Is our sound over-processed?

[LawrenceH]

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1324162699' post='1471480']
Did you ever see the experiment in Talkbass where someone gave tracks of a guitar with a solid alder body and a bolt on neck and the same pups and strings on a plank of wood found on the floor. No-one could tell which was which.
[/quote]

That bloody thread must be the most misunderstood piece of confusing 'evidence' about wood and tone ever. It is entirely irrelevant, except for perhaps demonstrating the unsurprising fact that the same pickup position and strings on two different pieces of wood have the potential to sound similar, especially through computer speakers. What it doesn't do is prove that wood has no effect on tone. It is n of 1 with no info on wood resonant frequencies, densities etc etc and the lack of consensus doesn't even preclude the possibility that people can hear a difference,just that they can't ascribe it to one or the other.
Anyway, I've been flamed on here before about wood but I think it's actually very interesting, so at the risk of virtual immolation once again, the physics behind wood's contribution to tone is well-characterised. For a string fixed between two points, unless the mounting bar (read: body) is perfectly rigid (which is impossible) then some energy will be imparted to the bar, transfer of which will be most efficient at resonant modes eg the primary resonant frequency. This in turn leads to faster decay of the string note envelope in a frequency-dependent fashion and this is itself amplified via the pickup.
An unambiguous demonstration of the role resonant frequency plays is to take a Fender guitar with a dead spot at a particular fret and put a small c clamp on the headstock. The node causing the dead spot will shift as the mass of the clamp has altered the resonant frequency(ies) of the neck. Headless basses were designed in part to address this phenomenon, so it's important to recognise that both material and construction contribute - if the latter didn't, xylophones would only be able to play one note.
Graphite composite is a very stiff material, and I'd imagine it has a correspondingly high resonant frequency such that the energy imparted to the body is minimised- out of interest, are Statii acoustically quiet compared to, say, a typical Fender, notably in the mids? Fixing wings onto this type of material won't make much of a difference and you'd expect such an instrument to sustain very well with an even decay envelope. Similarly, laminate neck-throughs are typically going to be very stiff and strong. But take a non-laminate, lightweight neck and bolt it onto a medium density bit of wood and now you have the potential for significant resonance modes in the mid-range which will affect the tone of the instrument more noticeably. Anything that then alters the way the [i]system[/i] resonates, which can be making a bit of wood thinner, or stiffer, or a high mass bridge, has the potential to be audible. Acoustic guitar builders have more tricks up their sleeve here because the construction plays an even more dominant/complex role in tone, so they can incorporate bracing, change back, top and side woods to alter mass versus stiffness of any one part of the system and in multiple planes through the material, as well as altering Helmholtz resonator tuning which will play a dominant role in tone. We can't do a lot of that with electric basses so tend to be more reliant on the inherent properties of the wood in that respect, laminate construction notwithstanding.
Btw I'm sure that even if instruments did tend to differ in general it's perfectly possible to build bolt-ons with the characteristics of neck-thoughs and vice versa.

[guildbass]

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1324135512' post='1471187']
Funny you should mention a ribbon mic.

Interesting bit of kit that against a more modern mic.

The ribbon is heavy as far as mic membranes go, and very inflexible (its actually corrugated). Back then they couldnt deal with too much SPL either.

The result is a mic that by its very nature severely colours the tone, it loses a lot of top end, more importatnly though te mic cant reproduce very fast transients at all, in effect its a limiter in and of itself.

Now you may think this is a mad or bad or dangerous thing to use on a asource if there is some other device available that can do a better job of reproducinbg the real sound for you. Well sometimes, but not always, Bruce Swedien delivberately used ribbons when recording fast percussion deliberately because of this limiting effect, it meant he could get a much louder mix with louder percussion without having to resort to further processing.

Now that is what I mean by every thing you use has an effect, everything colours the sound, so your Buddy Holy single ribbon mic recordings, apart from the huge amount of eq that is inherent in a recording to tape at any time (boost highs going in cut them coming out to help with the hissss, also the biasing as well) would have been helped with nice Pultech style eqs and almost certainly some form of compression (yes even then).

