*slowly wipes a single bead of sweat from brow*
Phew.
I mean NZ is a loooong way off, but never cross the line when you mess around with clowns wielding axes.
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My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal
- Thread starter el murdoque
- Start date
*slowly wipes a single bead of sweat from brow*
Phew.
I mean NZ is a loooong way off, but never cross the line when you mess around with clowns wielding axes.
I just sold the Le Bass again.
Here are the main reasons it did not make it:
1. Cab Sim. It sounded a bit muffled and worked, in my case, only well when using dirt. I would have loved to use it on only channel B - but as is, my preferred settings were A without cab sim and B with cab sim.
2. Form factor. This thing is not only big, but it is too long for convenience. It does not really fit a Nano and defies most attempts to create a minimal pedal setup.
3. Fusion modes. Some sort of fusion master volume knob would have done wonders here, the blue channel has a solid drop in volume, while the red channel jumps up - so you can effectively only use two of the channels.
4. Sound. I don't really get much of the magic tube sound in the clean channel. When I compare the A channel to the Noble, the A channel stinks. (Yes, I compared the made in China, $200 pedal to the holy grail that's six times as much and has a year-long waiting list). But to get that tube running, I'm looking at 12V with high current draw.
Here are the main reasons it did not make it:
1. Cab Sim. It sounded a bit muffled and worked, in my case, only well when using dirt. I would have loved to use it on only channel B - but as is, my preferred settings were A without cab sim and B with cab sim.
2. Form factor. This thing is not only big, but it is too long for convenience. It does not really fit a Nano and defies most attempts to create a minimal pedal setup.
3. Fusion modes. Some sort of fusion master volume knob would have done wonders here, the blue channel has a solid drop in volume, while the red channel jumps up - so you can effectively only use two of the channels.
4. Sound. I don't really get much of the magic tube sound in the clean channel. When I compare the A channel to the Noble, the A channel stinks. (Yes, I compared the made in China, $200 pedal to the holy grail that's six times as much and has a year-long waiting list). But to get that tube running, I'm looking at 12V with high current draw.
As much as it sucks, playing advocate for the devil here,
but I want to make the following points regarding your statement:
In a studio environment, I would hope and expect that the 1176 they have in their rack sounds much better than the 1176 I have in my $400 digital board.
BUT! It most likely will also sound better than the Cali76 I have on my analog board.
In a studio environment, it's okay to tinker around with a ton of gear until the tone is just right.
In a live environment, at least for amateur musicians that do not travel with their own FOH and sound techs but will have to make do with what and who they find at the venue, it's about what works - with compromises.
We usually don't take pedals we judge too fickle, even if they are great when set just right.
A live setup has to have a certain resilience and robustness when all you get is a five minute sound check.
And that's where convenience clandestinely sneaks a foot into the door.
This is really the point where everyone has to watch out and be on their toes.
From "I'll make this small compromise because while I loose a little potential in sound, I gain a huge leap in convenience"
it's just a small step further and you're looking at a Kemper.
This is all just so bloody accurate.
Two extra things, with regards to live applications; ask a FOH tech to put a mic on your bass cab, and they'll look at you as if you just told them you planned to fornicate their mother on stage during the show instead of playing bass. Honestly, in my experience, it's ask them for ANYTHING and they'll look at you that way. Bass is, by and large, the very lowest priority for most FOH techs when setting up a stage; they have the drums, guitars, vocals, and potentially horns/woodwinds (or both in the case of my touring band) all with mics on them, which will require a ton of fiddling to get levelled out properly. They take an XLR line from us, and call it a day. I've had this from (several) horses mouths while in tour in various countries; bass is honestly, truly, the last thing most FOH techs care about. So literally our entire on-stage existence is already compromised from the beginning.
Additionally, in my case, I play in a reggae band. I can tell you now, the vast majority of FOH techs (outside of Jamaica, which I can confirm is a bass players' on-stage paradise!) don't even know how to mix reggae music full stop, let alone reggae bass. The last time I was in the UK was a f*cking nightmare; every FOH tech was some metal or punk bro, and they couldn't register why I wanted low pass filtering north of 5k (one literally replied to me "But then how are you going to slice through the wall of guitars?" when we had.... one electric guitar in a 15w amp on stage). So I realized, particularly for touring overseas, that I need a readymade, convenient FOH solution that will work without any further adjustments.
Of course, all this is true. Back in the dark ages, my primary gigging rig was a TCE RH450, much beloved on TB
bored, which has a serviceable compressor and dirt channel on board, as well as a good tuner and 4-band semi-parametric EQ. No pedals *required*, and none taken. It did the job, no-one noticed or cared, I'm sure, but it was pretty uninspiring to me after a fairly short interval.Compromise is fine, until you feel compromised.
I played a show with the reggae band once. Decent crowd (700ish), decent stage, top notch catering.
However, I usually ask the FOH techs after a show how satisfied they were with my signal and what kind of processing they did or had to do to get it sounding well. I'm running IEM and get my own mix before the signal gets to FOH, so I have no idea how it sounds out front. That guy told me that in the first song, he pulled down 500Hz because it was much too strong for bass. That stuff interferes with the melody of the song. In the second song he realized that the bass IS the melody of the song and he set it back to flat. So even if you give them a signal that has necessary EQ, filtering, compression and limiting already applied, they will still find ways to mess with you.
