Difficulty overdriving Shuttle 6.0

[bassmatt1]

Hi, im a long time lurker here but this is my first post, be gentle.
Im using a bass with 9v active electronics with the volume up full and the eq flat. I can barley get the red led on the shuttle pre amp to flash let alone get any consistent overdrive. I have noticed most people saying they find it almost too easy to overdrive, where am i going wrong here?
I guess the battery is the obvious thing to check first, coud my cable be having any effect?
The shuttle settings are:
Gain - full
Volume - 12
Bass - 1 oclock
mid - 10 oclock
freq - 11 oclock
High - 1 oclock
no pre shape
Im still exerimenting alot so those settings are not set in stone.
TIA
Matt

 

[zorro]

Yea, it definitely sounds like your battery is old. with the gain full up you should definitely be getting some pre amp clipping.

Is the preamp clipping light flashing? If you are expecting a fuzz like sounds that could be an issue. The amp doesn't sound like that.

Do you only have one cable? Try another one. And make sure that you are plugged all the way into your bass. Sometimes I accidentally don't push the jack flush with the body.

Good luck. Let us know how things turn out.

 

[RickenBoogie]

And, there's always overdrive pedals, which get the crunch at any volume.

 

[bassmatt1]

I have replaced the battery and it really hasn't made any difference. I have a few old cables i have tried to no avail, i really meant is it possible for a cable to have this effect.
If I pluck the e string very hard the led will light up.
Its an Ibanez bass are they known to have a low output perhaps?
Its not the end of the world its still a great little amp, i was just wondering why my experience with it seemed to be different to everyone else.
Cheers

 

[JustDavid]

I've 2 Ibanez SR485s that both have low output. I haven't bothered to research the proper pickup height, but suspect that's likely the reason why.

 

[seamonkey]

And, there's always overdrive pedals, which get the crunch at any volume.

+1 - that's your best options.

Or, you can open up your bass and see if there's a trim pot in there. Mark where's it at now, and tweak it. There's hardly any chance of harming anything.

 

[tallboybass]

....see if there's a trim pot in there.....

+1

I believe most active basses have a way to adjust the output volume. It made a big difference with my Lakland.

 

[thejohnkim]

my shuttle also seems to have a lot of headroom before the preamp starts to clip. i'm using a zon sonus 5 which has an active bart preamp, with the trim pot at 50% since it worked the best balance of tone and battery life with a multitude of other amps, the shuttle's front end doesn't seem made for overdrive. even when i use a signal booster to overdrive the front end the overdrive is not very satisfying like other tube preamps i've used like the IOD, DB659, SVP-Pro, etc. for overdrive, the best is found in (high quality) pedals with these new micro heads.

 

[JimmyM]

I have only had one experience with the Shuttle 6.0 at a Sam Ash in Long Island. Used a Precision into it...I couldn't get it to distort at all. Sounded excellent but I cranked that gain all the way up and got as clean a tone as if I backed off the gain to halfway. So you're not alone.

 

[tolson36]

The Shuttle has a single input that does not have a high/low switch so I imagine that it's designed to handle both passive and active (a wide range)

so a passive bass is on the lower side and won't overdrive the input too much unless you really dig in. the only way I've found to really drive the tube is using some type of pedal that will provide a boost

I have a Shure wireless unit that boosts my signal enough but then I really don't want to overdrive it a bunch. Just a little. However, it's worth pursuing because it does produce some nice gritty tone.

I've heard that some other tubes could be swapped in to produce quicker breakup.

 

[6810]

I guess it depends on what you mean by overdrive.

If you mean a saturated preamp tube drive, you may want to do a tube swap (look for the thread I started, tons of info, mostly courtesy of everyone but me.

That said, through an active bass with a hot signal, I got some pretty smooth harmonic distortion, quite gritty too, running all the time into the red.

So in that case maybe something to boost your signal (preamp or just cave in and get a distortion box, after all the shuttle has plenty of watts for clean).

If it's a full on power tube style grind... forget it - just get get a pedal.

So I guess it depends on the bass and how hot the signal is.

But more than that it depends on what you want out of the amp.