bigjohn

If you can get your tone @ 200W then great. I can't. I Like lots of bass and roll of most of the treble and high mids. I wouldn't (can't) hear myself over the drums @ 200W unless I EQ'd differently.

A visual demonstration!

Sounds like pretentiousness to me Playing in front of or behind the beat should be a conscious choice shouldn't it?

Tasty.

[quote name='51m0n' post='736145' date='Feb 5 2010, 01:30 PM']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.[/quote] Bootsy is blessed. [quote name='cheddatom' post='736158' date='Feb 5 2010, 01:37 PM']"crap bass" is subjective. I have a Brice 6 string which cost me around £100. I like the way it plays, and I like the way it sounds thruogh my rig. If I could get a laptop to model exactly what my rig does to give me "perfect modelling", i'd put my £100 bass through it, yeh. Depending on the sort of sound i'm going for, it might be better to use my £500 schecter 6, as that has an active pre-amp, but I wouldn't be fussed if I forgot to bring it.[/quote] I didn't say expensive, I said crap. ie - one which you didn't like the tone of. As the OP said "Core Tone" isn't very important. My position is that that every part of the signal chain is important because I believe my tone is the result of my playing through these parts. Your position, if I understand thee is that you can modify your tone through effects to such a level that some parts of your chain are inconsequential ie you can't hear the difference. I think both positions are valid by the way. So long as the player is happy with the result. The thing is though... do you include a bass as something where it's intrinsic addition or subtraction from your subjective tone can be safely ignored?

[quote name='cheddatom' post='736024' date='Feb 5 2010, 12:04 PM']Set right means setting them to the same sound. I suppose i'm not just talking about modelling specifically. Using my pedal board and a PA, I reckon I could approximate almost every sound. No, I couldn't set up an absolute copy of a head including it's EQ. As far as models go, I wouldn't know how advanced the latest ones are, but it's clearly withint the realms of possibility to model exactly the behaviour of a valve (or SS) amp. You stick white noise in one end, monitor the other end, and attach actuators (or whatever they're called) to the amp's knobs. Simple![/quote] 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 name='cheddatom' post='735979' date='Feb 5 2010, 11:42 AM']I didn't say that there's no difference, or that they're the same. I'm saying that [b]set right[/b], the two can sound (to the most discerning human ear) exactly the same. It's obviously possible. Then, if two things sound exactly the same, there is no inferior choice. You do then have to take other things into consideration IE the whole signal chain (as 5imon was saying). Perhaps they sound exactly the same until you feed in a load of fizz with a fuzz pedal, at which point the high frequency response "seems" to change, etc etc.[/quote] Set right is a bit vague though innit? Set right for what? Valve amps don't just have one particular tone do they? (although my marshall JCM800 was pretty close) A Pod can't replicate a particular valve amp preamp / power amp at all it's EQ/gain settings can it? So therefore it's easy to tell the difference. Especially if you're using it! At best, the settings on models are approximations, which then get further from their original intention the more you EQ them.

[quote name='Prosebass' post='735974' date='Feb 5 2010, 11:39 AM']As regards basic tone, every bass I make or modify gets auditioned in front of Mrs Prosebass and she always says the same, which is, ' no matter what bass you play they all sound the same' which is so true.[/quote] ha ha! The last bass I bought, the GF loved it, said how it sounded much better than all the basses. I got it home, put some flats on it and she asked why I did that. "Now it sounds just like all the others!".

[quote name='cheddatom' post='735939' date='Feb 5 2010, 11:15 AM']Also, I can't beleive you people rolling with green papers! Yuck! They're so thick, they give me a sore throat and make me cough (more). I always use silver.[/quote] I'll agree with you on that. I'm not agreeing with you on the Pod thing. They're not like valve amps at all. Although you can make them sound like a valve amp. It's the same doing an impression of somebody. You might be able to impersonate a certain mannerism or someone's voice in a certain situation. Though that might be useful / amusing. It doesn't mean that you've magically morphed into the person your impersonating does it? I can completely agree that Pods and the like are far more useful (in terms of flexibility) and practical than a great big valve amp... but to say that there's no difference? That's a nonsense. They're (like everything) a compromise.

