51m0n

Nonsense. Adding level anywhere in the frequency range, such that you overload the maximum clean input level of whatever preamp you are talking about will cause distortion. So what he means is adding more volume may cause breakup. Cutting any area will not ever add more distortion. Since you are removing level. However it may not specifically lessen distortion, if the distortion is produced from a large amount of level in another area of the frequency spectrum. So if you have a signal that is 60dB higher at 200Hz and 12Khz than it is at 1Khz, but it is still under the headroom of the input gain of the pre, then you will have a clean but ridiculously scooped sound. If you then bring the gain up on that sound you will clip at the top and bottom of the frequency range, but quite probably not really in the middle. If you cut the bass and treble you will eventually clean that signal up. Note you didnt cut the mids!

+1 for Reaper, it uses far more advanced stretching algorithms than audacity for this kind of thing

That desk makes me go all kinds of wibbley. Love it! Well done, nothing more likely to give you a sweaty top lip than working in a not completed, unfamiliar and untested environment, which is about the case whenever I track anywhere. Invariably errors creep in and you just have to figure things out and keep on as fast and calmly as possible to prevent the band from getting wind of the stress. Not easy at all, well done keeping the clients happy mate, thats the most important bit!

Judging by a lot of posts on this forum its the restraint required to not punch other band members in the face when they are terminally stupid/insensitive......

The big MXR M134 stereo chorus is nice, for pedal Best chorus I've heard though was from an Eventide Harmoniser, totally epic!

Agree with you it would be better less humungous though, but a brilliant idea all the same!

Good question that! You could go with a TC Nova, it may well do exactly what you want. It sounds to me like you use the EBS as an always on compressor. You may well be looking for something that doesnt really comrpess more so much as more obviously. The way to get comression to be a bit more obvious is careful tweaking of attack and release times alongside the ratio and threshold, you need the compressor action to come in a tad earlier, and release fast enough to catch all the individual peaks of quick slap passages. Very different from the action on the EBS as you likely have it set up. As always the best sounding compressor pedals IMO are the Joe Meek Floor Q (I just love the action on this, it sounds so fat its ridiculous!) and the Markbass Compressore. Both pedals allow the kind of fine tuning I'm talking about, I would put either after the EBS or turn off the EBS when you have thes eon for a more overtly comrpessed sound.

A mic feedsback when it picks up the output from the speakers loudly enough to cause a loop. That is that the noise from the speakers picked up in the mic makes the speakers reproduce that noise more (louder) so that it is then picked up by the mic more etc etc etc The closer a mic is to its intended source (the doublebass) the louder the source is compared to background volume (the speakers and everything else), and the lower the gain on the mic, and the less likely you are to get feedback. This is because of the inverse square law, volume = 1 / (distance* distance). If you know your maths you can see that moving a mic away from a source even a little bit produces a very large drop off in volume indeed. Unfortunately a double bass is an instrument that makes its sound over a very large area (the entire body and sound board). If you close mic a bit of it you dont get the actual sound we hear, you get a part of that sound, that is never ever truly representative of the entire instrument. If you move the mic away from the instrument in order to capture the real complete sound you get more background sound, and more chance of feedback as you have to crank the gain on the mic to compensate. Its not the bass that causes the feedback, although it can resonate in sympathy to it, its the signal from the speaker(s) being picked up by the bass mic.

[quote name='lettsguitars' timestamp='1344892338' post='1770844'] Slapping is an effect! [/quote] Yeah, so is fingerstyle, and tapping, and using a pick.....

OK, you dont [b][i]need[/i][/b] any effects to play great sounding slap bass. You need great technique to play great sounding slap bass, [i]and great feel[/i]. Otherwise all the technique in the world will make no odds, you'll sound like someone putting up a shed. However, a bit of compression, if you know what you are doing, can help you control the larger transient on the attack of the note, it can also help even out the probable apparent volume change due to the move from fingerstyle to slap. Conversely if you dont know what you are doing you will almost certainly use a pedal with no metering and ladle on far more compression than you should (cos I cant hear it if I dont set it like this) and that can be very detrimental to your tone and your slapping: you will play too hard, especially if the attack is too short on the compressor, effectively fighting the compression circuit, and that will lead you to the incorrect conclusion that compressors ruin your dynamics. Its worth noting that Flea doesnt go stomping on an eq pedal to suck the mids out of his tone when he starts slapping, and that because in a band mix you dont want to do that, that bedroom poseur slap bass tone sounds rubbish in a mix, it will have no definition, be overly clacky and have no girth or punch either. Dont go there! A decent bass with a decent set up and new(ish) strings will deliver a great slap tone and fingerstyle tone in a mix without resorting to eq at all when you change. A lot of Flea's stuff mixes slap and fingerstyle all the way through, so you would do well not to have to hit any fx for this at all. Chorus, envelope filter, phaser, flanger etc all have their place (all of them together can sound very very Bootsy!), but really Flea only uses any fx like this very very sparingly (Sir Psycho Sexy being the most obvious I can think of)

Glue the inner piece of wood to the glass that will be in the space, a wood veneer on glass if you will???

I honestly dont know, havent used an mbox. Sorry!

Thats pretty impressive work there HJ, nice one Never managed to have that problem myself. When I set up at rehearsal I plug it in to the wall for power, turn it on, check the folder (where the file will be recorded) hit the record button once to go into monitor mode to check the recording level, the button flashes when in this mode, then hit it again to go into full record mode, the button goes red at that point. I think that that is about the minimum amount of button pushing you really need to do to ensure a decent recording on any kit. If you are doing less then you probably arent checking the level? That could easily be a mistake that can bite you later.... I leave it there until the end of the rehearsal, import the tracks into my lappie and use Reaper to edit the crap out and generate mp3s of the good bits, which takes about 15 minutes if you know what you are doing. Then I send those to other band members using wetransfer.com.

Sounds like you're doomed by the acoustics of the venue. No amount of turning up the volume can get things louder in a null. What were the dimensions of the room? Relying on more mids than bass (ie around 2-400Hz rather than sub 200Hz) for more of your sound can get you away from this, but the ral solution is venues with decent acoustics (oh like that happens).

Zoom H2 or H4, the H1 I've heard mixed opinions about when it gets very loud (not being able to turn the gain down enough). I have an H4n, and its the dogs danglies.

Why not copy the monitor drivers and ports for the door hole layout?

Right sound for the song wins any argument. It may be a Fender P or an Alembic, or a bass banjo, its always worth trying another sound, if you have the time.

Thats going to be a whole mother load of wire pulling right there! Someone is going to have sore knees, and a sore back by the end of that little argument (all the wire pulling I have ever done has always ended up as an argument with too much copper trying to fit into too little space at some point)

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1344513523' post='1765672'] It's rented acommo and not likely to be anywhere near an "ideal" room unfortunately, just somewhere nice to work and mix [/quote] You can still make some bits and bobs to help that arent attached to the walls though. Not too expensive or difficult either if you have some tools and time....

Time to build some bass traps and broadband absorption I think.... (Note to self, must get on with first proper blog piece!)

At a guess, several hundred.... Never really thought about it though, I can count the really great ones on one hand

Lovely pair of port holes in that there door sir. Looks super-pro matey!

Oh dont worry, you wont even realise its happened until your next gig, first track, you'll be there expecting some classy fingerstyle, when all of a sudden your thumb will take complete control and you'll find yourself doing a passable impression of Mark King....

Yeah I use a lot of db style 124 fingering, but then I play a 35" scale 5 string. Whenever I pick up a 34" scale 4 string it seems rather twee in comparison now.....