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Double Bass New pickup or amp?

M

Manticore Guy

Feb 24, 2006
114
0
West Orange, NJ
#1
I play upright bass for the jazz band at my school. There is a Fishman BP- 100 that I use for my bass, and the school has a Fender Bassman 200 Amp. The combination of those two plus my upright frankly sounds pretty bad. My teacher claims that the sound is bad because "the Bassman is an electric amp. With an acoustic bass amp, the sound would be much better". However, I've read a lot here on TB about how the BP 100 is a less than superior device, and that a full circle or another pickup would solve this problem.
So my question is, is it the BP 100 causing the bad sound or the combination of the upright going through the Bassman 200?
 
#2
Manticore Guy said:
So my question is, is it the BP 100 causing the bad sound or the combination of the upright going through the Bassman 200?
Click to expand...

Probably a bit of both, but a good bit of advice is to start at the beginning of youyr signal chain and work forward from there. Your sound will almost certainly improve with a Full Circle. I've used a couple of the Fender Bassman amps with my FC equipped basses. While they don't sound as good as they would through the AI/EA gear I normally use, I bet they sound better than they would with a BP-100 though the more expensive rig. YMMV.
 
#4
yeah i Play in a (probably) similar jazz band at my high school and i play my upright with the full circles and we played a gig where i played through a Peavey TNT whixh is probably a pretty similar amp, And it sounded pretty good a bit woofy cuz of the 15 inch speaker but not too bad.
 
#6
You could also try the BP100 on the other side of the bridge (the underside, so you can't see it from where you stand when you're playing). You can also mount it with hot glue instead of the clips, and try different distances from the strings for more or less string sound.

If that still isn't working, I would try another pickup as opposed to another amp.
 
#8
No mention here of using an outboard preamp? That pickup definitely benefits from one. That'd also be the least expensive, least work solution to improving the sound. Try the basic Fishman or K&K models, for example.
 

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