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Double Bass Pickup suggestions
- Thread starter MBASSTT
- Start date
I just got the bass a week ago, it was sitting in a room unplayed for at least 25 years. The couple that had it knew nothing about it and had it listed as "base fiddle". It came with a bow and stand (explains the balancing act)
The block appears to be a mic mounting device.
As soon as I can let this out of my hands without withdrawls, I am taking it to Mark at Monaco's Violin Shop for a once over.
It's almost criminal what I paid for this!
The block appears to be a mic mounting device.
As soon as I can let this out of my hands without withdrawls, I am taking it to Mark at Monaco's Violin Shop for a once over.
It's almost criminal what I paid for this!
Disclaimer: I don't have the Krivo, I have a String Charger mag pickup.
While piezos thend to get louder when bowing, my String Charger gets quieter. If you look at a string when plucked vs. bowed, you will see the string moves more when plucked. The mag pickup doesn't "see" as much motion when the string is bowed, so the output signal is lower. The result is I have to adapt my bowing to make up for the reduced level.
Slapping gets picked up to some extent but you are not getting the sound of the string itself, not the sound of hitting the fingerboard so it's more subtle than with piezos. It's closer to the sound of slapping on a bass guitar. If you slap a lot and use a mag pickup, you can mount a piezo under the fingerboard, and mix the two to taste.
Check the spec sheet for the input impedance. It needs to be 1 Mohm or higher for most piezos. The primary EQ option to look for is a high pass filter (HPF) which helps a lot with feedback reduction. Other EQ needs are dependent on the freq response of the speakers and to a lesser extent any "baked in" freq response of the amp.
I like the K&K Rockabilky preamps; but I’ve heard good things about the Shadow Preamp as well. Fishman makes one too; all are very good. My HPF is built into the AI Clarus head I run through now and it works very well. For years I cranked an Ampeg SVT wide open to play loud psychobilly with an Underwood pickup and I would sometimes have to deal with feedback issues. Nothing crazy, but annoying nevertheless. With the HPF, K&K rockabilly preamp and the built in HPF in the Clarus I have no problems whatsoever and I hang with a loud drummer and a guitarist who used to like his amps to go to 11.
I’ve played lots of shows with other rockabilly/psychobilly bands throughout the years and several of them taped the f-holes—one even filled up his upright bass with strips of mattress foam just to avoid feedback — can you imagine! I never saw the point in this as I was always able to keep feedback down to a minimum back then by EQ’ing out the problematic frequencies with my built in EQ on my SVT II head through an 810 cabinet; of course this was while using an Underwood pickup with no preamp back then. I used this setup for 20 years; but now with the HPF on my Clarus, Vic’s Model C Pickup and K&K Rockabilly preamp I don’t have those issues anymore. I’m very happy with my rig now and I wish there were shows I could go and play it on now.
I wouldn't normally plug my F-holes either, but there are situations where it makes sense for some players. It really depends on how loud you need to play and how far you are willing to go. If it came down to it, I would rather use custom plugs than gaff tape the F-holes, which is what some people resort too. I have actually seen it first hand with a very loud rock-a-billy band. The bass sounded great and was unbelievably loud.
I have never plugged the F-holes on an upright, but I have worked with sound hole plugs on acoustic guitars and ABGs and it made huge difference for the better. The instrument sounded more like it should with the plugs than without.
A magnetic pickup is not going to sound much like an acoustic bass anyway.
A high pass filter is not going to deal with the same frequency range that plugging the F-Holes will.
I’ve never used magnetic pickups as I’ve always played gut strings or synthetics until recently. Some players love them. We opened for Lee Rocker’s Big Blue years ago and he has always used them. He said they never feedback and they amplify well. I didn’t particularly care for his tone slapping those Jargar steel strings he likes, but to each his own. His looked exactly like a P-Bass pickup setup, but he was playing more pizz with Big Blue and that actually sounded pretty good.
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I imagine stuffing the bass and covering the f-holes compromises the true upright sound. I know a big part of having an upright in some bands, is the aesthetic. Who doesn't love to see someone thumping away on a doghouse?
I guess it's a balance between tone, volume, and convenience.
Your input is much appreciated.
I guess it's a balance between tone, volume, and convenience.
Your input is much appreciated.
Vic's Pickups
^^yes^^
Going high volume, piezos are an easy answer that provides some level of control over feedback. Unfortunately they also have their own voicing, sort of electric sounding compared to what a DB sounds like acoustically, but the pre-amp and/or amp can also help get around that to a point.