You dont seem to grasp what goes in to a mix to make it sound natural, at the very very least you will be eq'ed (probably some fairly drastic cutting so you and the kick fit together), almost certainly you will be further compressed. There may well be other tricks too (ducking the bass of the kick to get more clarity and perception of tightness, not to mention a couple of dB of extra level attainable in the entir emix as a result). Then there qwill be the rest of the band too. It isnt done to justify the equiptment its done to make it sound better, and if you dont do it you end up with a vastly inferior mix every time. I'd happily prove it to you.

You ask what the Royal Albert Hall adds to a sound, well in fact it has always suffered from a massive echo, which initially was extremely detrimental, until the work on the vellarium and mushroom design and placement in the late 1990's started to get things under control [url="http://peutz.fr/lacoustique/articles/salles/PaperIOA02.pdf"]reference[/url]. There is nothing helpful about that, but its natural I guess.
[/quote]

I say ribbon mic... It may not have been.. But it was a vocal mic of some kind. The point was that the band played live, in a room with the guitar/amp combo doing it's thing, an upright bass, a drum kit or some cardboard boxes or the producers knees for percussion and a microphone. Yes, of course the equipment added or took away some stuff but not intentionally. At the end of the day, the tone of the bass was recorded faithfully...For what it was worth.

What we have going into the Studio is a classical guitar, a bass and a female vocalist. I intend to preserve the essential tone of my bass as far as I can, because I LIKE the tone of my bass and consider it appropriate. It has a pleasing, well rounded tone without the help of extra electronics and I believe it has that tone because of it's construction. I intend to reproduce the acoustic tone of the rather good Yamaha classical guitar as far as I can, and I intend to do likewise with the vocal.

The Guitar will be externally mic'd to sound like it is even though it has a reasonably good built-in piezo/mic set-up. My bass may be compressed/limited if I can't play evenly enough but the point of this thread was about the tone of the instrument. I will NOT be altering the TONE of my bass by stuffing it through magic boxes. Natural limitations in recording devices and room acoustics, whether real or synthetically applied are a part of the listeners experience but this thread was about whether a bass guitar has an inherent tone or whether it derives it's TONE from the intentional modification of the signal path, like an electric guitar does. In my opinion, MY two basses both generate tones which, when amplified need no alteration
to sound nice. Yes, in a challenging sonic environment one might need fancy help to RETAIN THAT TONE in the mix, but the point is, the tone generated by the instrument alone CAN, and in my case IS good enough. The tone generated by my set-neck Guild WASN'T....It needed help. The tone generated by every bolt-on neck bass guitar [u]I[/u] have tried (that's me, not anyone else mind) , needed help to bring it to life.

The OP said '[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Do we actually like the sound bass guitars make or to do we need the sugar coating to make them palatable?'[/font][/color]

Well, In answer to that question, I like the 'natural' sound my two basses make and after 38 years of bass playing and 38 years of having and hearing basses which sounded dull, dead and lifeless unless they were put through loads of circuitry, I believe the difference is that the construction of the Warwick and the Spector, being NS designed maple through-necks, gives them both their own distinct and natural tones which are attractive and usable enough to stand alone, something which no other basses I have owned of played has had.

So there!

[guildbass]

