SansAmp for Fretless?

[dmq89]

Did a search on this, but not a whole lot came up...

Just wondering if any of y'all use a BDDI with fretless?

My BDDI sounds good with my fretted bass, but my fretlesses are kind of lacking. I added a Boss GEB7 to boost my mids (around 800hz) and I put that after the BDDI - seems to help a bit, but it could always be better!

My settings (after futzing with the 7 band EQ on my Ampeg) all seem to be around 12:00 - 1:00, except the Presence, which is rolled right off...

So what settings do you use, and what kind of a tone do you get? I'm looking for a growly J bass tone with tons of mwah if I play over the fingerboard...

Any suggestions?

Thanx!!!

[Sorefinger]

I´m currently converting one of my basses to fretless so I should be able to tell you more in a week or two...

In the meantime, I´d try backing off both bass and treble a bit (to about 10 o´clock, maybe even less) and fiddle with the blend knob - less blend, more mids.

Oh, and how about putting the GEB-7 in front of the Sansamp?

[bassbrad]

I'm using an Electronix Submarine to nail my fretless tone. I set it about 10:00 and use whatever gain is needed to equalize with the other bass I use.

[Crabby]

The SABBDI really is not the tool for the tone you described (I'm looking for a growly J bass tone with tons of mwah if I play over the fingerboard...). The SABDDI is designed to have the "scooped" tone of an SVT. The tone of this pedal has a natural scoop to it in that mids are lowered in favour of deeper lows and crisper highs and the added overdrive. This tone is pretty much the opposite of what you described.

Now many players will repeat over and over that if you use the blend knob, you can blend back in your clean tone to counter attack the mid scoop. The same people will also advise that if you lower the bass and treble controls on the pedal, the mids will be boosted. Doing both will help but there is no way around the fact that this pedal sounds the way it sounds and it will take you much farther away from the tone you described then if you just don't use it.

I am in no way slamming the SABBDI as I love what it does and think it works amazingly well at achieving a dirty tube amp breaking up rock tone. But i have owned both the single chanel pedal version and the programmable version and worked extensively with them to try and get my fretless bass to sound "growly" with them and it just didn't work.

I found that to retain the mid centered growl that I love about fretless bass, I had to use extreme settings which pretty much made the pedal redundent and nothing more then a sinple DI. And doing this, still sucked the growl out of my tone!!!

I have never tried the Paradriver but have heard that it works much better to retain the mids.

Again, I think the SABDDI is great at getting a particular tone, but it was completely counter productive at getting the "Jaco" type fretless tone I was after.

[keb]

Originally Posted by Crabby

The SABBDI really is not the tool for the tone you described (I'm looking for a growly J bass tone with tons of mwah if I play over the fingerboard...). The SABDDI is designed to have the "scooped" tone of an SVT. The tone of this pedal has a natural scoop to it in that mids are lowered in favour of deeper lows and crisper highs and the added overdrive. This tone is pretty much the opposite of what you described.

Now many players will repeat over and over that if you use the blend knob, you can blend back in your clean tone to counter attack the mid scoop. The same people will also advise that if you lower the bass and treble controls on the pedal, the mids will be boosted. Doing both will help but there is no way around the fact that this pedal sounds the way it sounds and it will take you much farther away from the tone you described then if you just don't use it.

I am in no way slamming the SABBDI as I love what it does and think it works amazingly well at achieving a dirty tube amp breaking up rock tone. But i have owned both the single chanel pedal version and the programmable version and worked extensively with them to try and get my fretless bass to sound "growly" with them and it just didn't work.

I found that to retain the mid centered growl that I love about fretless bass, I had to use extreme settings which pretty much made the pedal redundent and nothing more then a sinple DI. And doing this, still sucked the growl out of my tone!!!

I have never tried the Paradriver but have heard that it works much better to retain the mids.

Again, I think the SABDDI is great at getting a particular tone, but it was completely counter productive at getting the "Jaco" type fretless tone I was after.

This has been exactly my experience with using a BDDI with a fretless as well. I did like using a BDDI for a crunchy fretted tone, but I could never get a satisfactory (for my tastes) fretless sound, for pretty much the exact reasons you stated.

[dmq89]

Thanx for all of your input so far!

I did buy the BDDI for my fretted bass, but have since moved to fretless exclusively. I'm making it work for the most part, but I do find that putting too many mids in the sound gives me a "boing-y" tone (???) that I like more with fretted.

