mcnach

I never use 'active' inputs. By default I go with passive and only if that doesn't work well I'd switch to active. I have never had to. Most active basses have an output comparable to most passive basses. My lowest output bass was a passive Jazz. My highest output basses were also passive. On an active, you may turn all controls to max and then it'll probably have quite a large output, but that seems a bizarre way to do things, certainly not something I ever felt I needed.

I sold an OLP once to a guy, I had put a Nordstrand MM4.2 pickup and the 2-band preamp from my Stingray (I had replaced it with e 3-band John East MMSR). The guy liked the bass, and was talking about some preamp he had found that was supposed to be an exact copy of MusicMan's 2-band preamp. I told him "but that's what you've got in there now". He was surprised, he thought I I couldn't possibly have put a real MusicMan preamp in there. Good job we got talking or he would have ended up with two similar preamps unnecessarily

I suspect he only found out after the deed was done...

THere's even a coffee-drinking one!!! I feel like I haven't lived

Nice one!

A drummer I sometimes play with tends to play ahead unintentionally, which makes things sound rushed. I try to pull back a bit, but he notices it, what he does is slow down... and I just have to stop trying or we'd end up going really slow. He's been a drummer for decades, so I can't find a way to approach this. I am the new guy, relatively, so I just go with it. It's difficult, but when you play with someone who gets the whole playing behind the beat etc, it makes me sound great, I love it

It is versatile indeed. I tend to favour the P pickup. Anywhere between both pickups on equally and all the way to P alone. Bass control flat or slightly up, treble down somewhat, sometimes completely. The treble is not wide enough for me, and removes part of what I want to remove but not all. The two controls interact a bit, and it's relatively easy to adjust your mids once you have experimented a bit. If you love it, don't try passive, just in case

If I were going to use another preamp I'd use the U-Retro I have. I really like those. It uses three stacked knobs, so I could leave one knob as dummy for those moments "oh, sure, don't worry, let me adjust this... -turn dummy- any better now?" or, better, add a passive tone control (it can be added easily to the U-Retro). But I'm really enjoying the basic passive sound, so that's what I am leaning towards right now.

Mine looks a bit different, especially the treble control. It's got a dual pot of some kind. In passive mode it does change the sound a bit, but it's marginal, nothing like a standard passive control. :shrug: edit: to clarify, left to right we have - bass - treble - balance - volume (push/pull for preamp bypass)

I opened it up to see if I could find some tell-tale label, but found nothing. Then again, I used to have a really cool 3-band with passive tone control Glockenklang preamp a few years ago and I don't think it came with any labels. I have to say I am impressed at the hardware they used. Those pots/switches look solid, quality stuff. The preamp is not a bad one, but me and 2-banders don't usually share a deep love, and every preamp seems to colour the sound slightly. The Sandberg one is pretty neutral, I would say, but there's still something there. At home I can live with it, and in many live settings it's just fine even if I still prefer the passive flavour. But sometimes it's just too much in your face (my face, baceface ). It's subtle, I suppose, for most people, but it's at a frequency range that I guess I listen to a lot, and once you hear it it just bothers me. I'm a fan of onboard active EQ, just not every option is to my liking. I do love passive tone controls... A single passive tone control and an active semiparametric mids module would be my ideal.

where did you find those emojis??? !!!! PS: in case that English flag was there because of my Scottish location... as much as I love Scotland, the coffee situation is the same (but improving rapidly too ). I am Spanish and got hooked on coffee in Portugal, where every little tiny cafe/bar had delicious coffee, and I just needed to ask for a coffee. Just coffee. If I wanted milk, or diluted with water, I'd ask separately. None of this having to study a two-page list with names I would never remember, and then get to the till and forget under pressure, so you blurt whatever you could remember "what did you go for?" "surpriseccino coffee" "I didn't know they made that one" "they do, just for me"

Three months on... I love the bass. The pickups are great. Preamp... nah. It's got to go. Lately I've been playing it more and more in passive mode and there's just a quality there that becomes... hidden under a blanket the minute I engage the preamp. I didn't notice it at first but it's one of those things that once you realise it, you can't ignore. I was noticing something not quite to my liking on the higher bass/low mids, and it goes away when I bypass the preamp.