[quote name='LawrenceH' timestamp='1324181673' post='1471581']
That bloody thread must be the most misunderstood piece of confusing 'evidence' about wood and tone ever. It is entirely irrelevant, except for perhaps demonstrating the unsurprising fact that the same pickup position and strings on two different pieces of wood have the potential to sound similar, especially through computer speakers. What it doesn't do is prove that wood has no effect on tone. It is n of 1 with no info on wood resonant frequencies, densities etc etc and the lack of consensus doesn't even preclude the possibility that people can hear a difference,just that they can't ascribe it to one or the other.
Anyway, I've been flamed on here before about wood but I think it's actually very interesting, so at the risk of virtual immolation once again, the physics behind wood's contribution to tone is well-characterised. For a string fixed between two points, unless the mounting bar (read: body) is perfectly rigid (which is impossible) then some energy will be imparted to the bar, transfer of which will be most efficient at resonant modes eg the primary resonant frequency. This in turn leads to faster decay of the string note envelope in a frequency-dependent fashion and this is itself amplified via the pickup.
An unambiguous demonstration of the role resonant frequency plays is to take a Fender guitar with a dead spot at a particular fret and put a small c clamp on the headstock. The node causing the dead spot will shift as the mass of the clamp has altered the resonant frequency(ies) of the neck. Headless basses were designed in part to address this phenomenon, so it's important to recognise that both material and construction contribute - if the latter didn't, xylophones would only be able to play one note.
Graphite composite is a very stiff material, and I'd imagine it has a correspondingly high resonant frequency such that the energy imparted to the body is minimised- out of interest, are Statii acoustically quiet compared to, say, a typical Fender, notably in the mids? Fixing wings onto this type of material won't make much of a difference and you'd expect such an instrument to sustain very well with an even decay envelope. Similarly, laminate neck-throughs are typically going to be very stiff and strong. But take a non-laminate, lightweight neck and bolt it onto a medium density bit of wood and now you have the potential for significant resonance modes in the mid-range which will affect the tone of the instrument more noticeably. Anything that then alters the way the [i]system[/i] resonates, which can be making a bit of wood thinner, or stiffer, or a high mass bridge, has the potential to be audible. Acoustic guitar builders have more tricks up their sleeve here because the construction plays an even more dominant/complex role in tone, so they can incorporate bracing, change back, top and side woods to alter mass versus stiffness of any one part of the system and in multiple planes through the material, as well as altering Helmholtz resonator tuning which will play a dominant role in tone. We can't do a lot of that with electric basses so tend to be more reliant on the inherent properties of the wood in that respect, laminate construction notwithstanding.
Btw I'm sure that even if instruments did tend to differ in general it's perfectly possible to build bolt-ons with the characteristics of neck-thoughs and vice versa.
[/quote]

Perhaps while the neck is designed not to resonate, the wings, affixed as they can be via different density strips, are allowed to move when excited at certain lower frequencies. In effect, acting like the ports on a loaded speaker cab do....???

As regards very rigid materials...Surely any vibration generated by the strings will pass through that material without attenuation and either the entire device will 'ring' or if there WERE wings fitted which were allowed to move, they would be excited by the vibration. Wouldn't the structure of the material have a bearing here. I know from speaker cabinet design that Medite ( a very dense chipboard) was liked because it didn't 'ring'....

Edited December 19, 2011 by guildbass

[51m0n]

Of course the equiptment available was used to add and subtract stuff intentionally. They used proximity effect, and the root mean square rule, to mix the band for one mic in the room. My pont is every choice you make when recording a band effects the timbre of every instrument to some degree, and how all the instrumetns are perceived, whether you track with one mic in a room or 100 hundred tracks overdubbed and mixed later.

You dont hear the whole tone of any instrument in a mix (any mix) unless its playing on its own. Its tone is obscured by other things in the mix unless they are seperated by frequency sufficiently - and sufficiently is gerneally several octaves apart.

With as simple a mix as the one you describe there is a lot less to compete with your bass. If you like the way it sounds with absolutely no eq then thats brilliant as there is less to go wrong for you. In a mix of such clearly seperated instruments: acoustic guitar will only step on the mids and zing of your bass (but that is enough to require a bit of eq to help them stay clear), and will probably be seperated in the stereo spread to make room for the real star, the vocal, which if its a female will have a fundamental around 200Hz, and if is male more likely 100Hz give or take, and you can bet that if your bass is hot in a region that the voice is your bass will be eq'ed to move out of the way.

My Roscoe solo doesnt need any eq to sound fantatic to my ears, it is very very punchy, which I prefer to super deep, especially for live. Of course with a tiny bit of eq and pickup selection I can radically change the timbre to suit the song, especially coupled with differences in playing style, and strings. However there isnt a chance that anyone could play it such that it needed no eq or compression or anything else in order to deliver the best possible result in a busy mix. There is simply too much going on.

Bass doesnt need a tonne of fx to sound great, it does need some careful sculpting (both frequency and often transients) to fit in a mix. I dont really understand the OPs original point since I dont hear much bass that has been processed for the sake of it. Its processed enough to work in the song it resides, if it happens to be an old style funk track then it is processed accordingly with the amps and cabs and mics used, if it happens to be some indie anthem then its generally a dull thud, if its a 'bass-centric' thing there may be more flavour from fx, think Bootsy. Its what works, if you were playing an old school Motown track you want a dull thud, duller the better, super old flatwound strings etc, then the harmonic content of the sound comes from the small tube amp and cab that are being driven hard, and the aggressive plucking pushing the pickups hard too.

