51m0n

OK its all gone quiet out there so I'll spill the beans: STE_001 is the Markbass -> Berg rig STE_002 is the LH500 -> Super12 rig IMO neither sounds remotely dull or like a generic 15 (surely that was a wind up ?) but whatever. You can hear masses of top end off those cabs (admittedly rather fizzy from the OD pedal but hey its there), and both rigs did a brilliant job of getting the sound that was wanted and drowning out the rest of the neighbourhood in bass. Alex and I both noted that the Berg goes deeper (port tuned lower I think) than the super12, but you can certainly eq plenty of bass into the super12. Its a very nice sounding cab guys, I'd happily recommend it to anyone looking for a loud but really pretty portable solution. The BigOne is a hell of a cab though..... Once again thanks to Alex for the time and kit to do this!

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='930829' date='Aug 20 2010, 12:39 PM']Noob question, what's a two buss? :blush:[/quote] Any group you set up will have a stereo output. In old mixer parlance that is a two buss. As in two channel buss. The main outputs from a mixer are also a two buss, and therefore often get referred to as [i]the[/i] 2 buss

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='930809' date='Aug 20 2010, 12:23 PM'][b]I find your mix a little too bright for my ears. Do you think mine lacked top end?[/b][/quote] No, but like I said that was a five minute job cranked out on a pair of cans for a laugh, to do it seriously would take a [i]bit[/i] more time Having said that I think your vocal lacked some presence, and could have been a bit louder to match more 'radio orientated' modern mixes. Not necessarily wrong by any means, but not as forward as you might want.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='930820' date='Aug 20 2010, 12:32 PM']Will check that out, thanks. It's not even a drum machine, it's just my Korg PX4D (my constant jamming companion ). I know it sound pish but I was surprised at how "acceptable" I got the 2 loops to sound - especially the transition between them. Will I be able to use the vst in Reaper?[/quote] Yes It can be made to sound new or old school just by learning how to compress and eq and what mics to favour etc etc, I like it since it leaves a lot of creative decisions up to you, and you can learn a huge amount about mixing drums from it. WHen you add it to a track it adds about 9 tracks for the various mics in a folder under its main track, you can add fx to any of those tracks (ie the snare, or the kick or the overheads, or room mics etc). With some creative grouping in Reaper you can have all those tracks grouped, a set of fx auxes for the drums alone, and a group around all of the above for a gentle buss glue comp or whatever. You put your midi items on the main track and out comes beautiful drums! Its a genius DAW is Reaper!

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='930809' date='Aug 20 2010, 12:23 PM']Nice one. You're absolutely right about the lack of reverb in that track. I have some on the backing vocals to give them distance from the main vox and a minute amount of "small room" on the guitars (I think you can hear it in the bass intro) but again it's one of those things I need to learn about. I was worried about the kick before. I'll notch down a bit. Cheers. I find your mix a little too bright for my ears. Do you think mine lacked top end?[/quote] The kick isn't too loud, its fighting the bass, set up a compressor on the bass, but make it listen (key listen or sidechain) form the kick, when the kick happens it will duck the bass just for a moment) Reverb is a must, and delays too but the devil is in the detail!

Oh, and bin the drum machine, download Bluenoise MyDrumset. Its a free VST, gives you acces to a pretty well recorded Ludwig (IIRC) but you get to throw your own effects on each mic, which means a genuinely more realistic result IMO...

