Gain Knob: How much gain you give ?

[10emmanuel]

Hello everyone. I Have an Ampeg 4x10 with a Peavey head and I Was Wondering, How Much gain I Should give. I don't use any pedals, I don't like distortion on bass, for instance, I Have The gain of At 3 Out of 10. There's no Reason For That, Only not to Give Too Much distortion to the sound, but I was wondering if I just should put the gain knob On Zero And Just put the volume up with the volume knob.. What do You guys Say? How Do You relate The gain knob and the volume knob?.

Thanks!

 

[agedhorse]

And don’t stress your speakers.

Yup, but that’s independent of gain.

 

[sunburst79]

Use your Mk I Audio Sensors. Meaning ears.

If there’s metering just below the edge of clipping normally provides the best signal to noise ratio. And preamp gain is normally before the tone stack. So you’re trying to get the cleanest possible signal to drive the tone stack. How you boost or cut tone controls will affect the actual preamp gain in many cases. And how the metering is derived across the preamp and tone stack will determine how the preamp clips or at least what it’s showing going into the power section of the amp.

Use your ears and eyes. If it sounds good it sounds good. A little preamp clipping is fine. Power amp clipping is generally speaking a bad thing and to be avoided.

If there’s no metering than your back to using your ears exclusively.

There can be good distortion and bad distortion. Some amps respond well to high pre amp gain. Others just go Splat in unpleasant ways. You normally would go for a preamp level just below your loudest transients.

There aren’t any rules other than the rule of thumb but Your ears will tell you if your hearing what you want. And if your using them the amp and speakers will let You know if they are unhappy. My personal advice is to run the master as low as possible to get the required volume. It’s all to easy accidentally send some transient into a maxed out power amp and kill a driver. So running the amp wide open with the Master Volume set wide open is not the best idea either in my opinion.

None of this really touches on built in limiters and compression.

 

[mambo4]

. What I’ve noticed is that as I turn up the gain, there’s a point where the D and G strings suddenly feel more balanced with the lower ones

I'd hazard a guess that it's the distortion. Most preamp circuits start to distort only at specific frequency ranges, which might nerf the perceived volume of strings which are have higher signal in those frequencies. Probably making E&A seem more quiet.
But it's only a guess.

 

[agedhorse]

I'd hazard a guess that it's the distortion. Most preamp circuits start to distort only at specific frequency ranges, which might nerf the perceived volume of strings which are have higher signal in those frequencies. Probably making E&A seem more quiet.
But it's only a guess.

It’s an interesting guess for sure…

 

[lug]

In general, low gain/higher Master guy here. I'm a Smooth operator!

 

[mambo4]

I set my gain so that I can sound mostly clean with a light touch, distorted with a heavy touch.
I wish I knew enough about the tech to dialup that responsiveness more
but my Streamliner does a fine job.

 

[Count Bassie]

This is just from my own experimenting, but maybe someone here can explain the technical side. I play a lot of hotel gigs and occasionally some bigger venues, usually with whatever solid-state amp is on stage. What I’ve noticed is that as I turn up the gain, there’s a point where the D and G strings suddenly feel more balanced with the lower ones. Below that point they sound a bit weak, and if I go past it, the sound starts getting kind of muddy when I play with softer dynamics. That “in-between” spot is where the whole bass feels most even to me, and it’s basically how I’ve been setting my gain on SS amps.

Can’t say much about valve amps as I have little experience with them but I imagine it’s the same.

Hope this helps!

Almost everything's got a "sweet spot".

 

[Count Bassie]

Whenever I play my Epiphone Thunderbird Classic Pro I have to watch the input gain, that bass is hot. On the other hand, I've got a modded bass with Rickenbacker p'ups and RIC spec'd harness with very low output, and that one needs a gain boost until it feels more like where the 'bird's level is at, especially if swapping during a set. Doesn't matter what amp I'm using.

That took some practice because the characters of those two basses are different, but similar also, in a way, once their relative gains at the amp's input are pretty close. Ears are what you've got after you understand something about your gear.

 

[Al Kraft]

I like to use enough preamp gain to wake up some of its character/harmonic richness without getting into OD or distortion territory.

With my basses and playing style, that usually ends up somewhere in the 11 o'clock to 2 o'clock gain knob position. However, but I always dial in the gain setting by ear. The master volume is set for the needs of the venue.