FOH EQ

[JonnyAngle]

When playing live, how do you determine what the actual EQ of my bass is?

These are not my actual settings but this will clarify my question:

If I have a 3 band eq on my bass with the bass and treble dimed with the mids cut down to 0. Then I have the mids boosted on my amp with the bass and treble cut.

How do I know what my overall eq will be? The reason I ask is because I have a plethora of pedals that have their own parametric eq's on them and am wondering if they affect the "overall eqing" or if the last eq in the chain is the most prevalent.

Sorry about the rambling, I hope it makes sense.

 

[Hollywars]

Well, over all, you seem to have treble and bass boosted and mids cut all the way, so you will have a very scooped sound, because the LAST THING YOU DO is cut like 12 db or whatever your EQ has of your mids.

 

[Kael]

You boost onboard Bass and Treble and cut your mids completely, then compensate for this massive EQ'ing by reversing the procedure at the amp? That makes no sense. Chances are you are getting a pre-EQ DI out from your amp in most situations which would lead you to sounding insanely scooped in FOH. IMO, there is zero reason to over EQ yourself from the onboard preamp to begin with. You obviously are trying to fix the over-EQ'd tone once it gets to your amp anyway.

Try backing off the EQ onboard and at the amp. Then lightly goose/cut things at the instrument to get the sound you want. Finally, use the EQ on the amp to adjust for room acoustics.

 

[Bardley]

I don't quite understand how your question relates to FOH eq? Everything you put in the signal chain is going to effect the end result. Isn't that the point of putting them there in the first place?

BTW, the drastic EQ you were describing cannot be helping anything.

 

[bassmanbiff]

It's not really that the last one takes precedence. They all have an effect. You should probably think of the one on the amp as being the final "shaping" eq for room conditions and that kind of thing and the various pedals with independent eq (??!!) as creating the tone for that pedal independent of the adjustments needed for the environment.

The real problem is if you to use extremes in the final eq, since nearly all eq's do bad things as they get too far from "no adjustment", particularly if one is trying to recover from over compensation prior to it (as when a pedal has an extreme eq and one is trying to fix it in a later eq).

 

[ga_edwards]

The overall eq by the sounds of that example would be all over the place. But if you wanted to get a picture of it you could find out the frequencies of the bass' eq and the amp eq and plot them on a graph and see what curve it gives you.

If your amp came with a manual, it may have graphs showing what each of the eq controls does to the curve.

IMO though if any eq stage is the most important, it's the first one. If you output a bad sound, no amount of post processing will fix it. I would try to aim for as little eq'ing as possible. Not only does it avoid adding unnecessary noise, but it gives more scope for tweaking if everything sounds good set flat, and is easier to correct if something doesn't sound right.

BTW chaps, the OP states that these are not his actual settings, he's just using it as an example.

 

[JonnyAngle]

So the actual EQ is going to be a combination of all of the settings. I like to have a slight frowny face eq to cut through the band (which is how I have it set on my amp.) When engage my BDDI, I seem to get lost (I assume because it scoops the mids.) So I was clarifying that by eqing my amp to cut through the mix, I may still get lost by having a pedal that is scooping the mids. What the amp does NOT do is take the scooped signal and bring it flat (even though the mids are boosted on the amp.)

 

[ga_edwards]

That sounds about right. The BDDI is notorious for scooping the mids. Others have claimed to have success reducing the bass and treble to retain mids along with the blend control. But I can't get a pleasant tone out of one like this. I think the resulting mid hump from this technique is in the wrong frequency for me.

I digress. It would seem to me that you're trying to put back with the amp what the BDDI is removing. However, you can't dial in what isn't there. If there's not enough mids going into the amp, you're going to have a hard time dialing them in. I think you may have better luck with a different pedal that has a more mid centred, neutral tone.

 

[JonnyAngle]

+1 I got a VT and it makes all of my wildest dreams come true.

 

[walker rosewood]

if you have an iphone, there are plenty of apps like this one... which will show you the frequency curve of whatever it hears.


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