Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

[ugly_bassplayer]

26348276[/URL], member: 119778"]The bickering has grown as science and facts have become more subjective.

subjective science facts

i think you just tore a hole in the space time continuum

 

[JES]

i think you just tore a hole in the space time continuum

 

[lucas303]

While my interests/temperament have almost no overlap with the amps forum, on occasion I have received invaluable assistance there. Shout out to @Passinwind for steering me to victory while the rest of the forum belittled me. My modified Fearful single 12” cab is still a central part of my rig. There are kind, helpful people sprinkled throughout TB.

That dude is awesome for sure.

 

[monsterthompson]

Sputtery octave fuzz from BSRI arrived today. Holy drone machine.

 

[Passinwind]

Hey youse guys, stop saying nice things about me and get back to business!

I'm well into a gear purge and have a scary plan for a reformat of pretty much my whole practice/recording rig. No more 15/6/1 cabs, TC112AF on the way out, new little DIY-ish combo in place, and the long delayed tube rig just needs "some final assembly" once the new cab for it comes in next month. My NAMM preps got derailed by the nasty fire at the Marco Bass hive and I just pulled the plug on my trip to Anaheim this year. My new bass to-be was destroyed in the fire and I've ordered a Marco acoustic guitar instead now.

Here's the "combo", a 110 airhead cab some TBer friends built to accomodate various small format modern amps, originally a GK MB500. I was going to roll my own amp but came to my senses and just started by trying a couple of different commercial pieces, with a somewhat surprising winner emerging:

The tilt wedge doubles as a removable hatch door behind the amp for back panel access and cable storage, pretty slick.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Hey youse guys, stop saying nice things about me and get back to business!

I'm well into a gear purge and have a scary plan for a reformat of pretty much my whole practice/recording rig. No more 15/6/1 cabs, TC112AF on the way out, new little DIY-ish combo in place, and the long delayed tube rig just needs "some final assembly" once the new cab for it comes in next month. My NAMM preps got derailed by the nasty fire at the Marco Bass hive and I just pulled the plug on my trip to Anaheim this year. My new bass to-be was destroyed in the fire and I've ordered a Marco acoustic guitar instead now.

Here's the "combo", a 110 airhead cab some TBer friends built to accomodate various small format modern amps, originally a GK MB500. I was going to roll my own amp but came to my senese and just started by trying a couple of different commercial pieces, with a somewhat surprising winner emerging:

View attachment 4657526


The tilt wedge doubles as a removable hatch door behind the amp for back panel access and cable storage, pretty slick.

awesome DIY little amp

while you’re here, looking for another amp. to many gigs and rehearsals at different places to haul around 80 pounds rack mounted.
I currently use and abuse an old USA ampeg svt 4 pro. Looking for something was at least that much power.
I use 8 ohm cabs at 700 watts ( old eden 410)
I was thinking maybe a Crown power amp and a VT bass…?

Any recommendations would be more than welcome

 

[Passinwind]

awesome DIY little amp

while you’re here, looking for another amp. to many gigs and rehearsals at different places to haul around 80 pounds rack mounted.
I currently use and abuse an old USA ampeg svt 4 pro. Looking for something was at least that much power.
I use 8 ohm cabs at 700 watts ( old eden 410)
I was thinking maybe a Crown power amp and a VT bass…?

Any recommendations would be more than welcome

My favorite rack rig used a QSC PLX2 1804, but that baby don't bridge. Double check carefully as far as level matching if using a pedal to drive a pro audio amp, it can give very disappointing results when it's not right. I've owned plenty of Crown amps and would be perfectly happy to get another one if it suited my needs at whatever time.

 

[lucas303]

Hey youse guys, stop saying nice things about me and get back to business!

I'm well into a gear purge and have a scary plan for a reformat of pretty much my whole practice/recording rig. No more 15/6/1 cabs, TC112AF on the way out, new little DIY-ish combo in place, and the long delayed tube rig just needs "some final assembly" once the new cab for it comes in next month. My NAMM preps got derailed by the nasty fire at the Marco Bass hive and I just pulled the plug on my trip to Anaheim this year. My new bass to-be was destroyed in the fire and I've ordered a Marco acoustic guitar instead now.

Here's the "combo", a 110 airhead cab some TBer friends built to accomodate various small format modern amps, originally a GK MB500. I was going to roll my own amp but came to my senses and just started by trying a couple of different commercial pieces, with a somewhat surprising winner emerging:

View attachment 4657526


The tilt wedge doubles as a removable hatch door behind the amp for back panel access and cable storage, pretty slick.

