When to know you’re over-processing your sound?

[Sonic Titan]

Hey folks!

I’ve been a gear enthusiast for a few years now and like many of us hear, I am seeing the signs of a trap when it comes to finding that “perfect tone.”

Starting to hit a point where I love the “core tone” pedals I use, but have myself convinced they ALL make my tone better and need to always stay on.

This is starting to feel silly to me as something tells me I’m just over-processing and tone-deaf as of late.

Recently purchased an Orange Terror Bass and I think I’m struggling to stop using the pedals that really pushed my Gallien Krueger 700RB into another realm of sound.

My current path + “core tone” is:

Bass (regardless of bass I’m using) —> FX pedals (fuzz, oct, wah, modulation which we’ll exclude from this convo) —> “Core Tone” (Lusithand Alma V2 Comp —> Sushi Box More (tube boost) —> EQD Monarch (helps capture and drive the MORE’s tube’s essence) —> Mesa Boogie Subway Di+ (primarily for EQ, and filters) —> Orange Terror Bass 500 (which JUST replaced my Gallien Krueger 700RB).

Since acquiring the Orange, I’m wondering if things like the Sushi Box More and the EQD Monarch (literally an Orange voiced preamp) are now redundant, but my prideful ears and inability to let go of certain gear is clouding my judgement and actually hurting my sound. I’m lost in the space of “this feeling is a placebo vs this actually helps my sound”

With the background provided, circling back to my main question:

When do you know - not so much feel, but actually know - when you’re over-processing your sound and what are some tricks you guys have used when in this predicament?

I’d love to hear this community’s thoughts, questions, and suggestions.

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this!

 

[jimfist]

Do a couple gigs without all the stuff. Then ask bandmates and audience members what they thought about your bass sound. Unless you need certain effects that are obviously over-the-top, chances are nobody will have noticed, provided you've got a reasonably good bare-bones tone going on. [IMO it's good practice to endure a gig or two going bass-DI-mixer, just to for the exercise of worst case scenario.]

I've done this, and the usual response is that it sounded fine. At that point, I realized that all of the other stuff was more for my head than anything that essentially matters.

 

[gtirard]

Hey folks!

I’ve been a gear enthusiast for a few years now and like many of us hear, I am seeing the signs of a trap when it comes to finding that “perfect tone.”

Starting to hit a point where I love the “core tone” pedals I use, but have myself convinced they ALL make my tone better and need to always stay on.

This is starting to feel silly to me as something tells me I’m just over-processing and tone-deaf as of late.

Recently purchased an Orange Terror Bass and I think I’m struggling to stop using the pedals that really pushed my Gallien Krueger 700RB into another realm of sound.

My current path + “core tone” is:

Bass (regardless of bass I’m using) —> FX pedals (fuzz, oct, wah, modulation which we’ll exclude from this convo) —> “Core Tone” (Lusithand Alma V2 Comp —> Sushi Box More (tube boost) —> EQD Monarch (helps capture and drive the MORE’s tube’s essence) —> Mesa Boogie Subway Di+ (primarily for EQ, and filters) —> Orange Terror Bass 500 (which JUST replaced my Gallien Krueger 700RB).

Since acquiring the Orange, I’m wondering if things like the Sushi Box More and the EQD Monarch (literally an Orange voiced preamp) are now redundant, but my prideful ears and inability to let go of certain gear is clouding my judgement and actually hurting my sound. I’m lost in the space of “this feeling is a placebo vs this actually helps my sound”

With the background provided, circling back to my main question:

When do you know - not so much feel, but actually know - when you’re over-processing your sound and what are some tricks you guys have used when in this predicament?

I’d love to hear this community’s thoughts, questions, and suggestions.

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this!

This is probably not the answer you're waiting for, but to me, there's no right or wrong level of processing, it depends on your goals. Some music genre work well with super processed sounds, others work better with pretty direct sound.

Something else: when you listen to "isolated bass tracks" of famous songs, you may be surprised to realize that a bass tone that you would have thought sounded very natural in the mix - is in fact very processed when soloed. For example a clean sound when heard in the mix may be a quite overdriven when played solo.

So my only advice is: always judge in the mix, never soloed track.

 

[Sonic Titan]

IMO it's good practice to endure a gig or two going bass-DI-mixer, just to for the exercise of worst case scenario

Sound advice for a newbie (which I’d still consider myself) so thank you for that clear answer with a great suggestion. Truly appreciate it jimfist!

 

[Sonic Titan]

This is probably not the answer you're waiting for, but to me, there's no right or wrong level of processing, it depends on your goals. Some music genre work well with super processed sounds, others work better with pretty direct sound.

Something else: when you listen to "isolated bass tracks" of famous songs, you may be surprised to realize that a bass tone that you would have thought sounded very natural in the mix - is in fact very processed when soloed. For example a clean sound when heard in the mix may be a quite overdriven when played solo.

So my only advice is: always judge in the mix, never soloed track.

Terrific response. I hadn’t considered the mixing route (mainly just the live sound route), but nonetheless, great points. Admittedly I’ve always been a sucker for processed sounds, and do think there is always a time and place for them.

