A lot of preams in signal way, interesting idea

[pavelx3]

Hi,
Iam bass teacher. One of my students asked me oneday...
Why bassplayer use only one or a few preamps?

question 1)
Iam making this thread scary now
What will happen if i use a lot of preamp?
Don't talk about dist, only think if will be clean bass sound better...

e.g
bass -ebs MC - VTbass - sadowsky DI - sansamp - tonehammer - Radial JDV - PA
or
bass -ebs MC - VTbass - sadowsky DI - sansamp - tonehammer - Radial JDV - pope MPP1 - EBSS TD 650
All turned on!
Don't talk about dist, only think if will be clean bass sound better...
Will be finall clean sound good?
My opinion is, that signal will be bad.. What do you think ???


Question 2
WHAT SHOULD I DO ??

I play on concerts direct to PA. I don't use overdrive or distortion. I play :
Active Warwick BASS - EBS MULTICOMP - PROGRAMMABLE SANSAMP - PA

Will be my clean sound much better if play
bass - multicomp - VT bass - sansamp - PA
or it is unnecessary money fired ??

or sell programmable sansamp and play: bass - multicomp - vt bass - PA ???
I've never use overdrive or distortion. But i have to have best clean sound


THANK YOU VERY MUCH for answers for quest 1 and 2.

[stflbn]

Try them together. Go with whichever you feels sounds best.

Personally I see no problem at all having the VT-bass in your signal chain. If it's turned off, it's not doing anything.

[bongomania]

Even if you ignore "obvious" distortion, there is more subtle distortion that happens every time you run a signal through an amplifier stage. It's not necessarily "grit" type distortion, but really any sort of small soft clipping that may only sound like light compression or "fattening", as well as non-clipping types of distortion that affect the shape of the waveform in other ways, smoothing or altering the texture of the wave. In small amounts, that subtle distortion can be brilliant--it's exactly the reason we like a preamp that makes our bass sound more "fat". But as you cascade preamps, that distortion can become ugly. It's like looking through many lenses that are slightly soft-focus: the first one makes everything look nice and smooth, but when you add many of these lenses, everything is a blurry mess.

Additionally, every gain stage adds noise. That is just a hard fact. A very high quality gain stage will add only a very small amount of noise, but it is there. Again, if you cascade them the noise is cumulative, and becomes intolerable.

So the challenge is to find combinations of preamps where the tone is "just right" and the noise level is tolerable. Note for example that many, many bassists do use three preamps in series: one onboard their bass, one in a pedal, and one in the amplifier.

[warwick.hoy]

Originally Posted by pavelx3

or sell programmable sansamp and play: bass - multicomp - vt bass - PA ???
I've never use overdrive or distortion. But i have to have best clean sound


THANK YOU VERY MUCH for answers for quest 1 and 2.

I have nothing to add except that if you sell your sansamp you might need to get a DI box to send a balanced signal to the PA. The VT Bass does not have an balanced DI out; as far as I know.

[DeluxeRed]

Originally Posted by warwick.hoy

I have nothing to add except that if you sell your sansamp you might need to get a DI box to send a balanced signal to the PA. The VT Bass does not have an balanced DI out; as far as I know.

The VT Bass output is UNbalanced but it is Low-Z, which means it can be plugged into most mixers (that support the 1/4" jack). And it claims to be able to drive long cable runs, even in bypass. So, maybe...maybe not, depending on the PA. Good advice to check that, though.