You dont mention whether you intend to use new or old strings, and that is in my opinion the single biggest timbre changing tool you have on a bass. If you ise old strings the harmonics simply arent there, and boosting the treble will not bring them back. If you ise new strings there is a mass of harmonics making a rich and complex sound, and even if you cut the treble and upper mids they still add flavour to the sound. The same bass will sound worlds apart with different quality, construction and age strings. I would suggest that the choice of string/condition is the first step toward bass tone, since it is the only part of the instrument you can readily change to fundamentally alter the timbre of the ntoe produced.

[guildbass]

Yeah...maybe a bit of proximity effect, but not a huge amount...Same goes for the other instruments. A snip of tape echo on the early stuff, a special room on the later stuff, a basic mic mixer without tone circuits straight into an Ampex high speed tape recorder. Later stuff was stereo with some more complex mic'ing going on...But much of it is extremely natural sounding stuff and you can hear that it is not done with much if you listen with a very revealing audio set up as the phase information from the room is still there from the microphone.

i shall be putting new strings on the Warwick. Whether i take the fresh edge off the strings or try to capture them with that first few hours of brightness still intact will be dictated by when I can put them on.

We are very cognizant of the interaction between bass and other instruments, in fact I have modified my bass lines many times to remove or re-voice a
note or chord that is interacting with some other part of the mix. However, the classical guitar does tend to stay well away from much of the bass lines...I am trying for a sound which uses bass as the 'floor' of the soundstage, using sustained chords to provide a rich backdrop, arpeggio'd chords to provide a ripple over that, the guitar putting the sparkle into the air and the vocal a lyrical ribbon flying through it all... f***, that sounds pretentious, but hey, shoot for the stars, right?

[4 Strings]

"That bloody thread must be the most misunderstood piece of confusing 'evidence' about wood and tone ever. It is entirely irrelevant, except for perhaps demonstrating the unsurprising fact that the same pickup position and strings on two different pieces of wood have the potential to sound similar, especially through computer speakers. What it doesn't do is prove that wood has no effect on tone. It is n of 1 with no info on wood resonant frequencies, densities etc etc and the lack of consensus doesn't even preclude the possibility that people can hear a difference,just that they can't ascribe it to one or the other."

>>> Agree, and it also shows that a 'better' sound was not had by the 'superior' wood being used (the plank was pine, btw, very soft indeed.) He did three samples so you couldn't simply guess right. No-one got it as the differences were so slight. I played it through the hi-fi, as I'm sure many others did. But I'm sure any subtleties were lost, bit like using different pups, amps, speakers etc.

"For a string fixed between two points, unless the mounting bar (read: body) is perfectly rigid (which is impossible) then some energy will be imparted to the bar, transfer of which will be most efficient at resonant modes eg the primary resonant frequency. This in turn leads to faster decay of the string note envelope in a frequency-dependent fashion and this is itself amplified via the pickup."

>>> Hence my granite cliff bass example

An unambiguous demonstration of the role resonant frequency plays is to take a Fender guitar with a dead spot at a particular fret and put a small c clamp on the headstock. The node causing the dead spot will shift as the mass of the clamp has altered the resonant frequency(ies) of the neck. Headless basses were designed in part to address this phenomenon, so it's important to recognise that both material and construction contribute - if the latter didn't, xylophones would only be able to play one note.

>>> To improve sustain you add mass to the headstock so why would a headless neck improve anything when one with infinite mass is the ideal?

Fixing wings onto this type of material won't make much of a difference and you'd expect such an instrument to sustain very well with an even decay envelope. Similarly, laminate neck-throughs are typically going to be very stiff and strong. But take a non-laminate, lightweight neck and bolt it onto a medium density bit of wood and now you have the potential for significant resonance modes in the mid-range which will affect the tone of the instrument more noticeably. Anything that then alters the way the [i]system[/i] resonates, which can be making a bit of wood thinner, or stiffer, or a high mass bridge, has the potential to be audible. Acoustic guitar builders have more tricks up their sleeve here ...

