Dear friends bassists,
i'm no more a gigging bassist, and i usually play electric bass in my own tracks at home, together with other instruments, and such.......
Anyway, recently i had a growing desire to investigate, for the little that i need, on some pieces of bass gear...... preamps, eqs, and compressors.
I got hooked in the few reviews and videos i saw of the DE-CL. In particolar due the favorable review by Ovnilab (not the only one) i decided to order one unit from the builder.
Anyway, the unit arrived 9-10 days ago, and i'm trying since to tweak and use it for recording. Without success.......
My problem, short described is this:
i have always too much compression/limiting in the lower strings (more low frequencies content) and too much little in the higher strings. I'm at the point of having squashed lower notes, and almost through-passing higher notes, especially most dinamic ones (like pops).
I play through an FMR RNP preamp, with also a Speck equalizer in the loop, besides the compressor. I tried to use the compressor in front of the preamp, or in the loop: alone, or after the eq, or before the eq (this seems the best solution of all).
I used at least 4-5 basses, five or four strings, actives or passives.
I've tried everything for days, nothing solves it. It's actually unusable, for me.
I've tried also to not look at leds, and to use only my ears, or to look at the results. Nothing prevents squashing the lows, but high spikes pass through. In my opinion, the attack of the limiter is not quick enough, and it's evident when recording.
I exchanged several emails with the builder. He's very quick at replying, but all of this was not much useful. He wrote me that the sensing circuit has some lows boosted, so it's more sensitive to low strings. I replied that i'd find logical to do the opposite (some compressors have an HPF filter in the sensing circuit for this).
He adviced me to use an eq in front for rolling some lows, and an eq post compressor, for "restoring" lows after presenting less lows to the compressor. I replied that it's an absurd and inappropriate way of solving this problem.
After he adviced me to use another compressor and wished me "good luck", i decided to persist some other time with trying to solve the problems, but frankly with today i'm really done............. When i substituted the DE-CL with my DBX 160A, having a difference like night and day in the recording track, i really decided to solve or sell quickly.
Return the item to the seller for a refund is an option that anycase makes me loose money: I live in Italy, and anyway i had to pay around the 25% added to the costs+ship, so it's a bit on the expensive side to get. The VAT+doganal costs won't be returned to me anycase.
So, if i don't find a solution i'll quickly sell the compressor in Italy or Europe.
I'm very disappointed for this purchase, maybe the most unlucky one of my musical life.
Maybe i should have read before the many threads in TB about selling the DE-CL. There will be a reason for this.
So, any observation? help? advice on the subject?
Many thanks in advance,
greetings.
i'm no more a gigging bassist, and i usually play electric bass in my own tracks at home, together with other instruments, and such.......
Anyway, recently i had a growing desire to investigate, for the little that i need, on some pieces of bass gear...... preamps, eqs, and compressors.
I got hooked in the few reviews and videos i saw of the DE-CL. In particolar due the favorable review by Ovnilab (not the only one) i decided to order one unit from the builder.
Anyway, the unit arrived 9-10 days ago, and i'm trying since to tweak and use it for recording. Without success.......
My problem, short described is this:
i have always too much compression/limiting in the lower strings (more low frequencies content) and too much little in the higher strings. I'm at the point of having squashed lower notes, and almost through-passing higher notes, especially most dinamic ones (like pops).
I play through an FMR RNP preamp, with also a Speck equalizer in the loop, besides the compressor. I tried to use the compressor in front of the preamp, or in the loop: alone, or after the eq, or before the eq (this seems the best solution of all).
I used at least 4-5 basses, five or four strings, actives or passives.
I've tried everything for days, nothing solves it. It's actually unusable, for me.
I've tried also to not look at leds, and to use only my ears, or to look at the results. Nothing prevents squashing the lows, but high spikes pass through. In my opinion, the attack of the limiter is not quick enough, and it's evident when recording.
I exchanged several emails with the builder. He's very quick at replying, but all of this was not much useful. He wrote me that the sensing circuit has some lows boosted, so it's more sensitive to low strings. I replied that i'd find logical to do the opposite (some compressors have an HPF filter in the sensing circuit for this).
He adviced me to use an eq in front for rolling some lows, and an eq post compressor, for "restoring" lows after presenting less lows to the compressor. I replied that it's an absurd and inappropriate way of solving this problem.
After he adviced me to use another compressor and wished me "good luck", i decided to persist some other time with trying to solve the problems, but frankly with today i'm really done............. When i substituted the DE-CL with my DBX 160A, having a difference like night and day in the recording track, i really decided to solve or sell quickly.
Return the item to the seller for a refund is an option that anycase makes me loose money: I live in Italy, and anyway i had to pay around the 25% added to the costs+ship, so it's a bit on the expensive side to get. The VAT+doganal costs won't be returned to me anycase.
So, if i don't find a solution i'll quickly sell the compressor in Italy or Europe.
I'm very disappointed for this purchase, maybe the most unlucky one of my musical life.
Maybe i should have read before the many threads in TB about selling the DE-CL. There will be a reason for this.
So, any observation? help? advice on the subject?
Many thanks in advance,
greetings.
Last edited:
. It is possible that a mistake was made in assembling the compressor that is exaggerating the pre-emphasis too much. Selecting a wrong component value such as a resistor or capacitor could cause this. 