I'm using a Vic's model C (bridge and fingerboard) and have been extremely pleased with it for both moderate and high -volume situations. But for lower volume and/or feeding into an FOH, I also have a mounted Sennheiser e604 dynamic mic that produces excellent tone and good mixing potential.
I also use these wirelessly by using wireless transmitters/receivers. I have two sets of these (Getaria 2.4GHz) so I can actually go wireless while using both my piezo system and my mounted mic. It is wonderful not having to worry about cables. Battery life is at least 3 hours; I've never run out of battery power while using them and routinely play for 3+ hours in sets.
Oh, and I don't cover my F-holes. Haven't needed to.
^^yes^^
Going high volume, piezos are an easy answer that provides some level of control over feedback. Unfortunately they also have their own voicing, sort of electric sounding compared to what a DB sounds like acoustically, but the pre-amp and/or amp can also help get around that to a point.
I'm using a Vic's model C (bridge and fingerboard) and have been extremely pleased with it for both moderate and high -volume situations. But for lower volume and/or feeding into an FOH, I also have a mounted Sennheiser e604 dynamic mic that produces excellent tone and good mixing potential.
I also use these wirelessly by using wireless transmitters/receivers. I have two sets of these (Getaria 2.4GHz) so I can actually go wireless while using both my piezo system and my mounted mic. It is wonderful not having to worry about cables. Battery life is at least 3 hours; I've never run out of battery power while using them and routinely play for 3+ hours in sets.
Oh, and I don't cover my F-holes. Haven't needed to.
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Oh yeah - the presence is killer — plus our guarantee went up by $100 as soon as I started playing UB.
Setup is key. Get a luthier to examine it and set it up properly with the strings, height and soundpost adjusted to make that Kay really sing. You’ll be very happy with it and they are so road worthy.
I have had good luck tuning my bass with either a 31 band graphic or parametric EQ as well. The loudest environment I played in was big band and I never had any problems getting loud enough.
The guy I mentioned playing rock-a-billy was in a relatively small club and playing at a much higher stage volume than I have ever needed. Also the PA had four Cerwin Vega EL36 subs fairly close to the stage. I was actually surprised, if not amazed by how loud and tight the upright was. It was loud enough give you that feeling of chest pump when the bass and kick drum hit.
Taping or plugging the F-Holes:
I believe it does two thing. One it keeps high SPL sound from passing easily into the bass were it can bounce around and excite the bass's body in an unatural way. Keep in mind the basses body has several different resonant modes. For example the front and back plates are typically tuned to different frequency, and also you have the Helmhotz resonance (to name a few).
A hole on an enclosed volume forms a Helmholtz resonator with a specific tuned frequency. The F-holes are designed to reinforce the bass's acoustic response, but the Helmholtz resonance (or any resonance) can cause problems when you use an amp. When exposed to high SPL the bass's natural resonances tend to develop feedback loops with the amp and thus get amplified out of context. In other words the frequency response of the system made up of the bass, pickup, and amplifier change as you increase the gain.
This is where EQ can come in really handy. If a couple of notes become too resonant, you can dip those frequencies to put them back in context. Plugging or taping the F-holes stops or dampens the build up of unnatural resonance in the bass's body, so it's sort of a different way of solving the same problem.
The last upright bass I used professionally was a real cannon acoustically. It was a 7/8s instrument that was very resonant. One of my peers picked it out for the organization. It would have been great in the bass section of some symphony orchestra, but it was not well suited for our needs, because we typically used an amp.
The bass's resonant qualities that made it loud and powerful acoustical really degraded it's ability to work with an amp. Even with all of the EQ tricks I know, I could not get this bass to sound good through an amp. I did not have any trouble getting it loud enough for my needs, but it always had sort of a boxey quality due to resonance in the low mids. The resonance was broadband, so it was impossible to correct with EQ. Dip one frequency and and adjacent frequencies became problematic. Dip the entire frequency range and the sound had no power.
My understanding is the whole idea of Blast Cult upright is to make a bass that is highly reinforced so it doesn't resonate like a normal acoustic upright. This allows it to play at super loud volumes with less feedback problems.
Custom Upright, Electric Basses and Accessories | Blast Cult
Doesn't sound particularly great to me, but I would have to hear it in a loud mix to really judge it fairly.
I can't imagine it getting any better than it already is! Yes, I am still going to take it in to get a clean bill of health.
