Using my amp wrong for years.

[two fingers]

Isn't that kind of like "The food in this restaurant is so mediocre. Waiter! Bring me some more! Yeah, pretty bland stuff. Been coming here for years". : )

I simply meant that out of the SVTs..... most of which I really liked the sound of..... the SVT 3 is the exception in that its tone was just kind of..... blah..... to me. The rest, especially the blue line classic, the 2, and the 6, were fabulous.

 

[Radarsonwheels]

I used to run a rack setup with a compressor/gate and an EQ component right into a bridged 1600 watt power amp for a hiphop gig I had. I would use those two to boost my instrument signal to a good line in volume and have TONS of clean headroom for massive neck pickup sounds on a jazz. It worked great- we were Philly city paper's 'best live hiphop act' of 2000

 

[BadExample]

Heart three sizes too small?

I like it.....
View attachment 2846175

Who knows, maybe this year I'll finally change. I'll start listening to the Christmas Classics.

 

[MDBass]

I have been trying out difference power/pre amp configurations and I have came to the conclusion that, I have been over looking all of my tonal possible options.
My gear consist of a pedal board with the basswitch IQ di. Which is a fantastic preamp. For some time now I have been running the Basswitch into the preamp section of either my Aguilar Ag 700 or my Ampeg Svt3 pro.
So In essence I have been running a pre-amp into a pre-amp. Which one could say cancels each other out, in a way.
So I explored using my effects loop send to bypass the Ag's pre-amp giving me all control from the Basswitch. Wow, what a difference. I still use the power amp section of the Ag but not the eq. Next I try running the Basswitch between the pre of the Ag and the power amp using the send and return of the effects loop. And another Eureka moment. So now I'm sending the signal opposite of what I have been doing for years.
Now the hard part is deciding which option to use. Ugh.
I spent hours here on TB reading up on what people do. I guess it all depends on what mood I'm in for the music.
If I want the Aguilar or Ampeg sound I won't use my Basswitch eq as a pre-amp ( just the effects) and possibly at times just get the Basswitch tone and bypass the pre on my amps.
I guess I'll forever be searching for the sound!
I could always get a cheap amp head with a effects loop and just use the power section for my pre-amp.
I just don't know. So many options.

Running a preamp into a preamp most certainly does not "cancel out" anything.

Series preamp processing can be incredibly useful; the EQ centerpoints/curves and coloration of each can vary greatly, and reversing the order will also change the response.

That's what you discovered when running the Basswitch in the FX loop, which is after the amp's preamp instead of in front of it.

When running both my pedalboard and my amp I regularly run three preamps in series, or four if I'm using an active bass.

As you said, lots of options: just remember, if it sounds good - it IS good.

 

[Kro]

Who knows, maybe this year I'll finally change. I'll start listening to the Christmas Classics.

Or you could just join the rest of us...

(Sorry OP for the derail)!

 

[BadExample]

Or you could just join the rest of us...

(Sorry OP for the derail)!

And Festivus for the rest of us!

Early derail is actually a blessing. A service. It saves the OP from the sorrow of a solid two page derail after spending hours on a 10 or 20 page thread.

 

[40Hz]

Just get a power amp (no pre).

But then you always need to pack along a separate preamp. And if you're into tubes, finding a tube amp with serious output power gets difficult and expensive. So I've found an instrument amp with an effects loop is the best of both worlds. It can be used either standalone, or with your choice of dozens of different outboard preamps. Win-Win!

That's what I've been doing these days. It's great to be able to have a handful of different preamps, each with their own sound. It's like a having a studio full of different amps at a fraction of the money and space that would be needed otherwise.

It gets even sweeter with some of the new mini and micro heads that may soon sport a breakout loop. I like the idea of being able to cart what's effectively a half dozen different amps around and still have them all fit in a backpack or gig bag.

Preamp pedals and effects-in jacks are definitely an option worth looking into.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

I'd rather go even smaller & just use the preamp from my bass straight into a power amp.

 

[SteveBassJr]

I kind of narrowed it down today.
The Carvin DSM 2000 power amp (15 years old) has a distorted sound. Old and dirty it's going to sit on my shelf till I throw it away now! So, my 3 choices are:
Straight through to my amp by bypassing my Basswich eq (I dialed in some real aggressive tone on my AG 700)
Using my Sadowsky on board preamp and running into the return loop (bypassing the amps eq and using the amps power section)
Using my bass in passive mode (utilizing the basswich preamp eq)
All have a slight variations of color.
I can go down this rabbit hole for days.

 

[spigmu]

I simply meant that out of the SVTs..... most of which I really liked the sound of..... the SVT 3 is the exception in that its tone was just kind of..... blah..... to me. The rest, especially the blue line classic, the 2, and the 6, were fabulous.

