chyc

Very good, and very versatile. I own a Sandberg custom so very similar to the supreme range pictured above, except I cannot coil split, yet. Currently musing over adding the requisite switches for that in the new year, but even if I don't I'm happy with the sounds I currently have. I've just looked at the price at Bass Direct and eeek! I bought mine new a few months ago for less than half that. I could do some samples, but there's already a video with these pickups, played by someone who can play better than me. The single coils to my ear get very close to the jazz/p sound

This is an interesting topic as it completely goes against everything I knew about amp/cabinet matching until today. To quote the manual I always thought that this is caused by the impedence being too low rather than the power rating of the cabinet. Also, if you have to back off the volume level, what would have happened if you'd used a cabinet rated at a lower power rating? Confused.

This is an interesting one. The SSL 2+ has a big red button to turn on 4000 series console emulation, but it's just that: one button. There's no granularity and certainly no eq or blending of tones. At $39 I'd be prepared to give the demo a go with a view to purchasing. Thanks for the pointer!

My signal path is about as clean as can be. A cable between bass and either an Acoustic Image Coda or a GSS 06B400MKD. If I'm twiddling with EQ it's because I cannot hear myself rather than I don't like my sound, so I guess it's the room environment that I miss with an audio interface.

I like a clean bass sound as much as anyone, but even I have to say that a cable straight into an audio interface and listening with headphones is just a little too dry for me. The main reason I like doing this is that I can record myself and listen back critically, and I can play along to all manner of things on teh internutz. So just out of curiosity, does anyone else practise through an audio interface? Do you do it dry, or do you spice up your tone with an IR or some EQ? I own Reaper and any workflows involving its included plugins I'd be very interested in hearing. If you wonder what tones I'm interested in, the answer is that I'm not sure. I'm usually very laid back about it, so long as it's not audibly distorted. In other words, this is a very open ended question so I can try others' tips and tricks and maybe steal some ideas 🙂 . Even the dry-as-a-cracker tone I get from the interface is fine, but uninspiring, hence the question. If it helps, the interface is an SSL 2 PS: Spending money is fine for me, so long as it's not too much. Chip in with your experiences anyway even if you have splurged on the Helix Native though!

While not exactly VST, Celestion are offering discounts on some of their IRs. 45% off bass speakers for example https://www.celestionplus.com/products/bass-responses-by-speaker

Not cheap, but there's the GSS bulletpack head which can take an external laptop battery, which they also sell. Head and battery are on their website. You can then pick your cabinet, or cabinets, and get 200W output, for 12 hours if their website is to be believed. The head I've linked to is said to require an external preamp. GSS do make heads with instrument inputs, but their website (or English section thereof) seems to have circular links and I can no longer find it.

How does activation work on the Waves stuff? I'm allergic to iLok.

If you want to convince others that rejoining the EU is a good thing, complaining that your musical instruments and accessories now take longer and are harder to return is perhaps not a compelling place to start. As you say, you don't know what people voted for. I won't comment any furthur on this thread: no good will come of it.

I'm totally with you on the Fishman pickups, I just don't like the sound, even in the hands of people who can definitely play. Barts are much nicer IMHO. Bass looks really nice. Congrats.

One thing that I try to do for practice is play along to a drone. There are some drones available online on websites, and I'm sure there are apps for most phones. With the drone in the background I try to noodle, in tune, with my eyes shut. Nothing against looking at the inlays, and I will do that from time to time, but when you're reading music you necessarily have to look away from the fingerboard. It'll also help you relax when you need to look away to take cues from other members of a band. Secondly, and more importantly, it helps you develop your ear to notice when you're out of tune. In a fast run the odd out of tune note is undetectable, but for those long mwahhhs if you can get yourself back in tune quickly then even if you're out by a lot then people will just put that down as a style rather than a dud note. Now staying in tune, eyes shut, with no reference like a drone to help: that's where I completely fall apart. Whoever can do that is a wizard. In terms of muscle memory, I'm sure there is an aspect of that, but go on YouTube and look at the famous bassists playing fretless. Most of the time they're looking down at their "fretting" hand while playing/soloing. Even the greats do that.