Sounds like I just need to remember the end goal I’m striving for. Thanks!

 

[AngelCrusher]

If you like to process this much it helps a lot to have a basic, even free daw like ableton lite or reaper where you can drop in bass-less tunes and play along with them while recording. Then listen to the mix and see how it works.

 

[Sonic Titan]

where you can drop in bass-less tunes and play along with them while recording

Thanks for the suggestion! Hadn’t considered doing my own at-home-mix-test… This is GOLDEN advice!

I do have Reaper, but am not sure of where to find bass-less tracks to import into Reaper… any advice on that? Is this similar to tracks found in WikiLoops?

thanks again

 

[AngelCrusher]

Thanks for the suggestion! Hadn’t considered doing my own at-home-mix-test… This is GOLDEN advice!

I do have Reaper, but am not sure of where to find bass-less tracks to import into Reaper… any advice on that? Is this similar to tracks found in WikiLoops?

thanks again

YouTube has a ton of stuff like that. Just rip the audio with software like audacity or monkey rewind. Etc.

 

[Killing Floor]

To me there’s a mental trade off between what I like to hear and the moving target of effort and noise management and reliability.
That’s likely why I keep my board small and focused even though I have a pedal obsession.
I don’t think you can over process if you’re happy with the result though.

 

[Katoosie]

One good, simple rule.

If it sounds good, it is good.

Who cares how many pedals you use, no? If you sound good with 1 or 50 or 0, does it matter?

 

[J Wilson]

If I had to have all that between the bass and amp, I'd just go back to playing key bass on a synth. It's hard for me to wrap my head around discussions of 'tone' with a pile of pedals between me and the amp.

 

[Slade N]

All sound is processed somehow - effects, cabs, speakers, bass, pickups, string choice, technique and the room/environment all change how we perceive the sound, there is no truly isolated sound. If you like your set up equation, run with it, if you are questioning it, take the suggestions provided. In the end, its your sound, so do what you need to make it how you like. If you find another route to that sound or a different sound that you like, then reconsider your gear at that point

 

[Chrisk-K]

If you are asking whether you are overprocessing your sound, then you are indeed overprocessing your sound.

 

[Dust2Dust]

My solution when I found myself in the same situation . . .

Turn everything off and start playing just bass and amp. If the tone "needs" something, then turn that something on. Repeat as necessary, turning one thing on at a time until you get a satisfactory tone. That's how I determined my Always On pedals.

After that I would turn things on that made "A good tone better" but that's simply because I had them already sitting there ready to go - leftovers from the initial madness that stared this experiment in the first place - which, by turning those pedals on, caused me to go back to square one

These days I just use just enough to get me in the "satisfactory" tone range and focus on actually making music with it

 

[Pdaddy1978]

Pedal mania in the bass world is a fairly recent phenomenon I think.
For decade's I never seen bass players stomping boxes.
But ...tone chasing is about as old as the instrument.
Changing pickups, changing amps, changing strings, looking for that perfect combination to achieve that perfect tone.
I , personally, was never compelled to , in my mind, over complicate things once I found the right combination of bass+amp.
But hey .... whatever floats yer boat.

 

[Derek Kay]

We all aspire to have, and pay for, a decent head to amplify our basses. Quality stuff usually, with decent preamps.

And yet many use lower quality 9v onboard/boxes/pedals between their PUs and the preamp they've already forked out for. This order is a wasteful practice IMO.

FXs and processors should be added further down the line, through the effects loop. The preamped sound generally assists the FX, and the levels are better, particularly for passive basses. You may find that the preamp does such a superior job that some FX become redundant.

Plugging directly into a pedal is usally a bottleneck for your sound, and the result is often "what pedal can I add to improve this?", while the more powerful EQ in your amphead is largely wasted.

If your bass produces an even output and is adequately shielded, then the preamp gain is a valuable tool.

 

[Thumpin6string]

It seems that maybe you need to find an amp that sounds like what you want by itself, or at least close. Either that, or maybe you don't like your bass to sound like your bass.

 

[Sonic Titan]

Dang this thread blew up quickly!

I’ve read everything up until now, and there is so much to take away from all of your comments, so I genuinely appreciate that.

Sounds like I need to just go directly into the amp and start with fresh ears again.

Bass pedals, man… this bog is thick and easy to get lost in.

 

[Wasnex]

Usually we make incremental changes by adding one pedal at a time and tweaking to get the desired effect. There may be a cumulative incremental degradation of tone as well. We may not hear the degradation of tone when we add and remove only one pedal. But it's usually pretty easy to hear if you add and remove a bunch of pedals.

So set up an experiment where you can quickly add and remove pedals from your signal path.

You don't necessarily need to stop using pedals are get rid of them. But I think you will probably find that it's beneficial to have less pedals in your signal path. Even bypassed pedals in the signal path can degrade the sound.

 

[sloppy_phil]

I would only suggest that there may be a bit of redundancy now that you have a Terror Bass head. I've used one of those for a decade, so am very familiar with how it sounds/feels. I have some Sushi Box pedals which are completely redundant when used in conjunction with the Terror; offers the same gain staging, and EQ options. They are a perfect fit with a Mesa D-350, though!