I was just being shmucky : )

 

[el murdoque]

I usually run my Sansamp straight into the FX-Return of whatever head I brought.
Sometimes, that extra EQ section comes in handy, though. On a recent gig I found myself a
bit underpowered on stage. To get the bass audible in the mix, I needed to dial out most of the bass and make up for that by raising the lower mids.
I could do that by using the amp's EQ while still sending an unaltered signal to FOH.

 

[two fingers]

I was just being shmucky : )

Ha! My apologies. As shmucky as I can be, I should have recognized it.

 

[spigmu]

Ha! My apologies. As shmucky as I can be, I should have recognized it.

No, no you were cool : ) It just reminded me of that old Catskills joke "The food here is terrible. And the portions are too small!" : )

 

[Bigbri]

Yeah I'm new to effects myself. But I determined years ago that when it comes to a signal path, the shorter the better. A pre into a pre can get hairy.

Will the XLR out on the Bassswitch feed a power amp? If so, power amps are all over the interwebz for cheap. Just send your pedal board to the power amp and be done with it.

The Aggie will have a sound of its own. But I never found the SVT 3 to have a particular sound worth writing home about (and I have owned every SVT ever made except a 5 and a 7). But that's just me.

There was a guy on here last week that has a 2xKT88 poweramp that didn't seem to want it. It wasn't labelled bass amp but might be worth a look.

 

[NOVAX]

What are you doing? Painting the ceiling. What are you doing? Painting the floor. The only way that I consider a set up to be 'wrong' is if it produces no sound.

 

[andruca]

For some years when I first bought a SansAmp RBI I'd use it with a power amp. Then added a rack compressor in between, then a para EQ, then realized a clean sounding powerful bass head with enough EQ and some CMP capabilities would do the same in only 2U rack space, so I went back to the old trusty Hartke 3500 (same head I had before going preamp+power amp, just not MOSFET, I'll always regret selling that first one). IME, the biggest point of having a preamp is the ability to carry your tone in there everywhere, then use whatever bass amp's preamp to adapt to the room (EQ, CMP if available). In my case any clean loud amp with enough lowend balls will do it 99% of the times if I carry "my sound in a box".

 

[non]

bypassing the amplifier preamp seems so obvious i can't believe i did not try this before. i immediately tried this with my practice amp a ampeg ba108. the sound is night and day. running my pedalboard and bass into the fx return gives me a more punchy sound. without the amp preamp i can really hear how the preamp colored the sound. it gives it a warm tube sound. bypassing the amp pre it loses the warmth but also loses the muddiness. without the amp pre it loses a little bass as well but using the preamp on the bass i can adjust the eq. i can't wait to try this with all my amps! it is like haveing two different sounding amps in one.
would it be safe to split the cable from my pedalboard and have one go to the amp input and one to the fx return and get a mix of the two sounds or am i just getting to excited? my head is going to explode with the new possibilities!
--

 

[Kro]

would it be safe to split the cable from my pedalboard and have one go to the amp input and one to the fx return and get a mix of the two sounds or am i just getting to excited?

Holy macaroni - and I say this more out of surprise than anything, not giving you hard time for asking, but I think that this is the third time that I've seen this question pop up in the past week - and before that I've hardly seen it asked before.

No, unless your amp has a blend function already built into the FX loop, plugging something into the return usually bypasses the amp's pre. Typically the use-case for FX loops is to take the amp's preamp output via the send, run that through FX (that work line-level), and then return back via the... return.

In that case you'd have to use an outboard blender or mixer in the loop to do the kind of blending you're looking at, though it is possible. I toyed with doing something similar for a little while, but decided against it in favor of simplicity (it wasn't worth it IMO).

 

[non]

Holy macaroni - and I say this more out of surprise than anything, not giving you hard time for asking, but I think that this is the third time that I've seen this question pop up in the past week - and before that I've hardly seen it asked before.

No, unless your amp has a blend function already built into the FX loop, plugging something into the return usually bypasses the amp's pre. Typically the use-case for FX loops is to take the amp's preamp output via the send, run that through FX (that work line-level), and then return back via the... return.

In that case you'd have to use an outboard blender or mixer in the loop to do the kind of blending you're looking at, though it is possible. I toyed with doing something similar for a little while, but decided against it in favor of simplicity (it wasn't worth it IMO).

i figured i was getting ahead of myself with the new possibilities. thanks for the input.

 

[Kro]

i figured i was getting ahead of myself with the new possibilities. thanks for the input.

Sorry, didn't mean to discourage - it is definitely possible to do, you'd just need another piece of gear.

You'd have to split your pedal board signal as you proposed, and send one side into the amp's input, and the other directly into the blender.

Then take the send from your amp, and also put that into the blender where you'd be able to mix the two signals together being mindful of levels (the send will usually be line-level, which is likely a bit hotter than your pedal-board's signal if it's at unity with instrument-level).

You'd then just have to send that blended signal, that should match line-level, into the return. Boom, done.