| Hey Pac,
Iīve always found amplification as a PITA. I really respect all the hi-fi guys here who know so much of it...anyhow, hereīs my 2 c.
If your pianist stays where you stay ( at the bass as You say ) he of course hears pretty much the same attack as You do. What the bass projects is completely another thing and the sound is different than what you ( or anyone else standing right at the bass ) hear.
The Realist is dark sounding itself, and due to the nature of itīs position it canīt pick up very much of the fingerboard attack.
The problem is that the fingerboard attack is fundamentally a PART of the sound Your bass projects. If You could stand, like 20 feet off your bass and have someone play it unamplified, the sound Your ears pick up is a MIX of the fundamentals which the body of the bass projects, AND the finger attack, plus some other noises I donīt even know of. The fact that different waves go through the air in different speeds and come to your ears from different directions does not make it any easier...
Now, if You only have the fundamentals coming out from the Realist through Your amp, that sound separated from the sound the bass itself projects appears to be muddy, especially in noisy big band setting. The bass itself can sound as nice as always when you listen to it standing right at it, but the more noisy the band goes, the less that nice mixture You hear yourself is audible for the rest of the gang and most of the audience. At worst, it leads to the situation where everything that is left of your sound is that low boom from your amp. If you donīt have anything mounted on your bass which would pick up your attack, the attack canīt be reproduced as a part of the sound that comes out of your amp.
Which amp do you use? If you have some EQ in your amp, You might try fiddling around with that.
The more noisy setting, the more the sound needs boosting of higher frequencies. Sometimes it helps,
if the fundamentals are all right, sometimes it leads to horrible sound.
What you are suggesting is that the Realist would be responsible of producing the fundamentals, and the suggested mic would pick the fingerboad and string attack. Thatīs a reversed approach to the way how it is usually done....but might work as well.
The thing is that You would have to cut the low frequencies off the mic signal, īcause your Realist already takes care of them, right?
My regular band setting is Bass, guitar and drums + five horn players. We play unamplified, except combos for guitar and bass. The balance is guite nice when I use my amp just for monitoring myself and the drummer, and let my bass take care of the projecting. Lately we did a studio session and recorded some stuff, and the bass sound in the recording is a 90%-10% mixture of microphone signal from a mic pointed towards f-hole and a Barcus-Berry pickup in my bridge. I was very happy with the mix, thatīs about how Iīd like to sound live as well.
R2
__________________
I may suck,
but at least my timeīs bad and I have no ideas.
Last edited by arto alho : 03-19-2003 at 03:28 AM.
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