>>> ... because they are acoustic instruments! All correct in theory but the potential effect on an electric bass is too small to be measurable nor audible.

Edited December 19, 2011 by 4 Strings

[guildbass]

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1324290354' post='1472493']
"

>>> ... because they are acoustic instruments! All correct in theory but the potential effect on an electric bass is too small to be measurable nor audible.
[/quote]

The only thing is, if you push a bass guitar up against a wood door and play it, there is an appreciable amount of volume. The bass guitar's body, neck and headstock is resonating with enough energy to make a large flat surface radiate sound waves at a fair level. I would imagine that the design and nature of the materials used in the body extremities could have an effect .on the energy within the body (and thus ultimately the output) if they were allowed to move... And if they were allowed to move in a controlled way., could have a 'designed in' positive effect...

[BigRedX]

[quote name='guildbass' timestamp='1324291956' post='1472523']
The only thing is, if you push a bass guitar up against a wood door and play it, there is an appreciable amount of volume. The bass guitar's body, neck and headstock is resonating with enough energy to make a large flat surface radiate sound waves at a fair level. I would imagine that the design and nature of the materials used in the body extremities could have an effect .on the energy within the body (and thus ultimately the output) if they were allowed to move... And if they were allowed to move in a controlled way., could have a 'designed in' positive effect...
[/quote]
But you'll be changing the tone by allowing another object to resonate and therefore "processing" the sound.

[BigRedX]

Just face it there is no such thing as a completely flat electronic circuit/microphone/speaker. If you spend a lot of money you can get close but you never get exactly the same waveform out with only uniform amplitude changes as you put in. And most of the time you wouldn't want to.

Don't go confusing processing that you find sounds pleasing with no processing at all.

[guildbass]

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1324162377' post='1471478']
Spector also uses different pickups and preamp and has different strings. This is going to mask any subtlety in sound the wood may make, if any.
[/quote]

Hmm... I don't think the pick-ups do that much... I've heard a Pedulla going from Barts to something very up-market and the overall tone was barely altered... I think the basses construction creates the primary tone signature, followed by wood DENSITY followed by pick-ups. Both my Guild 302's sounded the same, one was mahogany, one was Ash but they weighed virtually the same. The Spector weighs 25% more than the virtually identically shaped Warwick and sounds brighter and 'toppier but doesn't have the long lasting growling bottom notes ...Or rather it does, but they are pushed back in the mix so to speak. In a sense, it's like the Warwick has all the sliders on it's metaphorical 7 band EQ flat, and the Spector has the bottom three rolled off [quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1324298622' post='1472652']
But you'll be changing the tone by allowing another object to resonate and therefore "processing" the sound.
[/quote][quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1324298622' post='1472652']
But you'll be changing the tone by allowing another object to resonate and therefore "processing" the sound.
[/quote]

No!... The point of the thread is in effect, is the sound coming out of the bass what we like, or does that signal NEED to be changed. Up until the point of the signal leaving the instrument, any activity whether mechanical or electromagnetic is involved with creating the tone. At that point, the question is;' Is that tone completed, or is it in effect one half of a tone. In my opinion, for an electric 6 string guitar, it is half the tone and the amplifier adds the other half. however, i believe that a good bass guitar can output a tone that merely needs to amplified.
Yes, a pedant could argue that every transducer adds or subtracts something, but the difference is, unlike a guitarist, we are not necessarily choosing these things to add to the sound, we are choosing these things to try and preserve an existing sonic signature.
I don't buy a Mosfet power amp because of the neat way it clips or the way the rectifier valve lets go, I buy a huge solid state power amp because it has THD figures of 0.0001 % or whatever... In other words, I look for a linear response and I buy massive amps so that they don't clip

Edited December 19, 2011 by guildbass

[BigRedX]

[quote name='guildbass' timestamp='1324309997' post='1472852']
I don't buy a Mosfet power amp because of the neat way it clips or the way the rectifier valve lets go, I buy a huge solid state power amp because it has THD figures of 0.0001 % or whatever... In other words, I look for a linear response and I buy massive amps so that they don't clip
[/quote]
Really?

I don't. I don't care if the response is linear or what the THD figures are or any of the other numbers on the spec sheet. The things I'm interested in are: Is it loud enough? Is it light enough? Do I like the sound that is produced when I play my bass through it into my speakers?

