A bass auto-wah dilemma!

[Frontporch]

My bass is a modulus q-5 with a ACG filter style pre-amp for reference. A very powerful pre.
I play thru an epifani 999 into a BBC 10/12.
The dilemma is that I cannot find an auto-wah that my bass can trigger properly or sometimes at all. I have tried bunches of them and all I get is a low rumbling howl. No wah or sweep at all. I have tried lowering the volume of the amp and pushing the volume on the bass with sometimes horrendous noises. I have tried pedals with gain controls on the outside and inside. The last one was a neutrino that was hideously noisy and did nothing.

I am going to go with a Dunlop mini bass wah unless some of you TB'ers can set me straight on this.

Thanks

 

[DDXdesign]

Have you tried going the other way: quieter going in instead of coming out? A powerful pre can easily slam a filter wide open so fast you don't hear the sweep, so try decreasing the filter sensitivity, bass volume or both.

 

[Jared Lash]

From your description I can't tell if the filters you've used aren't opening at all (too little input signal) or are getting slammed open by a too hot signal.

Either way the ACG preamp has internal trimmers for each pickup output so you should be able to adjust the volume to work with the envelope filter of your choice.

FWIW I've owned three basses with versions of the ACG/East filter preamp (Stambaugh fretless with EMG jazz pickups and two ACG basses with Alan's proprietary pickups) and all three worked fine with filters - Iron Ether Xerographically, Chunk 00Funk, vintage Mu-Tron III, 3Leaf Wonderlove, Aguilar Filter Twin etc.

The first thing I'd recommend is running the bass passive if your ACG preamp has an active/passive option. If it doesn't I'd start with the low pass filters all the way open with the resonance all the way down and the HPF set to allow all the highs through but with no boost.

One issue with filter based preamps and envelope filters is that they allow for resoance at the cutoff point and the filter obviously also provides resonance at its cutoff point so they can combine for an unpleasant tone depending on how each are set.

And DDX design beat me to it but the next thing I'd do is make big adjustments to the input or gain of the filter pedal to figure out whether you aren't getting it to open or if you're hitting it too hard. Then you'll know which way to adjust the internal trimmers, should you choose to go that route.

 

[Frontporch]

From your description I can't tell if the filters you've used aren't opening at all (too little input signal) or are getting slammed open by a too hot signal.

Either way the ACG preamp has internal trimmers for each pickup output so you should be able to adjust the volume to work with the envelope filter of your choice.

FWIW I've owned three basses with versions of the ACG/East filter preamp (Stambaugh fretless with EMG jazz pickups and two ACG basses with Alan's proprietary pickups) and all three worked fine with filters - Iron Ether Xerographically, Chunk 00Funk, vintage Mu-Tron III, 3Leaf Wonderlove, Aguilar Filter Twin etc.

The first thing I'd recommend is running the bass passive if your ACG preamp has an active/passive option. If it doesn't I'd start with the low pass filters all the way open with the resonance all the way down and the HPF set to allow all the highs through but with no boost.

One issue with filter based preamps and envelope filters is that they allow for resoance at the cutoff point and the filter obviously also provides resonance at its cutoff point so they can combine for an unpleasant tone depending on how each are set.

And DDX design beat me to it but the next thing I'd do is make big adjustments to the input or gain of the filter pedal to figure out whether you aren't getting it to open or if you're hitting it too hard. Then you'll know which way to adjust the internal trimmers, should you choose to go that route.

I will give that a try and thanks.

 

[Bassheart365]

I play active setting only. I had the same problem at first with my Wonderlove. Then I reduced the sensitivity to a very low setting and it fixed the problem.