Heavy bass distortion for low end.

[Jeff Scott]

Ask Amy about bass overdrive!

 

[monsterthompson]

The point is though that you have to have some clean signal in there, otherwise there will be no punchy low end. It will be all sludgy and undefined, especially when tuned that low. I mean, listen to Sunn O)), not bass but ultra low-tuning, and really sludgy stuff. It works perfectly for them, but for what you're describing you'll need a bit more definition. I mean, unless you're looking for some sort of Necrobutcher-type sound which is pretty fuzzy and gnarly but not all that punchy, you're going to have to have some clean signal in the mix... maybe 30-40% of it clean.

This is just what I've come across in my time, I could be totally wrong.

I think you are pretty accurate, thanks a bunch.

there are several bass fuzz pedals with blend knobs so you can layer in a touch of clean to your taste. i've run the Darkglass B7k and the MXR Blowtorch (which i'm now selling), and they both have that feature. i just peeked at the Dunlop page, and it looks like they have a few pedals with clean blend controls.

also, as i've gotten older and wiser, i've found that in a live mix, less is often more when it comes to fuzzing up your tone. the compression from too much overdrive robs a bunch of your tone.

 

[monsterthompson]

when you get the funds, you want this head - Verellen Meat Smoke @ 1:20
http://youtu.be/EDqRXHwclM4

 

[deathsdj]

I agree with the dual rig idea. It works for me.

I run the black Firebass clean and the white Firebass gets my Rat King. It's pretty glorious.

 

[jeff7bass]

I agree with the dual rig idea. It works for me.

I run the black Firebass clean and the white Firebass gets my Rat King. It's pretty glorious.

Banned in most nightclubs...

 

[levis76]

I agree with the dual rig idea. It works for me.

I run the black Firebass clean and the white Firebass gets my Rat King. It's pretty glorious.

Egads!! Good luck loading that into anything smaller than a semi.

I'd love to see the sound guy's face after the third and then fourth cabinets went up on stage.

Blending is a great idea. I had a buddy who used two combo amps, a matched pair of Peavey TKO amps. He stacked them and he ran the bottom one clean and low and the other had his distorted and heavily processed sound that sounded like garbage alone, but fantastic with the clean bottom to support it. It was a 3 piece with a guitard that was waaay above playing any kind of rhythm, so the effected portion of the bass rig kind of helped fill out the bands sound. They called themselves The Asshats.

 

[levis76]

when you get the funds, you want this head - Verellen Meat Smoke @ 1:20
http://youtu.be/EDqRXHwclM4

That Meat Smoke is wicked. Couldn't find a vid with a Darkglass running into one, prolly cuz when you start playing it melts your face.

 

[monsterthompson]

or because only a few exist in the wild, and people are too busy wailing away to put vids on the tube.

 

[Bassmec]

Your F# = 23.125Hz

There is a good chance that an ordinary amp will have baked-in a filter that takes most signal below 30Hz out as noise. You need a high quality PA amp that does not impose a HPF roll-off.

I'd go for a Crest CA9 (or similar). The CA9 has two channels, each 2 ohm capable, and throws 1800 watts at 4 ohms bridged with 20Hz-20kHz, 0.1% THD (total harmonic distortion). Less that 1% is considered the basic standard, so this amp is seriously accurate down by 20Hz.

Then a tube pre (ART?), pedals (DarkGlass or SansAmp), and for speaker cabs—something that can represent however much of the fundamental you decide to throw at it (Acme, BagEnd, Epifani, fEARful, BFM, ThunderChild?). Maybe a GEQ will help you sculpt that?

Anyway, much luck with the 23.125Hz F#, I'd love to hear it, but my hi-end B&W speakers might not like it.

