51m0n

Yeah me too, been on the look out for a decent relatively cheap DB for Plux, any of you proper pros saying one is good enough gets my immediate attention!

Nice one! I love free vsts, cant get enough of them, some really interesting and cool sounding stuff out there if you go looking far enough. Quality can be a bit hit and miss (just like with the less free stuff IMO), but there are some absolute gems to be found.... Cheers!

IMO its about the best bass for its price, especially if ergonomics are anywhere on your list of ust haves. Ultra easy to play, and decent buil quality, and a perfectly goos tone. I highly recommend them....

If 'a lot' appear to be moving around, then that is partly because they were the hot ticket for a long time last year, inevitably in search of tone nirvana, or out of boredom of whatever people move gear on to try the next best thing. Personally I have no reason to move my sa450 at all, it performs perfectly for my needs. The MB range has some pretty different sounding heads in it, none of which I would describe as bland or muddy. If you love a real fat warm tube overdrive you are probably out of luck (although they have a new head out which is intended to cover this too), but if you want clean and warm or clean and fast (and less warm) you will find something you like. The LMII and LMIII and F1 and F500 all put out 500w into 4Ohms, and into a reasonably efficient cab with enough cone area you will be fine (into my ae410 it fills an at least 300 capacity room at under half way on the master volume with an appropriately set gain stage). If your cabs arent very efficient then you may need more power (but they go up to 1200 watts, so you should be ablt to find something that will cover it).

+1 bach is fab at b-lines!

One of my all time favourite songs:- The Banshees where one of the very best bands of the eighties IMO, love Siouxsie to bits

Its all about context. But IMO generally a 200w combo is not really sufficient backline without PA help, in most cases (ie blues rock pub band). And in most cases the pub rock band's PA is not up to giving any useful help to the bass without being in grave danger of going 'pop'. IME anyway.

[quote name='Tinman' post='736412' date='Feb 5 2010, 04:51 PM']Surely you have the possibility of incurring customs charges etc with that?[/quote] Custom charges level recently went up to about £130 IIRC

Pants, I missed this

MarloweDK is definitely the Daddy

+1 for the meths tube, my strings are on permanent rotation between being in the tube or on a bass, I have sets that are very old (by my standards anything over a month is old, some of mine are a couple of years old and going still strong using this method). I'd recommend DR Lo-riders as the best I've found for long life with this method, they come back really strong for a good month before needing swapping, I find Hi-Beams last a shorter time personally.

EMMA Discombobulator is lovely, Maxon AF-9 is supposedly very close to the holy grail of env filters (the original Mutron III) MXR Auto-Q is a slightly different take on the theme

[quote name='Killstarz' post='740916' date='Feb 10 2010, 12:55 PM']Envelope filters....any i should check out?[/quote] Oh my, now you've hit the world of hurt face first

Good point about the tweeters in Berg rigs. Jim seems to be one of the only guys in bass who gets the idea that they aren't there to overhype extreme top, but to extend the natural top end by a few KHz. The opposite of this for me was Bernie Goodfellow at the Brighton Bass day, he ran his basses through an EBS rig with so much ultra high top it was completely detracting from the bass. He seemed to like it (as did hordes of people admiring his stuff, and playing) but for me it was like I'd taken a bass channel on a desk and scooped all the mids and lows out then put in a 12dB shelving eq at about 3KHz, fine if thats the effect you are after I guess.... I really struggle to hear exactly where the tweeter takes over in my 410, unless I turn it off Compare this with an Eden rig, and its night and day! A lot of this is down to exceptional crossover design as much as (or probably more than) the actual tweeter components from what I've read. Plux's HT210 and HT115 have the big tweeter in, and that is capable of vicious top end, but set flat with no treble boost off the amp it sounds to me as if it starts lower than the bullet tweeters do, and is even more indiscernible. They are a huge part of what makes Berg cabs the best IMO...

I slap a super cheap rubber car mat on the Berg, its very non-slip and keeps everything in tip top condition. Cost peanuts...

As long as the groove is as fat as me I dont care who is doing what..... But if you must analyse it, I'm with Jake, I love a drummer who absolutely nails it to the floor. Then a bassist who sits right back sounds just so good. Unfortunately I tend to be right on it too, so if the drummer has any tendencies to race they come out when they play with me. I dont speed usually, except in the odd fill. Back in the day I was far more versatile, I'm just too lazy to put in the metronome time to get it back. What a waster eh

Time to buy a nice drill and thread tapping set?

Just as an outside the normal loop, I'd suggest having a crack with a Joe Meek sixQ channel strip if you can source one. I record with one regularly (actually a twinQ, but the 6Q is a mono strip so would suit the requirements better) and it is absolutely superb sounding. If I had an IP rig, it would very high on my list of pre's to check out!

[quote name='jake_tenfloors' post='739789' date='Feb 9 2010, 11:06 AM'] its here its here its here![/quote] No pics, no Berg.....

