Two Notes Le Bass

[Creeper]

I’ve been playing with a Sansamp programmable bass driver for a couple of years, however I thought I’d try out the Two Notes Le Bass preamp which has a 12AX7 tucked inside it to get those nice tubey tones and that pleasing break up which tubes can get.

its a superb preamp with a clean channel and a high gain channel, you can also mix the two channels either in series, where channel 1 feeds into the gain of input of channel 2, or in parallel where they are layered together. This does give quite a wide pallet of flavours from a lovely clean tubey tone to a bit of grit and gentle break up, to full on distortion.

The knobs and build quality are superb, i have found that the knobs can move a little in the pedal board box, but the controls are very intuitive.

ive not gigged it yet, but really am looking forward to giving it a good blast.

[visog]

Totes agree. My first unit failed but Bass Direct replaced without fuss. My second unit continues to add a sparkle to both clean and gritty sounds without a 'Darkglass wash' that homogenises so much over-driven bass these days. I believe there was a problem early on with power supplies but hey ho. Takes a bit of experimenting to get the right levels and EQ. Hadn't given much thought to the knobs but they're knobby I guess... Nice pre-amp...

[Cuzzie]

You’ll get no disagreement from me on how good a unit this thing is.

I would say really experiment with it and find tones you like and try weird settings, but that I don’t mean extreme distortion, the real joy in this is finding the clean tone and or a tone just breaking up. That’s the real magic sauce

[Creeper]

Yep, whilst I love my sansamp, I think this is in another league.

[visog]

Mod's probably need to merge these threads: 

 

 

[PatrickJ]

I had one of these but sent it back to Anderton's as I was getting loads of noise on the gain channel.

 They tested and said it was faulty but didn't have another in stock to replace it so I got a refund.  It's made me nervous to buy another but I am tempted as I constantly hear great things, and I think they look awesome .

[Cuzzie]

Yep can happen as with any high gain electrical object , but it’s worth a try again maybe, it’s not like going back to the ex, they are normally an ex for a reason, this was a minor blip

[Creeper]

I actually find I get less noise with either channel than I do from the sansamp..

[Cuzzie]

Mine is pretty quiet

As it has a metal back plate, sometimes the circuit board can make a connection to it, by judicious foam placement solves that 

Edited November 16, 2018 by Cuzzie

[Creeper]

Do you tend to use the cab sim when using the DI? I’ve used it when i’ve Played through my headphones and really liked it, but I’ve heard mixed opinions when used through the pa....

[Cuzzie]

Yep for me, as ever go with your ears and taste

[Al Krow]

10 hours ago, PJ-Bassist said:

I had one of these but sent it back to Anderton's as I was getting loads of noise on the gain channel.

 They tested and said it was faulty but didn't have another in stock to replace it so I got a refund.  It's made me nervous to buy another but I am tempted as I constantly hear great things, and I think they look awesome .

My experience was that isolated and correct type of power supply is vital with this pedal (and actually also my Zoom B3n as an aside). Mine was VERY noisy till I managed to sort that out - and I was pretty close to returning mine too till I spotted the solution. Quite a few comments on the noise issue on the "2 notes mega thread" that Visog linked to above.

Edited November 17, 2018 by Al Krow

[Cuzzie]

Bingo, Yep that’s true, but again it’s like most electrical items, power it as you are supposed to, gives it the greatest chance of it working effectively.

I would wager this is a given across the board

Edited November 17, 2018 by Cuzzie

[Opticaleye]

My original Le Bass gave up just before the warranty expired. The replacement has been fine though.

I'm a firm fan of Channel A (at home at least) but in the past I found it a little scooped when using it live. My new Broughton HPF in the effect loop really curbs the overpowering bottom end, letting the mids shine through. 

The Broughton HPF seems to make everything I have sound better though...

[Cuzzie]

@Opticaleye try setting the B channel up to be almost the same as A, essentially very clean, but pop some more kids in there, run them as cold fusion, parts out the scoop, brightens it a little

[Opticaleye]

16 minutes ago, Cuzzie said:

@Opticaleye try setting the B channel up to be almost the same as A, essentially very clean, but pop some more kids in there, run them as cold fusion, parts out the scoop, brightens it a little

I found that mixing Channel B cured the lack of mids but at the expense of losing most of the magic of channel A. The HPF retains the magic.

[Cuzzie]

Thats cool, for me I managed to keep the A magic favouring the blend towards it in the cold fusion so there is a hint more mids there, but the Broughton is quality, so no complaints.

I used to do something similar stacking it with the Hartke VXL

[Opticaleye]

10 minutes ago, Cuzzie said:

Thats cool, for me I managed to keep the A magic favouring the blend towards it in the cold fusion so there is a hint more mids there, but the Broughton is quality, so no complaints.

I used to do something similar stacking it with the Hartke VXL

I tried various pre's to introduce mids and even  ran the LeBass into the Aux in of my Quilter (with cab sim) whilst taking the Thru output into the front of the Quilter and mixing the tone paths. This worked (sometimes) brilliantly but just using the subtractive cut of the Broughton seems to work very simply and elegantly for my desired objective and my amps and cabs.

Channel A can make a smaller cab seem so much bigger.

[Al Krow]

That's kinda interesting, and definitely helpful to anyone who still has a Le Bass. I agree the mid scooped nature of the A channel, whilst nice at home, could definitely be an issue in the mix.

In my case I found that simply cutting the bass (you mentioned overpowering bottom end) on the pedal was quite effective in allowing more of the mids through without having the benefit of an HPF back then. 

[Opticaleye]

4 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

That's kinda interesting, and definitely helpful to anyone who still has a Le Bass. I agree the mid scooped nature of the A channel, whilst nice at home, could definitely be an issue in the mix.

In my case I found that simply cutting the bass (you mentioned overpowering bottom end) on the pedal was quite effective in allowing more of the mids through without having the benefit of an HPF back then. 

Yes, Channel A is boost only, so I used to leave both bass and treble completely off for the least scoop. With the Broughton I can turn the bass up on the LeBass and then cut @around 80hz on the HPF to accentuate the low mids. 

[Al Krow]

Yup, I never did get my head around why on such an otherwise excellent pre-amp / grit pedal they had only provided a 2 band EQ on Channel A; but there again I've become quite partial to having 3 band EQs on my basses these days and am no longer willing to put up with 2 band EQs on active basses, so maybe it's just me becoming spoilt!

[PatrickJ]

33 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Yup, I never did get my head around why on such an otherwise excellent pre-amp / grit pedal they had only provided a 2 band EQ on Channel A; but there again I've become quite partial to having 3 band EQs on my basses these days and am no longer willing to put up with 2 band EQs on active basses, so maybe it's just me becoming spoilt!

I'm with you, when I was looking for a new pedal pre-amp anything less than a 4 band or parametric EQ was ruled out.

[Al Krow]

36 minutes ago, PJ-Bassist said:

I'm with you, when I was looking for a new pedal pre-amp anything less than a 4 band or parametric EQ was ruled out.

Apologies to the OP for the thread side-track, but out of interest which pre-amps made it to your short list and which did you go for in the end?

[Cuzzie]

Thoroughly depends on who and what you play with.

Mid scoop is not always a bad thing

Edited November 18, 2018 by Cuzzie

[dannybuoy]

11 hours ago, Opticaleye said:

Yes, Channel A is boost only, so I used to leave both bass and treble completely off for the least scoop. With the Broughton I can turn the bass up on the LeBass and then cut @around 80hz on the HPF to accentuate the low mids. 

This. It’s pretty flat sounding with the EQ knobs off, so it’s only scooped if you make it so!