[quote name='51m0n' post='735935' date='Feb 5 2010, 11:13 AM']You and your family subsequently starve, because everyone knows that the public all have golden ears that can tell the difference - no really.... Because you didnt take core tone seriously! Dont say I didnt warn you [/quote] Well put. If you don't look after your tone, your tone won't look after you.

[quote name='Toasted' post='735831' date='Feb 5 2010, 09:16 AM']I'm all about the cleans.[/quote] My house needs doing. When are you free?

[quote name='Johnston' post='735810' date='Feb 5 2010, 08:43 AM']A quick question for yous!! Whats better a night that you get your tone spot on but the gig is a lead ballon due to other factors[/quote] That would be crap, but I'd take a crumb of comfort. [quote name='Johnston' post='735810' date='Feb 5 2010, 08:43 AM']A night your own carefuly crafted tone goes awry but the gig is one of them good ones that gives you a real buzz????[/quote] That would be great, but I'd wish I'd got my tone right. Worse case scenario is that the gigs crap and your amp breaks. I've had one of them!

yeah, run for the hills. OR if, you feel confident enough, do it for the laffs (it will go wrong!) . BUT DONT LEND ANY OF YOUR KIT! I only ever lend kit out to bands who we've booked as support (which is rare since we usually just play all night ourselves nowadays ) and even then it's on a strictly - you bust it, you pay for it, I know where you live kinda deal. I'd never do it for a promoter, not unless they were paying me to hire the kit - enough to make it worth my while + insurance. Drummers are different beasts and seem to lend kit out quite freely. But this is not that kind of situation.

She's deffo just trying to get the kit. If you can get out of that, and you can plan an escape route if it all goes tits up, I'd play the gig. It sound hilarious. Start of last summer we played a student union bar on a Friday night. The bar wasn't even open during the hour we sat about waiting to be able to soundcheck. I don't think that opened until they let the punters in. The promoter didn't even turn up on the night. And neither did the band who had been done for supplying the backline and kit before we went on. Luckily we had no drummer at the time and were playing a bit of country (which went down wonderfully... erm not . The band who did quite a good impression of a sh!t [i]Busted[/i] went down excellently ) But we played and it was fun. Our then new guitarists first gig. No disaster. But someone did come and ask us for the "tickets and the money". That was funny. It was the first I'd heard of any tickets. Apparently they'd sent 100 tickets to our bandleader, completely unsolicited with no instruction and he'd given some away. He'd assumed that was how he was supposed to make money to pay ourselves with so they were his to do with as he wanted. Luckily he's a lazy arse really (and we'd only agreed to this gig about a week before) and managed to find most of the tickets secreted around his person. Most of the people who came to see us paid on the door. I'd have really laughed if he'd sold all the tickets and we'd spent the money. So this "promoter"... basically books bands, gets some tickets printed and expects the bands to sell the tickets and collect the money for him, expects them to know that when they mysteriously appear in the post (or not as he's gonna send some one to collect for him anyway). Doesn't get the drum kit there for us, or a bass amp. (the band who were supposed to bring the kit had no idea that we didn't have a drummer, nor that we might have needed one) And he doesn't even turn up and sends some fella we don't know from Adam to ask us for money at 10:30pm on a Friday night. I'm sure we got asked back about 3 months after.

