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Where in the effects chain should I put the high pass filter?
- Thread starter cchorney
- Start date
Low pass filters take off the edge from overdrives and reduce the hiss from everything before them - last in the chain is ideal there, as you get the most benefit that way.
High pass filters - there are subsonic signals that your bass puts out on transients. You don’t want that to get to your amp or speakers. It can also compromise headroom in other parts of the chain, and muddy the operation of overdrives. So, earlier in the signal chain is usually better, but that’s not a hard rule - if your signal chain has enough headroom to deal with those signals without clipping, later is OK. As the point of overdrives is to clip, if you have an overdrive in your signal chain that preserves low end, it’s a good idea to put your high pass before that.
High pass filters - there are subsonic signals that your bass puts out on transients. You don’t want that to get to your amp or speakers. It can also compromise headroom in other parts of the chain, and muddy the operation of overdrives. So, earlier in the signal chain is usually better, but that’s not a hard rule - if your signal chain has enough headroom to deal with those signals without clipping, later is OK. As the point of overdrives is to clip, if you have an overdrive in your signal chain that preserves low end, it’s a good idea to put your high pass before that.
My experience is the opposite. It cleans the muddy lows for a better tone.
Perhaps I didn't express myself well. I agree. I play five string, but prefer to clean up the lowest lows. Most of my career I've used sealed cabs to do that the inefficient way, but not long ago I got an HPF to do it properly.
I have a small pedal board which I put before the amp (tuner, compressor, octave pedal, chorus, tone hammer which I primarily use for distortion when wanted). I have my Broughton HPF alone in the effects loop to cut unwanted low frequencies before anything hits the power amp. Works well for me.
I run it 1st. To my ears my filter, tube OD and (if I'm using one) octaver sound much better if not fed the lowest of lows. I don't see a reason to send undesired frequencies through the whole chain only to remove them at the end, but I guess some pedals may sound better if fed the uber lows. I don't seem to own any such pedals.
I'm about to try the Broughton HPF/LPF in a empress compressor's sidechain before going into a JPTR saturator pre-amp. I don't care for the sound of pre-amp first so it's tuner > compressor (HPF side chained) > pre-amp > whatever else. Not too worried about micro controlling the lows since I'm always on a 4 string. Figured I could get more out of my walkabout with adding the HPF.
Reason I'm planning this is because of how the signal comes out of an 18v bass. I believe this would get me more control over what frequencies are compressed by the level detection circuit. Maybe the compressor is experiencing its limitations in my case.
I'd like to try using the empress para EQ sidechained but that's almost 2x the cost.
Let me know if this is nonsense.
Reason I'm planning this is because of how the signal comes out of an 18v bass. I believe this would get me more control over what frequencies are compressed by the level detection circuit. Maybe the compressor is experiencing its limitations in my case.
I'd like to try using the empress para EQ sidechained but that's almost 2x the cost.
Let me know if this is nonsense.
Maybe I misunderstand what you’re saying here. An HPF in the side chain limits low frequencies from triggering the compressor. It does not remove the low frequencies from the signal path.
