talkinganimals Posted July 20, 2012 Share Posted July 20, 2012 Hi guys, Bit of a dumb newbie question but I was wondering if anyone who uses one of these pedals could give me a bit of advice. I basically bought one with the intention of using it to help even out the volume levels between my strings. I play an active 5 and I find that, unless I want to totally suck all the bass and meat out of my tone, the low B and E strings tend to be a lot louder than the others. What I really was hoping for was to be able to bring the overall volume of the strings a bit closer together without losing any of the meat. Anyway I'm struggling to really get that effect, I seem to only succeed in squashing the life out of the low notes entirely, even with the threshold turned right down anti-clockwise. I can then boost the levels, but this adds extra noise that I could do without. I feel like I'm probably just not using it right and was interested in the sort of settings other people are using with it, or if they've had any similar experiences? Cheers! Jonathan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted July 20, 2012 Share Posted July 20, 2012 First question, what is your eq like? If you are boosting in an area that those upper strings have no output (ie frequencies below their fundamental) then you are using eq to make your lower strings louder (sometimes by a lot louder) than the upper strings. A compressor is going to struggle to help there. Just a thought. Given that your EQ isnt going to make this an impossible balancing act however, try this. Set:- Slope (ratio in common terminology) to 2:1 Attack to between 12 O'clock and 3 O'clock (you dont want to crush the transients) Level (makeup gain) to 12 O;'clock (we can refine this in a bit) Threshold to fully anti-clockwise Now, play your low E, then your G, just keep alternating and as you do roll the threshold clockwise. When you hear the compressor start to grab on the E roll back a smidge anti-clockwise. The G will probably not be affected by the compressor yet, as far as you can hear it anyway, although in all likelihood it will still be giving some GR. Then turn play 8ths on the E and engage and disengage the comp, adjust the level to make the comp equally as loud engaged as disengaged. Once you are there thats about as good as you can get. The compressor is as unobtrusively compressing the signal as possible but for as much of the time as possible (ie low ratio & very low threshold). However this compressor is not able to allow you to adjust the key listen frequencies, so the likelihood is that your bass end is what is going to cause the compressor to engage the most, somewhat defeating the objective. Nevertheless this kind of setting will get you somewhere close to what you would ideally want. You can tweak the attack time a bit now if you like, to fine tune it to remain as unobtrusive as possible. Too fast an attack will result in the transients being caught to early, the compression will sound very obvious, the tone wil become less bright, and the feel will be that your dynamics are struggling. Too long an attack and it will feel like the compressor isnt really helping at all, or you can get noticeable pumping with extreme settings. Even if you cant hear the upper strings being levelled out, until you are in a mix you can't judge this, the human ear is not a very good dB meter at all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
talkinganimals Posted July 23, 2012 Author Share Posted July 23, 2012 Thanks very much for your detailed reply! My EQ is generally just set pretty flat. I'm using a Mark Bass LMII so I will then fiddle with the filters. I've tried rolling off some of the bass to help with this issue but it doesn't seem to help much - I still have the same sound where, once the compressor's turned on, the lower notes just sound weak and farty. My experience with compressors begins and ends at fiddling with the on-screen ones you get in Pro Tools. I don't *really* know what I'm doing as such, but having all the dials and graphs and things is a huge help and I usually find I can get the sound I'm after. On the pedal, with no visual reference, I find it much harder to tell what's going on and why. Anyway I'll be at rehearsals later this week so I'll sit down and have a go again, following your advice this time. Hopefully I'll manage to get it sounding OK in the mix... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 Search on the forum and you'll find me constantly banging on at people about the limitations that the space for metering on pedals gives. They're really hard to use for any but the most seasoned compressor hack. Hope it goes well in the rehearsal! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kesh Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 i would just adjust pickup height downward on the low strings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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