[guildbass]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1324310508' post='1472865']
Really?

I don't. I don't care if the response is linear or what the THD figures are or any of the other numbers on the spec sheet. The things I'm interested in are: Is it loud enough? Is it light enough? Do I like the sound that is produced when I play my bass through it into my speakers?
[/quote]

Fair enough. Horses for courses...I already like the sound of my bass so I use amps which add as little as possible to the instrument's sound, and I use a cab which again adds as little as possible. sadly, I can't afford digi amps so my amps weigh about the same as my car...Hey ho...:-)

[BigRedX]

[quote name='guildbass' timestamp='1324320995' post='1473023']
Fair enough. Horses for courses...I already like the sound of my bass so I use amps which add as little as possible to the instrument's sound, and I use a cab which again adds as little as possible. sadly, I can't afford digi amps so my amps weigh about the same as my car...Hey ho...:-)
[/quote]

So what bass, amp and cab do you have?

[51m0n]

[quote name='guildbass' timestamp='1324320995' post='1473023']
Fair enough. Horses for courses...I already like the sound of my bass so I use amps which add as little as possible to the instrument's sound, and I use a cab which again adds as little as possible. sadly, I can't afford digi amps so my amps weigh about the same as my car...Hey ho...:-)
[/quote]

What cab is it you use that is so incredibly flat. I am truly intrigued at this point.

Edited December 19, 2011 by 51m0n

[51m0n]

[quote name='guildbass' timestamp='1324289183' post='1472482']
Yeah...maybe a bit of proximity effect, but not a huge amount...Same goes for the other instruments. A snip of tape echo on the early stuff, a special room on the later stuff, a basic mic mixer without tone circuits straight into an Ampex high speed tape recorder. Later stuff was stereo with some more complex mic'ing going on...But much of it is extremely natural sounding stuff and you can hear that it is not done with much if you listen with a very revealing audio set up as the phase information from the room is still there from the microphone.

i shall be putting new strings on the Warwick. Whether i take the fresh edge off the strings or try to capture them with that first few hours of brightness still intact will be dictated by when I can put them on.

We are very cognizant of the interaction between bass and other instruments, in fact I have modified my bass lines many times to remove or re-voice a
note or chord that is interacting with some other part of the mix. However, the classical guitar does tend to stay well away from much of the bass lines...I am trying for a sound which uses bass as the 'floor' of the soundstage, using sustained chords to provide a rich backdrop, arpeggio'd chords to provide a ripple over that, the guitar putting the sparkle into the air and the vocal a lyrical ribbon flying through it all... f***, that sounds pretentious, but hey, shoot for the stars, right?
[/quote]

No, plenty of proximity effect, the singer wa right on top of the mic, the rest of the band up to 20 feet away in your old school 50's mono recording.

Tape was pretty lo tech in the 50's, plenty of noise and if you ran high speed you lost bass, if you ran low spped you lost top, the noise was consistent at least. All the desks were tube desks, masses of coloration, they were still striving to get uncoloured tube desks in the 50's. WHen less coloured desks turned up they were solid state, one of the first studios to switch was Motown and they HATED the new uncoloured desks.

Alot of spring reverb on the guitars, and plate reverb on the vocals was not uncommon, not to mention reverb chambers, which although they function by literally using air in a chamber as the effect are not really natural (the attic at Motown would not be a place to play as a band).

The point I keep coming back to is it sounds natural to you as you perceive it to be natural. The fact is that it isnt actually a very natural sound, it is the sum of all the colouration of the choices made by the engineer and producer up to that point (yes even in the fifties) as well as the musicians.

[EmmettC]

I always thought my Trace Elliot made every bass sound the same, but my Ampeg and SWR don't alter the sound as much, unless I dial it in. I used an Ashdown at a gig on Friday, and though not as bad as the Trace, it seemed to make my G&L and Fender sound similar, and not how they normally sound,
I don't own the Ashdown, and I didn't have alot of time to fiddle, so I could be misjudging it, but my Trace was terrible. My fender sounded no better than my cheap Aria played through that amp.

