Why so much mud?

Yesterday I went to a jam that turned into an offer to join a forming band. While there i got reunited with my Rogue Violin bass that I played for year and years ... but not very much at all in the past five years or so.

I have had it setup and I have La Bella Deep-Talkin' medium flatwounds on it. I'm pickin up a used amp tomorrow so I borrowed what was at the practice area, an Acoustic 100.

I played for the first time in a long time ... and I hated, hated, hated the sounds I was creating. Pure mud. I tried different amp and bass settings and all I got was mud on top of mud with a side order of ... you guessed it ... more mud.

Now I know my Rogue has a somewhat muddy neck pickup but in the past with the amps I've generally used I was able to coax an acceptable sound out of it. But this combination today was just miserable and I felt as if I was cheating the others in the band.

Was it my guitar? That amp? Both? And what can I do in the future to relieve this abysmal sound? I've thought about replacing the neck pickup but I've had a hard time finding something that will drop in very easily. I don't do mods like that so I would have to buy a pickup and then pay somebody to do the switch.

So I hope somebody here can clear up the muddy mess I made today.

 

yes i used a pick a lot because frankly I haven't played much bass at all so I've been playing acoustic and electric guitars, mostly flatpick bluegrass. It's also short scale or maybe medium scale ,,, but as I said I was just schocked at how it sounded. Two of the other players said my playing was fine, however, so light shone through the mud.

I'm hoping it could be the Acoustic amp. I've played one or two before and I thought the sound was just ho-hum but not muddy.

Maybe a pedal? I have lots of guitar pedals but really no bass-specific pedal except for a Behringer BD21 with a wonky knob that I have taped over so it works at one setting. Maybe I could use a spare guitar 10-band EQ pedal to help fine-tune the sound? Maybe ... that's all I can think of except using my other bass, an Ibanez GSR200 also strung with flats but I can change them to non-flats; I may even have a spare set.

Btw, in the interim I sold my three other basses, including an Ibanez Iceman and an Ergodyne 5-stringer. (I bought that for a forming new country bass that I left after two mind-numbing practices in which we played "Toes" by the Zac Brown Band for two hours or more because the leader demanded we play the song note-for-tone from the LP or CD or 8-track or whatever he had.)

 

The roundwound strings sound terrible on the Rogue. Just, just bad.

 

I'm really a minimalist person on pedals, especially on bass. However I do need a compressor because I'm basically a thumb player at heart (hey, so was Paul McCartney mainly) but also use pick and regular finger style. I do have supposedly a built-in compressor on the amp I'm getting but I've read reviews that it isn't all that great but it may be enough. I do have a cheap guitar compressor which I almost never use.

 

I'm not dismissing any advice as I've played bass for several years until about four to five years ago. But I will dismiss any advice from you. I came here for advice ... whether I wish to follow that advice is up to me, not you.