Thinking about a change in Amps/Pedals

[gregmon79]

The problem is the mismatching outputs of the different active basses. My main players are a Carvin with active PU's and active electronics that has super high output, a custom with a Glockenklang preamp that has about the same output as a loud passive instrument and an Ibanez that lies somewhere inbetween.



The thing that is bogging me is not that i read something somewhere, but what my ears tell me during rehearsal.
You know these moments, when the song shifts, the lead guitar engages the boost and you hit the OD, just to find out that with the current settings, pretty much everyone in the room hears a thunderous, angry, biting bass and not much else ...

My feeling is that i went too far on the pedalboard design and have to step back there. I had more than a decade of happy playing without pedals and now i feel like i went too far. My guess would be that updating my head, so it does more leads to a smaller pedalboard (or none at all) and a happier me.

Yeah I can see that. Maybe you moved and added too much too quickly. I did that once upon a time. Got like 15 pedals in a month or two’s time and it actually took me longer to even out because I wasn’t fully familiar with all my pedals and how they interacted with the rest of my setup, bass and band’s sound. It def took time. Like I said previously, it’s taken me almost 5 years to get where I’m at now. The dirt section was what took the longest. An OD was finally settled on last summer. But I do know what you mean. I would suggest taking what it working for you now, leave it. The stuff that isn’t either give it some more time and concentrate on what it’s doing one by one, or ditch it and move on. I think I can honestly say that I’ve liked if not loved every pedal I’ve tried. It was just the question of it working with my bands mix. It always comes down to that. As it should. But just because I really liked something didn’t mean it was going to work. It’s like my P bass, love that bass. But I can’t use it with my band, just doesn’t fit our sound. That was a trying 5 or 6 months let me tell you!! Haha

 

[Munjibunga]

A while back, i was quite happy with my setup, then i wanted a switchable overdrive in the whole thing. I would have liked two sounds, a mild overdrive and full out distortion and looked for a pedal to do both, but found none to my liking. So i bought the smallest pedalboard i could find and rigged it with OD, Distortion and Tuner. Then a comp. And then GAS hit.
Before i realized what had happened, i needed to buy cables with smaller jacks so i could fit pedal #13 on my board which matched my bass-gigbag in weight.
Now i have the struggle to get the sounds i want because i play different basses in different bands and it's hard to remember every setting of every pedal for every bass for two different amps and i don't want to arrive half an hour early to every rehearsal to get it dialed in.
Those of you who read this far might ask themselves why i am talking about pedals when i'm posting a thread to the amps section.

My thoughts were as follows: I feel that with the use of many pedals, i loose the ability to really use my active basses, because i have to keep them at the same settings. If i mess with the knobs on the basses, the response from the pedals becomes different and that is often a problem. But many things i do with the pedalboard can be done in a slightly less fancy way just by changing the EQ on the bass and the way i play.

So if i had an amp with two channels i could ditch the pedalboard entirely and use the head for overdrive. The only thing i'd really miss would be the tuner and its mute function, but if the head had an output for a tuner and a mute footswitch along with the channel selection, i could be fine. If i sold off one or two heads and most of my pedals, i'd be able to fund something solid. I would like tubes, but i would hate to carry 40kg twice a week to rehearsal and back.

At the moment, my smallest setup is a barefaced one10 with a H&K Tubemeister 18 head and my biggest is an aguilar stack, Tonehammer500 with 2 GS212 cabs. While i'm at it, i might as well sell off the aggie cabs and get more barefaceds - i'm thinking of a second one10 and a four10.

So is there such a thing as a tube head that's an easy carry, looks good on a single one10
and offers two channels with nice overdrive and mute switch?

The B|Amp does all that in its natural state - no pedals necessary.

 

[Korladis]

The problem is the mismatching outputs of the different active basses. My main players are a Carvin with active PU's and active electronics that has super high output, a custom with a Glockenklang preamp that has about the same output as a loud passive instrument and an Ibanez that lies somewhere inbetween.



The thing that is bogging me is not that i read something somewhere, but what my ears tell me during rehearsal.
You know these moments, when the song shifts, the lead guitar engages the boost and you hit the OD, just to find out that with the current settings, pretty much everyone in the room hears a thunderous, angry, biting bass and not much else ...

My feeling is that i went too far on the pedalboard design and have to step back there. I had more than a decade of happy playing without pedals and now i feel like i went too far. My guess would be that updating my head, so it does more leads to a smaller pedalboard (or none at all) and a happier me.

Ahhhh, okay. So your three main basses have substantially different output levels. Makes sense why it's hard to get a consistent sound with the pedals.

Do you switch between them in the same band at all? Or do you use one base for one band, another bass for a different band, and so on?

If the latter, depending on how many pedals are having the consistency problem, what you could do is just take your basses and setup your rig one day to figure out settings with the volume knobs of your pedals. For instance, take your Carvin, find where that sounds good on each pedal as far as the level control. Then, take some nail polish, or white out, or some other way of marking where the knob is at. And label it/color code it. Then take the Ibanez, find out how much you have to boost the level controls on the problem pedals to get the volume consistent to where it was with the Carvin. Use a different color, or label this setting differently. Rinse and repeat with your custom that has the Glockenklang pre.

This will be time consuming for while you're doing it, but it's the option I see for you that involves the least change to your rig, which it seems like you like the sound of when you get it dialed in. Once you've labeled where the volume/level knobs on the pedals need to be, before every rehearsal/gig just rotate them to the labelled volume level for the bass you're going to use.

 

[el murdoque]

Ahhhh, okay. So your three main basses have substantially different output levels. Makes sense why it's hard to get a consistent sound with the pedals.

Do you switch between them in the same band at all? Or do you use one base for one band, another bass for a different band, and so on?

This will be time consuming for while you're doing it, but it's the option I see for you that involves the least change to your rig, which it seems like you like the sound of when you get it dialed in. Once you've labeled where the volume/level knobs on the pedals need to be, before every rehearsal/gig just rotate them to the labelled volume level for the bass you're going to use.

This rotation thing is more a 'want' than a 'need' in one band, i pack whatever bass i feel like playing today. It's an all originals band and no one bothers with what i do on the bass as long as i lay down the groove for the guitars to play.
In the other band, the six comes in handy in three songs, where i can play entire chords when i have the C string,
but i can tweak around that as well. It's just that i don't feel entirely comfortable with the way it is ATM
(and that it is way too long since i bought an amp ;-) )