First stage show coming up soon, will I run into trouble w/o a preamp for my pickup?

[tbassist4]

Hi everyone,

I know very little about pickups. Is a preamp absolutely necessary for the pickup to make sound, or can I go without if need be? I know its probably best sonically to have one, but I can't really get one on short notice. Will the sound engineer be able to take care of it, or do I really need one?

Thanks so much for your time,

Tyler


P. S. I plan on getting a preamp soon, I just need to get through this one show preferably without.

[Joe Murray]

I'm a little confused about your question. What kind of bass are you playing?

[Joe Murray]

Sorry, I'm a moron. You're talking about your Double Bass.

[dmusic148]

It'll work, but it'll sound scratchy/trebly. The engineer may or may not be able to do much about it.

[mawalley]

Too many variables to be able to answer this question properly. For instance, it depends on the pickup you are using on the bass, how long the cable run will be prior to hitting some kind of preamplification, whether you are running direct to the board or to an amplifier...etc.

However, generally, while a preamp will be better, it isn't an absolute necessity for people to hear and know you are playing a bass. You probably won't be pleased with the sound, but it will be audible. I ran my first 6 or 8 shows direct from my pickup (a homemade dual-element piezo that wedges into the bridge wing slots) through a 10' cable to a phantom powered Behringer DI, which then connected via a 100' snake to the board. It sounded exactly like you'd expect - thin, harsh, tinny, not much definition - but with some creative EQ you can make it work.

Is there nothing else you can use as a preamp? Music stores around here will rent gear if you don't have what you need, and you could get by with a single channel on a small mixer. You could also use a slave output or the effects send from a solid state combo or head, just as a means to get by.

[moles]

If you have an amp, double-check the manufacturer's specs. I was surprised, when I started poking around, to find that the Ashdown head I was using for my slab rig has a (nearly) 4 Mohm impedance on the 'high' input. That's enough for a lot of piezo pickups. I don't often use it, but it's good to know that if everything else goes down at the same time, I can still pull off a gig with just my pickup, that head, and a 2x10.

[mstclairmiller]

You should get away with it. I've done plenty of shows where I've just plugged my Underwood into a di box and sent a signal to the FoH. Some cheap di boxes gave a really honky sound that the FoH guy had to wrestle with, but mostly I had no dramas at all.

[JtheJazzMan]

You can build your own little preamp in ~1 hour and a few bucks of parts from your local electronic hobby store.

http://personalpages.tds.net/~fdeck/bass/quickand.pdf

Works great and stops pickups from being harsh and tinny.

Can the engineers spare you a microphone?

[Ric Vice]

Originally Posted by JtheJazzMan

You can build your own little preamp in ~1 hour and a few bucks of parts from your local electronic hobby store.

http://personalpages.tds.net/~fdeck/bass/quickand.pdf

Works great and stops pickups from being harsh and tinny.

Can the engineers spare you a microphone?

FDeck,
You are to modest. Jazz Man. F Deck builds these little gems as well. If I needed on I'd just P.M. him and see about getting one. They work incredibly well, are very reasonably priced and have a Variable Lo Cut Filter, with a Phase correction switch to boot. Microphones are always fraught with problems, unless you have an engineer who understands how to isolate you in the mix, and an individual monitor for the bass alone. If that's the case, I'd use a mic, but I always carry F Deck's little HPF Buffer Preamp with me just in case. It's designed to insert into the signal chain of an amplifier, before the preamp like any conventional stomp box.

Ric