To Bi-amp or Not to Bi-amp, that is the question.

[jazzyvee]

LOL Terry, you are absolutely correct. Most times keeping things simple is the best way to be.

[terryc]

Jazzy...yeah it is, nowadays If I am doing a gig which involves a hired soundman & rigs I just DI from the amp and let them sort the outfront sound, sometimes you can get too caught up in it all that techno stuff and forget about the actual notes you are playing!
There is a guy I know and whatever guitar he is using, whether it be a Squier Starter Strat or a custom boutique guitar going through whatever amp is available, he sounds like BB King everytime! It must be in his fingers!

[jazzyvee]

Agreed that's what I normally do just take a DI from my rig but in this instance I wanted to take the opportunity to experiment because I had all the options available for me to do that.  
As for the fingers.... i think that is worthy of it's own thread.

[jazzyvee]

Agreed that's what I normally do just take a DI from my rig but in this instance I wanted to take the opportunity to experiment because I had all the options available for me to do that.  
As for the fingers.... i think that is worthy of it's own thread.

[terryc]

Jazzy..yeah good opportunity but I would be lost on all that, takes all my mental faculties just to adjust bass, low mid, high mid & treble and then factor in the filters on my bass! LOL

[edwin]

I was all set to go stereo this weekend, but decide at the last moment to not bother. The sound guy mentioned that if he had another 421, he'd mic my cabinet (Sunn 200S with JBL K140s), so I offered up my RE20. He ended up just using that and never even brought the DI fader up. I guess it sounded good out front (lots of compliments for the bass tone), but I think the very lowest frequencies were missing.  
 
I'm interested in hearing your impressions of the recording, Jazzy. Were your signals sent post-EQ?
 
Adjusting all these things is pretty straightforward once you get clear about what the purpose of each tonal option is. Biamping is for balancing highs and lows (or the pickups in stereo), amp tone controls are to interface the bass tone to the room and the onboard electronics are to adjust the tone for each part of the song. At least that's how I think about it. So, if I notice an issue, it's pretty clear what knobs I have to go for.

[StephenR]

Strange that the sound guy used the mic feed and not the DI or a combo of the two. I also think you probably lost a bit of lowest frequencies without the DI but if it sounded good in the room and you were happy with the stage sound that is all that matters.
 
Pretty much every soundman I work with wants a feed from a DI that is in front of my pre-amp so I bring my Avalon U5 to every gig. If there are enough channels available I ask them to also mic my cabinets.
 
For a live recording like Jazzy's recent one where there were multiple channels available for the bass it seems like a good time to experiment with sending each pickup to a different channel even if they get summed into mono for the FOH feed.

[jazzyvee]

Edwin, all being well I should get the recordings from the venue tomorrow afternoon so probably won't get a chance to listen properly till Wednesday. The DI signals were taken Post-EQ.

[willie]

If I had a Series Bass I would run it in stereo and Bi-Amp the output of each pick up separately. Both pickups have a wide frequency range. I wouldn't limit either pickups sound by it being reproduced by a single sized driver that can't reproduce cleanly and accurately the full range the pickup is capable of. But that's me. And I never claimed to be normal. Haha.

[pauldo]

I like Edwin's 'straightforward' description.
Interesting enough (although I haven't been in a large scenario that required it in a looonng time and as Stephen mentioned) past experiences with Sound guys was they always DI'd pre EQ, which meant that my FOH sound ultimatly was controlled by whomever was behind the board.  :-(
 
Jazzy, you were fortunate to have a post-EQ DI.
 
With that being said - when (again a long time ago) I use my 'big rig' it is a GK800RB bi-amped into a 2x10 and 1x15; and most of the time the amp EQ was set relatively flat seeing that I had a tone monster worth of control on my Distillate - the only change for room sound would be where the frequency was set for the bi-amp split. blah blah blah blah - sometimes I just like to hear myself talk . . . .  
 
The gigs I played in the last couple years have easily and respectfully been handled with a Carvin MB15,

[sonicus]

Willie , I have done as you describe in your post #256 as an experiment .  
  Such a notion makes me brain-storm ____ !  ( the geek gets out  and romps about and such )  
 What would your personal choice of respective cross-over frequencies be ?  
 
 
What drivers would you use ?  What would you look for as far as the excursion figures of the lowest frequency driver ? In other terms what XMAX figures would you look for to make it appealing to your application requirements ?   I was just wondering regarding your preferences ____  
 
Wolf

[edwin]

I had a stereo biamped system for a while. I found that the bridge pickup didn't benefit nearly as much as the neck pickup. In fact, one of my favorite setups these days is using a Showman with a Sunn 200S for the neck pickup and a Bandmaster with a single JBL K-120 for the bridge. That's pretty much all I need, although that's for a particular tone. If I was playing funk, it wouldn't do it at all.
 
I also think that biamping isn't really necessary for certain speakers. A fEARful has an excellent passive crossover (which weighs more than the woofer) and with a cabinet like that, there's no real need to biamp, especially now that power amps are very powerful and light these days. Most bass cabinets are so colored that biamping can really help overcome limitations of the cheap passive crossovers, etc. I'd rather use a fEARful full range than pretty much all of the commercial bass cabinets biamped. But that's just me.

[willie]

Wolf
I used to use JBL drivers. But now I use Beyma Drivers in cabinets I designed and built or ones I modified. For lows I use a 15G40's. 15 driver, 25-1500 Hz., Xmax 7mm. Thunderous clear lows. For mids I use 10MI100's. 10 mid bass driver. 70-4000 Hz. Xmax 4.5 mm. The clearest mid bass sounds I ever heard in a bass rig. I have a lot of 10 woofers but don't use them. I always Bi-amp so my 10's never see any real lows and the mid bass drivers reproduce mids way better than a woofer could. For highs I use CP-22 Bullet super tweeters. 4000-20000 Hz. Crossovers at 150 Hz and 4000 Hx. Depending on cabinet combination I am using I use 2 Crown MA9000I Amps in Bridge Mono. One for lows and one for highs. I can also add 2 Crown PB-3 Amps each  in bridge mono if using all my cabinets. So either 12000 or 15000 watts. I also separately compress my highs, lows and full range signals. I use F-1X Pre-amps, SF-2 Filter and DBX 160A Compressors. I think this is the clearest and best sounding bass rig I ever heard, I don't have a Series Bass so I don't get to Bi-Amp each pickups output. If I did I would for the ultimate control and reproduction of the tone each pickup can produce.. But my Alembic Basses sound great through this rig. It can fully reproduce them accurately and cleanly. Oh yeah, it can be loud too!

[jazzyvee]

I can imagine JJ reading this thread and having a wry smile to himself as he walks on stage, plugs into a a couple of DI-boxes  and delivers some serious bass vibes.
 
I'm gonna try that with my series bass next year and see how that works. Though I can imagine my reggae band wanting to hear & feel more bottom end on stage.

[terryc]

I can imagine Jaco reading this and becoming totally confused to what everyone is going on about!