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

[edwin]

Stereo Series bass->Alembic F2B->Crest Prolite 3.0 (or equivalent Peavey)->fEARful 15/6 for neck pickup and fEArful 12/6/1 for the bridge and call it done. Lightweight and very loud and full range.  
 
All of a sudden FOH engineers are very into the stereo DI. The last two really loved it! So, my signal chain inserts a Grace Design Felix in the signal chain. Unfortunately, that means the signal to the speakers is currently mono, but Grace is working on a mod.

[bigredbass]

It would first come down to a primary decision at the start, that being  
 
a) Would a contemporary (traditional) bass amp and speakers (think Mesa, Genzler, Aguilar, Fender, and on and on) suit what you want, as they've made tremendous strides since the 70's?
 
OR  
 
b) Would you prefer to go a 'component' route, like the rig Ed suggested above, the classic preamp/power amp/effects (rack-mount gear) and more esoteric cabinets like the FearFuls, Acmes, Epifanis, El Whappos (no Italians in THAT company), etc. ?
 
While the difference in the two approaches in more cases today is not as great as it once was, the 'bass amp' head or combo is like one of those TV's with the DVD player built in:  That's as good as it's ever going to get.  And even in today's world, the distortion figures on 'dedicated' bass amps is still many times that of component gear, if not in the preamps, certainly in the power amp end of it.
 
A Series/graphite axe is going to be as dry and surgically clean-sounding an Alembic as can be had.  You will have to decide if you want to warm/fatten it up a lot, or if a studio/headphone type presentation is what you want to carry thru the whole way.
 
By far the biggest difference is that the power amp rig will (Considering you're NOT running a tiny power amp like a D60 Crown . . . ) have a ton more headroom.  In that case, you're shooting for the 'big amp turned up to 2' and it never farts out on the low E's and never is anything less than disturbingly clear, and the connection between hands and strings and what you're hearing is instant, fast, never bogs down.
 
Not that you couldn't approach that with a 'big' bass head, but it's still noticeably different.
 
And this very precise presentation may not be for everyone.  I once fronted a CS800-based rig to a terrific player in a soul band, who loved it, but could not get used to losing the grunge he was used to with his SVT.  'It's TOO clean'.  And that's alright.  You'll just have to decide.
 
Joey

[ed_zeppelin]

quote:I can imagine Jaco reading this and becoming totally confused to what everyone is going on about!
 
I was thinking the same thing while reading this thread, but only because Jazzyvee mentioned this is the OP:
 
quote:I also have a Roland JC 120 that I could use
 
I spent some time recently on Joni Mitchell's site and happened to read her eulogy for Jaco from the December, 1987 issue of Musician magazine called; The Life and Death of Jaco Pastorius.
 
(I hope nobody minds if I quote just a little bit more than just the relevant reference to the Roland JC120 here. I encourage people to read the rest of her touching reminiscence at that link.)
 
 quote: ... The first time he came in, I had never heard him play. I forget who recommended him. Everybody'd heard my lament about the trouble I was having. I was trying to find a certain sound on the bottom end, going against the vogue at the time. It's very difficult to buck a vogue. Bass players were playing with dead strings; you couldn't get them to change to get a round, full-bodied tone. I liked that old analog, jukebox, Fifties sound-up-right bass, boomier. In the Sixties and early Seventies you had this dead, distant bass sound. I didn't care for it.  
 
And the other thing was, I had started to think, Why couldn't the bass leave the bottom sometimes and go up and play in the midrange and then return? Why did it have to always play the root? On The Jungle Line I had played some kind of keyboard bass line, and when it came around to Max Bennett having to play it, he just hated it. Because sometimes it didn't root the chord, it went up into the middle. To him that was flat-out wrong. To some people it was eccentric. So when Jaco came in, John Guerin said to me, God, you must love this guy; he almost never plays the root!  
 
