OD-3 bass distortion?

"Improve your gain" ????

It'll give you distortion.

 

What's your bass, what's your amp.

I find this very hard to believe that you can't max the power of your amp. Usually it's the opposite problem.

 

are you saying that you turn the gain on your amp all the way up, and it's not enough to cause clipping? that sounds like a fundamental design flaw to me. maybe your amp is broken.

 

DavyO,

You're chasing a very weird problem

You say you have a Yamaha bass with a preamp onboard driving your Carvin and you need MORE gain....I have alarm bells ringing in my head!

Try this:

1. Set ALL the EQ flat on both your bass and your amp.

2. Turn bass volume all the way up.

3. Turn the gain control on the Carvin all the way up.

4. Start turning up the master volume....is the sound already distorted? If so you have plenty of gain, you're clipping the amp's preamp stages. If not, you probably have the preamp in the bass installed incorrectly as it should be able to easily drive the Carvin to full output.

 

Is your bass active? Change the battery!

 

Some preamps are unity gain when all the controls are set flat. I'm fairly sure that the EMG BTS/BTC Control is, for example (had one in a MIM Jazz with a preamp bypass pot).

 

Is this the proper way to "run" an amp? I was told at one time that I should always crank both my bass's and my amp's volume controls to MAX and then control my volume with my gain control. Is this correct, or just bad advice?

 

hategear - most amps have a "preamp clipping" light. you should turn your gain up until the loudest note you play starts to make this light blink. then leave the gain where it is and control the volume with "master volume."

i play passive basses, and always leave the volume and tone on full because this lets all the tone through. with active basses though, you don't need to have the volume on full.

 

Thanks!

PS...I love your avatar! If I sing "Smooth Criminal" fast enough, it looks like he's dancing to it.

 

The Carvin PB200 does not have a preamp gain. I does have a gain knob, but it is for the sweepable mid-range (Some people don't understand how this works. Please take no offense if you already understand this. The mid-range works like this you select a frequency with the frequency knob. You can select higher to lower frequencies within the mid-range. You then can dial in a the amount of cut or boost with the gain knob) The volume on the amp really only adjusts the volume on the preamp going into the power amp. I am no expert, but try these options.

1. Plug your bass into the passive input. This makes it a bit louder, but it can clip the preamp if you have too much gain going into the PB200 preamp.

2. There are 3 speaker output jacks on the back. Two are to run two separate speakers (if you wanted to run an external speaker cabinet) and one of them bridges the two power amps into one channel. You can use any of them, but the one that bridges gives more power. I assume you are using the combo amp and not just the head unit. Make sure the speaker cable on the back is plugged into the bridged output jack. Note: you can use one of the other ones when you don't need as much power) Look at your manual, it should tell you this too.

 

No you don't RUN the amp that way.

The original post claimed he didn't have enough gain.

That was just a way to TEST if he had enough gain.

 

Like I said, thanks dancehallclasher.

 

The one who told you that has it all wrong. You preset the maximum allowable volume into you pre-amp (so the pre-amp doesn't clip) with the gain control. And you set your output volume with the master volume knob. This way you have the least possible noise and hum, and the maximum dynamics out of your amp.