I think I have an analogy that's just about right enough to help understand impedance. Imagine you tie one end of a skipping rope to a ring drilled into a wall, and wiggle the other end of the rope. You want to see what frequencies you're pumping out with your arm, and you do so by measuring and plotting the up and down movement of this ring over time. Now, imagine that wall is made of jelly, that ring is going to be wibble wobbling up and down like mad when you're really yanking that skipping rope. That wall has a nice low input impedance, and it's really easy to measure what the ring is doing, which is great. However, what happens when you make the signal small? Your small movements are going to be lost in all the noise of external factors, and in particular your high frequencies are just not being seen in the movement of the ring. Also another problem with the jelly is that there will be some reflections as the ring starts to move the skipping rope, creating an echo (not really a problem in musical instruments, but thought I'd mention it). Next up is the brick wall. The ring is barely moving now, but when it does it's a much more accurate representation of your output frequencies of your arm. This is the high input impedance scenario and the movement of the ring captures all your nuanced wiggles on the skipping rope in exquisite detail. What's the catch? Well if you know that your signal is nice and strong then a brick wall is a waste as the small movements aren't as easy to measure. Here's where we have to really stretch the analogy: you and your arm are the instrument, the skipping rope is the signal going down the cable if not the actual cable, the ring and wall are your preamp, which in this case is included inside your amp. Your nice strong signal would be when you're using a magnetic pickup, and the small weak signal is the piezo pickup. I should also add that this analogy totally breaks down when you consider microphones, with their very small signals yet small impedances, but oh well. Coming back to your amp, the obvious question in your situation is "why would an amp have both? Wouldn't the high impedance work in both piezo and magnetic pickups?" As Bill says, there's definitely a case where you can have your input impedance too low for the instrument, but the case against making it too high is not so obvious. Many preamps just offer the one input impedance for all situations ~5MΩ (e.g. the Fishman Pro EQ is 10MΩ). I suppose if you're not careful you could cause clipping with an instrument that is too hot, but in all my years using an ultra high impedance input for both unbuffered piezo and magnetic I've never had a problem. I just have a lower gain for the magnetic pickups. There's an SoS article about impedance which is excellent. It talks about the history of the values chosen, as well as a little bit of the maths involved. Hopefully my analogy above can be understood by someone with no mathematical background and is correct enough to not upset anyone who does actually fully understand the science behind it.

Doesn't need to be built in the UK, just repaired

I thought of appending this as a question on the Markbass combo amp repair thread, but didn't want to derail it: what amp companies are good at customer care post warranty? For my part I've owned Acoustic Image who have been excellent, but getting the amp across the pond and back can be expensive, which is why I'm selfishly tacking on "UK edition" to this thread. The driver for this is that I may be looking for a more bass guitar centric amp, and repairability is one criterion that very much interests me, yet I don't know much about it. Even if the manufacturer is on the other side of the world, are they fixable in independent repair shops at a reasonable cost? From the aforementioned thread I take it Markbass are not great, but what about other manufacturers? Ashdown, Orange, TE, Phil Jones et al? Sure this is inviting unscrutinized anecdotes, but I trust you all!

So many jokes possible on this thread, so little time..... However, on a more serious note, coupled with what @Acebassmusic says, an amp can get awfully warm during a gig, so boards can expand and wires can move. When the thing is off it cools off and "resets" back to its original state. I'm not saying that's the reason, just that it's believable that something like you experience can happen.

I'm now the owner of a Sandberg Custom 5! My wife, the guy at PMT and me all came to the same conclusion: there was definitely a sound in the MM soapbar pickup found on the Sandberg Basic that just couldn't be replicated with the XTenders in the Custom, but the XTenders have a very nice tone, and are much more versatile, and so overall the bass you see in the picture is the one I took home. It responds very well to tweaking, and the default sound suits my style of playing, which is to sit back in the mix rather than cut through it, although with some tweaking you can get a really nice honk out the bridge pickup. My wife said that the XTenders had a much smoother sound, and that the low B string had much better note definition. Listening back to the recordings I made, there were far more mistakes using the Basic. At this level of craftmanship it's so subjective, but it's probably not controversial to say the Custom's form factor suits me better. Surprisingly Sandberg never got back to me after I asked them a few questions, but the bass spoke for itself, and PMT got the sale. Just for the record, the main question I asked them was what type of pickup was in this Custom. There are actually two types of XTender. I have my suspicions I know which one it is, but wanted it confirmed.

