Drop1s EQ tutorial

Thank you for delivering. Its an interesting concept, but there are some logical holes...not knocking the efficacy of the method as I havent tried it, but logically you are saying that the angle of the cab to you plays a key role in this process...so what happens if you move? What about the audience or your bandmates if your eq is dialed in for where you are standing...what if where you dial it in is not where you stand when you play - gotta walk over, tweak, walk back, listen, walk back tweak, etc?

These instructions would probably be amazing for setting your stereo's EQ (do those still exist?), seems like a big process though for bass and could take more time than a soundman will give you or that your band will tolerate while waiting to groove?

I have found (for me) that the best way to dial in a room is w an LPF/HPF. Play, listen, twist one knob while listening, get it in the spot you like and then rip it all night long! Just one knob...two if you use an HPF to tame back the top end.

But good on you for following through. Might give it a try just to see, but I dont see myself putting this routine in place. How long does this typically tale you to dial in a room? Plqying up and down each string and listening will require at least a few seconds × # of frets on your instrument × # of strings...for a 24 fret 4 string you are talking 4 mins if you spend a second on each note...2 seconds per note becomes 8 mins...any tweaking and this could be 20 mins easy.

 

Excellent Thanks! Your a brave man in the know it all talkbass world...

 

This is similar to tuning a room. Listening to how a speaker system reacts in a room, then taking out the peaks and valleys, completing with tone shaping.

You are on point and I give you a big thumbs up! Thanks for taking the time to write this process. As a production director and FOH engineer, I have noticed a lot of musicians do not know any of this info, how their gear interacts with a room. I hope those who read this will consider this information and try it out for themselves. Most will be surprised how much better they will hear what they are playing.....And for those who play in places with no PA support and have to rely on their bass rig, the audience will understand what the bass player is trying to say.

 

Open E is E1 (41hz), and E at the 12th fret is E2 (82hz).

 

Agreed. Especially true when a variable HPF is in the signal path.

 

Thanks for not letting the Trolls put you off, that sounds logical and well thought out.

Thanks for sharing, Maurie.

 

Nice! Thank you sir!

 

Compelling stuff, thank you. I’m going to give it a go.

 

Thanks for the methodical approach especially since there are more and more EQ options to confuse us bass players.

 

I think this is just something to keep in mind. But aren't there still benefits?

Let me sum it up. Bass frequencies can always end up louder or quieter do to reinforcement and cancellation. The smaller the room is, and the lower the notes are, the worse this can be. Most acoustic treatment in live venues doesn't do squat below 200hz, so standing waves are a real problem in any venue with lower ceilings or walls less than maybe 20 feet apart. I believe this is the problem neophytes don't understand until they're taught or learn through experience.

So, practically, all those notes you're correcting are only going to sound correct to a listener standing exactly where you stand when you're correcting.

But sounding correct there -- this is still probably a good thing. Because it means you'll not be playing way too darned loud on those fundamentals because you can't hear them where you are standing. The FOH guy can deal with the room if you're going into the board, and if you aren't going through the board you pretty much are at the mercy of the room no matter what you do. So balancing so YOU can hear well will help you give the best performance. Right?

Or maybe I'm just coming from a perspective. I've played with too many bassists who were on top of their amp and had their EQ scooped and then just cranked it louder when they couldn't hear themselves instead of EQing it better and pointing the amp at themselves. Recently a venue I visit often has hosted an open mic where the bass amp is on the floor, horizontal, and if the stage is full with other musicians the bassist ends up standing so close it points at their knees. The bass is ALWAYS too loud in those circumstances, too. It gives me band argument flashbacks.

I believe good eq and having the amp where I can hear it well when I'm on bass goes a long way to keeping me from making those mistakes.

 

You definitely need to EQ for the location you will be monitoring from. The EQ will be most valid in the position you set it for, and varying degrees of invalid everywhere else.

The way I like to use the EQ for bass is pretty consistent with what @Drop1 expressed with one exception: I fine tune the EQ for a relatively even tone in the context of the mix, rather than when I am playing by myself. This relates to masking and frequency slotting. IMHO, the EQ of a GK RB series amp is setup really well for this sort of EQ strategy, where you essentially balance the sound across the range of the instrument. But I don't feel RB series amps are particularly great for dialing in a "signature sound." Of course YMMV.

Unfortunately & IMHO, the tone controls on many vintage tube amps are fairly decent for dialing in a signature sound, but not well suited for balancing tone. With most of the tube amps I own, I feel each amp tends to have one basic core sound that can be revealed and slightly tailored with the tone controls. So the best thing you can do with some amps is set your tone controls so the desired signature sound is revealed in a good acoustic environment and then forget about the tone controls. If you want to effectively deal with acoustic problems or balance your tone, you will probably need an EQ pedal that is more flexible and capable.

I am also an advocate of EQ'ing for intended purpose. On stage I like bright and articulate sound because I want the bass to jump out of the quagmire as much as possible. This allows me to monitor at a lower level, so the low end produced by rig does not fight with the main PA speakers as much.

My stage sound would be too gnarly for the main mix with most styles of music. I plug my bass into a decent DI and usually run the volume wide open and the tone controls flat, so the audio tech gets a neutral signal to carve up as appropriate.

 

My personal strategy is to elevate the speaker and aim it at my ears. I want to hear the direct full range the speaker produces. But not everyone likes hear the full range of the bass. I get the impression that many only want to hear up to about 400-700hz or so.

 

From a practical standpoint, this isn't readily applied on stage in the real world due to time and space limitations. We don't always have the luxury of a personal soundcheck, and very often the space(and FOH engineer) dictates where your cab will be, giving little or no option to find optimal cab placement.

Not trying to say it's not good methodology, just not practical or realistic in some circumstances, so not always readily applicable.

 

Thanks, @Drop1!

 

This is a valid approach, but in practice, if you consistently have problems with a boomy sound (which is mainly what this would help with), you'll get a lot more mileage from going to the source of those issues in your rig and technique, and address them there. For instance, using a cab that's big enough (for the driver/s) and tuned low enough that it doesn't have the huge low mid bump that many cabs use to disguise how weak they otherwise are.

If you have a rig and a dialed in sound that are boomy to start with, mostly what this will be doing is undoing that, with the added complication of that interacting with the room. If you minimize those issue first, then you JUST have to deal with the room, and then this might be somewhat helpful if you can do it quickly enough to be somewhat practical, more so than just intuitively grabbing what you need to pull out, etc... But the other thing is that "the room" is going to have different effects depending on where your cab is and where you are listening from. Which means that if you get too aggressive with these kinds of adjustments for your own listening position, you may be hurting your sound in other parts of the room. So ideally you would adjust and then move around the entire room as much as you can to get a good sense of what is going on everywhere, and then refine or undo whatever you changed.

 

Also, this really should be in Live Sound and not Effects.