Double Bass Chasing Tone

[Jeffrey20]

Hello all. First time posting. What a great resource this is!

I’m currently searching for a little better tone and punch with my upright. I’m currently playing an Englehardt. I think it’s a student model, and I’m using a fresh set of Thomastik Spirocores that I really enjoy playing. Great acoustic tone. I’m a pizz player and I really like these strings.

I’m using a Kustom KXB100 amp on a standard amp stand. My signal chain includes a K&K Bass Max pickup on the low E side of the bridge, a Polytune tuner and a HPF-Pre series 2 High Pass Filter. I typically don’t roll off the HP unless we are in a club where the bass shakes the room and I have to make an adjustment.

My settings on my amp:
Bass-All the way up
Low mids- about 7
High mids- barely up
Treble-0
Gain about 2, Master Volume 9

This has given me a fairly round tone that I enjoy.

My question is would adding a compressor pedal get me a better tone with more attack and presence?

I’m looking for something that still allows for that round tone but has some extra overall punch. I tried adding a little treble but it started to get that standard bass sound that I’m trying to avoid.

I’m also considering moving to an SVT200 solid state with a 4x10 cab. Buddy has one... thought it might be fun.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thanks for your time.

 

[Francois Blais]

In what order do you plug your stuff, if I may ask?

 

[Ric Vice]

Hello all. First time posting. What a great resource this is!


My settings on my amp:
Bass-All the way up
Low mids- about 7
High mids- barely up
Treble-0
Gain about 2, Master Volume 9

This has given me a fairly round tone that I enjoy.

My question is would adding a compressor pedal get me a better tone with more attack and presence?

I’m looking for something that still allows for that round tone but has some extra overall punch. I tried adding a little treble but it started to get that standard bass sound that I’m trying to avoid.

I’m also considering moving to an SVT200 solid state with a 4x10 cab. Buddy has one... thought it might be fun.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thanks for your time.

Jeffrey,
The short answer with the compressor is "maybe" but probably not. A great deal of articulation comes from your fingers, hands and arms. You're on the right track with the low mid's. Try
backing off the bass control some and adding some treble. Yeah, I know it's not as pretty, but it should give you more edge on the note. I've seen Dave Holland and Gary Peacock both use
4x10's very successfully, however that's a lot of speaker surface. The Kustom KXB100 head got a lot of good press as a affordable amp for Double Bass. The combo has it tied to a 1/15 which
is great for BG not so good for DB. Players on TB have really liked the Micro VR 210 cabinets. Just my take.

 

[Jeffrey20]

Pickup-Tuner-High Pass-Amp

 

[Jeffrey20]

Jeffrey,
The short answer with the compressor is "maybe" but probably not. A great deal of articulation comes from your fingers, hands and arms. You're on the right track with the low mid's. Try
backing off the bass control some and adding some treble. Yeah, I know it's not as pretty, but it should give you more edge on the note. I've seen Dave Holland and Gary Peacock both use
4x10's very successfully, however that's a lot of speaker surface. The Kustom KXB100 head got a lot of good press as a affordable amp for Double Bass. The combo has it tied to a 1/15 which
is great for BG not so good for DB. Players on TB have really liked the Micro VR 210 cabinets. Just my take.

Hey Thanks Ric. Thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

 

[lurk]

Man, it's your sound and your call ultimately, but i think compression should be avoided and if used used judiciously. Don't be afraid of a little bit of edge either. That usually filtered out with a little distance from the amp. Sounds like you're digging the upright. Have fun!

 

[Jay Corwin]

Hello all. First time posting. What a great resource this is!

I’m currently searching for a little better tone and punch with my upright. I’m currently playing an Englehardt. I think it’s a student model, and I’m using a fresh set of Thomastik Spirocores that I really enjoy playing. Great acoustic tone. I’m a pizz player and I really like these strings.

I’m using a Kustom KXB100 amp on a standard amp stand. My signal chain includes a K&K Bass Max pickup on the low E side of the bridge, a Polytune tuner and a HPF-Pre series 2 High Pass Filter. I typically don’t roll off the HP unless we are in a club where the bass shakes the room and I have to make an adjustment.

My settings on my amp:
Bass-All the way up
Low mids- about 7
High mids- barely up
Treble-0
Gain about 2, Master Volume 9

This has given me a fairly round tone that I enjoy.

My question is would adding a compressor pedal get me a better tone with more attack and presence?

I’m looking for something that still allows for that round tone but has some extra overall punch. I tried adding a little treble but it started to get that standard bass sound that I’m trying to avoid.

I’m also considering moving to an SVT200 solid state with a 4x10 cab. Buddy has one... thought it might be fun.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thanks for your time.

Looking at your settings, I get the impression that you are fighting the normal deficiencies that we all fight when we start using piezo pickups. That is, trying to cut the shrill quackery of a piezo out with EQ, and put the oomph of DB back into the mix. It's a never ending battle once you amplify these things, and it gets worse the louder you get.

I checked the mid points on the EQ for that amp, and they aren't upright friendly IME (this doesn't mean you can't make it sound good though). Many of us cut frequencies around the 700hz area to help control the MID problems that piezos often present. This helps soften or round the tone back out a bit.

A couple of ideas, depending on your budget:

1. get an acoustic preamp with tone shaping
2. TC Electronics BodyRez pedal

I use the BodyRez pedal in my signal chain. There are a couple of really nice things it does for acoustics. First, it cuts around the 700hz mark. Second - although it has compression built in, it is very subtle unless you run it wide open. It's also very inexpensive, and very easy to use (one knob). I wrote a lengthy review on it here: BodyRez Thread. It plays very nice with a RSII pickup. Results may vary with a Bassmax. It's cheap one to buy and try though.

 

[Francois Blais]

Pickup-Tuner-High Pass-Amp

Beep!
Change that to Pickup-HPF-Tuner-Amp.
The tuner has a too-low input impedance and is loading your pickup.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

The last two are the best advices I can think of and should be combined.

A double bass is not a bass guitar and unless you want to play any bass heavy and bass guitar typical styles of music just put up as much bass control that the amplified double bass does not sound thin. That might vary with band volume and room size.

Treble has mostly influence on hardness of attack, higher mids on transparency and ability to hear intonation well, lower mids are what gives body to the sound.

I'm no fan of a bass max because the rubber/synthetic wrap dampens higher frequencies. What sounds good at home might not sound good with the band (but I doubt the former would be the case with a bass max).

To get a good sound out of amplification you need one or better two additional people, one with a good ear to sound. You first need to get a good amplified sound for the listener and then need to experiment where to put the amp relative to your ear and in which direction it should point (might influence the listeners sound a bit too).
The person with the good ear should listen in typical listeners distance and give advice to the third one what to change on the amp and how much. You should only play because every player sounds different on the same instrument. You might need to correct the listeners sound a bit after you found a good position for the cabinet (usually not on th floor but raised up like sitting on a stool or on a stand). Of course that mostly works with smaller cabs.

At the end you might find another bass player playing your instrument and you can listen unamplified and amplified in listeners distance and maybe find someone else to turn volume up and down while your colleague is playing to compare the purely acoustical sound to the amplified one.