[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='732572' date='Feb 2 2010, 09:24 AM']...spalted crotch quilt burl top made from the last remaining Truffula tree.[/quote]

[quote name='51m0n' post='735334' date='Feb 4 2010, 05:58 PM']You seem to be arguing at odds to me on this I think....[/quote] Aye, to be honest, no-ones right or wrong when it comes to what they think they can hear... [quote name='51m0n' post='735334' date='Feb 4 2010, 05:58 PM']Tell that to Musical Fidelity, their Titan power amplifier is about as good as it gets at £30000 a pop it ought to be, and its solid state.[/quote] It's a bit tinny. I prefer my Sansui [quote name='51m0n' post='735334' date='Feb 4 2010, 05:58 PM']If you take a decent bit of sensible speaker cable and measure the output off the end the difference between that and an $8000 a meter cable is barely measurable.[/quote] I didn't think it was measurable at all. In that you can measure the difference between two different wires, but the wire wouldn't be able to tell you which one was $8000 a meter. Didn't this audiophile speaker wire thing start off as a con with some bankrupt stock? I'm sure I read that somewhere. [quote name='51m0n' post='735334' date='Feb 4 2010, 05:58 PM']Again its been done well enough to fool a forum full of bassplayers (and many others too I hasten to add) looking for the truth, its just not as hard as you are making out to model a tube closely enough to fool the human ear. Sorry, but thats the case. All those who want to dispute that, claiming unbelievably powerful senses akin to electronic analysis equiptment take a big step forward. You have not yet done a true double blind test, so you havent been proven wrong conclusively yet. If you did you would be wrong on average 50% of the time. Accept it as unpalateable as it may seem. The geeks have achieved that much.[/quote] I'm still not convinced. Ok - I'm not suggesting that I can tell if someone else is playing through whatever amps. However, I find, that I prefer playing through valve amps... I find it easier to EQ a pleasant tone to my ears. I've yet to hear myself play through a model which sounds like I know I get valve amps to sound like. A better test would be to get the whole control group to play into two amps, one valve, one solid state modeled on the valve amp and see if they could tell the difference themselves, let them play with the EQ not knowing which one was which.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='735311' date='Feb 4 2010, 05:39 PM']As has already been said though, spectral analysis is pointless - who looks at music? If it sounds ballpark then it's fine, especially on bass. We're the only people who listen to bass guitar sounds critically anyway.[/quote] Yeah I know, I'm just being pedantic. My original point was it's a mistake to think the tone of an instrument no longer matters because you can dial in tone, when "good tone" (ie the tone you want) is about maximising the quality of the signal from start to finish and taking control of it through whichever means are best. It's not about thinking "Well, I can't tell the difference, swap it out for an inferior substitute", because, that is the road to sh!t tone.

[quote name='51m0n' post='735288' date='Feb 4 2010, 05:19 PM']A test was done here or TB over this and the results were inconclusive. Similar tests were done between an Ampeg B15 and a MB LMII on TB (by JimmyP IIRC) - masses of votes taken as to which was which, and guess what the split was utterly inconclusive. This is on a bass forum listened to by bassists (often with an agenda one way or the other) and even then solo'ed they couldn't be relied upon to tell the amps apart.[/quote] Though I'm sure that was fun for those involved, that's a pretty loaded test. So people can't tell the difference between how one player sounds using two different amps EQ'd to sound similar. It hardly proves anything other than that does it? [quote name='51m0n' post='735288' date='Feb 4 2010, 05:19 PM']How can you possibly expect the public to? What about in a mix?[/quote] To be honest, I don't. But I don't come at playing bass from that angle really. I play for myself, and if I can hear the difference, then that's enough. I hope somebody else can / will / does, but so what if they don't? At least I tried. :brow:

[quote name='51m0n' post='735256' date='Feb 4 2010, 04:58 PM']And I've yet to see any really hi end hifi (please site some evidence) that wont accept high end CD as an input. Really good CD is very very good indeed these days. SACD is staggering.[/quote] I never said anything about anything not taking CD as an input. [quote name='51m0n' post='735256' date='Feb 4 2010, 04:58 PM']All valves do is degrade the signal in a measurable, gentle and acoustically pleasant way. They impart no magic other than even order distortion. They are not a Holy Grail, just a different way of treating a signal. If you push them hard they dont sound harsh because of the nature of the way they break up. If you dont push them hard the effect is less obvious. If you drive them well within their limits the degradation is unnoticeable, and unmeasurable. Just like a transistor in the same circumstances. That is an absolute fact.[/quote] It's is also absolute fact that people who design and build hifi where the brief is to "make the best possible" use valves. They don't use transistors. If you A/B a top end transistor hi fi and a top end valve hi fi, you can not only hear the difference, but the differences between them are detectable through spectrum analysis. So it's not "immeasurable". [quote name='51m0n' post='735256' date='Feb 4 2010, 04:58 PM']As for needing a super computer to model a tube, that is a complete myth. Please site a study to support this. It just is not the case![/quote] You'd need a pretty powerful computer to completely and accurately model a specific valve and it's habits foibles and responses at different levels of heat and voltage. That's what I was alluding to. It would be like modelling the weather. I'd like to see / hear of someone who has successfully (with or without a supercomputer) recreated a specific valve amp which stands up to aural and spectral scrutiny.