Couldn't resist, here's a cheeky bit of mastering for you Couldn't bring myself to smash the thing to bits a la Stadium, but its pushing pretty hard, bit of eq'ing, some (very subtle) saturation, and a fiddle (subtle) with the stereo width too. All done in 5 minutes on a set of cans, so it may sound plop in the real world! All done in the box, no expensive hardware kit used at all. I am nothing more than an amateur hack at this at best, but I enjoy having a go! Damned fine first effort though. You've got the most important thing right, its a catchy toon, cant underestimate the importance of that. Its a bit dry, maybe, but the kind of reverb you need would be a gluey ambience type of thing (possible on everything, even just on the two buss, but very very very subtle) that you dont so much hear as feel. You could duck the bass off the kick too, so they aren't fighting for sonic territory so much. Going to mp3 is not the way to glue stuff together, its a pretty nasty process sonically. A decent bit of buss compression will sort that out far better (alongside the ambience verb). May only need a couple of dB to make it come together. Another nice trick on a group buss is some tape saturation emulation (again subtle). You should be able (depending on the DAW) to program level and effects changes on a single track, should you wish to, but it is often easier to split the tracks as you suggest. Watch out for the crossover curves if you do this, you will want them super steep!) Mixing quiet in the box is not bad thing, Mastering guys often like a mix that peaks at no more than -6dBfs to give them headroom to play with, and there are some pretty high profile advocates of recording and mixing very quietly (providing you go for 24bit).

[quote name='Wolverinebass' post='930294' date='Aug 19 2010, 08:57 PM']That Big One sounds great. Really, really good and clear. Certainly didn't sound muddy to me. The playing is rather good as well. Top!! [/quote] She's only been playing a year and a bit too...

[quote name='Protium' post='930206' date='Aug 19 2010, 07:29 PM']They both sound like a dull SS amp through a generic 15" cab in an acoustically bad room, but I voted number 2.[/quote] In what way dull? Dull as in not bright/toppy, or dull as in untinteresting? The room is no worse acoustically than almost any room that size (small), and better than a fair few rehearsal rooms I've had the misfortune to be in. Certainly on a par with most venus though. With the mics about 4' from the cab picking up everything then you are mostly hearing the sound of the cab in that room, which would be what your punters hear - which is the point of the recording to be fair.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='930053' date='Aug 19 2010, 05:05 PM']You can very clearly hear the difference between the Big One and the other two![/quote] Not half! I reckon its the ultimate 'butter' sounding r&b/funk fingerstyle cab I've ever heard (well maybe the Berg NV215 was as good). Utterly gorgeous thick sound with all the articulation you could ever want. I love that cab, if I win the lottery I'm having one with a tweeter (+ attenuator)

[quote name='josh3184' post='929934' date='Aug 19 2010, 03:38 PM']I voted 002 due to the slightly better bass handling imo. It was definitely my favorite whichever it was [/quote] Ooooh that's interesting, how you've perceived that in the mix is different to how it was in the room. Actually I'll give you all a clue, #1 went deeper, #2 was more prominent in the low mids, and gives the impression of handling more bass. If you listen on serious speakers you can hear #1 go deeper in the second section than #2 does, but in the first section #2 sounds fuller, because its more lo-mid prominent. I love all this, to be honest that wasnt much help as a clue When do you want me to reveal the truth then?

[quote name='ShergoldSnickers' post='929903' date='Aug 19 2010, 03:08 PM']Thanks 51m0n - appreciated.[/quote] No problem mate!

And he is the LH500 into the BigOne without any OD Pretty much all the above still applies though. Still damned fine bass sound IMO...

OK here we go, after much mucking about he is the LH500 into the BigOne. A couple of notes for this, we were struggling a bit with getting volume into the front of the amps because the bassist was such a gentle player and theSR300 it turns out is a very very low output bass. As the LH500 has np input gain in the end we just plugged into the passive input on the LH500, and all was well. Unfortunately we probably were so worried about getting enough volume that we may have got a little bit too much on this one. So the bass is a bit loud in the recording I think, however this is where my eyeballs were going fuzzy, and the BigOne was pushing huge amounts of air out of the ports - the guitarist commented on this and he was on the other side of the room (not a big room but hey!), he could feel a breeze at about 7 feet away. In conclusion the LH500 will drive the BigOne to very very high levels given a decent input level (no seperate input gain you see), easily enough to gig with, just dont be afraid to really dime the volume and give it the beans!