The handy thing about bass guitars is that instead of producing a simple sine wave like a signal generator, they produce a wide range of interesting audible harmonics in multiples of the fundamental frequency of the tuned string.
None of the loudspeaker manufactures you mention respond at all well and have very little power handling before total fartsville X-Lim and thus catastrophic damage at 23.125Hz anyway, the only loudspeaker manufacturers that can handle any power and deliver any level at such a low frequency is a specialist sub woofer company like Danley Labs.
For this tuning and duty I would recommend using a >24dB per octave HPF at 40Hz or you will destroy the the original posters speakers first gig, especially if you use a high power low distortion solid state amp.
This is a job for lowish tube watts (200 clean 100 dirty so you don't fry anything) and massive highly efficient speaker count and surface area so you can hear the smaller wattage amps at high volume.

 

[monsterthompson]

tuning that low is going to generate a ton of sub 50k noise. that territory is all kick drum. a high pass filter is going to be good here. by filtering out those noise level frequencies, the OP's speakers will be able to focus on 1st overtone and higher stuff (which is where the musical sounds are) instead of getting jumbled up in worthless flop. since the speakers won't be caught up in trying to reproduce sounds at those frequencies (which rob you of punch), they will more efficiently produce the sounds the OP is after.

 

[DukeLeJeune]

...and for speaker cabs—something that can represent however much of the fundamental you decide to throw at it (Acme, BagEnd, Epifani, fEARful, BFM, ThunderChild?).

The only "Thunderchild" series cab that can really dish out even the first overtone, 46 Hz, is the Thunderchild 118. While I think my PA-style horns do as good a job with distortion as a good PA system, I can see a strong argument for a cone midrange. My cone-mid cabs go under the "Hathor" series name. Forthcoming in that series is a cab that combines an 18" sub with two 5" cone mids, and that one will deliver the first overtone of low F# with authority... but still not the fundamental.

If I wanted to deliver the fundamental with authority, and not trade off efficiency to get there, I'd have to increase my box size eight-fold. My big gun Hathor 118 has aroughly 3.75 cubic feet internal volume, so we'd be looking at about 30 cubic feet internal volume to deliver that first overtone at the same level, along with needing four times the air-moving capability to deliver it just as loud. Very loud and very deep bass are very expensive achieve.

For this tuning and duty I would recommend using a >24dB per octave HPF at 40Hz or you will destroy the the original posters speakers first gig, especially if you use a high power low distortion solid state amp.

+1

This is a job for lowish tube watts (200 clean 100 dirty so you don't fry anything) and massive highly efficient speaker count and surface area so you can hear the smaller wattage amps at high volume.

I bet that would sound just killer, but load-in and load-out would suck. For instance to replicate the SPL of single fEARful 1515/66 driven by one kilowatt, and you're using 200 tube watts, imo you'd need the two 1515/66 cabs and one15/6 cab, or the equivalent (you wouldn't need as much power handling, so you could save a few bucks there). And I'm factoring "1 tube watt = 2 solid state watts" for purposes of perceived loudness; if you don't accept that fudge factor, figure on needing the equivalent of five 1515/66 cabs to get there with 200 tube watts.

I agree with the dual rig idea. It works for me.

I run the black Firebass clean and the white Firebass gets my Rat King. It's pretty glorious.

I know you didn't ask, but let me toss out an idea for configuring those dual stacks: Mix 'em up and toe 'em in. If you toe the two stacks in at about 20 degrees each (such that their inner front corners are touching or almost), their radiation patterns will gently criss-cross and you'll get a considerably wider net pattern, with little or no on-axis hot-spot. Now stack them with one clean cab on each side and one Rat King cab on each side, so that you get a mixture firing off at either angle. Now your tone will be more uniform over a considerably wider area.

Imo, ime, ymmv, etc.

 

[marklaforest]

Not that I downtune or anything, but I prefer not blending clean and dirty and I prefer having pedals that do a good job with it without needing a blend. There's a very fine line between getting a great sound blending and making it sound like there are two bass parts. That said, my Team Awesome Fuzz Machine has a blend and I can set it to where it sounds like the same signal easily enough, but the potential for making it sound like two bass parts is there.