There was a time when Jaco and I first worked together when there was nobody I'd rather hang with than him. There was an appreciation, a joie de vivre, a spontaneity. A lot of people couldn't take him. Maybe that's my peculiarity, but then, I also have a fondness for derelicts.  
 
He had this wide, fat swath of a sound. There weren't a lot of gizmos you could put your instrument through then, and the night I got my Roland Jazz Chorus amp, it was a prototype.  
 
Jaco and Bobbye Hall and I were playing a benefit up in San Francisco. I tried playing through this thing and Jaco flipped for it. So he stole it off me! He said, Oh yeah, I'm playing through that tonight! I said, What are you talking about? This is my new amp! He pointed to his rental amp and said, I'm not playing through that piece of shit. So he took mine!  
 
We went out onstage that night and Jaco got this huge wonderful busy sound and I played through this peanut. He was formidable! You can hear it in the mixes back then. He was very dominating. But I put up with it; I even got a kick out of it. Because I was so thrilled about the way he played. It was exactly what I was waiting for. ...
 


 
Peter Erskine, Joni, Jaco, Herbie.
 
Jaco had weird thumbs.

[moongerm]

Hey Edwin,  
 
   Based on your recommendation I got the Grace Felix several months ago and am digging it. I am using it as my only preamp/DI for shows that don't afford me to bring out the Alembic PREs. QSC GX7 into the Grace Felix stereo (using the amp 1/4 out for my bridge pickup) and the DI 1 for the neck. Then I use DI 2 as my DI out to the board in mix mode.
 
I would love to get that mod you mentioned for the Felix. I have to check out those fEarfuls one day.
 
-Brian

[moongerm]

I wish I could unsee that thumb. Cripes that's scary.
 
(Message edited by moongerm on March 27, 2016)
 
(Message edited by moongerm on March 27, 2016)

[keith_h]

Jon,  
Ah yes the days when our backs were stronger than our minds. I used to use two Acoustic 301's and two front load cabinets with JBL K140's. Who knows if I had kept it I might be in better physical shape today.  
 
I have only run stereo to dabble around at my house. For all of my normal playing I use a mono rig and have had no trouble getting the sound I want. I do use components of a an Eden Navigator and QSC power amp but I would feel comfortable using an integrated head with similar tone circuits. For speakers I have down scaled to a maximum of two full range 2X10 cabinets. One with a tweeter the other without. Prior to this I was using a Bag End ELF subsystem and would use a combination of single 18's and 2X10 cabinets depending upon my needs. The ELF provides signal processing and crossover for a bi-amp setup. Basically a mini bass PA that was smaller, lighter and sounded better than my 70's rig.  While it has a good sound I just don't need it anymore for the type of playing I do and the 2X10's are more than adequate to give me the tone I want to hear. So to sum it up I would not try to resurrect the old Sun rig except for nostalgia or if I was maybe in a Who tribute act. Instead I would look at modern amps/cabinets and if I were starting fresh lean towards an integrated head with 2-way/3-way cabinet or cabinets.
Keith

[edwin]

Weirdly, Xander has the opposite of that thumb. His won't even straighten out. He inherited it from his mom. They also both have double jointed thumbs and he's always delighted that he can pop it out and I can't. Oh well.
 
I'll find out about the Felix mods this week. It would probably be a question of repurposing the footswitch jack for channel 2 output and then not having a volume control for that channel, so the gain to the amp would have to be set at the amp. The good part about that mod is that everything else would work as normal, from mutes to the mono out (which would be simply panned to output 1 for the stereo setup).
 
I'll keep you posted.

[nemesis]

Thank you to all for all the guidance about setups, and getting away from the 70's technology..... I have a lot to look at now, but with the suggestions from the group I have lots to look at and think about. I thank you all so much and will continue to watch for more ideas. As I move forward with getting new equipment I keep you all posted. Lastly, do any of you have any thoughts of how to sell a Sunn setup, beside perhaps Ebay etc.?
Thank you Jon