51m0n

[quote name='Linus27' post='1340433' date='Aug 15 2011, 10:59 AM']51m0n, thanks that was certainly not tedious but very helpful. One point that I find interesting is the part about dropping the low mid to reduce the boom. I find I have to do this with pretty much all basses on my MarkBass to get a tone I am happy with. My ears really do not like this dial set to flat. The other point is you say set the EQ on the Stingray flat. However, what is flat on a 2EQ Ray as it just has a tone and bass dial and no indent like a 3EQ Ray has? Is flat on a 2EQ Ray with both dial turned half way?[/quote] Low Mid, mate, its the hardest to get 'right'. Too little and you have no warmth, too much (by even a dB) and you are getting properly muddy. I'm supoer finicky about this area too, it has to be exactly right! THing is when you have 2 different eq cicuits they can make some pretty complex curves, and you can get reinforcement in unexpected ares as a result, so the mud can come on really fast (as can the clank). Definitely figure out where 0 is on the ray, see if you can go from there, if it is boost only then turning it off is going to leave you feeling all empty inside for a while, dont worry, the amps eq is more than powerful enough to work around that, dont feel the urge to go straight back to halfway on both. If it is a boost only circuit then I think that bass & treble set at half with some VPF would be a real thudding clankfest with no discernable pitch very quickly in a mix! <Yoda>Powerful is the eq you use......</Yoda>

I havent read the posts imbetween, but from your OP I'd say A=studio, B=guitarist (btw you're right, its way overcompressed and harsh, sounds pants!), so C must be yours, it sounds pretty good as a starter, certainly better than the studios attempt. I think C needs some added top, its still a little dull. The problem will be that the cymbals are rather splashy, and may end up over powering things. Having said that SC is pretty poo in terms of audio quality, so on the wav that may sound fine. I'm unsure fomr your OP whether these were just mixed at the studio or tracked there as well, either way if you have the stems they could be almost certainly be remixed to get a better result, assuming you have enough tracks and not too much spill.

The one with the best metering and most complete control set.....

Cripes, no rehearsal at all? Rather you than me - and welcome to BC, nice to have you!

I know this is a tad tedious, and I dont want ot teach granny to suck eggs, but it surely is as dependant on the room, the strings (age, brand etc) and playing style as much as the cab, the tweeter attenuator setting etc etc. Not to mention the volume at which they are playing, which will have a huge effect on your perception of the sound, and almost certainly be different between bands/players/environments (Fletcher-Munsen curves and all that). So just some settings that have worked for someone else may be a million miles away from what you need. I suggest you try the following:- Set the bass and amp eq and filters all flat. Set the gain so the blue light never quite comes on. Set the master so that the bass (however nasal it seems compared to your usual sound) is at the right level in the mix. Cut the areas you dont like first rather than boost what you do like, try and stay on the amp eq as much as you can, mainly because its not subject to the vagiaries of battery power supply, but also because you want to use this to get your baseline tone, and the less you use the bass eq the more you have left to tweak at that end during a gig. Reset the gain control and then main volume as you make any change. Rules of thumb:- If you are struggling with clacky top end, roll up the VLE and see if that tames it, if you dont like that, try dipping te HF level on the eq instead, the two are very different in how they work. If you use the VPF you will very quickly (ie above 9 O'clock IME) get into too much sub, too much clacky top, so back that right off if you suffer in those areas! If you are struggling with boom then the low eq on the MB heads in quesiton is down at 40Hz, ie right down low. However a lot of what is perceived as boom can be up around 100Hz, so always take a moment to drop that a tad (ie the lo mid) instead and see if that fits the problem area better. With practice you can get the whole process down to about 2 minutes. Be sure to listen with your ears and not your eyes, it doesnt matter where the knobs end up, its the resultant sound that counts! More often than not if you go through this procedure in a full band mix you will end up using a lot less eq than normal and get a far better sound (IME). One other point, if you use the stingray eq to boost somewhere during a gig, watch that clip light on the amp!

Reaper 4.01 (on a Mac no less) Has superb built in vsts (no instruments really though) MyDrumset is a really nice drumset vsti (thats free)

Reaper 4.01 just released, (yes it works on a Mac!) about £25, best software bang for the buck out there.

Yes. Totally...

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiceeee....

[quote name='Skol303' post='1328748' date='Aug 5 2011, 02:20 PM']^ Nice, I like this idea. ^ And this one! As you guessed, it's the dubstep synth that's currently dominating the mix, so thanks again for the tips on how to "tame" it. Less itsy-bitsy tweaking and more brutal chopping is going to be my new approach to this particular track! Thanks again for the help - and also to Rimskidog for the tip about EQ'ing with everything in the mix. Great stuff guys, superb advice much appreciated.[/quote] No worries, and Rimskidog is the don....

