EDIT: TL;DR: At least one preamp tube had gone microphonic. Replacing the preamp tubes solved the problem. The pickup hadn't been adjusted perfectly when installed but it's fine now.
I really hope this bass and this amplifier can play nicely together.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/uzTfF4wKNCxPqk5PA
That's a Lace Aluma-P (apparently extremely) high output passive pickup and a Mesa Buster! 200 1x15 all-tube combo. I recently acquired both in hopes of achieving responsive grit and drive without a huge rig (surprise, surprise, I play metal; I'm after something like budget versions of Jeff Matz's tones here). I love the bass, the pickup, and the amp, but the kind of digging in that brings out that grit and drive tends to set off some nasty squealing—ear-splitting, can't-play-through-or-over, hit-standby-this-instant squealing. I can turn down a bit, switch back on several seconds later, and play normally, but if possible I'd like to be able to dig in without worrying about this.
Before I try to swap out anything or cough up a bench fee, I'm hoping a few of you will be kind enough to offer your wisdom on the matter. Specifically:
I really hope this bass and this amplifier can play nicely together.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/uzTfF4wKNCxPqk5PA
That's a Lace Aluma-P (apparently extremely) high output passive pickup and a Mesa Buster! 200 1x15 all-tube combo. I recently acquired both in hopes of achieving responsive grit and drive without a huge rig (surprise, surprise, I play metal; I'm after something like budget versions of Jeff Matz's tones here). I love the bass, the pickup, and the amp, but the kind of digging in that brings out that grit and drive tends to set off some nasty squealing—ear-splitting, can't-play-through-or-over, hit-standby-this-instant squealing. I can turn down a bit, switch back on several seconds later, and play normally, but if possible I'd like to be able to dig in without worrying about this.
Before I try to swap out anything or cough up a bench fee, I'm hoping a few of you will be kind enough to offer your wisdom on the matter. Specifically:
- What's going on? My best guess from what I've read so far is that the tubes are getting jostled too much and what I'm hearing is an extreme case of tube microphonics, but I'm fairly ignorant about electronics generally and entirely new to tube amplifiers.
- What are my options for addressing this? Switching from steel strings back to nickel has helped (good, because I've long preferred nickel anyway), but hasn't solved the issue entirely. I bought the Aluma-P because I anticipated this bass arriving with a ho-hum, run-of-the-mill stock pickup, but the stock pickup actually wasn't half bad and I've kept it, so I could go back to that if I had to (this bass-pickup combo also just killed a Blackstar FLY right out of the box, though that might have been a defective amp). EDIT: FLY's fine. No idea why I thought it wasn't other than that my Thunderbird seems to have much lower output than my other basses.
- Would adding an Xotic RC Bass Booster or similar pedal help or hurt, given the driven tone I'm after?
- My other basses (passive Thunderbird, active 5-string [detuned to G!]) don't seem to produce this result. The seller and I also played a number of his basses (active and passive, hot and not) through the amp before I bought it. EDIT: As it turns out, I get the awful squealing if I push it with any of these basses.
- This bass plays seems to play nicely with the new Fender Rumble 1x15s at my favorite store, and drives my little solid state Orange 35b beautifully.
- The problem seems to occur with the gain (called "volume" on this amp, but "gain" on pretty much any other) past 2:30 and the master past 9:30. The manual suggests that the amp starts to distort with the gain past 3:00, but not that this range is unusable. It's pretty much impossible to play with a drummer with the gain anywhere left of 1:00, anyway.
- I've got the lows at 11:00, mids at 1:00, and highs at 11:00, graphic disengaged.
- No effects at the moment, just plugged directly into the amp, with a patch cable in the effects loop (problem occurred with and without a cable in the effects loop).
- Amp sits directly on a not-perfectly-level concrete slab in a sealed garage.
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