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Mike Pope Design MPP-1 Review

#41
thepontif said:
Thanks Tony! How you been? I'm working on getting a few into the hands of some dealers. It may not be the traditional dealer arrangement, but I'm aware that people would like to here this thing so I'm trying to figure something out.

Hey, to address this business of MarkBass vs. others I kind of want to point out that "accurate" is pretty hard to define when it comes to speakers (or microphones). If you want accurate, buy a pair of Martin-Logans. No bass speaker on the market that I know of is accurate. Transduction isn't accurate. In fact, it remains the least accurate and least controllable stage in sound production/reproduction. That's why you still find yourself buying $3000.00 microphones for your studio. Because cheap ones just don't sound as good. And that's because good transduction (the converting of mechanical energy into electrical energy or the reverse) is really hard to achieve.

No matter how you couch it, selecting the components of a bass rig comes down to the fact that you can have a nearly totally transparent amp, and a nearly totally transparent preamp, and cables, and all that stuff that lives in the electrical domain. But there's no such thing as a speaker that moves the same way as a bass string. In order to have transparent transduction, the amp would be driving a giant string and making it move in a hugely amplified pattern that exactly mimics the string on your bass, and the thing picking up the string would have to be capable of reproducing every component of the string's movement over it's entire length without affecting the string's movement.

If you like the sound of your bass through a particular speaker, you want to keep the components in between out of the equation to the greatest degree possible. IMO, saying that an Epifani cab is more accurate than an Aguilar cab is more accurate than a MarkBass cab is just an exercise in psychoacoustics. One simply sounds the way you're expecting it to, and one doesn't. The one that matches your personal image of what your bass is supposed to sound like is going to sound more "accurate" to you. I really don't think there's any more to it than that.

That's been my experience anyway. My $0.02.
Click to expand...

For discussion sake. No flaming. Do you feel the same way about studio monitors? Why would an engineer pick a $3000. mic over a $75. mic? You said the cheap ones don't sound as good. Is that psychoacoustics?:)
I think as musicians we get to pick and play through what sounds good to us. My experience is that some cabs on the market don't even reproduce everything you put into them and others do. I want the ones that do the most. Perhaps my word accurate is tripping us up here. I find that well designed cabs that meet my sound needs are my faves and others sound less than ideal to me. Some sound great but aren't my sound. Some are sold at a price point for folks starting out. They rarely sound as good as those of dedicated designers who make them for pros. Transduction may be the most difficult to master yet some manufacturers have perfected the craft better than others.
 
#42
Mike is a very good player and a very personable human being.
He has done a great job working with Fodera and making a very good and useable pre. I am sure this pre amp will be a winner and will be in many racks. There are so many options these days that its hard to stay with one amp more than a few years without having a gas attack.
 
#44
chadds said:
For discussion sake. No flaming. Do you feel the same way about studio monitors? Why would an engineer pick a $3000. mic over a $75. mic? You said the cheap ones don't sound as good. Is that psychoacoustics?:)
I think as musicians we get to pick and play through what sounds good to us. My experience is that some cabs on the market don't even reproduce everything you put into them and others do. I want the ones that do the most. Perhaps my word accurate is tripping us up here. I find that well designed cabs that meet my sound needs are my faves and others sound less than ideal to me. Some sound great but aren't my sound. Some are sold at a price point for folks starting out. They rarely sound as good as those of dedicated designers who make them for pros. Transduction may be the most difficult to master yet some manufacturers have perfected the craft better than others.
Click to expand...

