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Quilter Bass Block

#3,341
At the risk of stating the obvious, the knob is not labeled 'Treble'! ;)

To my ear, turning it clockwise sounds like the tone control on a passive Fender-style bass. In conjunction with some Depth cut, it brings out a nice low-mid peak, to my ear.

I can't hear much above 2000hz (damn tinnitus!) but I can clearly hear the effect of the BB800's Contour control. This leads me to believe Pat's 200hz figure was not a typo.
 
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#3,343
1. We play bass. 2kHz is a respectable "treble" frequency (esp. considering I LPF everything above 4kHz.
2. Pat Quilter did not make a typo. 200Hz is exactly where the Contour knob functions. IIRC it's even a shelving EQ, which allows for some slightly different applications than a traditional tone knob.
3. The BB800, aside from the "DI" and lack of ground lift, is perfect! Don't @ me!



;)
 
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#3,345
zombywoof5050 said:
Not trying to be argumentative, but it just sounds strange to call 300hz mids and then call 200hz treble.
Click to expand...

@Mushroo pointed out above that the knob is not called treble. It is called contour.
I'd say "low mids" on those.

That is crazy tho. Pat Quilter says the "contour" provides a "deep treble cut."
I almost hear it like a LPF rather than a shelf.
 
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#3,346
I'm a bit confused by this statement:

DEPTH: an active cut-boost bass control, with 12 dB of range and an unusually low hinge frequency of 100Hz, and a very high slope (24dB/octave) to provide pinpoint control of the relative loudness of the lowest strings and overall roundness of tone.
Click to expand...

How can it have a 24db/octave slope, if there is only 12db of range? Does that imply the control only affects a half octave? Is the slope constant or does it range from 0-24db depending on the position of the knob?
 
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#3,347
Mushroo said:
I'm a bit confused by this statement:



How can it have a 24db/octave slope, if there is only 12db of range? Does that imply the control only affects a half octave? Is the slope constant or does it range from 0-24db depending on the position of the knob?
Click to expand...

Thank you for posting this. I was wondering the same thing but worried I was missing something in the techno-jargon.
 
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#3,348
Mushroo said:
I'm a bit confused by this statement:



How can it have a 24db/octave slope, if there is only 12db of range? Does that imply the control only affects a half octave? Is the slope constant or does it range from 0-24db depending on the position of the knob?
Click to expand...
Well, there are plenty of folks here who can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe those are measures of two different things. The range refers to how much you can boost or cut a given frequency or range of frequencies. The slope refers to the shape of the frequency range on which the boost and cut operate.

If you imagine a two dimensional graph on which the vertical axis is dB and the horizontal axis is frequency, you'll see what I mean. The range of boost and cut is basically how far you can move a frequency or a range of frequencies straight up or down. For a tone control to be usable, it can't affect all frequencies equally; if it did, it would look like a horizontal line moving up and down; not useful. So if a control is to affect only some of the frequencies rather than all, it has to roll off at at least one area. This would be depicted on the graph as one or more downward slopes. Such slopes could be gradual or steep. The X dB/octave describes precisely how steep the dropoff is. A different thing.

Or to put it another way, when you talk about the range of a tone control, you have to realize that there's some transition between the frequencies it's supposed to affect and the ones it's supposed to leave alone. It's not a hard brickwall stop where it has full effect at frequency X and zero effect at frequency X+1. That would look like a straight vertical line. Instead, there's a transitional zone where the effect gets gradually or rapidly reduced until it goes away. That looks like a slope, and its steepness can vary. Again, the dB/octave number describes how steep the slope is.
 
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#3,349
Richard Lindsey said:
Well, there are plenty of folks here who can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe those are measures of two different things. The range refers to how much you can boost or cut a given frequency or range of frequencies. The slope refers to the shape of the frequency range on which the boost and cut operate.

If you imagine a two dimensional graph on which the vertical axis is dB and the horizontal axis is frequency, you'll see what I mean. The range of boost and cut is basically how far you can move a frequency or a range of frequencies straight up or down. For a tone control to be usable, it can't affect all frequencies equally; if it did, it would look like a horizontal line moving up and down; not useful. So if a control is to affect only some of the frequencies rather than all, it has to roll off at at least one area. This would be depicted on the graph as one or more downward slopes. Such slopes could be gradual or steep. The X dB/octave describes precisely how steep the dropoff is. A different thing.

