Red-Eye received safe and sound (thanks Fire-Eye and thanks @crd !) First use was at Denver's Dazzle jazz club, pic attached. Backline is a Henriksen combo (with a 12" I think) and signal chain: Realist Lifeline -> Red-Eye -> fdeck HPF v2 -> Henriksen, with the Red-Eye also feeding the house (so yes, pre-fdeck). I use LaBella 7710N strings as I find them to have a very precise and controlled low end when amplified and I like the complex mid/high texture in the mix.
First reaction... wow. I've played this room quite a few times for comparison. It's not a terrible room acoustically and the sound folks are quite capable. There's always a lot of variability in the resonance of different notes of course, and this is a loud big band so feedback can be an issue. It's also a big Upton Brescian so lots of lows to manage.
The moral of the story from the night was quite similar to some of the comments from other folks on this thread. The way much of the register "sat" in the mix was much improved from my last recollection - well defined, clean, articulate, but still very thick and round, with a lot of "shape" to the note rather than being 2-dimensional. That was less true down low on the E string but I'd attribute that to the single 12 on a stand fighting a loud band, as well as the hpf which I utilize (post-DI in this case) to remove the deep mud on stage. I used the treble control at 50% and used the A/B for a mute button, which was a nice feature.
The other thing that kept hitting me about the red-eye is that it seems to smooth out those piezo thumps in a very musical way, getting to more of an "acoustic attack" rather than an "artificial attack". I mean those times when you dig in a bit and if you were unamplified it would be fine, but with the pickup it's harsh. That's probably improvements I should make in my technique, but each note sounded increasingly musical and sweet to my ears.
I'm no @Chris Fitzgerald so there weren't any people coming up to me after the show telling me I sounded good.... although a woman in leather pants did come up and say, "I know you're married but I'm crushing on you and your bass on stage", (so I really can't complain)... but I thought it was the best bass tone I've achieved in that venue. More importantly, the band seemed to respond differently, as if the pulse had more authority and clarity.
That's really all so far as I haven't been able to use it in a more intimate setting. Will do that in rehearsal tomorrow. Since I'm the basstaster(TM) I'm planning on doing some recordings to share, in various configurations (with Noble, fdeck, EA Doubler), mainly to prove to myself that the difference is not psychoacoustic and then exactly what the difference is. Feel free to ask questions in the meantime and I'll be back with more observations soon. Thanks for reading!
Yikes. The amps were fine, unfortunately
There you go Jack, another one!