I hear you and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your decision criteria. I agree that the main sticking point is the word "accurate". What is being "transduced" in the case of a bass? It's a bad analogy for what the string was doing long before it gets to the speaker anyway. We're not reproducing sound with a bass rig...we're producing it. In the grand scheme of things, the speaker is still kind of the front end. Some speakers just do a lousy job of producing sound. You put 25 volts in and get 40dB out at 1kHz at a foot, then you do it at 500Hz and you get 60dB out...you've got a very basic problem. Obviously, if a speaker won't respond below 80Hz, it's not going to work well for bass. But I've played through the MarkBass stuff at NAMM with Hadrien and I liked it. I don't know if I'd buy it...not sure...I'd have to take it to a gig. The sound is FORWARD for sure. But I didn't find them to be substandard in a general sense. I didn't find that they necessarily put anything on the sound that was BAD. But if you're a Marcus fan and you want his sound, I wouldn't think they'd be your first choice. For Jeff Berlin's sound I'd think they're great. But my experience with them is limited. I'd certainly put them way above the class of Crate or Ampeg in a GENERAL sense.

As for studio monitors, I don't think there's a qualified engineer out there who won't tell you that, whatever the monitors are that you use, you have to get used to the way they sound. As in, you have to understand what you're hearing from the monitors IN YOUR ROOM and have a feel for how it will translate on another system or in a car or whatever. There's no monitor that, when heard, simply produces the sound as it will always exist in nature. But the better monitors do things like minimize phase distortion at the crossover point and minimize mechanical distortion in the woofer and don't get rough when they're loud. Bottom line with monitors is you buy them so in order to hear music you're trying to pick apart. You are trying to make music sound good...you don't buy monitors that do it naturally for you. I have Event 20/20bas monitors. They're OK. Not great, but I'm used to them. I can do a really good mix on them. But I also have low ceilings and I know that the low end might surprise me when I listen on my acoustats with subs. It's just part of the application for monitors. With a bass rig, it sounds the way it sounds right then. So the decision criteria are really very different.

Mics vs. speakers isn't a fair comparison. A mic is CAPTURING a sound. If you're trying to record something "accurately" you wouldn't use a bass rig, would you? And to play back music that has been recorded with a great degree of accuracy, on a system that plays back with a great degree of accuracy, you're in the realm of the Audiophile which is whole different sensibility than bass rig design.
 
#47
chadds said:
I find that well designed cabs that meet my sound needs are my faves and others sound less than ideal to me.
Click to expand...

I believe this is the point that Mike P. is making, and what I also feel. If you find a well designed cab that meets your sound/tone need (e.g., wide and pure, punchy and tight, clean and hi fi crisp, a bit grindy and compressesd, distorted and growly, scooped and big in the low end, etc., etc., etc.), it is 'by definition' a good cab. This idea of 'flat' or 'transparent', etc. when talking about bass amplification continues to be a little silly to me.

Except for the Acme stuff, I've never heard two cabs within a single line of speakers (even those marketed as 'flat' or 'accurate') having anything close to the same tone.

The better way to view this IMO (and as I've posted many times before) is to view a cab as part of the tone chain, and find one that delivers your tone with the minimum of fuss and at the volume you need.

Amplification is a touch different to me, and I view this again somewhat similar to Mike. For those of us who like a relatively clean tone, find an amp that drives the sound of your bass and speaker into the audience with the minimum of knob tweaking and fuss, and again, at the volume needed for your situation.
 
#49
I really don't get that preamp/poweramp thing compared to a amp! I think this preamp is very cool and I would like to get one! But then I have to find a good poweramp and I would like to keep the weight down and it would be nice if the poweramp was 1 unit!

Mike? Have you through of making this preamp into amp or releasing a poweramp? Also do you recommeds for a poweramp to go with your preamp.

It seems bassplayers mostly don't uses preamp/poweramp but prefer a single amp!

This post is not slam Mike Popes preamp but just something that confuses me :)

-Christian
 
#50
Hou said:
I really don't get that preamp/poweramp thing compared to a amp! I think this preamp is very cool and I would like to get one! But then I have to find a good poweramp and I would like to keep the weight down and it would be nice if the poweramp was 1 unit!

Mike? Have you through of making this preamp into amp or releasing a poweramp? Also do you recommeds for a poweramp to go with your preamp.