Not a fan of Sandberg's 2-band EQ: I've been playing my VM4 a lot for the past 3 months, since I collected it. I was never entirely convinced by the preamp (2-band). I found ways to make it work, but it's just not there. Lately I've been playing it mostly in passive mode and enjoying it a lot more. There's something going on in the low end with the preamp engaged that I'm not liking. So it's going to happen. I'll either install the John East U-Retro that I've got in my drawer, or... most likely... I'll make it passive. I really like passive tone controls. As there's room for 4 controls, I could do volume, blend, Tonestyler and 'Tonestyler depth'. The pickups are nice (standard Sandberg), no problem with those. Does anybody know what Sandberg uses as standard for their 2-band preamps? I didn't specify anything so I got whatever is standard for them. I'm curious to find a bit more about them.

That looks very interesting! Thank you, I'll have to check it out

yeah yeah yeah, we all say that...

The mutes were installed separately, not on the studs. The studs served to anchor the bridge and as stops for the saddles, so that they don't move sideways.

good point. It's got to be fun.

I missed that earlier. I guess he went for the Standard Business plan that gives you something like 2 or 5TB storage. We've been using the Basic plan, which is free. You get 2Gb to start with which can grow up to 10Gb once you get a few referrals (I have 8Gb). Anyway, I'll shut up, you found what works for you and I know how annoying it gets when you find something you like and others keep telling you "oh, but you can do X and Y like me" I just wanted to make clear that it doesn't need to be a paid service. A couple of Gb is a LOT of band rehearsal material in mp3 format.

You know the SY-1 will appear in stock the minute you order a C4, right?

But they've improved in the past few years. Slow learners, but getting there. Once day they might even become civilised! 😛

The app is more trouble than it's worth, if all you want is to be able to receive files, indeed.

sorry! I should have clarified... similar to Dropbox in the sense that you can set a centralised storage (which sounds like your drummer would be the ideal person, as he is the one dealing with the audio) and it can stay there until you (well, the drummer) decides to keep it. It doesn't expire like with WeTransfer. You, personally, would receive one link to download files, and that's all. You do not need to have pCloud. But with dropbox you can do the same. I have both just because of the extra space, but with my main band I use Dropbox. I have a folder with subfolders for different projects in progress etc, and I store the processed audio there. I send the band links to individual files or individual folders with multiple files. They can download the stuff at their leisure, and the links are valid as long as I keep them in the same place, so a year from now they could go back and find the files again. They do not need Dropbox, in fact most don't have dropbox. If you have dropbox already, you might get a "oh, do you want to add this shared folder to your dropbox?" or some such when you try to open a link sent to you... just say "no, fosters off" and dropbox will leave you alone If you don't use dropbox for anything else, easiest thing is to remove it entirely, and just open the links as they get sent to you, download content wherever you wish and that's all. I feel your pain, because I was there too. At work we were collaborating with a group in the US and dealing with very large files. They sent us data via dropbox. Very soon my dropbox was saturated and could not use it, because I made the mistake of accepting the shared folder. Oh, how we laughed... My boss ended up losing a bunch of data because he got frustrated and deleted a whole lot of stuff without realising he was *really* deleting it It's a good idea for a collaboration, so everyone can add/remove things but you need to be careful and ensure everybody has sufficient Dropbox space. To simply distribute large files, however, it's easier to just have the person holding the files send a link to people and you can all download to your preferred destination, without needing new apps or anything. I like sometimes to send a link to a folder, the contents of which I update as needed. For example, I have a folder for recent rehearsals. Everybody has a link to it. They can all download the contents anytime. I simply put there any newer jam or any work in progress updates etc into subfolders with the date, and delete older stuff that's not needed anymore as I see fit. I don't need to send them link reminders each time, it's all there. If they want to, all they do is use the link, go to the folder with the date they want and download the contents.

That's how I use it, as sharing folders was creating trouble for some people with smaller storage.

There's also pCloud. Similar to Dropbox in many ways, but you get a bit more free storage. Drummer could just store the files and send you all links to download. You download what you want to your computer and do what you want with it. When he runs out of space it's up to him to delete the old stuff that nobody needs anymore. The advantage of Dropbox (when used in the same way, just sending links to the stuff, but not 'sharing' folders) and pCloud is that they stay available longer than with WeTransfer if someone forgets to download in time.