I'll second this. I've tried a ton of bass overdrives and found that many blend knobs make things worse before making them better. A big part of the problem is the mysterious art of phase cancellation. Things might seem ok at home when you're trying it out but put it in a mix and things go weird really quick. That being said, some people seem to have it figured out. The amptweaker tightdrive with the blend knob mod is one of those pedals that has phasing figured out.

Another thing to try is a clean boost cranked into a tube preamp section of a tube amp. My MXR micro amp into my V4 can get very gritty and sounds massive.

 

[deathsdj]

I bet that would sound just killer, but load-in and load-out would suck. For instance to replicate the SPL of single fEARful 1515/66 driven by one kilowatt, and you're using 200 tube watts, imo you'd need the two 1515/66 cabs and one15/6 cab, or the equivalent (you wouldn't need as much power handling, so you could save a few bucks there). And I'm factoring "1 tube watt = 2 solid state watts" for purposes of perceived loudness; if you don't accept that fudge factor, figure on needing the equivalent of five 1515/66 cabs to get there with 200 tube watts.



I know you didn't ask, but let me toss out an idea for configuring those dual stacks: Mix 'em up and toe 'em in. If you toe the two stacks in at about 20 degrees each (such that their inner front corners are touching or almost), their radiation patterns will gently criss-cross and you'll get a considerably wider net pattern, with little or no on-axis hot-spot. Now stack them with one clean cab on each side and one Rat King cab on each side, so that you get a mixture firing off at either angle. Now your tone will be more uniform over a considerably wider area.

Imo, ime, ymmv, etc.

Thanks man! I appreciate it. I just set all this up a couple of weeks ago and am still playing around with how to dial everything in. I'll try what you suggest for sure. I've read a lot of your posts and I'll gladly take advantage of your knowledge. Again thank you!

 

[deathsdj]

Banned in most nightclubs...

I'm sure!

I'm into original stuff so the clubs around here don't want me anyway. I do get to play a couple of large outdoor parties a year so I'm looking forward to trying this stuff out for those. Plus I can always use half or one quarter of this if needed. I also have a TNT and Basic 112 that I run together for smaller gigs and it sounds pretty good too.

 

[Jim Carr]

Your F# = 23.125Hz

There is a good chance that an ordinary amp will have baked-in a filter that takes most signal below 30Hz out as noise. You need a high quality PA amp that does not impose a HPF roll-off.

I'd go for a Crest CA9 (or similar). The CA9 has two channels, each 2 ohm capable, and throws 1800 watts at 4 ohms bridged with 20Hz-20kHz, 0.1% THD (total harmonic distortion). Less that 1% is considered the basic standard, so this amp is seriously accurate down by 20Hz.

Then a tube pre (ART?), pedals (DarkGlass or SansAmp), and for speaker cabs—something that can represent however much of the fundamental you decide to throw at it (Acme, BagEnd, Epifani, fEARful, BFM, ThunderChild?). Maybe a GEQ will help you sculpt that?

Anyway, much luck with the 23.125Hz F#, I'd love to hear it, but my hi-end B&W speakers might not like it.

The handy thing about bass guitars is that instead of producing a simple sine wave like a signal generator, they produce a wide range of interesting audible harmonics in multiples of the fundamental frequency of the tuned string.

You mean integral multiples of the fundamental F x 1, 2, 3, 4...? Oh, right! I guess I hadn't heard that... My irony in suggesting a GEQ was too subdued. Sorry!

 

[SquareWaves]

Yeah, but it can sound pretty awesome if done right...

Sunn tune to A.

 

[IPYF]

That Meat Smoke is wicked. Couldn't find a vid with a Darkglass running into one, prolly cuz when you start playing it melts your face.

I think my dream rig would include a Meat Smoke and a B7k. I'd need to win the lotto though.

 

[MotorCityWest]

That Meat Smoke is wicked. Couldn't find a vid with a Darkglass running into one, prolly cuz when you start playing it melts your face.

Ha..true.

The OD channel on this amp has finally freed me of tone chasing with pedals and amp g.a.s.