51m0n

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.

Was an excellent evening, thoroughly enjoyed all the bands on, I'd recommend them all... Nigels chrome Warwick was the business though, so glam it can only be offset by the fact he wears all black and stays in the background (grooving away like a good'un), it ends up looking like an entirely disembodies shiny bass playing itself and having a good jiggle about - genius!

[quote name='aldude' timestamp='1316616234' post='1380417'] That's an interesting document, and if I understand it correctly, the TC amp looks like a lower power amp due to its limiting of high peaks to create a more tubey sound, so this implies that the high peaks that we don't really hear anyway contribute quite a lot to the measured power output of an amp. Or, to put it another way, the 236W measured by that bass magazine (can't remember which right now) is mainly a fault of the testing method, which includes the loud peaks that you don't really hear anyway, the loud peaks being reproduced unnecessarily by the "other" solid state heads, but this is beneficial to the other heads as it ups the apparent wattage without really sounding much louder. I appreciate this has been scrutinised by TC's PR department but it certainly does help in understanding what the amp is up to! Unfortunately this does not address the ohmage capability of the amp and whether it would cope with 2.67 or even 2 ohms. [/quote] You can hear the peaks though. If they are truly represented you get a very different impression from an amp putting out the full wump of huge trnsient peaks into a cab that can reproduce them compared to an amp and cab that cant. The rig that produces them will tend to sound effortless, and will feel like you can dig in as hard as you like and it 'just delivers' on the other hand the amp that is limiting will temd toward a warmer sound (it is binning your attack to a noticeable degree) and will sound full, but it will also feel like it chokes up a bit wen you try and dig in, and that it doesnt really put out what you put in so much. Which you prefer is a different question, but anyone trying to claim that you cant hear them and you cant feel it or hear the difference when they arent there is tripping. Put it another way, if I create two masters of a mix, with the same RMS volume, but I brickwall limit one and not the other, the one that isnt limited will sound way better, every time. The one that is limited could have been made to have a higher RMS berfore clipping, but thats the con, if you dont do that then you get a better sounding mix (albeit with a lower RMS). This amp is applying the same (or very similar) tech to your bass sound, with a nice soft knee attack so you dont all get shirty about it. If you like it, thats fine, but if you dont then there is a really good reason why that might be.

That will in fact do the business.... Nice one!

[quote name='citymariner' timestamp='1318020927' post='1397468'] It built up a grand suspense to a grand looking cab! Just a (possibly naive) thought, how would you mic a cab like this? Would you need three mics and three different mics for the different types of driver? CM [/quote] You could (and Shep would I think) mic each driver individually. To be completist he would been to mic the port too. Or, if you wanted to capture some grind from a simpler more rock and roll type sound, you could take a DI for the lows and highs (using a nice crossover VST at mix down to cut the mids out completely), mic the full range twelve for grind and cut the top and bottom off it at mix down so as to fit the two tracks of bass together really seamlessly. Or you could room mic the amp (assuming you're in a great sounding room and you want a really live feel to the bass) and mix it with a DI, or close mic, or DI and close mic. As soon as you have multiple sources you need to really concentrate on trying to get the phase right, especially if any of those sources are bouncing to a single track. If you keep all the sources seperate and mix them at mixdown there are various free vsts (phasebug, bootsy's prefix etc) that allow you to sort out phase issues at that point.

You are such a tart Nigel Excellent bass though!

You need to get a gig down here so I can hear you live mate

Yeah, do love to crank the hell out of it and have a HUGE wall of bass with a really tip top drummer giving it the beans, dont care what the rest is comprised of (assuming they can play) but I do really need a fab drummer to really get off on it properly.

Great bass tone! Reminds me of The Jam (the bass) which is a very very good thing given the songs. Nice one

It does sound immense, I had a good long play on one at the SE Bass Bash. I can only imagine how this will sound in a couple of months time after the drivers have gotten some running time under their belts.... Shep is right, totally different beast from the Super Twelve T, different goal all over, another great sounding cab from Alex!

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1317831202' post='1395147'] So ... people are making judgments about £700+ premium speaker cabinets by listening to them though: a microphone of unknown quality, a life sucking amount of mp3 compression, and finaly spewed through a £50 pair of PC speakers probably incapable of reproducing the bottom 2 octaves of sound ... makes about as much sense as those people who post demos of high end plasma TVs so we can watch them on a computer screen ... [/quote] You make a big assumption about what we are all listening to this on! I would agree that the youttube compression at 240p is apalling though, and the room/mic/preamp/recording solution chaion is completely unknown (and given the compression virtually irrelevant anyway).

So you should be!

Ha ha, back on the good ship Warwick, mate?

Excellent!

[quote name='stringintheshade' timestamp='1317314530' post='1389413'] I can't post an ACR link without including this one. With just a hint of chorus, bass is near perfection in a beautifully layered mix. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQLTOGVld8A[/media] [/quote] Cracking stuff... Really want to do a 2 bass band, this isnt helping!

Another cracking tone and line:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQADXqHKmEQ

Cant find the original version, just this remix (where someone has decided that the right thing to do is whack a humungous delay on the drums and make it sound generally less good) but the bass tone and at least some of the genius bass playing is still there, massiveoly love this track! [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGYfI9cU69Y[/media]

[quote name='pantherairsoft' timestamp='1317238301' post='1388592'] String! We're far too upper class for that! We have a 99p tape measure from Wilkinsons [/quote] Thats absurd, you're a bass player man, you cant count above 4 any better than a drummer.....