MarkBass Little Mark iv

[Jabba_the_gut]

Stumbled across this the other day - they do look pretty!!

 

MARKBASS | Products | LITTLE MARK IV

[wateroftyne]

5 minutes ago, Jabba_the_gut said:

Stumbled across this the other day - they do look pretty!!

 

MARKBASS | Products | LITTLE MARK IV

 

Pretty...?

[Jabba_the_gut]

8 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

 

Pretty...?

 

Yeah, fair enough!!

 

I do quite like MarkBass gear - I also like having both a power switch and mute switch on the front panel. Be interested to try one of these whenever they are around.

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

Very nice but my old LMII is still going strong so I don't have a good enough reason to think about upgrading

[M@23]

I like Markbass stuff a lot and it’s cool that they raised the low to 68hz, but still 10kHz for treble? 

[Chienmortbb]

I find Mark Bass's use of colour (struggles for adjective) interesting. It proves that the rods and the cones in my eyes are still working but.......

When you consider the style that has come out of Italy, you have to hope that the performance and reliability makes up for the visual onslaught.

If you want to see how to use Orange tastefully,  see Orange.

 

On a more serious note, I have a Little Mark Tube in for repair. I cannot get any service information from them at all. Ashdown, Marshall, Peavey all great for help in servicing. Behringer are like Mark Bass, really hard to get help although their build quality is superb.

[BillyBass]

16 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

I find Mark Bass's use of colour (struggles for adjective) interesting. It proves that the rods and the cones in my eyes are still working but.......

When you consider the style that has come out of Italy, you have to hope that the performance and reliability makes up for the visual onslaught.

If you want to see how to use Orange tastefully,  see Orange.

I like the new Italy logo with 'Italian lifestyle' on it.  After all, when the upper middle classes are making over their homes, an Italian bass head will be a must have, along with the Maserati, Italian furniture, Gucci and Prada clothes and Smeg appliances.

 

Yes, with MarkBass, its not only about tone, its a lifestyle choice

 

Edited July 26, 2021 by BillyBass

[Jus Lukin]

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Edited March 15, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[uk_lefty]

16 hours ago, Jabba_the_gut said:

Stumbled across this the other day - they do look pretty!!

 

MARKBASS | Products | LITTLE MARK IV

I like the idea on the preset EQ points, adding the Old School filter, flat and scooped tone. From the description that's similar to their Marcus Miller signature amps. 

[Jus Lukin]

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Edited March 15, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Al Krow]

It looks like a very rehashed LM3 with a limiter bolted on.

 

Better EQ centre point for the bass at 68 rather than 40 Hz, but they've still left a massive EQ hole between upper mids at 800Hz and an unnecessarily high treble centre point of 10kHz. Shame.

[fretmeister]

They've kept the old and badly chosen EQ centres then?

Eijits.

[Jus Lukin]

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Edited March 15, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Al Krow]

@Jus Lukin - that's a useful set of graphs, thanks.

 

It does confirm for me the EQ "hole" point though. There is relatively small boost available at the key 1.6kHz range which is associated with "bite" or "presence". I have to separately adjust for this with an EQ pedal when using my LM2 combo (121H) and it feels like I've removed a blanket when I do!

 

So I'm very much with @fretmeister on this one. But at least they have replaced the boomy 40 Hz bass EQ with a MUCH better 68 Hz centre point.

[fretmeister]

The 40hz control is really only any good for cutting. 

 

The Marcus low is at 65Hz and it great for cutting boom on hollow stages and boosting on a solid stage. As it happens I tend to cut that a little and boost with the 180hz instead. Plenty of wallop but keeps out of the way of the kick drum and the tubas / bones I have to share sonic space with.

 

Then all I need to do is adjust the pickup balance on my J to match the song needs. All neck for Duck Dunn stuff, all bridge for the more jazzy tunes, and the middle for the rest. Works for me!

[Reggaebass]

On 26/07/2021 at 21:49, M@23 said:

they raised the low to 68hz,

Is it the higher the number the less bass ?

[fretmeister]

11 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

Is it the higher the number the less bass ?

Sort of.

 

68hz is a lower frequency than 1Khz etc.

But it's not that simple as an EQ control can have a very narrow band so a 68hz control might only change 65-70hz leading to a very pointy looking curve, or it might be a far wider band that is 30hz to 100hz and the curve would look like a gentle hill.

[Reggaebass]

8 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

Sort of.

 

68hz is a lower frequency than 1Khz etc.

But it's not that simple as an EQ control can have a very narrow band so a 68hz control might only change 65-70hz leading to a very pointy looking curve, or it might be a far wider band that is 30hz to 100hz and the curve would look like a gentle hill.

Thanks, I kinda thought it was something like that but wasn’t sure 👍

[jrixn1]

56 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

Is it the higher the number the less bass ?

