After about a year and a half of trying to get a decent sound in a Church band I think I finally really like the sound. But it took a lot of experimenting with different gear to get there. The trick was that the sound guys don't want to fight an onstage Bass amp. So I pieced together a technically incorrect "Rig".
I use a Lakland Skyline Jazz 5 with Fralins and Audere preamp, strung with D'addario tapewounds for a nice clean fundamental thump. Yes, I would love to have an Upright Bass, but $ says this is as close as I can get and the Lakland is more versatile. Which is very nice.
Then get this, because I can't play into a bass amp, I go into a old Alesis GT (guitar) Quadraverb for added clean boost and sometimes just a hint of reverb when using a foam mute under the strings. The trick with the GT Quadraverb is that you have to go in and store presets with the preamp volumes turned WAY down or completely off. It may seem like a pain but it's worth it because with all the other eq and effects you can make some nice ambient or thick delay sounds. I made an Upright Bass sounding preset with some dull sounding reverb and a little boost in the mid and high frequencies. But the thing has Much more under the hood.
Then out of the rackmount Alesis into a MarkBass tube Compressore' that goes into the snake that feeds the sound guys mixing board. That's right I put the compressor at the end of the chain. Probably wrong I'm sure, but my thinking was that I didn't want to overload the old house speakers and make them distort my sound. The MarkBass makes it easy because by setting the threshold level just so the little yellow light comes on only when playing at your loudest level. So it's only compressing then. I guess you can say that my goal is too try NOT to play the compressor then, its there for taming the volume spikes and hopefully sounding pretty natural while doing it.
My main amp is a Genz-Benz streamliner 900 but doesn't get out much anymore. Someday Im going to sneak my back-up amp, a MarkBass Little Mark II in as my preamp for Church, since you can play those without a speaker cabinet. Then I can bring out and try my favorite passive Basses!
When practicing at home with the same rig with my Lakland and the mute it sounds a little too dry and dull. But at Church its like I almost have all the sustain I need and puts a grin on my face every time I get to hear it. Sunday mornings are quickly turning into my best "tone" day.
Groove on.
I use a Lakland Skyline Jazz 5 with Fralins and Audere preamp, strung with D'addario tapewounds for a nice clean fundamental thump. Yes, I would love to have an Upright Bass, but $ says this is as close as I can get and the Lakland is more versatile. Which is very nice.
Then get this, because I can't play into a bass amp, I go into a old Alesis GT (guitar) Quadraverb for added clean boost and sometimes just a hint of reverb when using a foam mute under the strings. The trick with the GT Quadraverb is that you have to go in and store presets with the preamp volumes turned WAY down or completely off. It may seem like a pain but it's worth it because with all the other eq and effects you can make some nice ambient or thick delay sounds. I made an Upright Bass sounding preset with some dull sounding reverb and a little boost in the mid and high frequencies. But the thing has Much more under the hood.
Then out of the rackmount Alesis into a MarkBass tube Compressore' that goes into the snake that feeds the sound guys mixing board. That's right I put the compressor at the end of the chain. Probably wrong I'm sure, but my thinking was that I didn't want to overload the old house speakers and make them distort my sound. The MarkBass makes it easy because by setting the threshold level just so the little yellow light comes on only when playing at your loudest level. So it's only compressing then. I guess you can say that my goal is too try NOT to play the compressor then, its there for taming the volume spikes and hopefully sounding pretty natural while doing it.
My main amp is a Genz-Benz streamliner 900 but doesn't get out much anymore. Someday Im going to sneak my back-up amp, a MarkBass Little Mark II in as my preamp for Church, since you can play those without a speaker cabinet. Then I can bring out and try my favorite passive Basses!
When practicing at home with the same rig with my Lakland and the mute it sounds a little too dry and dull. But at Church its like I almost have all the sustain I need and puts a grin on my face every time I get to hear it. Sunday mornings are quickly turning into my best "tone" day.
Groove on.
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Bryan Beller recommends a compressor toward the end of the chain if not at the end, so I'm not sure it's "wrong". If it sounds good, it is good!
