Double Bass Lets talk about Tubes again.

[Ric Vice]

It's starting to sound to me like the most practical thing for me is to stick with an emulator for now. Maybe I'll keep my eyes out for something on the used market to experiment with. Thanks everyone

I've been interested in that development as well, the VT series
get high praise over on the other side of this forum. IME the Walter Woods MI series amps were solid state hardware that emulated the sound of your B-15N. I used one of Walter's MI-100-8's paired with two Double Baffle Reflex cabinets when I was playing lounge gigs. It sounded great.

Ric

 

[rickwolff]

I used one of Walter's MI-100-8's paired with two Double Baffle Reflex cabinets when I was playing lounge gigs. It sounded great.

Ric

Ah, lounge gigs. I remember those. I played at the top of the IDS Tower in Minneapolis (50th floor) for a couple years with a fabulous pianist from Brazil, Manfredo Fest. That's also where I met my wife of 38 years now. I'd have to say, that was one of my better gigs.

And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

 

[Jay Corwin]

And we'll wash down some of those original Buffalo Chicken Wings!!! My son went to PA school at D'Youville College. If I visit I think I'll come in the summer. That wind off the lake in the winter can cut you in half.

Lucky for me I live north of Buffalo, and we rarely get the lake effect snow that they are famous for. Often I can see my lawn when they are getting two feet of snow.

 

[Jay Corwin]

If you ever find yourself actually IN Buffalo, you'll need more than just "a" beer.
(Former resident of "Tonawanda", one of Buffalo's 'Burbs.)
Don-awanda! Kasper

Truth. BTW there is now a brewery, winery, cidery, meadery, or distillery on like every corner in Western NY.

 

[Jay Corwin]

I've been interested in that development as well, the VT series
get high praise over on the other side of this forum. IME the Walter Woods MI series amps were solid state hardware that emulated the sound of your B-15N. I used one of Walter's MI-100-8's paired with two Double Baffle Reflex cabinets when I was playing lounge gigs. It sounded great.

Ric

I have a VT and tried it out on upright through various channels. While it's a fantastic pedal for BG, I found it to be to tricky for upright. The character knob on it sweeps through different "styles" from SVT to B15 and a bunch in between. So anytime you touch the Character knob, the EQ reacts differently. The B15 setting was what I was truly interested in on it, but it didn't work well for my tastes. The output of that pedal also seemed super hot compared to the BDDI, which I can run 100% open into my head without any gain staging problems. It is a super versatile preamp, but I don't think it likes piezos much.

 

[shwashwa]

I have a VT and tried it out on upright through various channels. While it's a fantastic pedal for BG, I found it to be to tricky for upright. The character knob on it sweeps through different "styles" from SVT to B15 and a bunch in between. So anytime you touch the Character knob, the EQ reacts differently. The B15 setting was what I was truly interested in on it, but it didn't work well for my tastes. The output of that pedal also seemed super hot compared to the BDDI, which I can run 100% open into my head without any gain staging problems. It is a super versatile preamp, but I don't think it likes piezos much.

Agree, having owned both I much prefer the tone hammer. Gives you more control and you know what it's doing as opposed to the VT which is kind of a mystery and you can never really dial it exactly what you're looking for.

 

[Jay Corwin]

Agree, having owned both I much prefer the tone hammer. Gives you more control and you know what it's doing as opposed to the VT which is kind of a mystery and you can never really dial it exactly what you're looking for.

Yeah that Character knob is like some voodoo stuff going on inside that box.

 

[rickwolff]

Yeah that Character knob is like some voodoo stuff going on inside that box.

Gives me an idea for a new pre:

The VOODOO Preamp for Double Bass 'Adding even more mystery to that already mysterious instrument'.

If you don't already have a 'sound in your head' we can put one there. And if you don't treat the 'Voodoo Pedal' respectfully you may find yourself experiencing a very painful demise.

 

[MTN.bass72]

@sevenyearsdown , Im having to wait til after the new year, unfortunately, to get my first upright. I'm going with an Upton, or Shen ... I have a Noble that I will be running it through . .. I know there's a couple of guys on the Noble thread that told me they have great results doing this as well , which is why I'm confident on doing so...
Also, I may be mistaken , but I believe @Dave Hill some times runs upright through his Arkham Zephyr with good results . ..
Hope this helps, good luck

 

[Jay Corwin]

Gives me an idea for a new pre:

The VOODOO Preamp for Double Bass 'Adding even more mystery to that already mysterious instrument'.

If you don't already have a 'sound in your head' we can put one there. And if you don't treat the 'Voodoo Pedal' respectfully you may find yourself experiencing a very painful demise.

It should just be 1/4" pass through with a pot wired to nothing with some snazzy adjective labeled above it. People will A-B it next to bank breaking gear and swear it's the bees knees.

 

[Jay Corwin]

@sevenyearsdown , Im having to wait til after the new year, unfortunately, to get my first upright. I'm going with an Upton, or Shen ... I have a Noble that I will be running it through . .. I know there's a couple of guys on the Noble thread that told me they have great results doing this as well , which is why I'm confident on doing so...
Also, I may be mistaken , but I believe @Dave Hill some times runs upright through his Arkham Zephyr with good results . ..
Hope this helps, good luck

Dave and I have exchanged some messages. I think he has a Broughton P15 he uses too.

On the Noble - this is another device I find to be very expensive for what you get. I'm not saying it's not a great piece of gear, but $1000 bucks for a tube pre....I mean you can buy the cow and the milk if you get a PF50, and have some money left over for extra feed.

 

[jthisdell]

It should just be 1/4" pass through with a pot wired to nothing with some snazzy adjective labeled above it. People will A-B it next to bank breaking gear and swear it's the bees knees.