Roof top, midnight +1 minute New Years Eve '91(?), stopped all the taxi's going in or out of Brighton on the London Rd due to the number of revellers dancing in the road - till the police turned up.... oops

[quote name='dood' post='928990' date='Aug 18 2010, 07:54 PM']Hey Alex, nice to see ya on the board! Yeah, that's kinda what I was getting at in my comments above. I've owned a couple of MB heads and obviously the Hartke LH is my current rig, so I know the differences here in my front room - but it's alot more difficult with two unknown cabinets in an unknown room! But yeah, I like these real world tests![/quote] To clear up why we did it like we did, basically I know how loud my rig is, and what it sounds like (even in that room), I also know how loud Plux's LH500 is. The point of pairing up the LH500 with the BigOne and the Super12, rather than the MB head was to see if it could deliver enough beans with those cabs, given that its by far the most likely choice of amp for them. If they were looking to get an MB head I'd have stuck with that head. The reason I compared the LH500 and each Barefaced cab with my whole rig is simple, its the best rig I've ever owned, and as good as any I've ever heard, if Alex's cabs sounded good alongside it when driven by the LH500, then they would sound great against most other rigs. The reason they all sound similar is also straight forward, they got a sound out of my rig that was as close to what they wanted to hear as possible, they then needed to see if the same sound - or something very similar, could be achieved with the other rigs. This isnt a case of trying to hear the differences in the cabs flat and clean, its trying to see which works best in situ. Flat and clean would have been a huge amount easier for everyone to nail the different cabs - they do each have a very distinctive flavour thats quite obvious - this is a far more real world test than that though, this is how well those rigs could achieve a desired sound. WHich is more important at the end of the day. I dont care how great a cab copes with flat eq, if the sound I want needs it to deal with a 6dB boost at 80Hz after all! In case anyone is in any doubt I think the Barefaced cabs aquitted themselves splendidly, the super12 is very very punchy, and sounds lovely. The BigOne, well thats the daddy, but it really does like to be fed a lot of juice, and my rig, well thats still my favourite, but its very close!

I'll dig out the Big One file tomorrow, I think I have that one playing a different track with clean bass as well. Alex had his ear defenders in the whole time, I took mine out for a minute - it was like getting punched in the face Fantastic! Apparently all the guy who works there could hear that night was us lot. Oh and Dave is not a lightweight hitter on the drums and although the kit is a bit pants tht is his Mapex Saturn snare, which is very very tasty indeed. So yes it was hugely loud, by any standards, although the guitar was not fighting the same sonic territory as the bass in the clip, so its really easy to hear everything. Even if it was I think the loser would have ben the drums not the bass.... Just a point to note, the bassist in question plays with the lightest touch of anyone I've ever seen, really really gentle.... And thanks again Alex, it was a blinding evening, very very informative. I'm pretty certain you've got another sale on your hands in the near future, the Super Twelve was brilliant.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='928652' date='Aug 18 2010, 01:59 PM']I asked Alex specifically about achieving this affect and he suggested I might need a second Barefaced cab. Good to know one will do. [b]Boss ODB3 in not sounding like AIDS shocker.[/b][/quote] HAHAHAAAA!!!! Yeah, I avoid Boss pedals since forever, - largely cos the first ones I ever played with at a mates house were ultra noisy, could have been the fault of his Westone Thunder III, but I doubt it, that was a great bass! Those turd brown Boss Bass-Crud-i-Sound pedals, yuck! Definitely achieved wobbly eyeness, may have been the BigOne and Alex's Avalon/Quest set up, was very loud, but the Super12 was no slouch at all, totally capably of drowning out the rest of the band completely. I will state right now that every rig we tried (with the exception of the knackered in house Hartke, which was awful) sounded awesome, all just different flavours of "bass player's wet dream"....

