The "Markbass lacking in character" comment was a bit of a surprise. I've been using their gear for a while now- for fretted bass (especially slap) I put an Alembic F2B preamp in front (picked up for $50 at a local junk shop-gotta love Japan!), which sounds great with Spectors/ Stingrays & terrifying with a Status Empathy, but I'll always go straight to the Mark' for fretless. Considering that I prefer to keep most of the amps tone knobs at 12.00, the two tone shaping knobs are really useful- even without the Alembic pre-, dialling in the VPF gives a great slap tone, & the VLF works great for taking some of the zing out of fretless sounds.
Each to his own though- I daresay that if I could afford Epifani gear I'd be singing its praises right now.............
Hi Dutchwife! I can only comment on the gear I've tried and the basses I've tried through it.
When I tried the Jeff Berlin combo, the sales guy was singing its praises saying how neutral it was. My more jazzy/funky noodles (I'm not that much of a slapper BTW, although I love the style) are more or less confined to my Sei and Alembic, neither of which I've tried through Markbass. What I have tried through the 2x10 are my '72 Rick 4001, a Sei Offset 5 (not mine), and a Jaydee Supernatural amongst others. Through the JB combo I tried my '73 Ric 4000, a Warwick Thumb 5 through-neck, various Marleauxs and Overwaters, a Stingray, a Jazz, Warwick Streamer Stage 1 4 and 5s and a DoubleBuck, plus a few miscellaneous others. I couldn't get a sound out of any of them that I was really happy with, although bear in mind I haven't tried either amp in a band situation.
Here I have to clarify; I play rather quirkily (as Martin points out just about every time I'm at the Gallery, LOL!); I use a plectrum, rather like a guitarist would, and this presents me with a whole different set of sonic problems when it comes to choosing an amp/cab. Tweeters are for the most part out, as already stated; I generally get enough clarity from the plectrum. Also, I'm not really aiming for what I would consider to be a very clean, smooth sound, which is all I could seem to get from these particular Markbasses. Bear in mind the way I play will have a great deal of bearing on this and I'm by no means saying that someone else would get the same results; they seldom do in my experience!
In terms of a jazzy tone, if you check out Youtube for examples, I
love Matt Garrison's sound (growly, punchy and aggressive) and Leigh/Leroy Gorman's sound (bassist in Bow Wow Wow - not strictly a jazzy tone but you know what I mean) but find Dave Marks's sound (although he's a great player) far cleaner and thinner than what I'm aiming for; same with Jeff Berlin and (dare I say it?) Marcus (although certainly not the thin part...).
In terms of a rock sound (which after all is what I'm playing most of the time), I love Squire, Enwistle, Glenn Hughes on Deep Purple's Made in Europe etc, a big, aggressive, slightly distorted tone (although ironically I find I don't actually need to have distortion to approximate that sound, assuming the amp is aggressive enough; in fact I've had poor results with Marshall and Ampeg and the best results with Trace Elliot. I have no idea why! Again, the way I play I guess. as Leigh Gorman also used Trace I guess I shouldn't be surprised. So, if you said that for Jazzy stuff I was looking at maybe a slightly bigger, twangier version of Matt, and for rock stuff I was looking at an Entwistle/Squire kind of thing, you wouldn't be far away. Unfortunately I've struggled to get either from my limited Markbass experience.
After saying all that, the friend who has the Markbass head loves it and plays it through 2 Aguilars the same as mine, which is why I'm hoping to try it. He also uses various basses including Ric/Status and MM (although he also gets the best Ric sound through Trace; he bought my old gear he was so impressed, as is everyone he uses it with).
By far the best sound I've had from my Sei was through the EBS gear in the Gallery (650 and 1x15?). Unfortunately I played my Ric 4001CS through the same gear and struggled to get a tone I liked; I'd be happy to have two rigs if I could afford them but unfortunately at the moment I can't afford it. I'm therefore on the lookout for anything that will do both jobs, and I guess the Markbass is an option, altough I would love to get some EBS if only for my Sei. I would've loved to have bought Mike's if I could've got the cash together. One thing that did occur to me last night was that I could get something like an EBS at some stage and use a sansamp for the Rics.....
Anyway, enough of me. Back to other people's gear!!
