Alembic Guitars Club
Alembic products => Owning an Alembic => Troubleshooting => Topic started by: jazzyvee on February 16, 2019, 12:51:45 PM
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Over the past few years I have been using my all maple signature electronics powered Europa 5 bass for the majority of my reggae gigs and occasionally a series bass if it's a big occasion like a festival or a gig that I know is being filmed. This year I have decided to use my series basses more regularly.
I did a gig last night using my F1-x and Power amp and Barefaced Big Twin II cab and to me the sound was great nice thick heavy with articulation.
Today I have another gig same band same rig and at sound check two of the band members were complaining to me that my bass sounds to twangy and has too much mid range and they want all bottom end and no mids.
I know the sound they are looking for but it is not what I want from my sound as to me what they want is just bottom end heft and sod the articulation and clarity of notes.
So as my bass was DI'd I turned my power amp off so that the only sound from my bass was coming through the FOH into the room just to let them know that what they are hearing is FOH and then with the DI removed out so they can hear how I have set my rig for me to hear. The FOH is twangy but there is nothing I can do about that. ( the DI is set to Pre-eq)
Now aside from that what I have noticed in the past using the F1-x and power amp on it's own with a series bass and to a lesser extent a non series bass and filters full closed is that unlike a typical high end bass amp, the F1-x does not have a setting that removes everything but the low end or boosts the low end to get that heavy woolly sound. I can do that on my larger rig with the SF-2 or my mesa boogie walkabout head both have more tone eq-options.
I just wondered if it is something I am not doing with the F1-x or that is just these basses have such a high content of upper frequencies that what I am hearing is exactly what it is designed to do. These guys in the band have said that before to me but usually I have ignored them and told them they are not used to hearing a full range bass so get the bass EQ'd in their monitor feed as my bass rig is for me to hear.
So for me it has not been an issue I have responded to seriously in the past as I like the fact that there is still some of the higher end available so that the notes come out clear. But with it being mentioned again I am beginning to wonder. The room is not very good sound wise there is a lot of Boomines from the wooden stage and funny frequencies coming through when the bass drum and snare are being played so there may be environmental factors at play.
In reality whenever I have been approached by bass players and musicians after these gigs either from support bands or that audiences they have always been impressed with the FOH sound of my basses, as have FOH engineers too.
I don't want to add any effects to this particular rig as it is my small 3u SKB X-rack case and I personally like the way it usually sounds. Any suggestions on F1-x settings to get a deeper bottom end. The deep switch whilst has it's uses, I don't use it because is not deep at the right frequencies to achieve the sound I want.
I also wonder if I should consider adding a bass cut and boost switch from the standard Europa/Rogue system as an add on to my basses.
All wisdom gratefully received
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I've just been listening to one of our members Mehdi Sekkai (big Youth) on some youtube recordings with his reggae band and his sound is pretty similar to what I achieve and like me has enough mids in the tone to keep things heavy and clear.
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Mids can be a bless or a curse. They help defining notes but can get nasal. They may help thickening but can drawn your bass into blury mud, too. But the good side is that it's just a matter of Eq center frequency and bandwidth, though.
To my ears, sounds below 200~250Hz can add fatness to the cleaner or thighter bass tone we get below 100H. The real lows around 80Hz and below are muscular and strong, moves lots of air but are more felt in our bodies than heard. So they're essencial but you also have to raise the low mids to make your bass sound big, to add fat to the meat, to add more body around the bones.
The problem is that they can be obstrusive if excessive. 200~400Hz can makes you sound like "cardboard box" and that region also can mess with all other voices in the mix (guitars, keys, toms, snare, vocals). Above, 600~1200Hz can help define notes, but may make you sound too nasal. Good for a "jacoesque" fretless tone, but can be bad if you want a deep fat tone.
60Hz - Bones, Structure
120Hz - Muscles, Thight
200Hz - Fat, Body, Mud
350Hz - Hollow, Flabby
800 Hz - Nasal, Articulation
1200 Hz - Definition, Hearing Fatigue
2500Hz - Clearness, Attack, String noise
When I hear you saying "twangy", it makes me feel that mids really are the problem, but you can't rip off all mids to solve it. My suggestion would be trying a mid cut sweep between 200Hz to 800Hz, you must hear how it interacts with your lows to feel where it exactly need to be. In 200Hz it will probably kill the thickness you need, in 800Hz it'll probably start decreasing note articulation, but somewhere in between you will find the offending frequency you must tame.
I usualy turn down 320Hz with not more than 1 octave bandwidht and bring back any eventual missing lows with a low shelf eq at 100~200Hz (here I sweep too to find the exact point where I get the deepness back).
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The challenge here is to be aware that one thing is the tone you send to FOH/PA system, another is how the room reacts to the frequencies it throws to audience. So, any concerns regarding frequencies and tone are dependent on how good the sound engineer "flattened" the house first, simply because the room can enhance lows and mid lows in a very disturbing way (especially near corners and walls - just where they use to mount the stage, by the way).