[guildbass]

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1324325247' post='1473092']
What cab is it you use that is so incredibly flat. I am truly intrigued at this point.
[/quote]
The Pre-amp is a Peavey max. It has a cross-over output. Run flat it's pretty clean, especially through the solid state side. The output of that is shared into a Crown MA 2400...1200 RMS into 4 ohms per side. One channel feeds a 15" Gauss in a ported cab. The other channel is run into a custom built top cab which has a pair of 7" kevlar coned B & W HiFi drivers in individual tuned enclosures. The cross-over-ed output from the pre-amp can be swept between the two cabs to get them close to linear. With a pair of horns on top (which I don't actually use live) a sweep tone gives a close to linear response. It's a little more bumpy down at the bottom than it could be where the port isn't talking to the Gauss quite as well as it could...It was originally built for a Fender... But basically, with Cd music through the system, it sounds like a fairly good PA speaker. I don;t use the horns live, and to be honest, the stuff I do these days doesn't require this rig. Instead I use a small '80's 'Boxer' amp which is a single 12" in a wooden cab. It's not great but I can get it to sound pretty and close to the basses natural tone and at the end of the day, the punters don't care....It's rich enough to fill the bottom of the sound and bright enough for my solo stuff to be heard as individual notes.
in the studio, i will be D.I'ing with (hopefully) new strings...

[BigRedX]

How did you pick your crossover frequency?

How do you know your pre-amp is running flat?

[guildbass]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1324327653' post='1473134']
How did you pick your crossover frequency?

How do you know your pre-amp is running flat?
[/quote]

It scopes flat when set accordingly. I run a slightly phase delayed signal though the pre-amp and then mix that with an inverted copy of the original signal. If I get a null, it's flat...I can get it pretty close on the solid state side. The valve side does have the odd harmonic slipping through...,

The crossover frequency was set by ear...I tweaked it until there was no dips or bumps as the sweep tone ran up. it plays music fairly well and at the end of the day it doesn't significantly colour the sound of the bass,. The point of this post was to ask or perhaps discuss whether we use our basses as one half of a tone system, with the other half being an INTENTIONAL change or enhancement to the tone made by electronics in the signal path. OR do we use our amplification to simply make the instrument tone audible, with little or no alteration to the instrument's natural sound. I choose the latter. I endeavour to reproduce my instrument's tone without adding anything. I will never achieve perfection but I strive for it.

I do however have a fair amount of reverb on my vocal...Because my voice sucks!

[LawrenceH]

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1324290354' post='1472493']
Agree, and it also shows that a 'better' sound was not had by the 'superior' wood being used (the plank was pine, btw, very soft indeed.
[/quote]

Pine is actually a potentially very good wood for constructing musical instruments, offering excellent stiffness-to-weight ratio. It's what good piano soundboards are made from, most acoustic guitar tops, and early Fenders were I believe made of pine as well. IIRC that thread on talkbass also used a piece of wood significantly chunkier than a typical guitar neck which will drastically impact the resonance/stiffness, so the test is not really all that useful as too many variables have been altered simultaneously.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1324290354' post='1472493']
>>> Hence my granite cliff bass example
[/quote]
Yes, except that I'd say personally I don't desire this at all as to me that even, long envelope decay sounds a bit characterless, and I'm sure a lot of others would share that tonal preference.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1324290354' post='1472493']
>>> To improve sustain you add mass to the headstock so why would a headless neck improve anything when one with infinite mass is the ideal?
[/quote]

We add mass because it's often easier than taking it away. The point is to shift the dead spot slightly away from a particular note (hopefully ending up somewhere in-between fretted notes) by changing the frequency of the destructive resonance, that can be up or down. The neck including headstock can be considered a damped mass-spring system, increasing the mass on the spring lowers the resonant frequency (equation from Newton's 2nd law). Headless bass necks are light and stiff, these resonant frequencies are correspondingly higher, in the case of the ones causing dead spots hopefully nicely out of the way of the fundamentals!

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1324290354' post='1472493']
>>> ... because they are acoustic instruments! All correct in theory but the potential effect on an electric bass is too small to be measurable nor audible.
[/quote]

Hmm, I don't know why you'd conclude that, it doesn't match up with how we know a bass guitar works. A bass guitar pickup acts as a filter which can have an important role in soundshaping but ultimately what it picks up is the vibration of a string (position. If what you said was true, then the dead spots would not be an issue - instead they are often very noticeable and are a product of the system acoustic resonance and construction, ie the interaction of the string with the body. I'm sure more 'processed' sounds can effectively disguise many more subtle differences in acoustic resonance behaviour but you don't have to treat the sound that way.

