Sorry in advance for the long post. I'm really hoping someone has some insight, other than "try some other amps" 
I have a 3 week old Bee and I'm finding it very hard to get it to play nice with my amp. When I first picked it up it sounded outstanding plugged into my Hartke 7000 with basically the same settings I used to run with a passive P-Bass copy with Bartolini pickups. That is it sounded great at 'playing in the hotel room and at home with people there levels'. Then my first rehearsal 2 weeks ago with the new bass and I could barely play it. The strings were contacting the naked poles on the pickup (easily fixed since then) but even when they weren't making contact the amp was clipping like crazy and way too overdriven even if I turned down the inputs (the hartke has both a tube and solid state preamp section, and I used a blend, mostly tube).
I talked to Fred about it and tried some things we discussed. I moved the action up to get the strings away from the pickup, and then dropped the pickup to get them further away because it was still way overdriven even when the string was never contacting the poles of the pickup. I tried it into my mixer at home, and straight into my soundcard and it sounds better, but still pretty hot.
I turned the preamps way down (the solid state is off and the tube is at 2). I've been playing with the volume on the bass set to about 3/4 full. With things set like this (on board compression set to off, because it sounds like ass with it on-I've always played with it on (lowest setting) with the P bass, but the compressor doesn't seem to deal well with the signal from this bass) it sounds pretty good most of the time, but the open B string always sounds a bit overdriven, and if I really dig into either it or the E, it clearly distorts.
I feel like maybe the Hartke inputs are just too hot for the preamp on this bass (even with the passive P I always used the active input on the Hartke). I've tried every combination of settings I can think of, and if I get it to the point where it doesn't distort when I dig into the strings, then normal playing sounds flat and lifeless. I think this bass is producing a lot more low end info than my other one, and I want to be able to take advantage of that, so just turning all the on-board bass down isn't an option either.
Here are some options I'm considering:
1) get a good outboard compressor
2) have Fred rewire the pickup to parallel (instead of series)
3) drop the pickup even further away from the strings (I'll probably try this because it's the least work and no cost, but I'm afraid I'm going to end up with a very thin sound)
4) start looking for an amp that likes very hot inputs.
I have a 3 week old Bee and I'm finding it very hard to get it to play nice with my amp. When I first picked it up it sounded outstanding plugged into my Hartke 7000 with basically the same settings I used to run with a passive P-Bass copy with Bartolini pickups. That is it sounded great at 'playing in the hotel room and at home with people there levels'. Then my first rehearsal 2 weeks ago with the new bass and I could barely play it. The strings were contacting the naked poles on the pickup (easily fixed since then) but even when they weren't making contact the amp was clipping like crazy and way too overdriven even if I turned down the inputs (the hartke has both a tube and solid state preamp section, and I used a blend, mostly tube).
I talked to Fred about it and tried some things we discussed. I moved the action up to get the strings away from the pickup, and then dropped the pickup to get them further away because it was still way overdriven even when the string was never contacting the poles of the pickup. I tried it into my mixer at home, and straight into my soundcard and it sounds better, but still pretty hot.
I turned the preamps way down (the solid state is off and the tube is at 2). I've been playing with the volume on the bass set to about 3/4 full. With things set like this (on board compression set to off, because it sounds like ass with it on-I've always played with it on (lowest setting) with the P bass, but the compressor doesn't seem to deal well with the signal from this bass) it sounds pretty good most of the time, but the open B string always sounds a bit overdriven, and if I really dig into either it or the E, it clearly distorts.
I feel like maybe the Hartke inputs are just too hot for the preamp on this bass (even with the passive P I always used the active input on the Hartke). I've tried every combination of settings I can think of, and if I get it to the point where it doesn't distort when I dig into the strings, then normal playing sounds flat and lifeless. I think this bass is producing a lot more low end info than my other one, and I want to be able to take advantage of that, so just turning all the on-board bass down isn't an option either.
Here are some options I'm considering:
1) get a good outboard compressor
2) have Fred rewire the pickup to parallel (instead of series)
3) drop the pickup even further away from the strings (I'll probably try this because it's the least work and no cost, but I'm afraid I'm going to end up with a very thin sound)
4) start looking for an amp that likes very hot inputs.
That is Ashdown, but Hartke is quite clear with the input labelling 
. NOTHING like the sound of the Epi Thunderbird I usually play.
), and I don't want to mod the amp and possibly hurt it's used resale value..
) and the power seems great, although it's very hard to tell when playing at home. The nicest thing is that I can set it up so that when I really dig and it overloads, it's a pleasant tube distortion, rather than the terrible clipping that the Hartke had (even when using only the tube preamp section) The test will be at rehearsal this Wed with 2 guitars and a loud-ass drummer. Bass Northwest, as usual, has been very cool, and are allowing me an extended test drive. I hope it works out. The Shuttle has some really great things going for it, not the least of which is the 40 something pounds it saves over the Hartke...
