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[quote name='Ukelele Salad' post='992401' date='Oct 18 2010, 04:31 PM']I want them to say "This! THIS is the cab for you! It's so good we've locked the designer inside his own ass so that if he tells anyone else how to make it they won't believe him! You cannot get a better cab. Fact[/quote] Then buy a Bergantino....

[quote name='farmer61' post='993186' date='Oct 19 2010, 09:28 AM']Mine still have the rusty looking spots on them in places, tube shaking sounds a great idea, any excuse to get to the garage!! but I'm going to put them back on just to see how they sound after one more micro soak.....[/quote] I've never left mine until they go rusty first, crikey! Should still make a difference though.

ONe other point, I try and remember to give the tube a shake at lest once a day while they are soaking, just to swill th meths around a bit. Cant say it makes any difference or no, maybe I'm a little OCD, but I like my little trip to the shed for me meths shaking

I always give mine a gentle wipe off with a paper towel ( fnar fnar oo-er etc etc ) They sometimes look quite dull when they come out of the tube, almost tarnished... Hasn't stopped the improvement in sound for me ever though, dont expect them to sound exactly like new, rather they sound just 'broken in' as it were.

Well in a perfect world, where everyone had the exact same needs there would only be one cab. The fact is you have to compromise on something, they offer you the choice of where to compromise within their range. What is not to like? Oh, and rapid developement my backside, they've been going for years and years, steadily extending the range.

[quote name='risingson' post='992322' date='Oct 18 2010, 03:40 PM']What I mean is is it actually choice or a perceived level of choice that actually is non-existant? Put it this way, to my ears, a good 15" cabinet is going to sound pretty similar to most other good 15" cabinets out there, I don't think you can vary a product enough to merit multiple variations of that cabinet. But it's just a thought really.[/quote] Yeah, except only one may fit into your car boot, and the other may not, just as a result of an external dimension tweak that leaves the internal volume the same, just for instance....

[quote name='risingson' post='992282' date='Oct 18 2010, 03:03 PM']Depends whether it's choice or 'choice'.[/quote] Explain to the terminally dim (ie me) what you mean please!

So more choice from a particular manufacturer is a bad thing??? OK....

[quote name='Plux_the_Duck' post='992025' date='Oct 18 2010, 10:38 AM']We after another distortion pedal then father This one looks a lot better than the other one [/quote] Nearly as pink though!

Check your pickup height before anything else. By all means try a cheapo compressor, but I warn you now it will as like as not be utterly rubbish, and may well put you off the ida of using compression for life. Which will be a shame, and your loss. As for pedal compressors I'd only consider either a JoeMeek FloorQ or a Markbass Compressore. Firstly they have the minimum number of controls to really bend the comrpessor to your needs, and secondly they are two of the best sounding pedal compressors money can buy....

oooh Phil, nice one!

EQ then? Sounds like a dip in a large range of frequencies, around the lower mids, rather than a particular area of the bass. So maybe something in th electronics or pickups is letting it down, or how you eq it.

Do you mean 1 octave up the neck, or 1 octave across the strings? Listening to the myspace page the bass sounds pretty consistent to me (listening on Sennheiser ear bud thingies), do you find you're digging in harder to compensate then? If its up the neck, maybe the neck needs a bit more relief to not choke the strings. If its across the neck maybe you ned to have a look at the pickup height on the G string side, lift the pickup, get more oomph (although too close and the pickup's magnetic field will choke the strings). From your description (sounding compressed) I wouldnt be surprised to hear that the G string side of the pup is too close to the strings in fact.... I'd be surprised if there werent some compression on that bass somewhere in that recording/mixing process, but I also dont think its likely to have caused the effet you are describing, largely because there is more energy i lower notes, and these tend to hit the compressor harder, so you are most likely to hear the low notes get overcompressed first IME.

Magic! ....Mushrooms?

[quote name='Sean' post='987970' date='Oct 14 2010, 12:51 PM']Would it be possible to include some EQ advice for rigs relating to room acoustics too?[/quote] What, you wanna know all the secret knowledge? Be prepared to roll up your trouser leg then!