[quote name='dood' post='928574' date='Aug 18 2010, 01:01 PM']He he!! Yes, I like your style! Doesn't have to be fair! Good game, good game! - I love the overall tone of both of the rigs actually - they cut through with the added dirt. What are you using for your drive?[/quote] Drive was supplied by a wee little Boss OD pedal of some sort, yellow beastie, about 4 knobs on, including a bass/treble, drive, level and maybe some sort of selctor, dunno, boss arent my area of expertise . The trick to get them to cut through was not to turn the tweeters all the way off, just down a bit. Worked a treat! Its not me playing by the way, I cant take any credit for that at all, I just supplied a rig for people to a/b against (a 'known', if only by me).

[quote name='dood' post='928498' date='Aug 18 2010, 11:44 AM']Actually - I haven't read the text properly at all! - One amp with one cab and another amp with another. Hmmm... not really a fair comparison given the tonal differences in the amplifier's character. The MB has an active EQ circuit that boosts bass around 40hz - the LH500 is all passive and can not add that kind of bass girth to the tone. Hmm, given that - I reckon that the MarkBass head is tone two and the LH500 is tone One.[/quote] Who said anything about fair? It is a real comparison of two different rigs playing the same piece of music in the same environment recorded from the same position, albeit the rigs were next to each other. I like your logic, not that I'm saying you're right or wrong though, its just exactly the way my mind works too!

[quote name='dood' post='928488' date='Aug 18 2010, 11:39 AM']OH!! That's my fault for reading the text and not the title! So I assumed by reading the above that you had a Big One and a Super Twelve! lol's![/quote] Yeah, oops didnt make it clear enough, my fault , edited now! I particularly like the od since so many people want to hear what these cabs sound like with some grindy grindy going on, its pretty unusual to hear an ae410 like that, and I think the Super12 did a great job too!

[quote name='dood' post='928479' date='Aug 18 2010, 11:34 AM']p.s. The Hartke is a great amp head! Very pleased with my LH1000[/quote] Absolutely, they are an amazing piece of kit for the cash, love Plux's LH500!

Hold on, the Big One isnt in there, Dood! There is an Bergantino ae410, and there is a Barefaced Super12. The BigOne is fair bit easier to spot from the recording so I didnt put it up The point is how hard it is in a 'real world-ish' example to spot the diff between the SuperTwelve and a Berg ae410. Which is which....

OK a couple of weeks ago now Alex was kind enough to lend his Super Twelve, Big One and Avalon U5 and power amp to some friends of mine who are looking to get a first decent gigging bass rig together. I couldnt resist and took my rig and PLux's LH500 along so we could do some further comparisons to see what worked. The LH500 is very likely to be the amp the go for as its such good value for money, what we didnt know was how the Super Twelve would perform alongside the BigOne or how either would sound next to my rig (see sig). We assembled at Monster Rehearsal Studios for the comparison and set up alongside the very tired old Hartke rig there. The most notible thing about which is that it has to be dimed to keep up with the drums at all, in contrast my rig doesnt get past 10 O'clock before the walls are in danger of caving in. I recorded it all on my Zoom H4n so we could listen back at sane levels (I'm not kidding at one point I thought my eyesight had gone very very 'wrong', only to discover that the volume was causing it to blur!). Here are snippets of the same track played through my rig (Markbass sa450 -> Bergantino ae410) and the LH500 -> Super Twelve, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to have a guess at which is which. There was judicious use of amp eq in both cases, nothing much though, and the tweeters levels were played with. The tracks are Normalised to -3dB but no other processing has been done at all. This topic shouldn't self destruct at any point in the proceedings! As you will soon hear they like a bit of fuzzy bass (there was a Boss OD of some sort in there), the bass was an Ibby SR300. Not that that is of any consequence.... Enjoy!

Barefaced 212 without the tweeter (or rolled off) and a LMIII (maybe witha a sansamp VT pedal) or LM Rocker, or one of those little Orange chaps if you want more grind? Spent an evening with the Barefaced 212 a couple of weeks ago comparing it to my ae410, its a very very classy cab, recommended for those who want to punch hard, takes eq well and I couldnt get close to overpowering it with an LH500 or an sa450. Also unbelievably light (as are all of Alex's cabs) and very very easy to manage.