Double Bass Full-Circle: What does yours sound like with EQ set flat?

[robert_stuart]

Into headphones, mine seems to be all bass and no tone.

And so to match my bass's acoustic sound I need to boost the high-mids way up, and add some treble as well:



But I'm used to an electric bass, where the raw sound with flat EQ is pretty decent. (?) Is this normal for a Fishman Full Circle?

 

[Fredrik E. Nilsen]

This is normal. I always have to turn down the bass. I believe it's normal for most, if not all, DB pickups.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

No, it’s not. At least from your description for no highs at all. But ... see below.

The sound of a Full Circle very much depends on the mounting/pressure it gets.
Which basically means
A) the contact area between bridge foot and adjuster disk needs to be perfectly plan AND perpendicular to the adjuster hole axis.
B) there is variation in the sound in a 45 degree rotation of the Full Circle, then this gets mirrored and then the whole repeated four times.

A pickup at the bridge with a high impedance (pre-)amp input always has too much Bass because the damping in bass frequency radiation through the top is not there. Try dialing back half of the bass frequencies.

The mids should never be a problem with a Full Circle (except for too much and/or piezo quack), but depending on the rotational setting you might get (more and different) nasty resonances. Better go with a lower output signal and a better sound.

When I had my Full Circle. The cable showed to a corner of the bridge foot for best sound.

 

[brianrost]

Mine is exact opposite, high mids (800hZ to 1KhZ) cut quite a bit for quack from all pickups I've ever used on my two basses (both now fitted with Full Circles). As noted above, rotating the adjuster acts like a tone control, so experiment with different positions. A small turn won't affect bridge height much. I sometimes boost bass depending on the room, but I always use a HPF for feedback control so the two interact.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

At low volumes, it sounds great flat. As the volume goes up, the bass is too much so I use a high pass filter to keep things in balance. A lot has to do with the following factors IME:

1) The player's technique of tone production - some players pull a strong, punchy, forward sound, while at the other end of the spectrum some players get a much less articulate, padded kind of sound. The former tends to cut in a mix, the latter to get swallowed up.

2) The string type - bright undampened strings (usually steel but sometimes synthetic core) tend to have more high end information, and this translates through the pickup. The other end of the spectrum is as above.

3) The amplifier/speaker - each has its own inherent tendency. You can take the same player and bass from points 1 and 2 above and have to make drastically different EQ settings on different amps/speakers to approximate the same sound.

4) The room - reverberant/reflective rooms tend toward mud if you aren't careful. Dry/absorbant rooms soak up bass. Both need to be EQ'd differently.

 

[statsc]

It would be helpful if you provided more information regarding strings, type of bass, string height, etc. I can tell you that in 30 years of Full Circle use I can count the number of times I’ve had to boost the mids on the fingers of one hand, and then only a slight boost. Invariably it’s the opposite; cutting the mids to lessen the “piezo quack.” Sounds to me like a possible installation problem or a defective pick-up.

 

[Ric Vice]

Spirocores tend to have more upper midrange "honk" because it's an exposed core string (flatwound metal wraping on a spiral metal core, with no silk dampening in between). IMYOE, string type, pickup type, and input buffering have more effect on honk than the bass or string height. I would
venture a guess that the new Pirastro strings might be a good choice because they a sligntly less mid forward, but I haven't tried a set yet. Corelli's are brighter, but sound far warmer under the bow than Spirocore's. I use Evah Parazzi Weich, but they only last @ 18 months you can push it
a little further but depending on how much you perfore, their pretty dead the closer you get past a year and a half.

 

[juusokasperi]

With my current all-gut setup it's always a bit of a hassle trying to get a satisfying sound with the Full Circle. But I had the Pirastro Perpetuals on a while ago and with those that pickup worked really well, just plug in to an amp and maybe cut a bit of the low-mids.

 

[day82]

From all the experiment I have don, is the best combination:
Spiro weich,full-circle,Tonedexter 1.62bas,PJB bg300-PJB pb300