I started playing in a weekly jazz session (four horns, guitar, bass, drums.) The problem is, the studio we use has a giant amp and speaker that's probably meant for heavy metal. I keep tweaking the knobs, but when I'm loud enough to be heard, I get feedback or booming, especially on the open strings. Any advice?
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Double Bass What to Do When the Amp's Enormous
- Thread starter Jrosetree
- Start date
Greg Clinkingbeard
Commercial User
Get FDeck’s HPF and put a towel under your tailpiece.
Suggestions: Bring a reasonable size speaker that you can elevate. Wedge a rolled up towel between the tail piece and bass's body. Use notch filters. Ideally you would have 4-6 notch filters and possibly a variable HPF. Consider the Empress ParaEQ MkII Deluxe or Source Audio EQ2.
The ParaEQ is analog and most will find it more intuitive. It has three overlapping bands of parametric EQ and a variable HPF. I.E. you get a low band, mid band, and high band that overlap somewhat. Not ideal IMHO, but you could use the two lowest parametric bands for notches. The high band is probably too high, but it could be useful for dialing in the high mids. ParaEq MKII Deluxe
The EQ2 is significantly more powerful, but has a digital interface that you may find confusing. I haven't use this pedal, but if I understand correctly you can set it up to function as a 10-band parametric. I believe it also has an adjustable HPF. EQ2 Programmable Equalizer
TLDR:
I generally used a 112 or 210. I prefer to elevate my cab to about waist level and often tilt it back a bit to aim at my ears. I feel the allows me to hear at a lower volume and also reduces how much energy the amp sends into the body of the bass.
On one of the last tours I ran sound for, the back line included an Ampeg SVT and 810 that caused a lot of problems with the upright. Ultimately we turned the amp way down and let the PA do the work.
The bass was a nice carved instrument. The pickup was an Ehrlund EAP with the matching preamp. Our regular bass rig was a 2-channel 600W Acoustic Image head driving a Euphonic Audio NL210. This was a very good sounding combination that always had plenty of clean headroom.
Things we tried:
1. Moving the cabinet to different locations and distances in relation to the bass. This made a very small improvement
2. Adjusting the amp's tone controls. Not much help here. The SVT has pretty good tone controls, but they are not flexible enough to deal with the upright.
We did not try elevating the cab. It's simply too big and heavy. An 810 weighs about 140lbs and an SVT weighs about 90lbs.
I don't remember if we tried rolling up a towel and wedging it between the tail piece and front panel of the bass. This can be really helpful if the problem frequency is really low. Some prefer a tennis ball to a towel.
Things we did not try because we did not have the right pieces of gear. Notch problem frequencies. In my experience this can make a very significant difference.
Greg Clinkingbeard
Commercial User
It would be helpful to know about the amp. Some giant amps (Ampeg SVT and 810 cabinet) can work well.
Turn the speaker away from the body of your bass. Maybe stick it in the drummer’s ear.
Turn the speaker cab so it fires backwards or backwards at an angle toward the drummer.
I use my upright for blues and roots stuff. A Krivo magnetic pickup would let me be ridiculously loud if I wanted to. Big Ampeg amp with two 15s five feet behind me. The sound isnt exactly what you like. But its close rnough for rock n roll. Doesnt work woth all strings, check with Gollihur for more information
Anyone remember Uncle Toad? I was looking for his classic “Uncletoad’s Rules for Reducing Feedback” (from 2009) using a link that I had saved, but the link no longer works. I sent a PM to him and will post here if I get a response. If no response, I’ll look for and scan the document that I printed years ago.
Parametric EQ to the rescue!
I have a Tech 21 QStrip DI box which allows for very fast "surgical" ±18 dB EQ'ing with two parametric bands, lows, trebles, HPF and LPF.
Then I also rebuild the EQ setting as a preset in HX Stomp using the Parametric EQ block (or rather two of them, since it can only do ±12 dB).
From there I go directly into the Power Amp In/FX Return of my rehearsal room 15" combo, bypassing its preamp. (That combo already sounds bad enough with bass guitars, let alone with my newly acquired DB.)
For my DB setup, I had to massively attenuate 110 and 300 Hz to get rid of feedback when rehearsing with a drummer. Currently I only have my old Schertler Basik transducer which is very prone to feedback by its nature as it's a universal pickup, not necessarily for a DB. (I should decide on a piezo soon)
What also helped – apart from a tailpiece towel – was to stuff some plastic foam into the ƒ holes.
I have a Tech 21 QStrip DI box which allows for very fast "surgical" ±18 dB EQ'ing with two parametric bands, lows, trebles, HPF and LPF.
Then I also rebuild the EQ setting as a preset in HX Stomp using the Parametric EQ block (or rather two of them, since it can only do ±12 dB).
From there I go directly into the Power Amp In/FX Return of my rehearsal room 15" combo, bypassing its preamp. (That combo already sounds bad enough with bass guitars, let alone with my newly acquired DB.)
For my DB setup, I had to massively attenuate 110 and 300 Hz to get rid of feedback when rehearsing with a drummer. Currently I only have my old Schertler Basik transducer which is very prone to feedback by its nature as it's a universal pickup, not necessarily for a DB. (I should decide on a piezo soon)
What also helped – apart from a tailpiece towel – was to stuff some plastic foam into the ƒ holes.
Uncle Toad said that he would try to locate his file. In the meantime, i.e., just now, I remembered that the thread he posted in was made a sticky in the DB Forum. Here is his post:
Post in thread 'Stopping Feedback in LOUD Settings'
https://www.talkbass.com/threads/stopping-feedback-in-loud-settings.413725/post-5450657
I hope that it helps.