I prefer his stuff with Betty Davis...

Sledgehammer Fretless, pick, massive compression = one of the most awesome bass sounds of all time

[quote name='Skol303' post='1327364' date='Aug 4 2011, 04:44 PM']^ Superb! Many thanks 5im0n, really appreciate your input on this. I think I'm probably being to much of a "wuss" with my EQ'ing and gating, judging by your advice. Must admit I've been trying to balance everything - rather than being selective about what I can and can't lose altogether. I'll now approach this with a more 'ironed fisted' method, as you suggest! [PS: Nemesis the Warlock and ABC Warriors... I'm a big fan of those strips myself][/quote] No problem! Think of it like this, whatever you do you can always ease off a bit to get a more open sound, if what you are doing is really taking too much away. Oh, and cutting can be done way harder (more db) and way tighter (narrower Q) than boosting can before the result sounds plop. Espoecially in a mix. Oh yeah, another thing! Hi pass the offenders as high as you dare. Really, I know its bass, but a high pass filter at 45Hz is the least you can do to get rid of really subby issues and will leave all those lovelrly harmonics, your brain will apply those to pretty much any fundamental it hears giving the impression that the original sound is intact [i]alongside[/i] the actual fundamental. So, you're a bassist, which is the [i]dominant[/i] bass instrument in this mix? Distorted bass guitar (nope), kick (nope), or dub synth (almost certainly). So prioritise the low lows from the dub synth, the mids from the bass guitar, the kick should provide slap at around 4KHz and a healthy supportive whallop, in order to do which it must duck the other two (and hard). A good trick if you want the kick to really get noticed is to set a good 15ms of preattack on the compressor doing the ducking so the other instruments noticeably go away just before the kick turns up. In fact you can get a really cool almost pumping effect if you lengthen that and make it part of the groove. Be brutal as hell, those sounds are yours to control, so do it And yeah, Deadlock rocks (although I think Rogue Trooper is probably my all time favourite character from a comic).

I woudlnt change a thing in my sig....

Vicious complimetary eq. So listen to the kick, cut all the gash out of it (ALL of it, -20dB not a problem) Repeat through the bass stuff, the kick can usually take the heaviest eq though.. When you put them all together what combinations combine to bring back the mud (it is often the way the two tracks do and the other combinations dont so much). Now comes the 'art', with the tracks that are overlapping badly, you have to decide which one can lose that information at that frequency. Remember you dont need the fundamental (or even the second harmonic as often as not) for your brain to perceive bass, especially if something else is generating that bass. So go at the overlap with even more vigour, cut from only one out of any pair of signals that causes you pain. You decide which is the must have instrument at that frequency. Gate anything that rings too long (kick is a prime example) - be vindictive, forget sounding organic, you can always relax your iron fist later, but for now get everything totally tight sounding. Pre-emptive gate opening is really good for the fast transient sounds. Now think about what area of the waveforms need to be loudest. So the kick needs massive attack, and much less sustain, the bass can lose its attack for the kick, sidechain that out of the way with a compressor, too much may be just enough. Compress things to not just stop anything getting too out of shape dynamically, but also to cut wholes in the waveform where other instruments need to be strong. A well set up compressor can do wonders for this! Last point mud is more often around the low mid area (200-500Hz) rather than deep bass. Too much deep bass will cause your woofers to leap around and try and escape their enclosures, too much mud just sounds terrible.

[quote name='Al Heeley' post='1325848' date='Aug 3 2011, 04:40 PM']I think there's nothing punchier than a decent 4x10. I use Hartke XL 4 x 10 and a 1 x 12. The 4x10 is nearly as heavy as the peavey and its a pain dragging it around so I built a small wheeled trolley for it, now I just have to just lift it into the boot. Sounds better than the other cabs, pity you have to spend a lot more money than I can afford to get a good really lightweight one.[/quote] I can guarantee you that the Bareface SuperTwelve destroys that Harke cab for punch. I've compared them, and thats what happened. It wasn't any kind of surprise at all.

MB is like crack cocaine, you think you can kick it, but it just niggles in the back of your mind and one day when your guard is down you try one again somewhere, usually for free for the first couple of goes whilst they reestablish your GAS, and then BAM you're in over your head and in need of going cold turkey for a monthy or two to get over it all........

Found an old topic I made comparing the [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=99358&hl=supertwelve"]Bergantino ae410 and a SuperTwelve[/url] albeit driven by different amps, but playing the same music with the same signal chain, at VERY high volume, Alex chimes in about halfway through. It has some clips to listen to as well. May help you a bit....