Just out of curiosity what was it about the Traynor that won you over? (I've never used any of their stuff so I'm doubly curious.)

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

26350134[/URL], member: 37018"]My favorite rack rig used a QSC PLX2 1804, but that baby don't bridge. Double check carefully as far as level matching if using a pedal to drive a pro audio amp, it can give very disappointing results when it's not right. I've owned plenty of Crown amps and would be perfectly happy to get another one if it suited my needs at whatever time.

any opinions on the xli vs xls crown series?
one has a dsp the other is bare bones.
one is class AB and the other is class D
both have input sensitivity swtiches from .775v and 1.4v, vtdi can run both line and instrument levels. so all good on that end.

 

[Passinwind]

Just out of curiosity what was it about the Traynor that won you over? (I've never used any of their stuff so I'm doubly curious.)

I had no idea what to expect beyond Mark Gollihur recommending it as a sleeper upright amp. It has probably the best noise floor of any modestly priced amp I've ever heard. Better than many if not most expensive ones too, even the fanless ones I've owned. Not a hint of wool, grind, or overbaked non-defeatable compression, and it has very straighforward and pretty effective EQ. The Bass Expander control might be hipper as a Master Volume, but I've at least found two reasonably useful settings with it. The older SB200H model would be a killer mod platform, but a year or two ago they transitioned to glued in surface mount parts and I'm not feeling that brave just yet.

I probably will be adding a tweeter of some sort to the cab, but for my weekly semi-acoustic jams I don't really need it and I may go with a separate top box, especially since I already have a decent 2 x 4 one built up. Then the little combo could double as a satellite/ambience channel, which is something I really want to get back into sooner than later. Much sooner than later actually.

 

[Passinwind]

any opinions on the xli vs xls crown series?
one has a dsp the other is bare bones.
one is class AB and the other is class D
both have input sensitivity swtiches from .775v and 1.4v, vtdi can run both line and instrument levels. so all good on that end.

I've heard both sound good but have no experience playing bass directly through either. "Play feel" is so important, and so hard to quantify. That little Traynor feels like a million bucks for my needs, especially with my EUB...go figure!

Warranties have become increasingly important to me as well. My last few QSCs had six year coverage but I think that was just a special promo thing for a while. The Traynor has two years no fault, i.e. you drop it it's still covered, supposedly. But I could work on it easily enough anyway, and commercial power amps these days often require some $$$ test equipment I've never bothered to invest in.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

I've heard both sound good but have no experience playing bass directly through either. "Play feel" is so important, and so hard to quantify. That little Traynor feels like a million bucks for my needs, especially with my EUB...go figure!

Warranties have become increasingly important to me as well. My last few QSCs had six year coverage but I think that was just a special promo thing for a while. The Traynor has two years no fault, i.e. you drop it it's still covered, supposedly. But I could work on it easily enough anyway, and commercial power amps these days often require some $$$ test equipment I've never bothered to invest in.

Mucho karma points going you’re way
Thanks
Was looking at regular bass amps with the same power but the prices have gone up to sheer madness.

 

[Passinwind]

Mucho karma points going you’re way
Thanks
Was looking at regular bass amps with the same power but the prices have gone up to sheer madness.

I've owned a whole lot of high powered rack rigs, since I was also playing sound provider for a few decades and why not double dip? Supply and demand has sent very high powered bass amps to $$$$ status for the most part, it seems. And of course prosumer sound amps have been commodity items for a while now, with the DJ market driving a lot of that. And now that powered cabs are so popular there should be a ton of perfectly decent power amps out there for little money. I just got offered some older QSC commercial (install market) pieces at $100 apiece, in great looking shape. Not sure on the specs, I haven't gotten around to doing the research yet.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

I've owned a whole lot of high powered rack rigs, since I was also playing sound provider for a few decades and why not double dip? Supply and demand has sent very high powered bass amps to $$$$ status for the most part, it seems. And of course prosumer sound amps have been commodity items for a while now, with the DJ market driving a lot of that. And now that powered cabs are so popular there should be a ton of perfectly decent power amps out there for little money. I just got offered some older QSC commercial pieces at $100 apiece, in great looking shape. Not sure on the specs, I haven't gotten around to doing the research yet.

Please share any info on said power amps.
I’ve always wondered why QSC never have the bridge mono option, they are indeed great amps.

 

[Passinwind]

Please share any info on said power amps.
I’ve always wondered why QSC never have the bridge mono option, they are indeed great amps.