 

This diagram (in particular the lower third) shows what the frequencies mean: https://www.audio-issues.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/EQChart.jpg

 

They define 'Bass' as between 63Hz and 250Hz, and within the 'Bass' region they use the descriptors 'Bottom', 'Boom', 'Punch', and 'Warmth'.

 

40Hz is probably too low to be of much musical use, although it can cut stage rumble.  Here is what 40hz sounds like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxb4-ZL7zIk

[Al Krow]

6 minutes ago, jrixn1 said:

 

This diagram (in particular the lower third) shows what the frequencies mean: https://www.audio-issues.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/EQChart.jpg

 

They define 'Bass' as between 63Hz and 250Hz, and within the 'Bass' region they use the descriptors 'Bottom', 'Boom', 'Punch', and 'Warmth'.

 

40Hz is probably too low to be of much musical use, although it can cut stage rumble.  Here is what 40hz sounds like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxb4-ZL7zIk

 

Thanks for that clip - makes a massive difference listening connected through a decent pair of headphones vs through my laptop speakers! 

 

 40 Hz is pretty much what the fundamental on the low E is (41.2 Hz) so you would have thought it should add some weight to the bottom end (which I guess may have been MB's original line of thinking on this?) but, in practice, just seems to cause resonant boominess.

[Phil Starr]

On 28/07/2021 at 12:32, Al Krow said:

 

Thanks for that clip - makes a massive difference listening connected through a decent pair of headphones vs through my laptop speakers! 

 

 40 Hz is pretty much what the fundamental on the low E is (41.2 Hz) so you would have thought it should add some weight to the bottom end (which I guess may have been MB's original line of thinking on this?) but, in practice, just seems to cause resonant boominess.

it's really interesting isn't it to ask how much output at 40hz is useful. I've a little 6" cab at home specifically built to test this. It's pretty nearly flat down to 80Hz, the second harmonic of bottom E, and then the frequency response falls off the bottom of a cliff. Surprisingly perhaps it still sounds like a bass guitar with almost nothing in the bottom octave where the fundamental lives.

 

A fair number of recording engineers filter everything including bass at 50Hz and I've tried music both with and without a 50Hz filter . Most of the time even directly between them it's difficult to hear a difference, if you heard the recording on it's own I don't think many people would spot which was which.

 

Finally at a SouthWest Bass Bash we did some blind testing of a group of 12" speakers. About 40% of people said they preferred a Mark Bass cheapy over a Fearless/Barefaced/BassChat line up because of the extra bass. The thing being that it was the speaker with the least bass below 80Hz but it had a big bloom in the 80-160Hz region and an imbalance between the bass and mids which those bass players all heard as 'bass' and preferred. They weren't wrong of course, any audience would have heard it in a similar way.

 

I'm finding the psychology of sound perception as interesting as the well worked science of cabinet design and it is probably as relevant to practical cab designs as the science is to achieving the design goals.

 

[Al Krow]

15 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

Finally at a SouthWest Bass Bash we did some blind testing of a group of 12" speakers. About 40% of people said they preferred a Mark Bass cheapy over a Fearless/Barefaced/BassChat line up because of the extra bass. The thing being that it was the speaker with the least bass below 80Hz but it had a big bloom in the 80-160Hz region and an imbalance between the bass and mids which those bass players all heard as 'bass' and preferred. They weren't wrong of course, any audience would have heard it in a similar way.

Phil some excellent observations (as usual!). 

I do wonder whether in a band max the MB instead of sounding as though it had a "fuller bass" it would have felt like the cab had "a blanket over it" and was much less articulate than Fearless/BF/Berg/VK etc.

[Phil Starr]

4 hours ago, Al Krow said:

I do wonder whether in a band max the MB instead of sounding as though it had a "fuller bass" it would have felt like the cab had "a blanket over it" and was much less articulate than Fearless/BF/Berg/VK etc.

I'm not the one to comment on this really. I'm a relatively modest bassist, a latecomer to playing and a weekend warrior so I pretty much avoid questions of taste and stick to technical stuff where i have a bit more knowledge.

 

You're probably right though, that cab was quite bright but it had a pronounced mid scoop which I didn't like but which i know a lot of bassists prefer. I tend to use a flatter or even mid forward response and roll off the bass in most venues and that seems to work OK when playing live. I've probably spent more time mixing than playing bass and I eq so that the bass keeps away from the guitars and kick drum and sits in the pocket between them. that doesn't work with all types of music though.

[Chienmortbb]

I had too much mud in rehearsals yesterday so I tried a patch on the Zoom B1-4. Some time ago i cretaed a patch with two series high pass filters. I understand that these have a rolloff at 12dB per octave. Each had a -3dB point at 35Hz.  So the result was an HPF with a -6dB point at 35Hz. The result was that the mud dissapeared and all was well.

[Jus Lukin]

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Edited March 15, 2022 by Jus Lukin