Or better yet have a little digital processor in it that does something slightly different every time you use it. Would be great if it had GPS and could work perfectly at home and then do something strangely different at every other address.

 

[rickwolff]

It should just be 1/4" pass through with a pot wired to nothing with some snazzy adjective labeled above it. People will A-B it next to bank breaking gear and swear it's the bees knees.

Reminds me of a story Leland Sklar told about a producer who was always asking for something different in his sound, so Lee had one of the pots on his bass disconnected and when he was asked for that 'something different' he would make a big show out of cranking that knob (which was connected to nothing) and ask "How's that?" The producer would go "OH YEAH MAN, THAT'S IT'.

 

[rickwolff]

I'm thinking about starting a crowd-funding source to produce the 'VOODOO PRE-AMP'. Maybe I can get Francis (F Deck) to wire up something cool for a prototype.

 

[Ric Vice]

Ah, lounge gigs. I remember those. I played at the top of the IDS Tower in Minneapolis (50th floor) for a couple years with a fabulous pianist from Brazil, Manfredo Fest. That's also where I met my wife of 38 years now. I'd have to say, that was one of my better gigs.

And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Lucky you, I have all of Manfredo's albums. That's quite a feather you're wearing in your cap sir!

 

[Ric Vice]

I have a VT and tried it out on upright through various channels. While it's a fantastic pedal for BG, I found it to be to tricky for upright. The character knob on it sweeps through different "styles" from SVT to B15 and a bunch in between. So anytime you touch the Character knob, the EQ reacts differently. The B15 setting was what I was truly interested in on it, but it didn't work well for my tastes. The output of that pedal also seemed super hot compared to the BDDI, which I can run 100% open into my head without any gain staging problems. It is a super versatile preamp, but I don't think it likes piezos much.

Interesting, because I "real" B-15N sounds pretty amazing with double bass. Jess Oliver set the input impedances on each of the inputs differently to accomidate the various kinds of pickups that were circulating in the 1960's
So, from left to right on the B-15 the input impedances are 5.6, 1, and 2.2 Meg Ohms. All of these work well with piezo pickups.

Ric

 

[Jay Corwin]

Interesting, because I "real" B-15N sounds pretty amazing with double bass. Jess Oliver set the input impedances on each of the inputs differently to accomidate the various kinds of pickups that were circulating in the 1960's
So, from left to right on the B-15 the input impedances are 5.6, 1, and 2.2 Meg Ohms. All of these work well with piezo pickups.

Ric

I bet the VT sounds bonkers good with a Pbass. That's what it's probably designed for, P and Js. Where as the real B15 was meant to be more diverse with the inputs as you have described.

This thread has turned into a good discussion with many options discussed.

 

[damonsmith]

Peter Kowald was into tube amps, I'm with you on not wanting heavier gear, though:

 

[markeprice]

I wish I would have seen this post earlier! I am Mark with frogpedals.com. I hand build a tube preamp that is based on the Fender/Alembic F2b circuit. You can see it and the documentation on my web page and follow on Facebook. Search for frogpedals. There are a few videos of some people testing it. There is a professional bassist in Hamburg, Germany that loves the Frog Fx1. Jurgen Attig (jurgenattig.com). He and some friends just taped some video on the capabilities of the Frog Fx1 and hopefully it will be out soon. A friend of his has a Noble preamp and they conducted a quick A/B test of the Frog Fx1 and the Noble preamp (his friend owns the Noble), and they liked the Fx1 better. Take a look. Join me on Facebook and let me know if you have any questions.

First this isn't intended for the MBOL crowd, mic users, or my amp must be transparent folks. Lets just get that out of the way. My tone is colored, I love it, and it's far more practical in my live situations than trying to reproduce my acoustic tone.

So having said that, I basically use a bunch of "fake", clean tube tones. My amps are all Ampeg that emulate B15'ish stuff in the solid state world. I also run a sansamp BDDI depending on the gig, always with the tube emulation dimed.

This has lead me down the wormhole now to thinking about one of those fancy all tube Preamps, ei. Arkham, Jules, Noble, etc. I'm not interested in a tube power section, just the pre. I don't want a 200 pound head to load in. I figure if I'm already faking it with SS gear, why not try to the real thing. After all I danced with synthetic strings for a couple of years, then finally gave into my gut for guts.

I'm also not interested in talking about tube DI's like the REDDI because they aren't EQ'able, and I've come to the conclusion that I'll never send a dry signal of my pickup to the board - tube or SS.

Hybrid amps with a tube option pre all seem like a gimmick to me as well. Just seems like a marketing ploy, so I'm not interested in those either. I want to talk about all tube preamps that were designed for bass instruments.

So have any of you guys seriously run a nice tube preamp in your live rig long enough to give the good/bad impressions of it?

 

[Jay Corwin]

I wish I would have seen this post earlier! I am Mark with frogpedals.com. I hand build a tube preamp that is based on the Fender/Alembic F2b circuit. You can see it and the documentation on my web page and follow on Facebook. Search for frogpedals. There are a few videos of some people testing it. There is a professional bassist in Hamburg, Germany that loves the Frog Fx1. Jurgen Attig (jurgenattig.com). He and some friends just taped some video on the capabilities of the Frog Fx1 and hopefully it will be out soon. A friend of his has a Noble preamp and they conducted a quick A/B test of the Frog Fx1 and the Noble preamp (his friend owns the Noble), and they liked the Fx1 better. Take a look. Join me on Facebook and let me know if you have any questions.View attachment 1136272

I appreciate the interest, but I think my flirtation into tubes has ended.