51m0n

The sm57 mod is definitely used, and in some decent studios too, phantom power is irrelevant, its a dynamic mic. Compression on live vocals is a recipe for feedback city unless you really know your beans, I would leave that up to the FOH if I were you. You cant polish a turd, if the mic doesnt work with his voice then eq and compression can only do so much, and they can do less live due to feedback considerations.

[quote name='lozbass' timestamp='1319120098' post='1410182'] Fascinating thread...if I'd done my physics homework at home rather than on the bus, I probably wouldn't have needed to become a bass-player. However, it's genuinely good to get a better understanding of why the Amp One sounds the way it does. I have to rely on my ears - and can't complement this with a knowledge of engineering - but my ears tell me that the Amp One is probably the best bass amp I've heard. My main stereo rig involves an Aguilar DB680 and 750 on one side (into a Berg AE 112) and an Alembic SF2 into an Epi UL502 (into an Epi UL112 S1) on the other. There's a lex MPXG2 in there too - used sparingly. As you might imagine, there's a fair bit of heft, alongside some serious definition. Transients I don't know about. I'm not sure what perceived loudness means either in technical terms, but I perceive this lot to be pretty loud. My small rig involves just an AER Amp One. Large parts of the main rig are likely to be in the classifieds soon. [/quote] wow....

At living room volumes you arent going to be really getting the limiter to do anything at all, and the compression will be doing very little so you wont feel/hear the tubey type compression and limiting of the transients until you raise the level further.

Where's phase 2 gone, bro?

[quote name='mercuryl' timestamp='1319055387' post='1409489'] I agree, but make sure you dont miss the point of this thread that I started. This was never intended to be a "rig" to replace a full-size gigging set up. It was purchased for smaller gigs, parties and open mic nights. From that viewpoint, it has hit the spot BIG TIME. The big bonus is that i was completely unprepared for the sheer quality of the sound. Totally unbelievable. Another surprise is that it is much louder than I ever imagined to be. Indeed, it will be easily capable of gigging in the normal bars that I play in. But it won't be, and wasn't intended to be my main rig. I'm just about to purchase an RH750 to go with my RS210 and RS112 for that. But you gotta play one if these Amp One's. but be careful when you do, you'll be looking for that £1,000. [/quote] Not missing the point, just concerned that the potential for the amp is being somewhat overstated, it will clearly do small gigs and quieter venues with aplomb and sound fantastic, it just isnt a replacement for a big rig. It isnt meant to be, but some of the comments are borderline evangelical and may be misconstrued. I'm sure it is a fab piece of gear, especially given its size, and certainly has a place in the pantheon of quality kit, but if someone reads these reviews at face value I think they may be disappointed.

[quote name='LawrenceH' timestamp='1319043891' post='1409299'] I agree with everything you've said. However I do think people who are only used to the sound of the cheap electronics in bass amps/pedals may come to mistaken conclusions about the potential of these things (obviously not you). After all, we often judge good bass tone from recordings which will have an awful lot of similar processing on them but the difference is it's done well. The luxury of a truly big rig is great - but I'd still take the AER over many a mid-price/mid-size set up where the compromises are evident without the benefits. I do wish my F1 had a subsonic filter on it, that's a very different issue to the transients for me. [/quote] If you are looking for a high pass filter to put in your signal chain then our very own SilentFly's sfx company produces the [url="http://sfxsound.co.uk/mainpage.asp?page=thumpinator"]Thumpinator[/url] which is exactly that. Top quality kit the SFX stuff too....

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1319036278' post='1409173'] Sometimes I record in my house, and quite often mix. It gets rediculously loud and she's never complained [/quote] You, loud? Surely not, mate