I would hazard a guess that shifting system resonances up to the point where there are no longer any major vibrational modes covering the first few harmonics of the lower notes of the instrument would be sufficient to effectively remove the influence of construction/material from the audible sonic signature, presumably why a lot of high-end basses with laminates, through necks etc can be made to sound very consistent. However lots of basses, especially one-piece bolt on necks like Fenders, can have significant resonances in the bass/low mid range covering those important harmonics, a simple tap and listen is enough to confirm this (although how it interacts with the string vibration will be more complex to predict, but it will do something!). If a string vibration excites a resonance then that in turn will influence the string's behaviour - conservation of momentum and all that, basically it's all covered by Newton's 2nd law!

[LawrenceH]

[quote name='LawrenceH' timestamp='1324329834' post='1473175']Headless bass necks are light and stiff, these resonant frequencies are correspondingly higher, in the case of the ones causing dead spots hopefully nicely out of the way of the fundamentals! [/quote]

Oh yeah, thinking about it I realise that I didn't explain this fully at all. The dead spot should be a function of the fretting position along the neck in relation to the mass distribution, so even if you kept the overall mass constant, altering its distribution would alter the way the resonance interacted with the string. Chopping off the headstock should tend to shift dead spots further up the neck.

[51m0n]

SO what happens if you take your super flat rig into a venue that has lots of heavy soft furnishings in and lotso of people too?

Or tiled walls.

Do you leave it all as it is or do you use eq to try and help tailor your sound to the venue?

[guildbass]

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1324463358' post='1474389']
SO what happens if you take your super flat rig into a venue that has lots of heavy soft furnishings in and lotso of people too?

Or tiled walls.

Do you leave it all as it is or do you use eq to try and help tailor your sound to the venue?
[/quote]

when I used to use it, I left it exactly as it was all the time. I was running my Guild through it so it was pushing out a fair degree of 42 Hz anyway and the only way to get that bass to cut through a mix was to use a plectrum and the bridge pickup with a typical rock type song . There was enough depth to the sound to provide a rich 'fill' anyway and it never seemed to get overpowered or indeed couple with the room...Even in southampton Guildhall

I no longer use that rig though. I am much happier with a little amp for small venues...as I'm not playing with a Glam Rock band now...With just a classical guitar and the female human voice only we can manage quite happily with a little amp or for bigger stuff, D'I' into the desk and in-ear or wedge monitoring. My bass only needs to be sonically balanced with the acoustic guitar so it's really easy to set up. There IS a little bit of coupling with that little amp so I tend to stick it on a plastic crate or just roll the bass off a tad

[guildbass]

[quote name='EmmettC' timestamp='1324326822' post='1473115']
I always thought my Trace Elliot made every bass sound the same, but my Ampeg and SWR don't alter the sound as much, unless I dial it in. I used an Ashdown at a gig on Friday, and though not as bad as the Trace, it seemed to make my G&L and Fender sound similar, and not how they normally sound,
I don't own the Ashdown, and I didn't have alot of time to fiddle, so I could be misjudging it, but my Trace was terrible. My fender sounded no better than my cheap Aria played through that amp.
[/quote]

I used to love the sound of those Trace Elliots, the green ones, but as you say, the amp has the tone, the bass is just a stick with strings on. Interestingly my old guild had such a ferocious sonic signature it even sounded like a Guild through a Trace! I actually think that most bass amps are set up to make a 'P' bass type guitar sound good...And 'P' basses and their ilk have a deeply uninteresting tone through a HiFi so the average bass amp starts with that almost 'non' tonal characteristic as a starting point and builds from there.
Certainly, if I was building a bass amp for retail I'd start with the most common bass guitar and tailor my amp to make THAT guitar sound nice...And that's a bolt neck fender bass...As you say, It seems to me also that if you stuff almost any Fender-esque guitar through a Trace, you get a Trace sound. Stuff a Warwick Streamer through most bass amps and you get a Warwick Streamer sound...