Double Bass Bad Pickup? Or do I need a preamp?

[ClusterFlux]

In what I'm sure is a completely unprecedented move I've played EB for a long time, and recently started UB (and yes, I'm getting lessons). I recently bought a used UB that includes a Realist Copperhead which, as far as I know, should not require a preamp.

When plugging it into my current amp (Tech 21 VT 200), the output is low and boomy. I have to put volume almost all the way up to hear anything (and that produces lots of hiss). When recording direct into an audio interface, the volume peaks at almost the same volume as an EB, though it sounds boomy and distant.

I'm assuming the pickup is on its way out, rather than my needing a preamp. Is there any way to confirm this?

 

[Earl]

The Realist can sound boomy and distant, especially on a plywood bass.

 

[John Chambliss]

A high pass filter (HPF) would help with the boomy sound and the volume. Search the forums for various threads about HPFs and the “fdeck”.

 

[Don Hergert]

If your amp has EQ, try setting your bass low, mid and treble high, then try again.

Piezo pickups are reputed to have a limited lifetime; generally they're discussed at about 10 years, but there are a lot of dependencies. You already know yours is working or you wouldn't have gotten anything from it in your amp, but you can verify if a piezo pickup is working by literally rubbing your finger against it, you'll hear the movement in your amp.

If EQ adjustment doesn't help, it might be more likely that you may have an impedance mismatch from your pickup and going into your amp... Of course a pre-amp would take care of that, but you could also try an inline impedance matching transformer (usually used for mics, but might help).

Besides impedance matching, a pre-amp also provides a lot of other sound balancing settings. You might want those in addition to the impedance matching. Or you might want to look at a new pickup or a different kind of pickup, but regardless of the manufacturer, many if not most of us feed them into a pre-amp for the added features.

Actually, since you're working with a real double bass now, you might want to use a mic instead of a pickup, to acquire its real tone. Just a thought.

 

[lurk]

If your amp has EQ, try setting your bass low, mid and treble high, then try again.

Piezo pickups are reputed to have a limited lifetime; generally they're discussed at about 10 years, but there are a lot of dependencies. You already know yours is working or you wouldn't have gotten anything from it in your amp, but you can verify if a piezo pickup is working by literally rubbing your finger against it, you'll hear the movement in your amp.

If EQ adjustment doesn't help, it might be more likely that you may have an impedance mismatch from your pickup and going into your amp... Of course a pre-amp would take care of that, but you could also try an inline impedance matching transformer (usually used for mics, but might help).

Besides impedance matching, a pre-amp also provides a lot of other sound balancing settings. You might want those in addition to the impedance matching. Or you might want to look at a new pickup or a different kind of pickup, but regardless of the manufacturer, many if not most of us feed them into a pre-amp for the added features.

Actually, since you're working with a real double bass now, you might want to use a mic instead of a pickup, to acquire its real tone. Just a thought.

 

[lurk]

Ack. I meant to reply to the above post and apparently hit the post button. I strongly disagree with the idea of getting mic as a new-to-upright player. You will open up a whole expensive can of feedbacky worms. You can go a long way with a nice piezo, and if you eventually get tired of that sound start messing with mics. I personally use a gadget called the Tonedexter that has a thread of it's own here. The Realist is a dark pickup and does eventually die since it's under a lot of pressure. Many successful pros have used it for years. Before replacing it, try it with another amp. If it seems okay, then spring for a preamp. That fdeck suggested earlier is a great bang for your buck. If you find your Realist is shot, the pickup I use is the Lifeline, also by Gage. A lot of the good qualities of the Realist but a little less boomy and it handles loud situations a bit better.

 

[Don Hergert]

... I strongly disagree with the idea of getting mic as a new-to-upright player. ...

@lurk, I definitely respect your position, but I felt it might be a good option for a person coming from an EB experience, considering the many more tone-sensitive, more volume-sensitive genre that are also possible with DB. And, I'm not necessarily talking about a mounted mic. Many, many environments would prefer the tone of a DB through a simple stand mic as opposed to the tone of a DB through a piezo. A DB isn't an EB regarding tone, so why not explore that avenue?

 

[Adam Booker]

High impedance, hpf, and phase switch. The Holy Trinity of upright bass amplification.

 

[Jaygetsreal]

High impedance, hpf, and phase switch. The Holy Trinity of upright bass amplification.