[quote name='mercuryl' timestamp='1319034317' post='1409144'] I've spotted something interesting. if you look back through this thread (and other threads on this site), you'll see that the people who have actually played / heard AER products are amazed and full of praise. Go look on the web and see if you can find any reviewer who says anything bad about this amp. You won't. If you can find one, go try it out. You'll be utterly amazed. At about £1K - it an absolute bargain. [/quote] Yup I'd love to hear one, they do sound as if they may be a step up from most itsy-bitsy solutions. [quote name='LawrenceH' timestamp='1319038624' post='1409205'] I just don't have the sonic issues with the AER kit as I do with the TC, whatever the reason behind it. How it's implemented in practice is just as important as what's being done in principle - e.g. I love the sound of bass guitar from saturated tape, but I don't like it through a cheap nasty comp/limiter. [/quote] Again, absolutely, implementation is everything, couldnt agree more, but in order to achieve what they are doing there must be significant processing on the signal, and some people are going to hate it, because they will notice what is lost. I find it interesting that this is another system doing a lot of clever signal management on peaks that is being touted as sounding tubey. Now tubes do a beautiful line in squashing the transients and compressing the signal in a way that turns a lot of people on, thus allowing for the old nonsense about tube watts vs solid state watss (lets not go there). In effect a good tube amp is processing the signal to achieve a similar result when driven farely hard as one of these amps. Just with some extra colouring, although they may well have added a bit of that too. Personally I like the sound of a really great solid state amp more than a tube amp, I like my transients right there in my face, I like recording direct and hearing myself back on fabulous monitors, transients there in all their glory. I am not the only one. If tubey sounding compression is your game then you may well like what this amp does. I'd bet that there is a hard as nails brickwall limiter on the signal, and in front of that a compressor (possibly multiband) with a very soft knee and a pretty low threshold and a fast attack and release, easing you into the limiter so you dont notice it so much, but think "ooooh tubey" instead (hint, you really can set up a decent compressor to behave very like a tube amp in terms of compression). Most people perceive bass perfectly well when they cant hear the bottom octave of it, and the high pass filter on this, along with the cabinet porting will all be done to make sure that none of those 200w are wasted on anything that you dont absolutely need to hear to perceive bass. It doesnt mean that there is much bass, it means there is enough for you to peceive it as bass. Done well and without something to a/b this against you will be happy for days. Compare this to a Barefaced BigTwin or any other at least decently deep cab (Epifani ul410 series1 for instance) and you will hear what is not there. As I said before, if its done well, and you like the result thats brilliant, and I am sure its a really exceptional effort, but physics is physics, and I have enough experience with filtering and compression to have a really good idea what this will sound like. Is it the right solution for you? Clearly, and I'm really please you found it! Is going to compete with a big rig - errr no, not really, it may appear to but if you a/b it with one then the missing stuff will become more apparent. Is it so incredibly portable as to make the difference not worth worrying about for some - well clearly it is for some. Good luick to them sounds like a great product to me!

And another one:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaoXAwl9kw&feature=related

This would be your next step up IMO.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIgTrhPADVM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phUTCsVAKXA

As for the OP, these kinds of rigs are all about the filtering and limiting, and as Alex says, if you can live with whats missing then thats fine (a la the RH450) but some people are really going to struggle to feel happy with the transients being munched completely with around 15dB of loss, and the amp/cab doing virtually nothing below 60Hz.

[quote name='paulflan0151' timestamp='1319023969' post='1408952'] You guys know what your talking about. What do you think is the most transparent amp? I'm looking at getting a new rig in the not to distant future, what would you guys recomend? [/quote] The 'most transparent amp' is not going to be very suitable for you, it will be a super heavy weight mastering orientated monobloc, something like a hexateq studio 700:- The Warwick Hellborg stuff is going to be pretty transparent though, or you could try a Markbass F1 or F500, they are very clean and pretty darned flat too.

Yeah, not half, Mrs 51 is a trooper, she puts up with untold hours of sound engineering too, and has a house full of bassplayers - the youngest (7 yrs) is desperate to start the music service mini-bass (a teeny weeny db!). The entire house is crammed with bass kit of one sort or another, across all three floors! In fact she pretty much told me to stop pratting about and buy the Roscoe....

Tricky to find to try, they are very popular in broadcast circles, so try somewhere like radioworld?

Heil sound mics are incredible. They are dynamic mics, but use of neiodymium and very light diaphrams mean they go very very high and very low. I would suggest your singer tries a PR35 or even the new PR31BW, which although it claims to be great for kick drums (i is) it is not a kick drum mic just a smalelr handier version of the PR30 which sounds great on vocals. If these are a little too rich then the PR22 may be abetter option. A PR40 is a superb (really out of this world) mic for vocals, kick drum, DB, hell anything with a wide frequency range really. Not ideal for live vocals though!

Daf, thats incredibly generous, thank you very much! PM sent....

[quote name='silddx' timestamp='1318819812' post='1406522'] Christ mate, this was nice to come home to! Thank you! [/quote] +1 couldnt put it better myself!

Guys, thanks so much for the insightful comments, I shall keep my eyes peeled for any and all of the abpve and we shall make our way through them until we get 'the one' or at least something that doesnt make his rather lovely bass sound like the slapping of a dying fish.....

Evening all, Looks like I have a need for a pickup for Plux's upright, the probability of him getting involved in a big band now quite high and he will need to be amplified to have any chance of being heard against the horns. I know next to nothing about db pickups, other than they are a dark art at best. So I would love to hear some recommendations, and as usual if it costs less than an arm and a leg that would be rather super! Cheers all....

[quote name='aldude' timestamp='1318607285' post='1404327'] I guess the upshot is that some people find the transient important and others don't (or don't notice it!). As for the audience, who generally is not concerned or aware of things like transients, well.... who knows if they will be able to notice the difference. But, I would suggest that if any musical advantage comes in from such transients it's probably minor, compared with the other 100 things that make music sound good. Just my $0.02... [/quote] Its also a 'feel' thing for the player. Having the ability to reproduce the transients fully really does change the feel of an amp for the player though. If you dont get on with having that artifically reigned it it will definitely affect how you play, and that will affect how the audience perceives the band. I certainly dont mean to suggest that the RH450 is a terrible amp, far from it, I'm merely pointing out that it has a design that imparts various characteristics that you may or may not find helpful. Same as any amp really. But dont think the audience cant percieve transient info, its quite literally built in to them, they cant help it at all, our brains are incredibly adept at determining alot of info from the transient of a sound, its how we can identify a twig snapping as Mr Hungry Predator sneaks up on us in the dead of night, and work out which way to run.....