Many of the QSCs do bridge, it's just some like the shallower and lighter 1104 and 1804 that don't. They chose a tradeoff set that optimizes for good power at 8 ohms, which translated to no 2 ohm mode and no bridging at 4 ohms. For me that was great, 2 x ~550 watts at 8 ohms at 13 lbs and shallow enough to fit in many EFX racks.

I'll PM you when I get more details on the QSCs but shipping could easily be a deal killer. I'd only have to drive about three miles roundtrip to make it happen so I might snag one or two to pass along to friends, I guess.

Edit: PM sent.

 

[Starthief]

Since there's been a fair bit of Miezo talk in this thread I figured I would post about this here...

I'm pretty sure now that I'm going to go either for a Miezo or a FingyBass, and I'm trying to figure out which and work out the details. Any advice or experiences you could share would be helpful.

Miezo:

Is a bit pricier now, and I wish I'd gotten into things a few months earlier and had ordered one before their price increase. But it still seems very reasonable for what seems to be excellent quality. And it seems classier, with a really appealing shape, nice woods and good hardware. Also a better website and it seems easier to find information on them. The luthier has a great reputation and seems to be friendly and good with communication and advice.

I feel like I should go for a 5-string -- a compromise between making up some of the lost range from having fewer frets, and not being too complex. But I'm not sure about string spacing, never having played a 5-string. It seems like narrower would make the left hand more comfortable but the right hand a bit more difficult?

I don't know about 16" vs 18". Smaller size is probably fine for my left hand since I like that short U-bass scale length, mandolin, etc. But I wonder about tuning -- could the 16" handle BEADG starting from B1 with readily available strings, or would the 18" be better at that? And how about flats? And why does the site say the 18" is the better choice for slapping? (I don't plan to do a lot of slapping, but a little bit can work well with some effects and is fun...)

As far as pickups go, my main concern is noise/buzz from interference on a single coil. On the Mikro which is a PJ, I usually dial in 100% bridge and 0% or 70% neck and just leave it there. But whatever I do is going to be heavily processed.

MihaDo:

They don't have a price list for various options, but looking at their listings on Reverb and extrapolating gives some idea -- their lower prices on most instruments mostly seem to stem mainly from cheaper hardware. FingyBass owners here seem to be pretty happy with the instruments, though, and they do seem open to a lot of customization including different scale lengths, multiscale etc.

I don't much care for the body shape of their instruments at 16" and 18", but when you get to 22" it starts to look more graceful, though I'm not sure I like it as much as the Miezo. The B-style bodies are interesting but I'm not sure why they tend to cost $200 more.

Their "custom pickups" are pretty nonspecific -- some kind of soapbar but they don't say if it's single or double coil or what.

I'd probably be looking at a 22" 5-string, with no headphone pre, their tuning system, and no fancy woods. And that'd be about the same price as a Miezo 16/5, which... hmm, is the longer scale length that much of a benefit to someone who already likes small instruments anyway? If I went with the ABM monorail tuners it'd jump up in price by quite a bit, relatively.

The wait time for MihaDo is "a minimum of 30 working days" which really translates to 6 weeks. Not sure what the wait is for MüB currently, but I've never seen anyone complain about it.

So I think with my thoughts organized like this I'm leaning more toward Miezo...

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Back to the classics

 

[jbybj]

I know there are some Los Angelinos in this thread. I'm giving away a couple of 15" cabs, actually pretty nice ones. NOW GONE. Thanks.

For Sale/Trade - FREE** 15" BASS CABS WEST LOS ANGELES

 

[steubig]

I know there are some Los Angelinos in this thread. I'm giving away a couple of 15" cabs, actually pretty nice ones.
For Sale/Trade - FREE** 15" BASS CABS WEST LOS ANGELES

cool

culver city here.

nice that you're doing this, i have too many cabs at this point (probably getting rid of one soon-ish), so i'm no help. i would think those ev speakers would be worth something . . .

 

[Bob_Ross]

Just a little something I whipped up along with this morning's coffee: Steinberger L-2 bass into a VFE Klein Bottle, split out to a Chase Bliss Blooper, Montreal Assembly Count To 5, and Soma COSMOS. I did one pass with the bass prior to hitting record just to load up the Blooper with some fodder, then hit record while I bounced stuff back & forth between the Ct5 and the COSMOS. I kinda like the turn it takes shortly after the 4:00 mark. I kinda hate that glitch where it sounds like all the ambience disappears for a second just prior. meh...

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