It seems bassplayers mostly don't uses preamp/poweramp but prefer a single amp!

This post is not slam Mike Popes preamp but just something that confuses me :)

-Christian
Click to expand...

Most don't but those that do know why. I'm not saying that everyone should at all. I know that after discovering what a dedicated pre sounds like it helped me achieve my tone goals. Some pres are so good at what they do that you just want a power amp to amplify the goodness. Plus the interchangeability. I can switch between what I consider one of the best SS pres to what I consider one of the best Tube pres. I trust my amp and cab selection implicitly now and the pre is flavor of the day. In my case I'm not carrying much extra weight over an integrated head. I will hear the Pope pre soon.
 
#51
Hou said:
I really don't get that preamp/poweramp thing compared to a amp! I think this preamp is very cool and I would like to get one! But then I have to find a good poweramp and I would like to keep the weight down and it would be nice if the poweramp was 1 unit!

Mike? Have you through of making this preamp into amp or releasing a poweramp? Also do you recommeds for a poweramp to go with your preamp.

It seems bassplayers mostly don't uses preamp/poweramp but prefer a single amp!

This post is not slam Mike Popes preamp but just something that confuses me :)

-Christian
Click to expand...

I think most of the time it's a tone thing.
No two preamps are going to sound the same.
Some are more versatile (tonally &/or feature-wise) than others.
What are you looking for in your sound?
Yeah, it's a personal preference choice.
If your preference is simplicity and you're happy with the sound of a particular head -- there you go.

Personally, I'd like to pick my favorite tube preamp and favorite solid state preamp, put them both in a rack and switch between the two.

I also expect to soon see more powerful single-space power amps that use Class 'D' (or 'D' derivative) topology with switch-mode power supplies hitting the market.
 
#54
I might be able to help with this. Mike uses a Walter Woods Ultra Hi for his power amp. He has told me that weight is a big factor, as he tries to keep it light enough to fly with. He has told me that in many ways he prefers the bigger amps but just doesn't want to carry them. In another correspondence he mentioned the old Hafler amps being impressive. I actually used to cart around one of the big Haflers, and it was the best sounding power amp I've heard.
Hope that helps.
 
#55
If it helps, I've been using this amp with a UL-212 cabinet with great results. I will not be parting with my Markbass cabs though. They are more similar than different, and I only really notice a WIDER tone with the Epifani.
 
#58
I agree, I believe the job of the power amp is to provide power with out adding "tone". There are many that do that nicely. I've had good luck with Crowns' in the past and just bought a new XTi2000. No noise, light, quiet fans and powerful. Side note :-), I just linked over to Mike's site and it worked fine.
 
#59
Hey Mike, it would be nice to see what frequencies and ranges each tone control effects. Your preamp looks great and is very similar to what I was going to have an engineer build for me. I may just be more interested in yours now. Some clips with a passive bass demonstrating the controls would help sell these better. Even though Im sure that $1500 is reasonable for this piece of gear after high quality components and r&d are considered, it's still up there. So, clips with a passive bass would be nice. Thanks, and good job.
 
#60
Man, I've been kicking this preamp around in my head for a few weeks now. My 'modern' rig is a Walter Woods MI225 into a UL310. This rig gets most of the work out of all my gear. I'm very very happy with it, so I'm hesitant about picking up more gear. However, I don't know if I can resist.

The thing is, I had an Ultra and the low end wasn't where it needed to be for me. I favor the older WW EQ section. I never need more power, but it would be nice to have more headroom---just in case.

I know the WWU tone very well. How does the Pope compare to the WWU in the low end? I'm thinking (if I can pick one up) of pairing it with a Stewart World 1.2 power amp and running it in bridged to give me ~1000 watts into 4 ohms. (Slightly less on the UL310...which of course isn't rated that high.)

I'm just thinking out loud here, since it is a large investment --- though, I do think that the pre is priced very nicely.

Any thoughts about this rig?
 

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