So it seems that I need to add more lows to smooth out the tone. Any frequency suggestions here? Like I said, a smooth aggressive (not boing-y) growl is what I'm after...

FWIW I'm using a MIM fretless with Fender noiseless pups in it - great sounding bass - as well as a custom fretless made by ibanezcollector with Dimarzio Ultras in it. The tone is SO close I can taste it, but still too "boing-y" (new word of the day, I guess... ) for me.

Should I maybe dial in my tone from the amp and pups (gig rig - Ampeg, studio rig - Peavey) and use the BDDI as a tone shaper instead?

again, thanx for the help so far - I love this place!

[bassman251]

IMO the growl comes from the pickups. If the pickups don't growl your probably not going to get it anywhere else.

After doing research on your ultra jazz pickups on the Dimarzio website your pickups are slightly mid scooped anyway.

I use Dimarzio model P&J pickups and get plenty of growl, with the Sansamp always on.

[johnvice]

Originally Posted by dmq89

My BDDI sounds good with my fretted bass, but my fretlesses are kind of lacking. I added a Boss GEB7 to boost my mids (around 800hz)

To get the fretless 'm-wah', I boost at 900hz . I love the SansAmp BDI but I have no use for it with a fretless bass.

[dmq89]

So it looks like I'm probably better off to just remove this from my effects chain altogether?

Can anyone recommend a good preamp for fretless, or should I just stick with my amp's preamp and use the Boss GEB-7 for tone shaping?

It would be nice to know what all of the monster fretless guys (Manring, DiPiazza, Bailey et al) are using to get their tones!

[keb]

Originally Posted by johnvice

To get the fretless 'm-wah', I boost at 900hz . I love the SansAmp BDI but I have no use for it with a fretless bass.

Yep and it just so happens that the BDDI has a big notch at about that frequency. A couple folks from here ran a BDDI through a frequency analyzer and both found this.

[wateroftyne]

+1 to what has aleady been said. SABDDI + Fretless = not a good thing.

The same applied to the Para DI - I just couldn't get a decent tone out of it.

[acleex38]

I use my BDDI all the time with my fretless bass. BUT...

...admittedly, it's usually for songs where I don't feel like sounding all that fretless. It really unfretlessizes my tone. I'm okay with that for a handful of tunes - saves me the trouble of bringing multiple basses.

[JohnDavisNYC]

i'm gonna be the jerk that points out that the 'mwah' comes from your hands and the fingerboard... if you aren't getting the sound you want acoustically, it's never going to happen with any eq or effect.

i pretty much only practice electric bass 'acoustically'... if i can get the sound i want out of the bass naturally, the pickups and amp matter less...

obviously, i can get pretty into pedals and sound and bass abuse, but i am just talking in terms of actually getting 'normal' bass sounds... it should sound like you want it acoustically. if it doesn't, time to look at your hands/technique and your instrument/setup.

cheers,
john

[D.Don]

Originally Posted by dmq89

Did a search on this, but not a whole lot came up...

Just wondering if any of y'all use a BDDI with fretless?

My BDDI sounds good with my fretted bass, but my fretlesses are kind of lacking. I added a Boss GEB7 to boost my mids (around 800hz) and I put that after the BDDI - seems to help a bit, but it could always be better!

My settings (after futzing with the 7 band EQ on my Ampeg) all seem to be around 12:00 - 1:00, except the Presence, which is rolled right off...

So what settings do you use, and what kind of a tone do you get? I'm looking for a growly J bass tone with tons of mwah if I play over the fingerboard...

Any suggestions?

Thanx!!!

I use the Sansamp Acoustic DI to my fretless, more than happy and using the sweep mid to find the right "mwaah" etc.

D.Don

[D.Don]

Originally Posted by JohnDavisNYC

i'm gonna be the jerk that points out that the 'mwah' comes from your hands and the fingerboard... if you aren't getting the sound you want acoustically, it's never going to happen with any eq or effect.

i pretty much only practice electric bass 'acoustically'... if i can get the sound i want out of the bass naturally, the pickups and amp matter less...

obviously, i can get pretty into pedals and sound and bass abuse, but i am just talking in terms of actually getting 'normal' bass sounds... it should sound like you want it acoustically. if it doesn't, time to look at your hands/technique and your instrument/setup.

cheers,
john

You can with a sweep find the spot where it's "nicest" and accentuate it, but yeah, it's pretty much in the fingers of the player of course.

D.Don