On my Peavey Tour 700 Head i have the pre gain full up on 10 (5 o'clock, nice overdrive sound) and nothing is clipping. Post gain is on 4-5 (11-12 o'clock)
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Speaker farting.
- Thread starter Fingerpickingood
- Start date
On my Peavey Tour 700 Head i have the pre gain full up on 10 (5 o'clock, nice overdrive sound) and nothing is clipping. Post gain is on 4-5 (11-12 o'clock)
What do you mean by " 4 " ? Do you mean the actual number on a knob, or , 4 as on a clock face ? Going with the clock face example, most of my preamp settings are usually between 12 and 3 o'clock, and I am not a fan of " grit " or distortion at all in my tone. No problems staying clean at those settings, and this seems to be the sweet spot from amp to amp, brand to brand, in my experience.
But it's all irrelevant if the OP is getting clean sound until he digs in and then his speaker distorts fartily on the attack of every note.
Other than a Gibson EB "mudbucker" and active basses (amps have lo/hi or dedicated active/passive inputs for this) passive basses' outputs are pretty much in the same ballpark. As I've said, bass amps didn't used to have master volumes and no one complained or asked for a master. IMO it's something the bass playing world would be better off without.
The number on a knob. I'm only talking about the preamp volume or gain, not the other settings. Maybe you play with a very light touch.
Wow, that's amazing that there's no distortion with the preamp maxed out. I've never payed through an anp that was like that. Have you ever tried it with the post full up and the pre lower?
Clearly your experience is limited, and does not serve you in well in this discussion.
You make over arching statements about basses and amps that are untrue, and seem to lack familiarity/understanding with basic concepts like gain staging.
There are passive basses that have extremely high outputs, and active basses that have moderate outputs. On top of that, there is no consideration for anything that may be between the bass and the amp.
No one complained about not having a master? Funny, those pots aint free. They wouldnt end up on amps if people didnt want them. See, here's the pulse. And this is your finger, far away from the pulse... Say, would you like a chocolate covered pretzel?
Numbers and/or knob position mean nothing. The circuit design and pot taper can cause some controls to max out very early in their rotation. Others don't come alive until near the other end of the rotation. Still others have a much more even effect over the entire rotation. I prefer the latter.
I'm currently using one of agedhorse's designs, which falls into that latter category.
I can crank the first gain control and stay very clean by backing off on the instrument volume control(s) and/or pulling back on my volume pedal, then controlling the overall later in the amp.
By the same token, I can set the first gain knob very low and overdrive the preamp section by upping the gain somewhere before the amp in my pedal chain.
Moral = input level means just as much as gain knob settings when it comes to distortion. No blanket statements can be made that apply to anything other than an individual case.
I'm currently using one of agedhorse's designs, which falls into that latter category.
I can crank the first gain control and stay very clean by backing off on the instrument volume control(s) and/or pulling back on my volume pedal, then controlling the overall later in the amp.
By the same token, I can set the first gain knob very low and overdrive the preamp section by upping the gain somewhere before the amp in my pedal chain.
Moral = input level means just as much as gain knob settings when it comes to distortion. No blanket statements can be made that apply to anything other than an individual case.
As I said, on one end of the spectrum you have a vintage Gibson EB, 30,000 ohms DC resistance. On the other end, vintage Rickenbacker 4001 and Danelectro basses, around 4.5-5.5K ohms. Comparatively few bass players have access to these instruments anyway, so they can be pretty much eliminated from the discussion. The majority of passive basses have P (around 10K) or J style (around 8K) pickups. I've own dozens of Precisions, Jazz Basses, Rickenbackers, Gibson Thunderbirds, and just about any other common type of bass over the last 40 years and I can tell you that when changing from say, a Jazz Bass to a Precision I never had to make any drastic adjustments on the amp. It's not like if you have an amp set for a Jazz Bass and you plug in a Precision it's pushing the amp into overdrive. Even proprietary soap bar etc. pickups have outputs in about the same range. Barring a '60s Gibson EB and vintage Danelectro lipstick pickups there simply aren't the wild extremes in the output of passive basses that you seem to think there is. Re pedals, only overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedals will affect the input level, and they aren't on all the time, so there wouldn't be any point in setting your amp for a pedal unless the pedal was going to be on 100% of the time. Which it's most likely NOT going to be.
Re pots costing money, yeah they do, but to a manufacturer the cost is negligible. It's called marketing, more knobs = better. By now, a generation or two of bassists have come up not knowing anything else so they don't question it.
By the way, your snarky, sarcastic attitude doesn't serve YOU very well. And no, I wouldn't take a chocolate covered anything from you...
Hahaha, I AM the OP. But yes, I do indeed have a very strong right hand attack. I believe we've managed to ascertain that both my EQ settings on my basses and the lower quality of my cab are to blame. The rest of the thread has me breaking out the popcorn.
I had a similar problem with multiple setups, always used the same bass though.
I play a modified short scale squier bronco. I play with my fingers over the neck. Turned out my action was too low for that, and anytime I dug in (a lot as I play Stonery stuff too) I would end up pressing the strings into my pickup and it would make contact with the pickup then snap back and cause this terrible farty/distortion. It was hard to tell as I had to play hard to cause it and if I was it was hard to see it happen to catch that issue.
Raised my action and solved that, but the pair of greenboy cabs, and stereo setup I made didn't hurt either.
I play a modified short scale squier bronco. I play with my fingers over the neck. Turned out my action was too low for that, and anytime I dug in (a lot as I play Stonery stuff too) I would end up pressing the strings into my pickup and it would make contact with the pickup then snap back and cause this terrible farty/distortion. It was hard to tell as I had to play hard to cause it and if I was it was hard to see it happen to catch that issue.
Raised my action and solved that, but the pair of greenboy cabs, and stereo setup I made didn't hurt either.
I think another issue is the faster paced stuff I like to practice, which involves a lot of three-finger galloping. I'll have to raise my action a bit and see how that works out.
Sure there's distortion, that's what i want, but there's no clipping.
I think another issue is the faster paced stuff I like to practice, which involves a lot of three-finger galloping. I'll have to raise my action a bit and see how that works out.
Don't raise your action unless you have fret buzz. Lower the pickups away from the strings
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Actually, so was I. My GB amps have both Gain and Volume controls for the preamp, and a Master. I would not call my style, soft touch, I like to dig in most of the time.
