Of course, some would say that if your bass and cabinet sound good enough significant tone sculpting is not necessary.
Sorry, mate. Your chain was just hangin' out. I had to yank it.
P.S. Seriously, I get what you're sayin'. A happy middle ground could be the Demeter HBP-1 with those semi-parametric bass and mid controls.
M. M.
Yes, well... I actually did kind of expect that as the 201 has a rep of mythic proportions. To a certain extent it should - again - maybe the worlds best DI - I wouldn't necessarily pick an Avalon or RED over one ... and it does have an almost magical 'crystaline' quality to it. ...which disappears when run through external EQ. I tried a few pretty good ones... had the same experience with Alembic. Just seems like they lose a bit of the magic with other outboard gear.
These days I could use one in my recording rack as I EQ and comp using plug's... but for live work where I'm dealing with multiple musical settings, a mix of active and passive basses and sometimes iffy rooms it would be living life on the edge ... truth is that these days I'm headed opposite of our OP. I can get real happy live with a GK 1001 RB II and a stack of Avatar cab's or Bag Ends
or an EA Micro for low volume stuff ... recording I use a passive bass and either a DI or a mic pre and record totally dry... boring as crap to listen to on it's own I grant but it does grant one some flexibility when tracking/mixing and frankly live, I could hardly care as long as it's warm, round, defined and not boomy - pretty much it's going to work for me.
me support guy you dig ? now excuse me whilst I go shave my knuckles on the sidewalk...
This was kinda funny with the Demeter. I show up at a gig to sit in with some guys I might be playing with later... the original bassist is there with his rig. It's a bluesy, retro rocky kinda scene. So we swap a couple of long afternoon sets. In the last one, the other guys has the bass chair. So I grab the guitarist's 57 RI Strat, turn the Crown way down, turn the Demeter way the heck up and wail away as rhythm guitarist - through a Music Man HD 212 - the 100 lb, 2x12 with 6" mid / tweet monster cab. That strat never sounded quite like that before or since! Nice rhythm grind from the Demeter - I could definately use that as a track sound. The MM cab was a bit on the heavy side though ... Kinda like Steve Cropper meets KORN ... I got the gig in spite of that ...
If I were going back to pre/pwr setups it would be back to the Eden Navigator and something light. I gigged that pre and a 2402 pretty hard and while I hate all the freaking knobs, the gold, the aircraft landing strip LEDS - the Nav is still the best compromise of live pre's
for me - and in the studio - it can be a stunner.
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