Am I right in thinking that class d amplifiers get this HPF for free, or at least the amp's designers would need to explicitly build an amp to generate subsonic frequencies, which would make no sense?

Amazed there isn't a larger market for this kind of thing. Who wouldn't want to make their kit last longer and make their sound sound better? I had to laugh at one comment on the YT vid which said they wouldn't buy one because they couldn't hear the difference.

On one thread that flew past me maybe a week ago, someone posted a video of this magical effects box that, when engaged, wouldn't change the sound recorded by the microphone to my ears but you could see the cones of the cabinet doing much much less work. Nowhere did it mention it was an HPF, but I assume that an HPF was a large part of its secret sauce. I now cannot find the video, nor remember the name of the box. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I think it was either a 4x10 or a 6x10 in the video.

Listening back now and sheesh that's some bad playing. Oh well, better get practising. You can probably tell which one is which because I had trouble playing the maple bass.

I'm listening back to recordings I made today at PMT. Conditions were not great: I had little time and it was bloomin' loud in there (pesky other shoppers) so I couldn't hear myself. One thing's for sure though listening back, you cannot just pick up a 5er and play it like a 4 string. Sympathetic vibrations abound and much of what I recorded is not fit for public consumption. Still, I don't want to make it a wasted trip. Which sample is your favourite? I managed to sneak in the B string near the end of the sample. Three samples are of one bass dialed on different pickups (rear, front and both), one is of the single pickup bass.

As it so happens, I've just walked through the door back from PMT after they booted me out at closing time. I got a few minutes on both. I will use the words "Basic" to describe the lighter single pickup bass, and "Custom" to describe the darker dual XTender bocote bass. Both basses are very good, good enough for me to be happy with either. They're different: the Basic is a wee bit cheaper, is lighter in weight, and dare I say it a little nicer to go up and down the neck. Conversely the Custom has a much larger variation in tone. Comparing these two to the Yamaha TRBX605 also at PMT, there is no comparison. Maybe the Yamaha and I didn't gel but the neck felt all wrong and the sound was not pleasant (even after amateur playing is taken into account). Looks-wise, you can see the pictures for yourself. The maple on the Basic is stunning in the flesh (in the wood?). The Custom has a more functional look. I don't dislike it, but I don't like it either. On the Custom I could get close to a Musicman when leaning towards the rear pickup. Nothing close to a P came out the neck pickup but it was smooth. Perhaps a J with a slight tilt towards the front pickup? I emailed Sandberg to ask them how the wiring of the single bucker was done in the Basic: series or parallel. I never got a reply but based on my playing, I would say they're in series and I was unable to get a Musicman burp from this bass. That's not to say it was bad: if I want a Musicman sound I could just buy one and if it were a SUB I'd have spare change over a Sandberg. For the benefit of this thread I may head in with an audio interface to record a short clip of me fumbling to play something. Could even make a game of it: guess the bass and which pickup 🙂. For me personally I will be back with my wife, whom I've said before has excellent taste in everything. She'll help me decide if either is the one for me, but at the moment both are contenders for augmenting the stable. It's quite exciting as the last bass I bought was probably around 13 years ago (and yes it was a Sandberg.) As an aside, I really do like and recommend PMT Oxford. They're patient and always willing to help me. Must be tough competing with Thomann's prices and service, but I wouldn't purchase an instrument without playing it first. Thomann would get sick of me after the 7th or 8th return.

Thanks for the input. I have a California JJ (as it was called back then) and absolutely love it. I caved and got my local PMT to order these two instruments in so I can try them. Will be very interesting to compare to one another. I thought I was going to buy the Yamaha TRBX 605 but I really didn't get on with that when I tried it. Will keep you posted.