[quote name='jake_tenfloors' post='737610' date='Feb 6 2010, 08:56 PM']Berg IP112 ordered Really can't wait!! I'll be getting the extension cab after i've saved for my macbook I'll post pics when it arrives.[/quote] Nice one! Waiting for the pix now

Amount of low end has nothing whatsoever to do with what size driver is involved, so a 15 is not necessarily deeper than a 210 (in fact the Berg HT115 in this house has slightly less low end than the Berg HT210), it is all about box volume. Also a Barefaced Compact doesnt have a horn but has enough top for an awful lot of the uses people on this forum put it to, especially if you want to add a bit of grind to your tone. They arent a typical 115 though (modern driver), they arent all that for super modern slap tones by any means!

The general word on TB was always that if you wanted that big pillow of bass under everything sound then an Epifani 410ul, but make sure its a series 1. Then if you wanted a somewhat punchier tone go for the Bergantino ae410. If you want to go for 2 210s then ae210s combine to have a slightly (very slightly) larger internal volume than the ae410, and subsequently a tad more low end. If you dont want to go for a 410, and you have a lot of watts to throw at it then a Barefaced BigOne has absolutely vast amounts of bottom end available....

We'll happily have to go with slightly different philosophies there then, and why not? I'm with SiBob, the rest of you are all nuts!

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='736223' date='Feb 5 2010, 02:29 PM']What I will say is that I will become convinced about the bass/amp modelling concept when they can make any electric bass sound like Ray Brown's upright. Until then, I would guess its almost always 'nearly but not quite'.[/quote] Actually I think the Roland vBass tech is going to get very close to doing your head in completely there very soon. Maybe not this revision, since I would imagine they sent more time on electric than upright basses, but soon. I'm sure Ped will be happy to post the upright bass sound off his vBass if he gets a chance..... [quote name='cheddatom' post='736239' date='Feb 5 2010, 02:53 PM']I was talking about tonal shaping in general, and the way in which these days, you can get any sound from any number of methods. You don't need an all valve head, to get a sound the same as someone with one. You don't need a precision bass to sound like you're playing one etc. I don't mean to say that there are inconsequential parts in the chain. Everything in the chain has an effect, but lots of different chains, long and short, can create the same outcome. If that much scope is available for changing your tone, then the initial "core tone" of a bass becomes almost irrelevant. I mentioned that I would prefer one of my basses for certain sounds, because it has an active pre-amp. Well, if I wanted I could take the pre-amp out of the bass and put it in a pedal, or buy a similar sounding pre-amp to use with my other bass. I guess there some merit in the "if i'm spending X amount on Y bass with Z rig, I don't want to need any pedals to get MY sound", which is fair enough, but you've probably got a boring tone :-p I think the "everything needs to sound good set flat" mentality is crazy. You buy an amp, and it sounds amazing if you roll off some low end, but no, f*** that, you'd rather keep trading in amps until you find one where you can leave the EQ flat.[/quote] I think you miss a core point here though. If your original provider of tone (the bass) sounds pants, then you can never enjoy that bass without extra help. You must always be goosing it to get something useable. That means you are in effect missing an important possible useable tone, that of just your bass, which if you would have if your bass' tone was good enough (great even). You havent lost anything by having a great tone from your bass on its own, you've gained something instead. Similarly with amps, if your amp sounds great flat then you have the maximum range of adjustments off your amp to sort out issues with a room, or to get other interesting tones. You on the other hand are already using up adjustment range just to get a good starting point. My rig sounds ace flat. Really stellar, but I can get a massive variety of tones from it by playing with the eq. My bass sounds superb whereever I dial the pick up blend, and I have massive amounts of eq available on board. Some tones i wouldnt use because they are so extreme, somebody else might though. But every one is a good bass sound in the right place (some of those may be pretty whacked out places though ). Does this mean my tone is 'boring' errr no. Every one of those tones is great, not boring. Then I have some effects which I may or may not use, entirely dependant on musical context, and each of those effects range from extremely subtle to bonkers, and again, only a small range of the available sounds are useable for me on a gig, but none of the ones I use are boring, just (hopefully) tasteful. But I can turn all that extra guff off, center every thing and still sound great. If your bass and amp sound pants like that, then you cant. I prefer the position I'm in to the one you seem to advocate.

[quote name='bigjohn' post='736126' date='Feb 5 2010, 01:14 PM']Ok. So lets suppose you can model a valve, or whatever amp you like down to imperceptible differences that the player, never mind the audience can't hear. And your cabs do the biz. Do you think you should / could put a crap bass (in terms of tone) into the chain at the beginning?[/quote] Tone is a result of the entire signal chain though. It may be that that bass, though crap DI'ed, has a particular synergy with the cables/fx/amp/cab/drive/room/mic or ear such that the resultant tone is perfect to you. However the chances of a better starting point (ie a better sounding bass) sounding better after everything else is said and done are fairly high. Having said that though, Bootsy has often stated that although the ubiquitous Star bass(es) looked absolutely perfect, their tone was pretty shoddy. Once he'd gone through a bazillion fx and into his monster 18 cab rig though, the tone was uber-funk-tasti-gasmic-apopolous or something.