Or to put it another way, when you talk about the range of a tone control, you have to realize that there's some transition between the frequencies it's supposed to affect and the ones it's supposed to leave alone. It's not a hard brickwall stop where it has full effect at frequency X and zero effect at frequency X=1. That would look like a straight vertical line. Instead, there's a transitional zone where the effect gets gradually or rapidly reduced until it goes away. That looks like a slope, and its steepness can vary. Again, the dB/octave number describes how steep the slope is.
Click to expand...
A bit hard for me to understand this.. however, I actually believe this is what I’m hearing moving the knobs by either themselves or interactively with each other
 
#3,350
hennessybass said:
@Mushroo pointed out above that the knob is not called treble. It is called contour.
I'd say "low mids" on those.

That is crazy tho. Pat Quilter says the "contour" provides a "deep treble cut."
I almost hear it like a LPF rather than a shelf.
Click to expand...

I guess you misunderstood me...I wasn't referring to any knobs, I was referring to Pat Quilter's explanation of the control where he said "mid cut at 300hz" and then said "deep treble cut at 200hz". Sorry if i caused any confusion.

I've had my BB800 for almost a year now, and I love it!
 
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#3,352
Mushroo said:
The Manfrotto backpack that @Real Soon mentioned in post #843 fits both the Quilter BB800 (in the top compartment) and the Fryette GP/DI (in the bottom compartment).

If you have dimensions on the Summit, I'd be happy to measure if it will fit. :)
Click to expand...

Best Buy happens to be running a sale on the Manfrotto NX CSC backpacks right now. Much better price than I paid even though mine was on sale too!

I actually just bought ANOTHER one as I liked the first one for my BB800 rig so much, I wanted one for my actual camera. Haha
 
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#3,353
Oh! Also maybe needless to say, still got my BB800 heh, and while I know Duke had a lot of setbacks this year, I suspect I'm coming up somewhere in the queue for an Audiokinesis Hathor 1203 cab. Seems to be a champion pairing so I'm excited.

The manager of the psychedelic-inspired, somewhat 90s alt-voiced rock band I was with got problematic, so I'm not with that group anymore, but am starting a group with a singer with neo-soul & hip-hop vibes.... and it looks like my Ibanez BTB7 7-string bass is in demand till we pick up a keyboardist or guitarist. Despite the loop-oriented genre names, the music is a fun challenge and lets me test that bass's (and my pedalboard's) potential.

So for now, I'm running the BB800 into my dual 2x10 stack as I have been, and have noticed the low-end response of the Quilter is slightly more relaxed than the GK Fusion 500 with the Deep switch on, but not rolled back like 95% of amps. It's present and pleasant...and with that being thru a 2x10 stack, that means it'll be fat in a setup that pushes lows harder.

Jury's out on the high end. I just haven't spent enough time yet doing critical listening, though I know it speaks harmonics clearly. Also, if this is the way we're working for a while, I may bi-amp, and will have results for that setup to give.
 
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#3,354
Finally, I don't know jack diddly about where the 200Hz reference was made and am far, far too lazy to go look.

BUT the Contour setting on this amp most definitely, inarguably affects frequencies waaaay below 2000Hz when turned clockwise. How do I know? Because I'm working on music right now where I laid a bass part on a Fender fretless jazz bass with spanky new un-broken-in flats (they can be bright for a while!) that was recorded with boosted upper mids and highs, and recently I tried rolling back frequencies around 2200Hz in a shelf format, and the result was far, far different from what the Contour knob does.

Also I have experience as a mixing engineer and just know what those ranges sound like. lol

If Pat said there's a deep treble cut starting at 200Hz, I'm going to take that as: a slope that starts VERY gently around 200Hz, and begins to dip lower as you approach ~500Hz, more as you reach 1000Hz, and is pretty deep by 2000Hz. And is probably down to -18dB by the time you reach, say, 4000Hz. That's at, say, a 3 or 4 o'clock setting (and if we agree it maxes out at 5 o'clock).

That kind of response will have a nice organic shift in the shape of the response when mild vs wild, but we know we still have some mids no matter what, so it's safe to say it doesn't have a dramatic drop-off till it gets into the high range of the bass. I see a comparison to a passive tone control, and I agree that it's like a super nice tone control. Better shape than most, even.

Sorry, all these replies in a row are turning into a real essay! The dayjob needs to put me on a night shift.
 
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