The Secret Of Mix And Match
The Zoom B3 features very impressive simulations of 12 popular bass amplifiers. Each of the simulations has a default associated speaker cabinet, but one can freely choose to pair it from a total of 12 popular speaker cabinets. IMHO both the amplifier and speaker cabinet sims are the best I have ever encountered, but I needed to find them as they did not find me at first!
Many of us consider a device's preset patches to be dismissible, even those pre-programmed by the product's celebrity endorsers, and the Zoom B3 is no exception here. But even rolling your own custom patches from scratch comes with little-known, hidden surprises.
You see, when one selects an amplifier simulation, the B3 initially defaults all parameter settings for the selected sim. The problem with this is that the default value of the most powerful parameter is set ineffectively, across the board, for all of the 12 amplifier sims. Unless you know what to change and why, you may still end-up being short-changed.
To be specific, there exists a "Mix" parameter for each B3 amplifier sim that should be set based on your connected equipment, usage intent, and ultimately, the tone that is desired. The "Mix" in this case is the level of the preamp simulation vs. the cabinet-effected simulation. The lukewarm default for all amp sims on the B3 is always an ineffective 50%. Yes, you will hear something using that value, but it most likely is not exactly what you want to hear.
To keep things simple for now, I will only focus on this "Mix" parameter for the amp sims and not any other patch-level (i.e. TOTAL menu) or device-level (i.e. GLOBAL menu) parameters.
For my "power amp and real bass cabinets" situation (see my previous posts) I have found the best results are achieved using 100% of the preamp sim and 0% of the cabinet sim. This equates to a "Mix" parameter value of 0 and NOT the default value of 50. IMHO this difference has a very measurable impact on the resulting tone and is worthy of your attention and experimentation.
In situations where you are feeding a mixer, recorder or projecting through a full-range monitor speaker (QSC K, Mackie SRM, etc.) I have found the best results are achieved using 0% of the preamp sim and 100% of the cabinet sim. This equates to a "Mix" parameter value of 100 and NOT the default value of 50. Try it for yourself and it is likely the B3 will then become your new best friend.
Certainly mine are not set rules and perhaps some other subtle "Mix" values may better work for your scenarios, but at least the secret of the powerful "Mix" parameter is now exposed!
Cheers!
