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Volume up, volume down

Sterrrling

Sterrrling

Supporting Member
Dec 13, 2007
373
65
Tucson, AZ
#1
I'm looking for some advice and this maybe trivial for some but bare with me this is a newly occurring issue for me and I need a solution.

I have passive basses (Fenders), I active basses (Laklands, Schecter, ESP)...I have amps (Ampeg & Markbass), I have cabs (4x10's and 1x15). The problem is: when I plug in an active bass (as many of us know) the volume levels are much higher than that of passive basses and one must scramble to turn up, turn down, or make necessary adjustments to compensate.

I think what I'm asking is, is there a pedal to help compensate the volume difference between active and passive basses?
 
#3
Radial makes a pedal for this. It's like a preamp for two basses. You just have to swap them out and plug in. A boost or eq would work great too. Check out the programable EQ by source audio. It has 4 presets so all you'd have to do is press and hold a footswitch for a few seconds and you're good to go! A boost would just be engaged when you switch to a passive bass. I recently picked up a phat phuk b by wren and cuff. Ridiculously awesome boost. So sweet. I would do one or two of those things.

Couldn't you simply push the pad on your amp when you go to active? Most amps come with that now...... In between bass swaps I mean.
 
#7
I usually adjust the output of my active basses (mine have internal trimpots for this purposes) so that everything matches.

However, when I do want to use a pedal to address this issue, I typically use a very transparent boost pedal (for me, the Blackeye Effects Palmetto Boost). An EQ pedal is also a good choice if you need more tone shaping between basses.
 
#8
I've used 2 different pedals to accomplish this. The Empress ParaEQ has a boost channel that I used specifically for switching basses...and now I use the Providence Dual Bass Station. It has 2 full 3-band EQs with different levels to balance between instruments - works great.
 
#9
You could use just about any pedal with a volume knob. Turn all the knobs to remove whatever effect it is suppose to be and set the volume knob to a point to make up the difference between volumes of the two basses. Basically, use whatever extra pedal you may have lying around as a buffered volume pedal.
 
#10
EBS MicroBass II.

It gives you the chance to plug active and passive basses. It has two chanels with diferents eq section: A for passive basses, you find Low and High knobs; and B for active basses you have a wide parametric (that can go from sub-lows to hi-mids) and high knobs. You get Drive control, Tube sim, Mute, it´s a D.I too and it has a loop for the rest of the chain.

http://www.google.es/imgres?imgurl=...iact=rc&uact=3&dur=504&page=1&start=0&ndsp=12
 

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