[b]Bareface SuperTwelve T[/b] Seriously, its as punchy as Tyson, staggeringly close sound to my Berg ae410 (just needs a little boost in the low end to be almost the same in a mix), if I was buying again I'd go in that direction like a shot, oh and it is SO light..... It will keep up with a 410, specifically my 410 (so anything on the planet) in terms of output too. Very very highly recommended from me (and a lot of other people too).

Not to put a downer on your efforts, but IME a desk mix is ususally so completely unbalanced in a smaller venue as to be useless, almost no drums, massive vocals, massive keys, almost no guitar ansalmost no bass being the usual outcome, all eq'ed to work through a PA in that room means it will only be of use as a notepad for the vocalist. IME. You would be far better off getting a Zoom H2 and having someone look after it and record the sound in the room - that way you actually get a mix of the gig in entirety. The only way to get a great mix off a desk is to multitrack the entire thing, which is way outside your budget I would think (unless you have a handy HD24 knocking about, or an RME UFX, in which case you wouldnt be asking these questions anyway).

[quote name='TRBboy' post='1320560' date='Jul 29 2011, 03:37 PM']No, I don't really know what the heck i'm doing which is why I posted on here asking for advice. So you're saying that unless I'm going to have complicated, pro-standard equipment, I shouldn't bother at all? My Trace head used to have two knobs; compression low, and compression high. I found that these made a subtle difference to my sound and had the desired effect, and as I'm not a complete moron, I was able to judge how much compression to use without killing the dynamics of my playing. I appreciate your advice, but I just find it a bit like saying that unless you buy a £3000 bass there's no point learning to play.[/quote] No I am saying that you dont know what you are doing so you need a tool that will help you see what it is doing when you are changing parameters. Simple pedals very rarely offer the metering required to help you learn what settigns do what, the result is they will actually confuse you, and make the situation worse not better. This is offered as advice, take it or leave it. The Trace Dual knob compressor suffers the same failings of any single knob compressor, just twice as much, in that it has a large number of fixed parameters (ratio & threshold of the lower or higher component of the sound being all you can play with, and they are connected in the circuit IIRC). That actually limits its use massively. I've been fascinated by compression for years, and even now I cant hear it accurately enough without some metering to help, so if you aren't absolutely superhuman, you wont hear it when its helping, instead you will hear it when its more than just helping, but also changing the timbre of your sound. You may like that change or not, thats not the point, a good compressor, set up properly should be transparent if you need it to be. I am not saying you need a £3000 bass to start playing at all, Silverfoxnik payed about £25 on ebay for his dbx. I am saying you need a bass with 4 strings each that can be tuned independantly, adn pickups that work with electronics that work. It can (and probably should) be a Sue Ryder bass if you are just starting out. What wont do the job properly is a one string bass with no tuner!

[quote name='essexbasscat' post='1318173' date='Jul 27 2011, 12:56 PM']Heard through a friend the same situation exists in Brighton[/quote] Nah, dont believe it, there is regular amplified busking in Brighton, all sorts of it too, from jazz to rock, even entire bands sometimes near the shopping center. Always has been.

[quote name='TRBboy' post='1319868' date='Jul 28 2011, 11:01 PM']Oh dear, I can see I've opened a whole can of worms here! It would need to be pretty simple to use, or I'll just get bored with it and not use it. Is it possible to get something half decent without spending a fortune?[/quote] Honest answer, you dont know what the heck you are doing, if you dont get a device with proper metering you wont get the most out of it, and you will end spouting nonsense like "compression crushes dynamics". Hell you wont be able to tell if its even doing something until its doing too much! You need a full feature compressor, cheapest sort of thing is an [url="http://www.alesis.com/3630"]Alesis 3630[/url], its not the best compressor in the world by a long way, but its about a million times more useful to you than some pedal that you cant tell what it is doing because it has no metering, and you cant actually tailor to what you are trying to do because it doesnt have the rght controls. Another good starter option if you can find one is a dbx MC6, its a desktop kind of design, proper features, sounds great, I set up Silverfoxnik's one at last years SE Bass Bash for him, and he loves what it does for him in a live situation now. Compression, learn how to use it properly, or just dont go there.....

[quote name='phil.i.stein' post='1319801' date='Jul 28 2011, 09:52 PM']live ? in my experience, no. slap can benefit from some compression, but otherwise you're just crushing dynamics. ..and the guitar will win.[/quote] Oh god, here we go again.......... Live, absolutely! Crush the dynamics? No. Not possible with a compressor at all. Unless you set it up to be completely absurdly over intrusive, in which case its really getting closer to a limiter. A brickwall limiter can, a compressor, particularly a well set up compressor is virtually transparent, even delivering over 6dB of gain reduction. In other words a good compressor can really help even out the perceived level in the mix of your bass when playing with different techniques. Set up really well you wont even feel it compressing your signal at all. Do a search on here for posts I've made about compression, they are many and varied and should help.