I used to have a blonde M1, that I played in a square dance band as a young teen, and later in a Buddy Holly tribute. With the square dance band I was 100% acoustic and with the Buddy Holly band, I was mic'd since we mostly played theaters and large venues. That bass was a war horse! I regret selling it in the early 2000's.
I gotta tell ya, my demand in the area just went up in the week I've owned this!
All I need is for venues to reopen!
I don’t care for those Blast Cult basses either. I understand the point of making them like that so they never come apart; I just can’t justify why anyone would pay $6950 for the lowest end model of one of those.
I’ve noticed that amplifying the most resonant instruments seems to be a challenge when it comes to double bass. I would imagine using a mic for your big band application would have been very hard to do with mic bleed from all of the other instruments. I’ve had recent success using small microphones to pick up slap and “woodiness” of the bass and mixing them with my pickup set up (since the Clarus is two channel), but my old Kay would never compare sound wise to a beautiful, resonant carved bass like you played on.
On that model C, how is the balance between the fingerboard and bridge? Watching some videos (not necessarily that pickup), it seems as though the fingerboard slap is a little overwhelming.
Hey Pete, hope you are well. My daughter and I went in halves on this. She is a music major at Buff State and is primarily a violinist. I sold my Stingray, and have been putting together a fund for it over the last couple of months. It was out of dumb luck that my daughter entered a search for a fiddle and that came up. It plays and sounds incredible. I will keep my eyes open, there was a 3/4 Romanian in Cleveland, I believe he was asking $800.
I use an on-board K&K Dual Channel Pro ST pre-amp for the Model C, which includes equalizers and gain for each channel and a blending volume control, so there's no problem with controlling the volume of either piezo. Theoretically many of Vic's pickup sets can be used without a pre-amp (he uses double-piezo pickups so the output is strong), but even if the Model C could be used that way, I didn't want to have to walk over to the amp for balancing the Model C's piezos. Plus I wanted to use wireless outputs, which are setup for mono signals, which is also accomplished by the K&K Dual Channel Pro ST.
My Zoom MS-60B has an input impedance of 1 Mohm. I was thinking of using the Avalon U5 model setting (it has a high pass filter) along with the para or graphic EQ. Should I run the eq before or after the preamp?
Thanks for the input, I thought for sure this would be one of those things where 50 different people would have 50 different answers, but you all seem to be on the same page (or at least the same book)
Anyhow here is my plan, let me know what you think.
A Vic's model B piezo
A magnetic pickup off of the fingerboard of my own making using some p bass pickups. (Something similar to the photo) with a volume pot.
Running the Piezo into my Zoom MS60B multi effects pedal using the Avalon U5 preamp setting and the parametric or graphic EQ
Running the piezo, post preamp and eq and the magnetic both into a blender to balance the pickups, than into my PF500.
I figure this would give me some flexibility and at least a starting point without dumping alot of $$$
Thoughts?
Anyhow here is my plan, let me know what you think.
A Vic's model B piezo
A magnetic pickup off of the fingerboard of my own making using some p bass pickups. (Something similar to the photo) with a volume pot.
Running the Piezo into my Zoom MS60B multi effects pedal using the Avalon U5 preamp setting and the parametric or graphic EQ
Running the piezo, post preamp and eq and the magnetic both into a blender to balance the pickups, than into my PF500.
I figure this would give me some flexibility and at least a starting point without dumping alot of $$$
Thoughts?
Although I love the Avalon U5 in the studio, I don’t find it as practical as a preamplifier for live performances. I need more EQ and filtering than it provides. I feel you would be better off with the Headway EDB-2 or something similar. As far as the magnetic pick ups go, standard Precision Bass pickups don’t accurately sense the vibration and travel (excursion) of a Double Bass string. You’re better off with the Schaller or the Krivo. Just my take.
I own almost all of the pickups mentioned and none of them do everything perfect.....
The reality is that only you and one other bass player in the room will notice any difference between them.
Start with the Vic's and then +1000 to any creative efforts to make use of what you have, especially the drawer full of old P bass pickups. One of the best things you'll ever do with that old Kay is stop wasting money on all of the hipster synthetic core strings and put a set of Spirocore mediums on it.
The reality is that only you and one other bass player in the room will notice any difference between them.
Start with the Vic's and then +1000 to any creative efforts to make use of what you have, especially the drawer full of old P bass pickups. One of the best things you'll ever do with that old Kay is stop wasting money on all of the hipster synthetic core strings and put a set of Spirocore mediums on it.