Gods below, I hate that thing! With passion!
T
Thanks dude!
So I've had the DCX bass now for a little over a month, and am still thoroughly impressed with it.
So much range, so dynamic.
So much range, so dynamic.
I was sent off on a sidequest by @Charlie Tuna , who had a non-dirt pedal delivered to my doorstep:
Any pedal is a dirt pedal if you set the gain high enough.
This, however, is a filter pedal. A super filter pedal. It has two of them.
right to left, you can configure your filter. High pass, low pass, band pass or notch filter - then set the Q of the filter, and the center frequency. The filter gain knob sets the resonance (I think). Then come the confusing knobs. When you're running only filter A (selected by the switch on the bottom), the leftmost knob sets the mix between your dry signal and the filter. Fully CCW is wet, fully CW ist dry. When you use both filters it is confusing, and I still need to figure out what exactly happens. The loner on the lower left is a pre gain that can make a dirt pedal out of the thing, it's at unity fully CCW.
While others might instantly gleam what great opportunities slumber in this device, I went about it a little more blockheaded.
Charlie Tuna not only sent me the manual and stood by with advice, I actually forced him to bring out the crayons and paint it for me, using tiny, friendly words until I slowly approached this topic from the right side.
Give me a filter, and I set it to HP, pick a frequency by ear and then slam it with a bass knob turned up way too high on some pedal that comes before it in the chain. But this one does it all on its own. It's super intuitive.
You want to be better endowed "down there"?
Simple. Set the Switch to "A", then you pick the HP, which is short for High Pass, often described as Low Cut. You leave the Q alone for now and pick the frequency you absolutely have no wish to cut, somewhere just above the 75Hz mark. Then you set the filter gain to a point north of noon, and that will create a resonant spike at the point where the filter starts. The mix knob stays at noon, ensuring a 50/50 mix of dry and wet signal, thus eliminating the filter effect of the filter, leaving only the resonant spike. With the Q knob, you can now adjust how steep the slope will be, and the result will be your signal, but with a resonant spike in the just-over-75Hz area, and therefore a thicker sound.
Any pedal is a dirt pedal if you set the gain high enough.
This, however, is a filter pedal. A super filter pedal. It has two of them.
right to left, you can configure your filter. High pass, low pass, band pass or notch filter - then set the Q of the filter, and the center frequency. The filter gain knob sets the resonance (I think). Then come the confusing knobs. When you're running only filter A (selected by the switch on the bottom), the leftmost knob sets the mix between your dry signal and the filter. Fully CCW is wet, fully CW ist dry. When you use both filters it is confusing, and I still need to figure out what exactly happens. The loner on the lower left is a pre gain that can make a dirt pedal out of the thing, it's at unity fully CCW.
While others might instantly gleam what great opportunities slumber in this device, I went about it a little more blockheaded.
Charlie Tuna not only sent me the manual and stood by with advice, I actually forced him to bring out the crayons and paint it for me, using tiny, friendly words until I slowly approached this topic from the right side.
Give me a filter, and I set it to HP, pick a frequency by ear and then slam it with a bass knob turned up way too high on some pedal that comes before it in the chain. But this one does it all on its own. It's super intuitive.
You want to be better endowed "down there"?
Simple. Set the Switch to "A", then you pick the HP, which is short for High Pass, often described as Low Cut. You leave the Q alone for now and pick the frequency you absolutely have no wish to cut, somewhere just above the 75Hz mark. Then you set the filter gain to a point north of noon, and that will create a resonant spike at the point where the filter starts. The mix knob stays at noon, ensuring a 50/50 mix of dry and wet signal, thus eliminating the filter effect of the filter, leaving only the resonant spike. With the Q knob, you can now adjust how steep the slope will be, and the result will be your signal, but with a resonant spike in the just-over-75Hz area, and therefore a thicker sound.
I’ve really had my eye on the Audiofab Frequency Distiller, which is essentially the “official” release of this circuit but that one lacks the Input Gain (presumably the bottom Gain knob that is present in the original schematic for the circuit) that this version has which is annoying (I love extra knobs that can change the response, and possibly even drive the filters into distortion?).
The Q/Damping control on the Alembic SF-2 that inspired this is what sets the peak at the cutoff frequency (so I would assume the same here), the Filter Gain I presume is just a volume per filter that acts like a mixer for the two filters in A+B mode and an overall volume in A mode.
Of course mixing a high-passed signal with your clean signal will still retain the filtering out of lows, just decrease its effect (full frequency contribution from both signals above the cutoff, full lows below cutoff only from one signal). How much lows were cut out would depend on the blend setting and Q setting (the Q raises the peak at cutoff while also slightly altering the cutoff slope), but with equal blend and low Q you’d expect the 12db filter slope to be reduced to around 6db assuming everything is phase coherent. If you just want a boost at a particular bass frequency then you could mix a bandpass filter with the clean and crank the Q (though I presume the HPF approach sounds better because of the missing lows).
