Double Bass Tuner First?

[Kael]

Anyone have any notion as to whether or not sticking a Boss TU-3 tuner in front of my Fishman will detrimentally affect my signal? Not sure if I need to keep the first thing the pickup sees being my Fishman or not.

Unnecessary but truncated back story: I am building a small doubling pedal board. Pondering one tuner vs two for the board.

 

[sadasar]

I've always run my tuner first in my signal chain. I've never noticed a difference in my sound as opposed to running it else where in my chain.

 

[Floyd Eye]

My TU2 is and has always been first on my board. For many reasons.

 

[Kael]

Thanks. Thinking it might make more sense to run two tuners. That way I can still send separate signals to FOH when possible or send a joint signal when I must while retaining ability to silently tune each instrument.

 

[walterw]

in principle, the preamp needs to be absolutely first; if a buffered tuner like the boss is in front, it becomes the preamp, and it's often not up to that task. at that point, the actual piezo preamp is wasted.

with a true-bypass tuner it won't matter, because when off it will have no effect, allowing the pickup to still hit the preamp "unmolested".

 

[ricobasso]

in principle, the preamp needs to be absolutely first; if a buffered tuner like the boss is in front, it becomes the preamp, and it's often not up to that task. at that point, the actual piezo preamp is wasted.

+1 on that

I built a EUB using a Belcat pre-amp/tuner for the same type of piezo pickup that I use on my 3/4 upright. The EUB always sounded bass light compare to the upright. I put this down to the small body on the EUB, but when I checked the preamp I found that the internal tuner input was always connected to the piezo input. I checked the component values and found that the tuner part had an input impedance of only 200k Ohms.
To cut a long story short, I built a 10M Ohm buffer amp and put it before the tuner. Now I have much more low end.

So the short answer is check the input impedance of your tuner when it is on and off.

 

[Kael]

Hmmm... In that case i think I'll pick up a tuner that is true bypass. In theory that should let my Fishman still be the preamp the piezo sees. Of course in theory communism works.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I am building a small doubling pedal board. Pondering one tuner vs two for the board.

Just a note about tuners and DB - the pitch/sustain envelope of the DB is something I could never reconcile with a tuner. Because of the width of the vibration of the string, plucked DB open strings tend to start significantly sharp and then flatten out the longer the string vibrates. Every single time I've ever tried to tune a DB with a tuner, I've ended up feeling like the bass is tuned flat in real performance situations. I have much better luck tuning with my ears, which seem to hear a later part of the envelope as the part that needs to be "in tune". YMMV, as always.

 

[Kael]

I will watch that. I know many favor ye olde pitch fork but for my situation the ability to tune silently in loud enviornments is mandatory.