As a 5'7" bassist who usually stands next to a 6'2" guitarist, I may have to consider one of these....
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Bass sound on stages
- Thread starter mrcbass
- Start date
Oh, these things work. They can rattle your eyeballs, no joke! I used a Buttkicker with a 1000 watt transducer. It was like standing in front of 10 SVTs cranked.
I have the opposite problem: I am taller than the singer/bandleader...and with the Bassboard, the diference becomes significant.
I think he is becoming jealous...
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All rooms are different and the bass response can vary a LOT around the stage/room.
Placement of the amp and your position relative to the amp is important. Your sweetspot relative to the amp is not always where you might think. Move around a bit and you may be surprised where you suddenly "find" the bass (and realize why everyone else think you're too loud...).
Placement of the amp and your position relative to the amp is important. Your sweetspot relative to the amp is not always where you might think. Move around a bit and you may be surprised where you suddenly "find" the bass (and realize why everyone else think you're too loud...).
Whole new meaning to 'spinal tap' right there no doubt.
Just one problem.. in a domestic basement, 1000 watts must surely make the point of preserving neighbourliness entirely moot. With that kind of power, a passive board (mounted on doorstops) close to the cab stack might do well.
This is true, though I suspect adjusting that may not get the hoped-for results. The more a response is dependent on finding the right node, the more the deep bass will sound on one note when you do hear it. I advocate for upping the mids at need because those won't lie.
Adjusting boundary effect (proximity to floor or nearby wall) can help though, because it's not frequency specific in the same way resonance nodes are.
Edit: it might be worth upping the high frequencies, rather than the mids. Some upward slope to around 6 KHz and higher can really help with clarity, but it depends on whether fret noise is a virtue or a curse in context.
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Over the years i have found that what the audience hears of your rig is NOT what you hear when standing in front of your cab, it takes a while to learn to decode this and becomes even more difficult if you constantly change gear. I would recommend wither getting a LONG ass cable or wireless so you can walk into the audience area to hear what you sound like or have someone play your Bass while you walk out there.
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Absolutely. Boosting the mids can definitely help on some stages (as can a HPF) but it might also make the sound unbearable on other stages. The fact that the OP only experience the problem on certain stages suggests to me that the room is the problem here. In my experience the best way to solve that is to move around a bit to find a sweetspot and THEN resort to eq if it's still necessary. Especially if any of the eq'd signal goes to FOH (which it will unless you only send a clean, pre-eq DI signal to FOH). Sending a heavily eq'd "room corrected" signal to the mixing desk is rarely a good idea.
I appreciate everyone's input trying to help, but I seem to not be asking the question right.
Regarding my EQ settings, I tend to dial them to where they feel good and leave them alone. I use several pedals as a preamp that drive my tone, but I will play with adjusting the mids again to see what happens. It is rare when I'm not right on top of my cab (literally bumping it with my back). The rare times that I do have 6-8 feet between us, the same basic situation is present - yes I can hear it better, but it is always much stronger when I'm on a wooden stage.
But the settings have been set like that for a while and were identical from Saturday to Sunday. The only difference between Saturday and Sunday was the venue; both smallish clubs, one on concrete, one on a little platform stage. While playing with them might help in general, they are not part of the issue I'm trying to solve.
I have had it set up so that one speaker is on end (on concrete) when I forgot my stand one gig. It didn't sound good.
I did note a post or two that addressed my question and it sounds like I can't get away with a small wooden platform to trick physics into thinking my cab is on a wood stage, which what I was asking, so thanks, I won't waste my time trying to play with this concept.
Regarding my EQ settings, I tend to dial them to where they feel good and leave them alone. I use several pedals as a preamp that drive my tone, but I will play with adjusting the mids again to see what happens. It is rare when I'm not right on top of my cab (literally bumping it with my back). The rare times that I do have 6-8 feet between us, the same basic situation is present - yes I can hear it better, but it is always much stronger when I'm on a wooden stage.
But the settings have been set like that for a while and were identical from Saturday to Sunday. The only difference between Saturday and Sunday was the venue; both smallish clubs, one on concrete, one on a little platform stage. While playing with them might help in general, they are not part of the issue I'm trying to solve.
I have had it set up so that one speaker is on end (on concrete) when I forgot my stand one gig. It didn't sound good.
I did note a post or two that addressed my question and it sounds like I can't get away with a small wooden platform to trick physics into thinking my cab is on a wood stage, which what I was asking, so thanks, I won't waste my time trying to play with this concept.
