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Tone vs Volume Dilemma

#22
Try finding some soloed tracks of recorded bass lines you like. Often times I find the solo tracks are very different from what I thought.

When dialing in a tone alone it's easy to try and lean toward smoothing out imperfections. But sometimes those imperfections are what help you cut through. A little bit of OD, string noise, fret noise, etc. or what a hockey coach might call sandpaper, might be just the right touch to allow you to express without brute force of turning up to 11.
 
#23
Listen to "while my guitar gently weeps" solo bass track. It sounds awful but works in the mix. You can get a Fender Rumble 350 head and a Rumble 410 new for around $600.00. Very powerful. I never get a chance to turn mine up at a gig. But I do knock stuff off the walls at home when I get a chance.:D
 
#25
The room you are playing in has a lot to do with how you sound. Do you get the same results in different venues?
I play for a living and have lots of gear, and find that a Jazz bass is one of the easier basses to find a spot where I am heard, but gear matters, and I find that either a 4x10 or a 2x12 will get the job done most everywhere. If I need more than that I usually have PA support.
I use a Bergantino AE410 or a Greenboy 1212/6 - both great cabinets that project extremely well. Heads? I have used quite a few, and got very good results with an Ampeg pf500 and the Bergie, but the Ampeg could not drive the Greenboy satisfactorily all the time. So I switched to an Epifani UL902 and and I don't have any power problems any more. And we play pretty loud at times - guitar player cranks a 1960 blonde Bassman into that good zone on bigger shows. I have no problem being heard. After I bought the Epifani I quite buying heads - it is light and does the job I need. I know this is expensive stuff, but it is worth it.
 
#26
B-string said:
Here is a good start for you! [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Move fast though if it is not already gone. Play it before you pay.

Decent cab [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] Total $450 + gas for both!
Click to expand...

Geez....assuming the stuff works properly, that's a really nice deal...especially the amp. People ask twice that around here for those things.
 
#28
Try this: set your rig up with the bass all the way down, get to volume with just your various mids and highs - and be sure to be nice and loud.

Then roll in your bass to taste before your speakers fart out.

This will get you where you need to be while you work out your purchases and is a great way to run a rig hot without damaging cones.
 
#29
I don't know why B-string is so anti graphic EQ. I've been shaping my tone with 12 band one ever since I started.

To bring bass forward, mids up, lowest lows down, crank it up.

Jazz pickups pop with neck on full and bridge dialed back a little. It picks up environmental interference noise in that mode though.

Hearing yourself is best with a tall rig. Try using a cab stand or tilt the 4x10 back. Then get a pair of 2x10 for a vertical stack.
 
#30
Downunderwonder said:
I don't know why B-string is so anti graphic EQ. I've been shaping my tone with 12 band one ever since I started.

To bring bass forward, mids up, lowest lows down, crank it up.

Jazz pickups pop with neck on full and bridge dialed back a little. It picks up environmental interference noise in that mode though.

Hearing yourself is best with a tall rig. Try using a cab stand or tilt the 4x10 back. Then get a pair of 2x10 for a vertical stack.
Click to expand...

Well since you mentioned my take you must want to know?
Miss-use by roughly 80% of users. When I HAD to live with them in live sound they were useful at 1/4 or 1/3 octave. I have yet to see a 31 band GEQ on a bass amp. Explore response curves on a typical bass amp GEQ. If they work for you more power to you. No judgement, for me I find them an unnecessary, possibly problematic bell and whistle. And that is my right ;).
 
#31
I'm leaning towards the b-string side of the spectrum. My own feeling is that much of tone is found upstream from the EQ controls in an amp. Of course the zone from the fingers all the way to the amp'a input jack counts significantly. Once you get to the amp it seems to me the preamp stage has a voicing unique to each amp and that is where I feel the tone of the amp lives (tube power sections notwithstanding).

The "tone" controls on the amp enhance the amp's voice, but are really more useful as EQ meaning to equalize - or more precisely to make minor and final adjustments to cut or boost.

If I'm searching for a tone it usually involves preamp selection and adjusting input values such as "drive" or "character" etc.

IMO most amps have a range of useful tone that sounds great, but a much larger range that sounds like monkey-butt. The trick is to go easy on the tweaking to avoid the monkey-butt range.

Pardon my lack of sophistication.
 