[quote name='Bilbo' post='987034' date='Oct 13 2010, 03:25 PM']There is a lovely story where, early in their career, Van Halen were touring in support of Ted Nugent. Eddie Van Halen's sound was the talk of the town and Nugent asked to try his gear. He picked up EVH's guitar without touching a single knob on his guitar or amp and sounded exactly like Ted Nugent.[/quote] You see this is nonsense to me. Is anyone suggesting that if Ted had played an E chord or just an open E string it would have sounded 'exactly' like Ted's rig did? Really? Or are they all confusing playing nuances with tone (ie the actually sonic timbre of the guitar/strings/pups/fx/amp/room combination)? Or is is that both rigs actually sound pretty similar tonally? So if I were to offer Ted a go on a guitar rig, then regardless of [b]anything[/b] I might do to it setup wise it would always sound [b]exactly[/b] like Ted's rig would it? I'm willing to bet considerable money that a) thats not so, and b ) I can show that it isnt so. [quote name='Bilbo' post='987034' date='Oct 13 2010, 03:25 PM']I find every bass I play (which are few, to be fair) sounds more like me than it does the label on the headstock and would not buy a bass on the basis of a website 'sample'. But, then again, I have cloth ears and can't hear the difference between basses the way some of you guys say you can. I don't know what a 'classic' Fender Precision or Jazz sound is. I can recognise players but not the basses they play.[/quote] See I dont believe that either Bilbo, I believe you when you say you hear yourself playing the same way, I dont believe that it makes no difference what bass you pickup or how you set the controls, that bass sounds the same as all the rest. That is, the nature of the waveform produced by the instrument will not be different, I just think you may be listening to the notes/harmony/melody/MUSIC rather than the sound. For instance my Roscoe has a seriously overpowered eq, are you really trying to tell me that whatever I do with it its always going to sound the same if you play it? I can almost always tell a P bass vs a Jazz, so can you. Its startlingly obvious, especially with roundwounds IME. Extreme eq can do a lot to camouflage them. I'm not a Fender nerd though, so I cant differentiate a 60's vs 70's jazz. In fact I find that its the pickup configurations, electronics and strings that make the biggest differences in similar quality instruments. Not the wood, construction (ie neck through vs bolt on) or colour.

Whilst its true of cabs that you have mic placement, room blah blah blah we are talking about a bass here. If you D.I a bass with as short a signal path to the recorder and apply no eq then you have a really good representation of what that bass sounds like. Clealry you need to note the strings used, piuckup selection, preamp settings and the playing style as well. And yes it wont sound exactly like you playing the part, but it will be a good indication of the timbre of the instrument. If the basses all sound significantly different in that line then the company has a huge problem with QC. WIth todays modern build techniques and reliance on machined parts then the actual piece of wood is the diff, and I reckon thats a pretty darned small tolerance to be able to notice. Its slightly different for entirely handcrafted instruments I would think. My cans plugged into my machine are good enough to mix on (at least pretty well), I can certainly gauge a bass tone with them! Ed Friedlands youtube clips are spot on IMO, albeit the audio is compressed. It would be even better if they did it as high quality FLAC downloads though (24 bit/96KHz) because you really really can hear the difference (assuming you dont have impaired hearing).

[quote name='urb' post='986662' date='Oct 13 2010, 10:08 AM']I second your comments on Mark Bass slappers too - to my ears these amps have a very generic sound and really shape the way a bass sounds, to make it sound like 'the mark bass sound' - I'm sure this can be avoided but it's almost getting to the point now where I can hear a Mark Bass rig a mile off! Nice gear but not my cup of Earl Grey at all... Cheers Mike[/quote] Really? I agree the cabs are definitely 'voiced' but I find the LMII based amps to be really good at not overly colouring the sound of the bass (to be fair they are 'warm', but not wooly at all). Of course a lot of people do tend to just reach over and use the filters and so they are adding a predetermined voicing there as well, maybe thats a lot to do with it too!

Ultimate use of hipshot detuners on a bass?

oooh boy, can you say "can of worms!"??? Whats your budget, what kind of bass rig are you recording? If I had to choose one mic for ever to record bass with it would be a Heil PR40 I love it! But it isnt cheap Oh and yet another +1 for Reaper

[quote name='obbm' post='984127' date='Oct 11 2010, 10:03 AM']How are you going to mix the outputs of the 4 mic pre-amps?[/quote] Exactly!

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='984064' date='Oct 11 2010, 08:19 AM']She's one of the best groovers on the planet, and can make a few notes sound amazing. Also, a great reason to buy a Fender Jazz. [/quote] +1

Big meths user here Even bothered to build the tube thingy too. Usually there's a set festering in there ready to whip out and slap on.... Rotate strings whenever I'm going to play in front of people - big believer in being able to cut what I dont want with eq, but you cant add it back if it ain't there to begin with!