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Double Bass countryman di

bass dan

bass dan

Feb 18, 2007
845
72
st. simons isl. GA
#1
I would like to hear from some folks that are using just a countryman type 85 di straight to the pa when playing gigs.

I have a fishman pro plat. that I have been using and it works pretty good, but more and more I use pre eq instead of post eq. I was thinking of getting a countryman and just run my fishman full circle pickup straight to the di then on to the board.

Anyone doing this? My guess is it may not be that much better than the fishman but was curious what some folks experience has been doing this.
 
#4
On occasions when I've been DI'd, it's almost always been a Countryman 85. The 85 contains a high quality FET preamp driving the matching transformer.

On almost all of those occasions, the biggest problem has been that a PA can put out a lot more low end than a typical bass speaker, especially if subwoofers are involved. Taming that portion of the spectrum is a matter of filtering / EQ, and this is where the Fishman preamp may give you (or the PA tech) a bit more control than what is available on the PA desk, especially the "depth" knob.
 
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#7
BassGreaser said:
Did it cut the gain, low-end, mids like the standard DI box every club uses for electric bass?
Click to expand...

BassGreaser,
Since I've gone into that particular box on many occasions it evidently sends the full frequency spectrum directly to the board, so if they don't EQ properly it for Double Bass you get a ton of bass response. It's the one of the most common boxes that are out there and it has a adjustable megohm load I believe, but like I said it can be really bass heavy.

Ric
 
#8
The Countryman is a very good DI, and has a 1Meg input impedance. The DI's that are most common have a input impedance that is at best 1/4 of that.

I want a flat signal to hit my console from the bass. If the bassist has a tunable notch filter , that's handy (so long as it's really a notch and not a wide filter). But no high-pass.
 
#9
TimmyP said:
I want a flat signal to hit my console from the bass. If the bassist has a tunable notch filter , that's handy (so long as it's really a notch and not a wide filter). But no high-pass.
Click to expand...

Just curious as this is a problem I've had at a soundcheck or two: How does one send a flat signal and what do you mean by that?
Every time I've sent my pre-eq signal to the board my sound was like fireworks (lots of tweeters going "pop, clack, tick" above the rest of the mix in a very bad way). Especially since lately I've been doing a lot of aggressive slapping with a rockabilly group. However, 90% of the soundmen down here have never handled an upright bass before which may account for something. Just wondering, maybe it's the wine. Thanks.
 
#10
TimmyP said:
The Countryman is a very good DI, and has a 1Meg input impedance. The DI's that are most common have a input impedance that is at best 1/4 of that.

I want a flat signal to hit my console from the bass. If the bassist has a tunable notch filter , that's handy (so long as it's really a notch and not a wide filter). But no high-pass.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, a lot of sound guys have never dealt with a DB. The biggest problem I have encountered is what happens when all of the sub-harmonic stuff gets fed straight to the subs. I've smoked subs with my low E.

But I don't want to get into sound-guy-bashing, since it sounds like you have more experience than that. Perhaps a useful question to ask is: What advice would you give to an apprentice sound guy about the DB?
 
#11
fdeck said:
Unfortunately, a lot of sound guys have never dealt with a DB. The biggest problem I have encountered is what happens when all of the sub-harmonic stuff gets fed straight to the subs. I've smoked subs with my low E.

But I don't want to get into sound-guy-bashing, since it sounds like you have more experience than that. Perhaps a useful question to ask is: What advice would you give to an apprentice sound guy about the DB?
Click to expand...

That too. Too many times I've been unable to get out of "rumble mode" with my eq. Especially when the subs are sitting on the stage itself (which happens more times than I'd care to remember) and begin to induce the howling feedback just from being in proximity to those VW sized speaker cabs and your endpin contacting common surfaces as them. I've tried propping my bass by the rib on the instep of my foot to keep the endpin off the stage on which the subs were sitting or turning 'depth' knob on my fishman preamp (which doesn't really apply to this thread but...) waaaaaayyy down to no avail.
What would be a good thing to 'prep' the soundguy with?
 
#12
TimmyP said:
The Countryman is a very good DI, and has a 1Meg input impedance. The DI's that are most common have a input impedance that is at best 1/4 of that.

I want a flat signal to hit my console from the bass. If the bassist has a tunable notch filter , that's handy (so long as it's really a notch and not a wide filter). But no high-pass.
Click to expand...

Countryman has 10Meg input impedance!
 
#13
Barcza said:
Countryman has 10Meg input impedance!
Click to expand...

Really? I would expect it to have done more to shave some of the ugly off the Underwood signal, which is supposed to be right around 10 megs. Maybe that's why it sounded better, but not good.

Greaser,
Plugged into the signal chain between the Underwood and an amp, the 85 smoothed out the signal and took some of the high-frequency nastiness out, as you would expect a buffer to do. It did not otherwise mess with the signal that I could hear, as far as what this cheap little amp would put out.

I thought the Countryman's impedence was too low for that signal, at the time, but Barcza could definitely be right and I'm pretty close to unteachable on these matters and could easily be wrong. Gotta check the spec sheet tomorrow. Anyway, great indestructible DI. Buy one on principle.
 
#16
Having sat behind the lighting console FOH through several Vancouver Jazz Festivals the only bass sound I thought was truly horrible in almost 100 different basses there was Dave Holland running only a DI. The soundman was someone I've worked with for years and have heard regularly get magnificent bass sounds with a mic so I know he wasn't the problem. I might not go through the trouble to use a mic through an amp in a small venue but through a PA I wouldn't even consider a DI except as a very last resort. Especially not something exotic like a REDDI (and I do ove those things) when for that money you could get a small diaphragm condenser that you could count on really sounding great. Just my unsolicited 2 bits.
 
#18
Yes Jeff, using a mic is great until you get up to volume levels where it is unusable. It's always a compromise either way. And Dave Holland doesn't use a Countryman, does he? Isn't it a tube DI?

The Countryman is a great piece if gear, higher quality build compared to the Fishman IMO. But I think you still need to use some eq to get the sound to be usable in most cases. The Fishman wins for convenience, bells and whistles, ect.
 

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