JazznFunk
Supporting Member
Get out in front of your amp. Even with a stack, you can NOT tell how it sounds in the room until you get 15-20 feet in front of it. Sound check it, adjust it so it sounds good out there, THEN see how it sounds when you're on stage with it and notice how different it sounds. You're probably pumping a ton of volume to be heard on stage standing right on top of your rig, and it is indeed killing people out front. Next, is the PA doing the heavy lifting, and are there big subs involved which may be 'smothering' your rig on stage, causing you to need to turn it up to hear yourself? This happened to me often back in the day - from over-zealous use of the house subs rendering my rig useless. I ended up ditching the rig and going completely direct and using monitors only to hear myself. If your amp is handling the bulk of the low end, then you have to be your own 'FOH' and get out front to tweak accordingly.
As far as those mids go, there is never just one 'set and forget' option, because every room is different. As primarily an upright player, what i have to tweak from room to room can be vastly different, as is the low-end cut that I have to use from room to room, especially with boomy stages, or when they decide to set us up in a corner location where bass gathers and gets really nasty. While my preamp handles the job of evening out the tone I get from my bass/pickup, the amp must always be tuned to the room.... same concept for electric as well. Start 'flat' and work from there.
As far as those mids go, there is never just one 'set and forget' option, because every room is different. As primarily an upright player, what i have to tweak from room to room can be vastly different, as is the low-end cut that I have to use from room to room, especially with boomy stages, or when they decide to set us up in a corner location where bass gathers and gets really nasty. While my preamp handles the job of evening out the tone I get from my bass/pickup, the amp must always be tuned to the room.... same concept for electric as well. Start 'flat' and work from there.
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I had the same problem. Ampless and IEM fixed it. I find that I still feel plenty of ‘oomph’ coming from behind the subs to let me know there’s a bass guitar there, and I love the clarity from the IEMs. And no more sound washing across the stage and bleeding into mics or other band members’ ears. Wandering around the stage and still being able to hear myself clearly is a bonus, too.
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No, building a small wooden box will not help in the way you're hoping for (although getting the cab off the floor is generally a good idea).
Rooms have frequency modes at lower frequencies. It is how they resonate. You will hear drastically different tones depending on where the cabinet is located and where you stand. I notice this a lot in my practice room. Some spots sound perfect, others are boomy or have almost no bass. Try moving your position or the amp's position if possible until you find something you like in a particular venue.
It's possible that when you are told to turn down, it isn't you: there's a lot of stuff that lives in 125 and 250hz that isnt bass guitar.....a floor tom with a slight ring may be the culprit but you'll get blamed for it and guitar muted chugs can sometimes be mistaken for bass by avg joes
Its already been said, stage/room acoustics and all that are a big part of the puzzle for bass. One thing that stands out to me about your rig is that if those Markbass cabinets are rear ported, well... I had a NY122 that was rear ported. I found it was more susceptible to interacting with boundaries and did not like it. I also played (keys) in a band with a bass player that had Ta C Electronic rear port cabinet. Same thing. Just saying, it was my experience.
Make sure that your cabs are in phase with each other. Take a 9V battery (a tired one is fine), plug in a Speak-On to one cab, and unscrew the Speak-On at the other end of the cable. You should see that the ends of the wires of the + (black) and the - (white) are separated by the right amount of space to make contact with the 9v battery terminals. When you do so, observe which way the cones move (in or out); then, using the same cable, perform the same test (again making sure to match battery polarity to cable color) on the other cab. You should see the same movement for both cabs. 
The next step would be to make sure that both of your speaker cables are assembled correctly.
The next step would be to make sure that both of your speaker cables are assembled correctly.
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Whole new meaning to 'spinal tap' right there no doubt.
It is virtually inaudible from 20 feet away. No problem with the neighbors, or cranky soundmen either.
The transducer is a lead weight that creates a vibration of the platform giving the concussive feel of very loud speakers. When balanced with IEM it gives the sensation like you are in front of several SVTs. The wattage is needed to move the weight.
Having done a a little research on Bassboard multi-driver platform, they are rated a 600 watts. The Buttkicker was a larger platform and had a single driver.
But to your point, as it aged after15 years the platform got a little buzzy as the shock mounts showed signs of wear but nothing more annoying that a drum snare rattle.
are both situations indoors or outdoors? I find most concrete stages tend to be outdoors and vice versa
I once played in a church that was at least 600 years old. Excellent acoustics for voice but I could not hear myself or the bass drum at all no matter what I did. I ended up standing with my left leg touching the bass drum so I could at least feel when I was in time.