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1318601360' post='1404216'] I think depends a lot on what type sound you use. If you use an overdriven sound then your already removing those high amplitude transients anyway so vast amounts of headroom in the poweramp dosnt make any odds. Its a different story for a clean sound. [b]Even there though I'm not convinced that those venerated chest slamming transients translate to anything musical or that enhaces the overall sound of the band from an audience point of view - I doubt they are evident at any appreciable distance from the speakers, and they certainly wont make it unscathed through any kind of recording process.[/b] At least with an overdriven sound I dont miss my 1.6kw QSC compared to the RH450. [/quote] Not so. The transients are a very musical thing, they are certainly ultra important to the timbre of the sound, the brain takes large hints as to the timbre of a sound based solely on its initial transient. If you like a bright bass sound then one that has a good clear clean transient will sound brighter. The transient also supplies a lot of directional info (less important, but ineresting nevertheless) since the difference in time that the transient hits your ears is as important as relative volume in discerning direction. A clean transient is super important for slap bass, and pick bass then. Why do you think the transient would be any more effected by the atmosphere and bodies than any other part of the sound in a venue? Sound pressure level decreases by 6 dB per doubling of distance from the source, regardless of initial volume, so the ratio between the transient and the rest of the sound will stay nominally the same however far away from the source you are (admittedly in an anechoic chamber, and not taking into account room modes/acoustics of the venue so much, but the rule is generally accurate). The frequency response changes more over distance. When recording clean bass the normal route is a DI box. A decent (something around £100) DI will completely preserve the transient (or close enough as to have no appreciable difference), which is a big reason why it is so used in recording! If by saying you dont think those transients could survive any kind of recording process you are referring to the use of compression whilst refcording and more importatnly mixing, and the use of brickwall limiters whilst mastering then I think you are misinformed. Whilst it is often the case that a compressor may be set to have an attack time short enough to change the initail transient, it is also very very usual to allow the transien tthrough unscathed (attack > 60ms) on a lot of signals (bass included). In fact it may be the case that the initail transient is emphasised by the use of compression. If that produces the desired result. This is definitely often the case. When it comes to brickwall limiting, well you're right, if that is applied to maximum effect (Death Magnetic anyone?) then you end up with crushed transients even in the bass. However, used sparringly it will tend to effect the loudest transients only - which is more often the kick and or snare rather than the bass IME. It is still possible to have the bass transient there and virtually unscathed very often. Now I'm a big fan of compressors, and I love using and abusing compression live and in the studio, but if you dont have a strong transient to start with that really does effect the way a compressor subsequently sounds, and if you have a brickwall limited sound in the first place there is pretty much nothing you can do other than carve a transient out with a compressor, and that doesnt sound anything like a s good as an unlimited natural sound, if that is your goal. To quote Bruce Swedien (and he has forgotten more about recording than you or I will ever know):- [quote]In the music that I am normally involved in, I have always felt that good transient content is one of the very most important components of the recorded image. I would even go so far as to say that transient response has at it’s core a direct relationship to the emotional impact of a recording. Particularly in the main genre’s of music that I record.... namely R & B and ‘Pop’ recordings[/quote]

[quote name='Clarky' timestamp='1318493218' post='1402738'] Cheers 51m0n! Praise indeed given your skills in the studio, as evidenced by the Kit Richardson EP [/quote]

That is seriously seriously good Clarky. Lovely warm tone on the bass, and the groove is just impecable, couldnt fault the playing at all. Her voice is just gorgeous too, you lucky git to be working in a band of that calibre. Oh, and I liked the song a lot too!

[quote name='thunderider' timestamp='1318188872' post='1399055'] iv got a laney dp 150 head going through a 115 and 118, if i turn up the gain,with the bass on the eq high it distorts even speakers of these size and the red light comes on,altho laney say this has to flicker,my gears on rickenfaker page,but dont seem loud,also the volume on the right seem not to do alot,also talk of volume 2 bassist i admire play heavy rawkus bass,first being lemmy,it suprised me hes sposed to be the loudest bassest yet he running a 100 watt head with 2 412s dont seem to powerfull to me,the other being alan davey he seems to use a mixture of stuff when gigging,but he uses 2 fender bassman 50 heads with a ashdown 115 and a 2112,but they seem to drive these and get some volume outta these!!,i wanna play loud!! [/quote] Speaker size is not relevant to them distorting, the XMAX is. Typically those older speakers had pretty dismal XMAX compared to todays drivers. Certainly it is very easy to cause them to fart out with excessive bass boost and lowish apparent volumes. I had a Laney G300 (the big daddy to the series that came after the dp150) back in the day (had HH power amps in it in fact - was pretty well build for the period too). Certainly capable of producing enough oomph in the low end to fart out two 410s. As for Lemmy, you have noticed he has a massive PA behind him havent you? His onstage volume is probably not so loud in fact, and his tone was never massively bassy, plus he now runs nice shiny new kit, with nice modern drivers in.