same problem with a piezo Stingray, and even moreso with an ACG Recurve with a Parametric EQ. It was utterly baffling and I could never get a consistent sound that I liked again.

 

Also, different preamp makers choose different frequencies. If you know Status basses well, you know that the frequencies are very well chosen, as you can run the treble and bass full on and it brings the instrument to life with no harshness or boominess. Fenders tend to be a little harsher, so I go more carefully and just boost a little.

 

I did have one of the Mayones Jabba Jazzes for a while and it was quite a nice setup as standard. Again, you needed to be quite measured with how much boost you added.

 

A lot also depends on what kind of music you're playing. In the live shows I do, I often need a lot of subtlety and control for certain numbers, so I can palm mute with no booms and play gently and with great tactility at times, so a passive bass is ideal.

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by HeadlessBassist

[Doctor J]

40 minutes ago, HeadlessBassist said:

Agreed re your Stingray, EJWW. The lack of a centre detent on the controls means you can never get the same sound twice.

 

This doesn't really make sense. A passive bass doesn't have detents either, would you say the range of detent-free travel on a Precision tone pot means you can never get the same tone twice?

 

A two band Stingray has bass boost only, along with treble cut and boost. The way I set them up was to use the grub screw on the knob as a marker. For the bass knob, turn it all the way down, no boost, and have the grub screw pointing straight up, from the playing perspective. Then you know when it's flat and, if you boost, by how much. For the treble knob, I move it to roughly half way, then set the grub screw pointing straight up, from the playing perspective. You're roughly flat, at that point and it's very easy to see whether you're cutting or boosting and by how much. Very simple. FWIW, I would set passive basses up the same way, the grub screw pointing up when the controls are up full, i.e. flat, not cutting. That way you can see very easily how you are set on any bass, passive or active whether you have detents or not.

[Jack]

Actually I think there's a small amount of cut in the bass control as well. About 80/20 IIRC. It's a "spirit of the law, letter of the law" thing. The control is actually boost only, but the whole circuit has a lot of bass loss, so you can still use the bass control to cut bass by not boosting as much,

 

My point was just that it doesn't really matter where flat is, I'm still turning the controls until it sounds good. 

Edited 2 hours ago by Jack

[HeadlessBassist]

Interesting points both, but I agree with EJWW's Music Man point. Personally, I like consistency. I want the same sound every time I plug in. Yes, I often turn the tone control down by 50% when I solo the bridge pickup of my Jazzes or American Performer Mustang, but you can tell where you are in that case, by the angle the white line is pointing on the control.