osakasuperrescue

Currently watching some demos of the baby-sized X and yeah, I think this is a good shout. I have some surplus gear to sell off so time to hit Reverb!

Late to the party with a shout for the Laney Digbeth - I'm using the 500w version and finding it's a nice, solid foundation tone. Doesn't necessarily have the unique character of an Ampeg or Darkglass, but then what does outside those brands! Has a DI out and headphone out/line in so handy for use at home too, is a small and lightweight box and sounds monster through cabs too. Comes with a nice tube simulation channel that gets pretty hairy when you crank it, but works great set to neutral as a pedal platform too. Also got some nice touches in the EQ, with a tilt control which has come in handy live and a high mids frequency band selection. More to the point, just £400 brand new

Cheers all - currently investigating some alternate distortion options and chain placement to help with that. Also found that over a quick set at the weekend, rolling off some bass and low mids on the preamp pedal seemed to help a lot, so I'll keep running some experiments

Thanks Kev - super useful intel, especially on the thickness of that bottom string. I'm maybe coming at this from a guitarist perspective where you always go thicker gauge for lower, heavier tunings, but if my aim is to stop the low A# from getting too boomy, maybe I stick with a .130 for it. I always run my Opto-Comp first with a decent amount of squish on it, so sounds like that'll do the trick. Dub is great and all but there is a time and a place for it, and it's not in a sludge metal riff! I think that managing low end distortion is the key thing here - I used the B3K live over the weekend and dialled it all down a notch, plus shaved some bass and low mids off my preamp (used the Laney Digbeth preamp pedal), and that seemed to help too. I'll investigate one of the bigger Darkglass options that allow for that crossover - the variety of their options plus the price always makes me a little nervous but research is all pointing me that direction.

Hello all, hoping to pick some brains here, on the subject of playing in a low tuning live and experiencing some tone issues that I'm trying to diagnose. I'm playing in a sludge metal band on a Yamaha BB235 tuned to match the guitarist in Drop A# (A#-F-A#-D#-G#), so low B down a half step, E-A-D-G up a half step, usually going into a Laney DIgbeth 500w head set fairly conservatively on EQ, pushed by either a Laney Blackheath or Darkglass B3K v1 overdrive (after an Ampeg Opto-Comp). I'm a guitarist by trade and have only been regularly on bass since the start of the year. What I've been finding is that in a few gigs now (so rooms of varying size), riffs on the low A# are getting super muddy, and I'm trying to tick off things I could do to improve this. So far I have: Go up a string gauge notch on the bottom string (so a .135), and down a notch on the rest (.105, .85, .70, .50 vs. the usual .100, .80, .65, .45) to try and balance tensions out and give the low A# more stabillity Better clean blend through pedalboard (I can employ a DSM Simplifier Bass Station which may help) Doing some pedal routing to process the high frequency bass distortion separately, leave the low frequencies as clean as possible (or just a lower gain setting in general) Compensating EQ on the amp (am I right in thinking cut some bass, boost some high mids?) Get a better bass for added performance all round But are there other considerations? I understand from reading elsewhere that an issue with tuning so low is that PAs are going to pick up less of that lowest frequency, but that's starting to get into live sound engineering and a lot more over my head. Hopefully a few other metalheads in here can give me some pointers!

Okay, so here's the thing - I've been gigging with a new band since the start of the year, running a few different setups but have settled on a board (compressor, distortion, chorus) into the front of a Laney Digbeth 500w head, then DI out the back of that (pre or post EQ, whatever FoH ask for). Currently don't have a cab of my own, maybe in the near future, have used backline cab once or twice for stage volume only. Issue I'm finding is that we play low, Drop A# on a 5-string, and I'm getting some nasty, muddy frequencies coming in for any riffs that spends a lot of time on the bottom string. I know that a better clean blend and/or distorting the highs more than the lows will help with that, so I'm investigating bringing the DSM Bass Station back onto my board to use that as a clean signal router, but I'm also confusing myself about the cab sim option the Bass Station offers. If I run my board out through the Bass Station into the front of the Laney and add the cab sim to that, am I confusing the DI output? Should any cab sim be going after the DI but before it reaches the desk? I'm asking because I think blending in some cab sim may also hep tame some of the nastier distortion frequencies (for reference, not a fan of the modern Darkglass 'clank', much more an old school Ampeg growl kind of guy), but I'm not clear on how to work that into my current rig. So I am open to being schooled on how to apply cab sims into DIs in a live setting - any and all suggestions are welcome!

Afternoon all, joining in to pick a wider range of brains than Reddit and this looks like a good place to start! Mid-40s British player, been a guitarist ince the early 90s who dabbled now and then in bass, but as of this year I'm a permanent member in a sludgecore band playing around the East Midlands, who you can find here: Shadowvale My influences are industrial rock (Filter, White Zombie, Nine Inch Nails), while the band is more your Crowbar, Mastodon, Deftones kind of doomy crunch. Playing a Yamaha BB235 5-string down in Drop A# through a Laney Digbeth DB500 head (no cab yet), with access to pedals including a DSM Bass Station, Ampeg Opto-Comp and Liquifier, a Darkglass B3K and Laney Blackheath for drive/distortion and an Orange Fur Coat fuzz I have yet to figure out properly. Also have an Ibanez GSR180 in standard mainly for recording, with a laptop holding plugins like Amplitube, plus some Neural DSP and Bogren stuff.