Wil Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 Whenever I'm in the practice room I am faced with a quandry - should I utilise the active EQ built into my bass to shape my sound, or set everything flat and leave the EQing to my Sansamp? More often than not I find myself leaving the basses' EQ alone entirely and using the amp, but am I missing a trick? Is there any advantage to using more than one EQ stage? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aldude Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 [quote name='Wil' post='1196732' date='Apr 12 2011, 12:57 PM']Whenever I'm in the practice room I am faced with a quandry - should I utilise the active EQ built into my bass to shape my sound, or set everything flat and leave the EQing to my Sansamp? More often than not I find myself leaving the basses' EQ alone entirely and using the amp, but am I missing a trick? Is there any advantage to using more than one EQ stage?[/quote] I would agree that there is far too much EQ possibility across the signal chain. Here's some choices to be made off the top of my head: Which pickup? Active or passive? Bass EQ? Effects that shape the sound, e.g. EQ pedals, tube compressors? Amp head preamp EQ? That's without going into other tone shaping possibilities that can't be changed on the go, e.g. which strings, pickups, cabs. To soothe my brain from all this choice I usually run the amp flat, use an amp built in compressor and just use the active EQ on the bass to shape the sound - that way, if I don't like the way things are sounding, I can give it a tweak, even mid-song. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezbass Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 Run the amp flat and make your adjustments from the bass. If you can't quite get it quite right from the bass then go to the amp's EQ. My £0.02 worth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTUK Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 I set the amp flattish and set about indenting the pre-amp on the bass around middle..and tweak to see what I am missing. I may go back to the amp to compensate for the room...and mess with some mids, but I don't need to do much. As the gig may get louder through the set, I leave some scope on the bass to work with..but if I outstrip that...I know we are getting too loud. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voxpop Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 [quote name='ezbass' post='1196782' date='Apr 12 2011, 01:40 PM']Run the amp flat and make your adjustments from the bass. If you can't quite get it quite right from the bass then go to the amp's EQ. My £0.02 worth.[/quote] +1 use the bass.... unless you are playing a big stage where your bass is Di'ed to the PA, then it is best to tweek the amp so the out front sound does not change. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wil Posted April 12, 2011 Author Share Posted April 12, 2011 Thanks for the responses - it makes sense that using the basses' EQ and leaving the amp flat at least offers the flexibility of adjustment on the fly. I'll try working that way next time we're in the practice space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 Unless you're amp is very limited the tone controls on it will be far more versatile and effective then anything that can be crammed into the average bass guitar control cavity and still leave room for a PP3 battery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ou7shined Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 [quote name='JTUK' post='1196784' date='Apr 12 2011, 01:41 PM']I set the amp [b]flattish[/b] and set about indenting the pre-amp on the bass around middle..and tweak to see what I am missing. I may go back to the amp to compensate for the room...and mess with some mids, but I don't need to do much....[/quote] +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icastle Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 [quote name='Wil' post='1196732' date='Apr 12 2011, 12:57 PM']Whenever I'm in the practice room I am faced with a quandry - should I utilise the active EQ built into my bass to shape my sound, or set everything flat and leave the EQing to my Sansamp? More often than not I find myself leaving the basses' EQ alone entirely and using the amp, but am I missing a trick? Is there any advantage to using more than one EQ stage?[/quote] I tend to do it the other way round - I leave the amp pretty much flat and control everything on the bass as far as I can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charic Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 Interesting, I set a sound I generically like with the amp. Then I alter the bass for song variation etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
watchman Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 When I played active basses I set the sound up to my taste on the rig and then used the bass controls to tweak it on the fly if I needed to. Now I'm a passivist I do the same and scurry around at the back trying to tweak the rig if I got it wrong. I have learned the importance of getting it as right as possible in the first place... At one point I had the idea of using a little Zoom B2.1u to switch between preset sounds, but I can't for the life of me get the hang of getting decent sounds out of these things, and they're really not very tweakable on the fly. I have come to firmly believe that the sound coming from my (passive) bass needs to be about right before anything else happens, and that a very careful choice of tone cap in the bass can achieve wonders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spongebob Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 (edited) I always use the method I was told years ago - all bass settings to the top, and do the tweaking with the amp. Mind you, I've always played passive. Edited April 12, 2011 by spongebob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lozz196 Posted April 12, 2011 Share Posted April 12, 2011 [quote name='spongebob' post='1197103' date='Apr 12 2011, 05:58 PM']I always use the method I was told years ago - all bass settings to the top, and do the tweaking with the amp. Mind you, I've always played passive.[/quote] Same here. Always figured that as I can be a bit exuberent with my picking hand, trying to re-adjust to the right tone after I`ve hit either the volume or tone control would not be practical, whereas whacking it back up to full - well that I can manage. I have now gone down the route of having a DI pedal, such as Sansamp/Behringer/MXR in the line, and have worked on my sound so that the amp & pedal sound very nearly the same. That way, if at a large venue, and having to go through FOH PA, I`ll DI from the pedal not the amp - I can then control volume on stage without being a pain to the sound guy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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