[quote name='silddx' post='735254' date='Feb 4 2010, 04:56 PM']You can show that spectrum analysis to my ears and see if [u]they[/u] notice [/quote] Ah, but your ears would notice the sound, whilst your eyes could feast on the graphs

[quote name='silddx' post='735241' date='Feb 4 2010, 04:51 PM']Cool! I'll stick my POD into a valve HiFi power amp and it will sound even better![/quote] I agree. Valve power all the way! [quote name='silddx' post='735241' date='Feb 4 2010, 04:51 PM']Seriously though, you are talking about a whole band sound here with a full frequency range. I defy pretty much anyone to tell the difference between a digital valve amp model and a real valve amp with a guitar or bass through it. In fact, it's been demonstrated, even on BC, that many people were saying the digital models sounded more appealing than their valve amp counterparts.[/quote] Well, that's the thing isn't it. Where do you draw the line? For me, any compromise I make on sound quality (equiv SS vs Valve) is going to be about price and transportability. If the last two were non-considerations then I wouldn't have a solid state power amp in my rig. I did have a digital one, which was OK, but not as good as the mosfets in there now Digital models schmodels. It's all subjective. I bet on average though, more people would prefer the sound of a true valve amp than a model, even if there are a few that prefer models. There are people that don't like strawberries that eat strawberry flavour ice cream.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='735238' date='Feb 4 2010, 04:49 PM']A difference, yeh, but which one is more "true"? I know that analog technology has the equivalent of an infinite sample rate and frequency response, but CDs aren't that far off. Perhaps what you're actually hearing is tonal colouration and compression?![/quote] That doesn't bear up when you see the spectrum analysis though.

[quote name='silddx' post='735222' date='Feb 4 2010, 04:34 PM']Given your stance on digital, you can't tell me you are getting value for money from your five grand HiFi when the album was recorded into a computer, mixed on a computer and mastered on a computer, then transferred to your CD which you play on your CD player which decodedes a digital signal into five grand's worth of analogue? Are you mad, sir?[/quote] Ha ha, well. yes. I am. no. No I'm not. My "Hi-Fi" cost about £220 from Richers in about 1989. I added a CD player for a further £80 in about 1997. However, if you hear a CD through a really good valve Hi-Fi, you can tell the difference immediately. Even if you A/B it with other really good SS audiophile amps. They're much easier to listen to at higher volumes (too much volume for my semi-detached ) And they sound better, richer bass, crisper highs, rounder mids at lower volumes. There's no need for a loudness button for instance... the response is the same across all frequencies (well all the ones you'd want) at all volume levels. I do agree that an amplified signal is always going to be weakest at it's weakest point, but why just let the weakest point be so weak?

[quote name='jimijimmi' post='735176' date='Feb 4 2010, 03:57 PM']lthough,you can get great sounds through Digital equiptment![/quote] Deffo. What I was saying about hifi though... if ever you get the chance to speak to people who design really high end hifi (not the hifi know nothing buffs ) they'll not hear of digital coming close to valves. You'd need a supercomputer to process the response of a valve and it's audible on both subjective (aural) and objective (measurable) levels. Even if you needed the flexibilty of digital effects on your front end, ideally you'd be using a plain vanilla valve power amp. We've only got used to the other way around (valve preamps and SS power) because that way around is lighter.