I will not bother you explaining how low frequencies can get stuck between walls creating nodes where it explodes and others where it is killed, but any room can produce this modal phenomenon. In some cases those reinforcements can be nicely spreaded, like in a properly designed recording studio, but it is not rare they end stacked up in few frequencies creating a clear unbalanced room response.
And the question is that you should not try to correct it just based on how your amp sound at a specific place in that room. It is like tryng to focusing the camera with someone's eyeglass who is severely nearsighted. And that is true to monitoring, too, although for different reasons.
When we hear our instrument through an amp, due to its own imperfections and the speakers limitations and cabinet characteristcs, it is always compressed in some degree and it also may lack highs. Even if you have tweeters on it, we just have to move our ears a little off their axis to decrease high perceiveness *(think about that guitarrist using his amp pointing towards his knees complaining about not hearing himself...). So, our "real" tone tends to be more open sounding to the DI/mixing board and, of course, to phone/monitor, than we can imagine facing our amps.
The conclusion is that we should work with 2 different systems, one for the audience and one exclusive to monitoring, in a way we could equalize specifically to the equipement that will be used to amplify it (because PA loudspeakers sounds different from phones and wedges) and where it will be listened (because the room response is not even).
House engineer should equalize bass auxiliar channel sent to your mates. The suggestion of taming mids should helps here, too. Probably it'll need be more aggressive because phones and wedges can sound more "midy" (that is not a word, right? sorry...) and lows leaking from PA also can blur things a little. But may be he simply doesn't have gear enough to do it right...
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Isn't F1-X based on Fender Bassman Eq? So, there is another way to scoop mids. Increasing Lows and Highs will attenuate Mids. More Lows will push the mid scoop towards 600Hz and raising Highs will lower the center frequency scoop more towards 300Hz. You just need to compensate the master volume to prevent distortion in the desk and eventualy use the filter to avoid sounding too trebly... but I would tottaly rather geting your signal pre than post, if I was your sound guy.
Hope this helps you somehow...
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Hi Mario_ Farufyno thanks for your detailed response I will need to read that through a few times to grasp the bones of it and yes I understand that the fender tone stack is interactive but practically using it correctly is what I need to do. The other interesting thing is when I have used that same rig in different venues for reggae it has sounded great and just as thick and meaty as I like it and just enough clarity to keep my OCD happy. So I do think there were environmental factors at the venue this weekend. Actually I started bringing the "small" rack primarily because the rigs I was being provided with at gigs were rubbish. Incidentally after the gig another two members of the band told me the sound was just right and I didn't change anything after soundcheck. :-)
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I'm thinking that it's not just an EQ issue. The nature of an Alembic style neck through is that the string vibrates in a very different fashion than other instruments. A Modulus neck through goes to the next level. I think it has to do with all of the harmonics being in phase with each other and the way the string keeps all its energy. It's not really a characteristic that can be EQ'd out. The strings are just going to be boingier, for lack of a better word. More alive.
Obviously, it's an awesome sound, but I think I get what your bandmates are after and I'm not sure an Alembic is going to do that thing.
OTOH, I may be totally wrong.
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I've been watching this thread with some interest, (I actually don't play any reggae...) but what Edwin says makes a lot of sense. Bolt-on necks may well be the answer to the classic sound, but, then again, perhaps an Alembic is the key to a totally different (and of course, AWEsome) sound!
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Alembic certainly is the key to a different sound and I have been having that for a few years, some hiccups along the way and change of cabs during the last year has given me a different sound. I am thinking that for my own on-stage sound in a reggae context that maybe the F1-x is not the best way to tune the bottom end the way I want it. I have thought since posting this that maybe I should look for an SF-2 to replace/trade with that F1-x in my small rack.
More money......
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Question, if I managed to get hold of an SF-2 to use as a preamp how I would send the output to the PA from the SF-2 since unlike the F1-x it does not have a DI out?
According to my pdf plugging into the front jack utilises the pre-amp and outputs to the A channel on the back but would that be too hot for a stage DI box.
Nothing is mentioned about what position the rear mono/stereo switch should be set to but I wonder if switching to stereo in this context would put the same signal on both A and B outputs?
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I think the sf-2 idea is a question for mica. I need to call her soon and will add that to the conversation.
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I think a high quality passive DI with a pad on it should handle the output of the SF-2 with no problem, such as a Radial JDI. I've used Radial DIs on the outputs of the F-2B with no problem, in fact, they sound great.
Active DIs might be a little more sensitive.
Stereo sets the SF-2 up to be two independent channels. There is no mixing across the channels, you get either two channels in series in the mono setting or two independent channels in stereo. Some DIs, like the Radial Duplex, have mixing capabilities, so that might be something to look into. I have the Duplex and I love it. Or maybe small mixer.