Absolutely. Plus maybe eternal experimentation, moving your pickup a couple of millimetres this way, that way, turning it slightly, shimming it with different materials, thicknesses...etc.
I really should stop now and spend more time on my technique!!

 

[Don Kasper]

The Holy Trinity of upright bass amplification.

Blessed are the Quiet, for they shall be Heard.
And so a Pickup was affixed to the bridge and it was Good...not Great, mind you, but Better than Nothing.
Piezo be with you.
Merry Xmas to all, and so forth.

 

[Francois Blais]

Plus maybe eternal experimentation, moving your pickup a couple of millimetres this way, that way, turning it slightly, shimming it with different materials, thicknesses...etc.

We are speaking of the Realist at the moment, so shimming is excluded methinks.
It perfectly applies to (most) wing pickups though!

 

[Ric Vice]

I played a nice Gotz plywood Bass all my 4 years in high school. Pickups were in their infancy then, and I certainly couldn’t have afforded one or the amp to go with it. The Realist has some issues with precisely what your experiencing and while the Realist instructions and advertising say it doesn’t need a preamp, in truth it does. You’ll need to invest in a inexpensive buffer preamp to solve this issue with that Tech 21 amplifier. Francis Deck makes great ones and their very inexpensive.

 

[Wasnex]

I went through two of the original Realists. AFAIK the copperhead is an evolution of the original Realist.

One failed after several years, and being place on several basses. It started crackling, the sound thinned out, and then it went totally dead.

Another bassist in my organization purchased the Realist shortly after they came out. Our job required about 50% classical bowing. The Realist was by far the best choice for bowing at the time and a big improvement over the Fishan BP-100s were using previously. The Realist pizz tone was acceptable, but not great IMHO. The Fishman had slightly better pizz tone, but you had to use a lot of EQ to get a usable arco sound IMHO. People frequently describe the Realist as Dark, but I would describe it as more neutral than older piezo contact pickups like the Fishman BP-100 and Underwood.

The last bass I played professionally was intended to be an acoustic cannon. It had a very resonant body and the Realist seemed to overemphasize the resonance. A bridge mounted pickup would probably have been a better choice for that bass. A bridge mounted pickup tends to emphasize more of the string sound and less of the body.

I never found it necessary to use a buffer or preamp with the Realist. The amps I used had 1 Meg input impedance which IMHO worked fine for the Realist. Additionally I ran it into a Shure A95U line matching transformer which was plugged into the mic input of a rack mixer. AFAIK this results in a much lower impedance than 1M and the sound was still fine. My memory is the Realist was designed so it as less sensitive to impedance than other piezo-based pickups. I played in professional, full-size big bands and never had any problem getting loud enough to drive the band.

If the pickup is not on the verge of failing, the problem could be that it is not fitted properly to the bass. It's possible that it's just not a good choice for your bass, but the low output level suggests that either the pickup is bad or there is some sort of installation problem.

 

[Ric Vice]

With my bass and preamp ( A Headway EDB-1 at the that time) the Realist always sounded better with a 5 Meg Ohm Load. The biggest improvement came from the High pass filtering on the Headway that you could set at either 40 hertz or 80 hertz. In combination with the 5 Meg Ohm impedance the Realist was greatly improved. Just my take of course everyone’s Bass and pickup yields different results. I checked the manual and found that impedance for the Tech 21’s input is Meg 4.7 Ohm’s, but when the pad switch engaged it’s only 10 K ohms, so be sure and check the position of that little push button. It could make a significant difference in the Realist tone quality.

 

[Jeff Kissell]

Could be a dirty jack, could be a bad cable, could be a bad pick up... the Realist Copperhead should have plenty of output into an amp with no preamp.

Whether or not you like the tone is an entirely different issue but that seems like what most replies so far are trying to solve.

good luck!

 

[Francois Blais]

The Realist can sound boomy and distant, especially on a plywood bass.

Very true.
I have a plywood bass, and a Realist sounded awful on that bass.
As for the impedance issue: if the input impedance was too low, the sound would get thin and brittle, not boomy.
So that's probably not an issue here.

 

[KUNGfuSHERIFF]

You answered your own question. The pickup is known to be dark and boomy, and an impedance-matching preamp helps. The weak link is your amplifier. Technique too, probably.