Too much saturation

[Garion]

Hi all
I was setting up my btb 556 with passive preamp (made by a little store) and I notify an acid sound. Too acid. I recorded some silly lines direct in my PC via behringer umc22
By the way, I figured out that there is too much saturation, almost a little distortion, when I isolated the PU.
Maybe should I change the preamp again?

 

[kalle74]

I have no idea what an "acid sound" is, but I would not live with a distorted sound. I want my bass to give a clean signal. That I will almost definitely color with a drive pedal, though.

So, most likely, I would swap the pre.

 

[Garion]

This is what I called an acid sound
Sorry, but I didn't touch the bass for a while... Anyway, the first take is with all the knob open, then only one pickup, then switching off the 3 different pot.
The little distortion is no related to the signal input, that was very low...

 

[Pilgrim]

I have no clue what "saturation" is (unless it's color saturation in an image), and even less what an "acid sound" might be.

It sounds fine to me. Not distorted, not unusual.

 

[Garion]

^
Don't you hear any distortion?
Sorry for my english, anyway

 

[Garion]

I've just ordered a very cheap preamp, just in case.
A Ming preamp. Let's see how it works...

 

[RattleSnack]

There is definitively some distortion on your track when you hit string harder. Couple of questions:
What is passive preamp?
If it uses a battery, than it is active. Change your battery and set EQ flat.
Have you tried turning down volume on your bass?
Check the visual on your audio track. Are peaks too high?

 

[Garion]

There is definitively some distortion on your track when you hit string harder. Couple of questions:
What is passive preamp?
If it uses a battery, than it is active. Change your battery and set EQ flat.
Have you tried turning down volume on your bass?
Check the visual on your audio track. Are peaks too high?

No, there is no battery (it was before i changed the active onboard preamp from ibanez).
There is not peak too high too... In fact, i hear more distortion from the neck pu, and the signal is lower than the others.

 

[RattleSnack]

It could be that the pickup is damaged or too close to strings.
Check your setup, and try lowering input gain on your sound card.

 

[Garion]

Sadly, i think the gain is not the problemi.... Pickups are at leas 5mm away from the strings.
In your opinion it will be a preamp problem? Anyway i'll try another pre and let's sede what happens. If the problem will continue, then I'll try with PU... But it's very difficult to find one that fit at the same (strange) dimension... It's a 6 string