#32
I get along fine with GEQ's but maybe I'm just used to it? I find lots of narrow bands useful for cutting out problems. For boosting, it can get a little weirder. Lot's of bands lets me shape more broad boosts, more similar to what may happen with a wide Q, 1-knob control. Fewer band one's like 7 or 9, I find that it's more musical boosting if you move 2 bands together as if they were one control. True, they can overlap and get some see-saw action happening in the response. The closer the seesaws are together, the more our ear puts it together as being more smooth and less choppy. It really depends a lot on the quality of the eq being used.


That said, in my PA, I can do everything I need to do with a 15-band.....with a fairly wide variety of speakers. Again, lowering big peaks...raising deep dips....doesn't have to be ruler flat. A few small bumps and dips never hurt anybody. :D
 
#33
Broad spectrum PA use with overlapping instrument response is the original intention with cut prefered to boost. IMO you are using it correctly. If moving two adjacent bands work for what you want to do, great. Just know you are still causing a hump or dip in between those two bands narrower with more bands than less. :)
 
#34
DigitalMan said:
I'm leaning towards the b-string side of the spectrum. My own feeling is that much of tone is found upstream from the EQ controls in an amp. Of course the zone from the fingers all the way to the amp'a input jack counts significantly. Once you get to the amp it seems to me the preamp stage has a voicing unique to each amp and that is where I feel the tone of the amp lives (tube power sections notwithstanding).

The "tone" controls on the amp enhance the amp's voice, but are really more useful as EQ meaning to equalize - or more precisely to make minor and final adjustments to cut or boost.

If I'm searching for a tone it usually involves preamp selection and adjusting input values such as "drive" or "character" etc.

IMO most amps have a range of useful tone that sounds great, but a much larger range that sounds like monkey-butt. The trick is to go easy on the tweaking to avoid the monkey-butt range.

Pardon my lack of sophistication.
Click to expand...

I would agree to a point, even more so when playing outside. Although, the condition of the room, size, shape, reflective or absorbative, and especially how many people are in there, as well as the rigs position in relation to walls and corners...and let's not forget about the one boundry that is constant...that being the ceiling...affects things to such a degree, I can't say to just make small adjustments. Sometimes my adjustments can get pretty wild looking, but when you put all those factors together and listen from out front where the people are...it ends up being good.

I do take even more of your approach when I play outside, as out there, all those other oddities don't come into play. I really like playing outside. It's so much easier to get a nice, consistent tone, especially from the PA.

BTW, controls with labels like "drive" or whatever are also just preset eq curves along with various types and amounts of distortion, harmonics, etc. in relation to the original signal. It's just that a lot of the homework has been done and concentrated into a single knob to turn, which is nice. Makes things a lot less complicated and easier to get a good tone faster.
 
#35
B-string said:
Broad spectrum PA use with overlapping instrument response is the original intention with cut prefered to boost. IMO you are using it correctly. If moving two adjacent bands work for what you want to do, great. Just know you are still causing a hump or dip in between those two bands narrower with more bands than less. :)
Click to expand...

Oh, I know. I'll do the 2-slider boost most often in the lower ranges with my T-max. Graphic on that one goes 40, 100, 250, 635, 1.6, 4, & 10. I'll move the 40&100, or the 100&250 up together SLIGHTLY.....but never very far and never all 3. 10khz lives at the bottom. The other 3 depends on how many bodies (or carpet and drapes) are soaking up how much sound wherever we happen to be at. :D


As an instrument amp, I do like the GK's regular 4-band better, but the Peavey has let me dial things in just a little bit better in a couple of problem places. When everything is working ideally on a good night, one doesn't end up sounding all that much different than the other, despite them being pretty different amps. Just a little bit different flavors of "me".
 
#37
That Peavey could be a bit troublesome for some, at least until you get used to how things interact. The bass knob is said to be all the way down at 20...which may be right, but it spills upwards quite a ways and the more you turn it, the more it spills. Treble the same way....8khz but spills downwards quite a bit, and even further with more extreme settings. If you were to turn them to their extremes, they'd probably meet in the middle like an old-school 2-band. The rest of the control is in the graphic bands.
 
#38
B-string said:
The G-K is interesting as it uses shelving (bass/treble) and bandpass (low mid and high mid). Interesting design.
Click to expand...

That's one of the things I like about it. Low shelving in combination with lowend filtering, and, in the old ones anyway, treble shelving down where it has audible effect on regular paper cone speakers without tweeters. Then the 2 middle bandpasses set in spots that have great musical effect on our instrument. It takes an approach geared for the electric bass rather than a broadband PA type approach.....and excells greatly at it.
 

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