Post or Pre EQ

[Bass-4-God]

Which option is considered to be better option concernig the EQ option of the direct out. Some heads give the option of either Post EQ or Pre EQ and some give the option of having both.

[4-string]

Originally Posted by Bass-4-God

Which option is considered to be better option concernig the EQ option of the direct out. Some heads give the option of either Post EQ or Pre EQ and some give the option of having both.

pre EQ usually works better IMO, but it depends on the soundman and the PA. With some PAs and in some rooms you just have to EQ a bit, and some guys just don't bother.

One guy who run sound in a club we play regularly always chooses post EQ when I ask him. He thinks it's pre EQ though, the knobs on Ashdown amps are a bit weird.

[wideload]

Personally, I'd rather give a pre DI to the board so he has a clean signal to foul up or bury. Not that I'm bitter...

[electracoyote]

Ask your sound guy.

If it's up to me, Pre every time. My EQ mix is for me on stage, but that may not translate so well to FOH. If I send an EQ'd signal to the board, just to be further EQ'd by the sound man, that seems redundant and can even have nasty results. I'd rather sound guy gets a clean signal, because he can hear the mix out there better than me, and he knows how to tweak the signal for a good FOH mix. Well, we can only hope.

[rockstarbassist]

Post or mike it up.
I actually enjoy the sound of my amp. :thu:

[wcriley]

I rarely have PA support. When I do have it, I couldn't send a pre-EQ signal if I wanted to. I have 3 band (w/sweepable mids) EQ built into my bass guitar.

I always send post-EQ from my amp. My cabs are reasonably flat, so I can get away with that. If the sound operator needs further EQ to fit the room, he's welcome to do so. But at least he has my "preferred" sound as a starting point.

[electracoyote]

Originally Posted by rockstarbassist

Post or mike it up.
I actually enjoy the sound of my amp. :thu:

On stage? Me too.

Everything changes out front.

[kraigo]

With many (dare I say most?) of us running multi-driver cabinets with crossovers, where do you put the mic? Just the woofer? Multiple mics? Space is usually at a premium, so moving back a foot or two to catch the speaker mix as it comes off the cab isn't an option. If I were using a tube amp with homogenous (e.g. an SVT cab) micing would make a lot more sense to me.

I don't do much EQ tweaking, so a DI pre EQ is my preferred method. I suppose in my ideal world I'd have a small tube amp mic'd in addition to a DI and a sound guy I actually trusted doing the mix. I don't generally trust the sound guy, so I generally want to give him something that's expected and easy to work with. Pre EQ does that.

KO

[billfitzmaurice]

Always pre. Your EQ accounts for the response of your speakers, and PA speakers are completely different. Also, your EQ gets the sound you want on stage, which may be completely different than what's required out front. So sending an EQ'd signal to PA serves no good purpose. OTOH an EQ'd send can cause the soundman problems getting it right in the PA.

[Von Felgenhauer]

Ill throw this question out. What if you use effects? Effects change with different eq points and when you put effects in a song you are typically looking particular sound which I know my amps eq helps add to. If I were to send a pre eq to F.O.H. could it be all hissy and bad sounding? I guess the best choice of this would be a mic.

[JimmyM]

They both suck. Mic it, baby!



But seriously, my rule of thumb is if you have to ask, run pre.

[rockstarbassist]

Originally Posted by electracoyote

On stage? Me too.

Everything changes out front.

We use monitors as well as our cabs, so.......

again, like always in these rehashed threads, if you can't send a Post DI signal from your amp and it not sound good in the mix, that's a "you" problem in not having the right amp, not the soundguy.

[rockstarbassist]

Originally Posted by Von Felgenhauer

Ill throw this question out. What if you use effects? Effects change with different eq points and when you put effects in a song you are typically looking particular sound which I know my amps eq helps add to. If I were to send a pre eq to F.O.H. could it be all hissy and bad sounding? I guess the best choice of this would be a mic.

I use 1 overdrive, 1 distortion and 1 flange. they all sound pretty good DI'd through my amp going Post, but it's definitely a lot better when the cab is mic'd up.

[xander8280]

I use a 370, I have the three band pre and a 5 band post, my post EQ is for the low/lowmids. It lets me really shape the tone after. I've used acoustic control heads for too long to go back to a just post or just pre. I need both!!!

[lowfreq33]

I usually do post with no problems. My cab is pretty flat though, and I'm going after a particular tone.

[T Bassman]

I agree with JimmyM, if you need to ask, Pre is the way to go.

Lately Ive been experimenting (when working with a familiar FOH tech), by using the post eq DI out of my Aguilar DB750, so I can get some tube gain in my tone, and also running a clean DI through my Radial JDI, so the FOH can have access to both without running an extra Mic line onstage, which seems to just get in the way on smaller stages for us.

I run my Aguilar eq pretty close to flat, so its really just to add a little 'wool' to my tone, but then the Radial provides articulation to help cut through excitable guitarists etc by the 3rd set who insist on increasing stage volume.

Its been working really well so far, and havnt had any phasing issues, so maybe if youre looking to try something new give this a whirl!

[rockstarbassist]

I never have to ask. The main places we play already know us and our gear so it's not that complicated..............
Have yet to ever have it be an issue in 14+ years of playing.

[Bass-4-God]

Thanks for the info thus far. I'm getting the Carvin BX500 and it only has Pre EQ so I wanted to know the pros and cons of only having Pre EQ

[onosson]

I've learned over the years to not go very extreme with my eq settings, and then generally send a post-eq mix to the FOH. There are two reasons for this. 1. part of my tone is a bit of high-end roll-off, achieved lately with the VLE dial on my LMIII. If I'm rolling some high end off the bass tone, I'd like that replicated out front, too. Secondly, I mix a keyboard rig in through the effects return as well, and double on keys for many of my gigs - the post-eq send guarantees that the mix of instruments I have on stage matches the front. I've done enough mixing (live and studio) to keep everything manageable for the soundman, but still be able to ensure that things are in the ballpark of what I want out front. As long as everyone involved knows what they're doing and doesn't have too much of an ego to discuss things with each other, then things should be able to work well.

[Queg]

Always pre?
Doesn't this depend on how much the preamp section is a part of your instrument's timbre? For example, if you're using your pre gain for overdrive I assume its because that's the sound of the instrument you want for the music you're performing. So you'll prefer that the house to get post eq in that case. If the engineer has a problem with it then ask for a mic on the cab. The engineer's job is to balance the mix and adjust eq for the room, not make specific tonal decisions about your instrument.

And the bass itself isn't necessarily where the instrument ends.

It really depends on how much your pre section contributes to your instruments timbre. And this question isn't merely about giving the engineer a bypass of the eq you had tweaked for a particular bass cab; for example, is Geddy's live sound pre-eq?

Let's push it even further: Should Miles have provided a "pre-mute" sound to FOH?