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Double Bass Using a Fishman BII peamp into venue amp or D.I.?

M

MichelD

May 19, 2014
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#1
I've got a couple of live gigs coming up, one is a small festival where our Cajun band is booked. I'm told there is a back line at the festival but I don't know what it is.

I know my Underwood pickup makes the bass sound brittle and tinny without the Fishman preamp when I use my roland Cube 60 so I'm wondering if I should bring it to the festival gig.

Then July 27 our band leader got us a pretty nice gig at a large local theatre. Again, I don't know the sound setup. If all they have is a FOH P.S. and want me to D.I. would it make sense to bring my Fishman preamp to plug in before the D.I.?

Or should I bring a small amp (either my Roland or Traynor 50 SB and 1x12 cab) for stage sound and let them take a D.I. from that?

I have rarely played live in thel ast 20 years, and I am used to bringing my Roland Cube 60 to small clubs, seniors' homes and small halls, but this band is taking off and we're rapidly getting booked to larger spaces.
 
#2
Well, refresh my memory ye olde BII preamp is strictly a 1/4" jack in and out device if memory serves me. So it should work into the 1/4" input on the DI they have but that's
not ideal because it's a unbalanced input into the DI which might give out AC line noise or hiss, my old Cube 60 (one of the orange ones) didn't have a DI and it appears the newer black ones
don't either. If the Theater uses or has the Countryman 57 DI then you're set. There are others that sound just fine as well.
 
#3
Yes! definitely bring the preamp, at the very least you’ll have a decent input and a reasonable chance of an acceptable monitor mix. Also don’t be timid in asking for what you need in your monitor. The FOH sound company’s job is to make you sound good.
 
#4
Ric Vice said:
Well, refresh my memory ye olde BII preamp is strictly a 1/4" jack in and out device if memory serves me. So it should work into the 1/4" input on the DI they have but that's
not ideal because it's a unbalanced input into the DI which might give out AC line noise or hiss, my old Cube 60 (one of the orange ones) didn't have a DI and it appears the newer black ones
don't either. If the Theater uses or has the Countryman 57 DI then you're set. There are others that sound just fine as well.
Click to expand...
Yes, it is a 1/4 in and out device.

My Cube 60 (Gray one about 35 years old ) has a DI out but the last time I tried it the sound guy rejected it.
 
#6
Always travel with an impedance buffer/preamp, since the probability that you get a high impedance amp or DI box is rather low. A passive DI works after the impedance buffer, but also an active DI is better placed after the buffer/preamp. You should make that absolutely clear to the technician if he wants to place the DI first.

A small amp is nice if you need to make yourself louder on stage from title to title, since you won’t like to ask the technician during the performance.
 
#7
Generally, here in the US many sound men have the Countryman 75 as part of their regular tool kit although not always. The Underwood pickup will function quite nicely at 1 Meg Ohm, so itidoesn’t take much in the way of buffering to improve it’s sound . As I recall the Fishman BII pre jas a 10 Meg ohm buffer, so used in combination with a decent DI it can sound quite good. The only DI I’ve used that sounded terrible with a Underwood or Realist was the Whirlwind IMP
 
#8
Ric Vice said:
Generally, here in the US many sound men have the Countryman 75 as part of their regular tool kit although not always. The Underwood pickup will function quite nicely at 1 Meg Ohm, so itidoesn’t take much in the way of buffering to improve it’s sound . As I recall the Fishman BII pre jas a 10 Meg ohm buffer, so used in combination with a decent DI it can sound quite good. The only DI I’ve used that sounded terrible with a Underwood or Realist was the Whirlwind IMP
Click to expand...

Thank you.

Valuable info.

Michel
 
#9
Ric Vice said:
Generally, here in the US many sound men have the Countryman 75 as part of their regular tool kit although not always. The Underwood pickup will function quite nicely at 1 Meg Ohm, so itidoesn’t take much in the way of buffering to improve it’s sound . As I recall the Fishman BII pre jas a 10 Meg ohm buffer, so used in combination with a decent DI it can sound quite good. The only DI I’ve used that sounded terrible with a Underwood or Realist was the Whirlwind IMP
Click to expand...


The Countryman Type 85 has 10 Meg input impedance providing you don't use the Thru. If you use the Thru, the pickups see 10 Meg in parallel with whatever you plug into.
 
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#10
If you normally use a buffer and a small amp...bring both. Suggested signal path: Bass to the buffer, buffer to provided house DI, thru from DI to your amp.

If something doesn't work well, simply remove it from the signal path.

Normally I don't like putting bass in the monitor for multiple reasons. 1. You need a pretty nice monitor cab before it will work well with bass. 2. Trying to tell an audio tech how to adjust your bass so it sounds good in the monitor is not an easy task. 3. Depending on how the board is setup, the audio tech may not even be able to adjust your tone in the monitor mix. 4. If the EQ is assigned to both house and monitor mixes, it should prioritized for making the house mix sound good. In order to have a custom EQ for both the house and your monitor mix, the bass must be assigned to two channels. One channel for the house mix and one channel for your monitor mix. 5. If the audio tech is not familiar with reinforcing double bass, he/she may not know how to deal with it; especially how sensitive to feedback it can be. 6. The monitor cab and your bass cab will be separated and also likely have different phase and group delay characteristics. Frequently adding a bunch of bass to the monitors makes it noticeably louder. But it will frequently have a hollow quality that causes the bass to seem to disappear in the mix. Essentially the monitor cab and your bass cab are fighting rather than integrating properly.

If the monitor is capable of producing better sound than your amp...simply turn the amp down.

The backline amp may be a good choice providing it's good quality, suitable for double bass, and you are familiar enough with it to get a sound quickly.

Your Cube 60 may be a bad choice if the stage volume will exceed its capabilities.

If possible call the audio tech to consult before gig day.
 
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#11
It’s the “Countryman 85” I got the product number wrong as there is no “Country Man 75”
I’m not familiar with the Traynor 50 SB I know the SB 108, SB 10, SB 12, and SB 15. If it’s only a 50 watt amp
It will likely get buried by the onstage monitors.
 
#14
MichelD’
Is the amplifier your referring to?

IMG_1486.png
IMG_1487.png
 
#17
MichelD said:
You betcha it is.
Click to expand...

By all accounts, the DI on your SB500H head would be ideal for the gigs you mentioned earlier and you’ll be able to hear yourself on stage through you own 1x12 cabinet, while the Fishman B preamp enhances/conditions the Underwood pickups timbre (tone color) You could eventually try un-installing one side of the Underwood pickup. Many in our Talk Bass community do that, claiming great. improvements in the way the pickup sounds. I wouldn’t recommend doing that right before those two gigs you have coming up. :)
 
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#18
Here’s a picture of the original Fishman Model B Preamp. I was told that Fishman took a Sadowsky Bass Preamp and added the 10 Meg input impedance to the front end. The second picture is a RedEye Preamp it greatly improves the tone quality of any piezo pickup or magnetic pickup. Something you might consider down the road.

IMG_0442.jpeg
IMG_0443.jpeg
 

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