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I do have a Radial DI Pro D2 which is passive.
Am I right in assuming that the pads on these devices only operate on the part of the signal going to the DI out and the thru is not affected?
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Oh here is my take after trying this yesterday.
I untangled all the wires on the back of my large rack system and rewired so that I went straight into the front of the SF-2 and had that set to mono so I got to twiddle both filters. Initial thoughts was that with my on bass filter settings that I normally start with, it sounds less crisp sounding even without the filter gain's up. After some quick experimenting it seems to work better if I put the filters on the bass fully open and do all the Eq tweaking from the SF2, trying to set the filters on the bass and on the SF-2 seems like I'm chasing my tail.
Putting the F1-x back in front and the SF-2 in it's s/r loop sounds much fuller to my ears and allows my tone changes on the bass to have a greater say in the sound than using the SF-2 on it's own.
My initial Verdict is that it seems like it would work great for my application of tuning the bottom end for reggae or any genre that is really bottom heavy but more challenging for "me" to use as a general pre-amp for everything as i'm a tweaker of my bass controls and the SF-2 seems to be the stronger partner in that aspect and would seem to override the subtle changes I'd make.
More experimentation needed.
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I would really love to hear how far you can go now.
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Good news, I have found an SF-2 over here in the UK and it should get here over by the weekend. I have rehearsal at the weekend and a gig next week so will give them a blast.
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Ok here is the thing. I tried it out this afternoon with my series I and barefaced cab after I moved the internal trim jumper lead to 20db.
Previously I had been using the input jack socket at the rear to connect my bass and found that was good but a little quiet volume wise compared to me using the F1-x, but after an on line conversation with Will Gunn he said thathe thinks the jumper inside relate to the jack on the front and he uses it as it came from alembic. So when I took it to rehearsal and tried it out, the result was a massive output which seems to be hitting the power amp too hard and distorting so it was back to the rear jack input which was fine for quality but not enough volume I think for a larger stage/venue.
I do think it would be great for reggae but for other things where I need to make quick changes on the bass, having two sets of filtering, one on the bass and the other on the SF-2 I would find quite confusing as the SF-2 seems more in charge than my bass.
So on a first outing I think my next test will be drop the jumper in the SF-2 back to 10 db and try it out by putting my bass into the front jack and see what affect that has on things. My ears tell me at the moment that the SF-2 is more effective in the send and return loop of the F1-x than on it's own. But we shall see.
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Right, live test observations. I've just got home from a reggae gig in a small venue in London using my Maple Signature Europa 5 bass into the front of my SF-2 in mono mode, then into my Synq 1K0 power amp driving my 800w Barefaced Big Baby2 cab.
It sounded great once i'd managed to get the eq settings on the bass and the SF-2 in the right place. The SF-2 is really powerful and I found that I needed to find the sweet spot where I could get the sound I wanted but still have the SF-2 set at a point that I could control things from the bass.
Channel 1 is set in Low Pass mode and Channel 2 is in Band pass.
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Another couple of reggae gigs under my belt and the sf-2 as a preamp is doing an excellent job. Can you confirm my understanding of the SF-2 filter gain knob. Am i right in thinking that knob raises the level of all the frequencies below the set frequency by the same amount if in LP mode and all above the set frequency by the same amount if in HP mode?
That is what i am assuming then using the band pass of the second channel to choose the low end punch frequency.
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In looking at the SF-2 manual, your understanding about the filter gain seems to be correct.
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Another couple of reggae gigs under my belt and the sf-2 as a preamp is doing an excellent job. Can you confirm my understanding of the SF-2 filter gain knob. Am i right in thinking that knob raises the level of all the frequencies below the set frequency by the same amount if in LP mode and all above the set frequency by the same amount if in HP mode?
That is what i am assuming then using the band pass of the second channel to choose the low end punch frequency.
That's exactly it and the damping knob adds a bump at the cutoff frequency. For a super deep and clear sound, try no unfiltered signal, high pass on one filter swept all the way down and damping to taste. It ensures no subsonics get through but the low end is massive.
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Edwin, what do you mean by “no unfiltered signal”?
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Edwin, what do you mean by “no unfiltered signal”?
An SF-2 allows you to mix the direct signal with the filtered signal, so in this scenario, it's all filtered signal.
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Ah, thank you!
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Revitalising this thread, i have been using the S-F2 as my main pre-amp for a while now and really have managed to get s great reggae sound fom it without any mud. I have used my Pro di radial box in the back of the rack for getting to FOH and only the occasional issue with levels. For this year i have a new SKB 4U Shallow rack unit and put the F1-x in the rack so will be using the S-F2 in the S/R loop. It makes it easier to use that rack for other genre gigs as for those the F-1x works best and i can fine tune with the S-F2.