Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Pleased to help.

Have a nice Christmas,

JL

I love my SABDDI. I've only had it for a short while but it's helped me dial in a tone that I've been searching for for a decade. Best $200 on outboard gear I've ever spent!

Practice getting your tones through something clean like your home audio system. That way it is easy to get the same tones at the same settings on other clean systems like a recording console or a high quality PA system.

Setting bass and guitar amp controls flat (midway between stops) does not get you flat frequency response. All guitar preamps have a big midrange suckout to compensate for the midrange hump of pickups. You can get a test CD that has the same volume level at many frequencies, or use a signal generator and sweep the frequency to set your amp controls to true flat. Any settings you arrive at on the SansAmp can then be used into any flat response system without trying to dial in offsets on the SansAmp. I plugged my SansAmp into the recorder inputs of my audiophile preamp, and the superior tonal range and fidelity of my stereo system allows much better shaping of tone. It is impossible to get all these same tones when running through my Marshall amp, no matter where you set the amp controls. Play a CD through a Marshall, or sing through it, and see if it doesn't horrendously color the sound. A SansAmp will help expand the tonal range of a bass or guitar amp, but the bass or guitar amp will limit the tones that can be gotten from a SansAmp. You need a high fidelity system to hear what a SansAmp can really do, and until you have plugged it into one, you have never really heard your SansAmp. Mine goes through 200WPC of clean power. I much prefer the sound over using a bass amp for practice. If you have a really good stereo system, use it with the SansAmp. Be mindful of speaker distress. Real audiophile speakers usually don't distort heavily until the brink of destruction since their job is to stay clean at all costs. Some people can't tell speaker distortion from SansAmp distortion. This is not for your children to play with, or your friends with ten thumbs.

The better the system you plug the SansAmp into, the more you will hear this effect I'm talking about. That boomy rack system with IC outputs, $10 woofers and $3 tweeters from your college days that you bought at Circuit City doesn't qualify. Best to stick to your bass amp in that case. It is much easier to get the wide range of tones like Entwistle got when running through high fidelity gear. A Marshall amp just won't do it, even with a SansAmp pushing it. Now, if I could only play like him.

Rics have more REAL low end than just about any other bass I can think of, it's in the pickup placement. I usually boost the low mid, around 200 hz, (220hz on an ampeg SVT) which really fills in the sound and I get massive low end even without a soundman if I want it. (that's one of the reasons I use SVT's as well as for the sound, I don't have to rely on the sound man as much, they fill most rooms with nice bottom. I don't usually trust most of them anyway, a lot of them think that you are working for them, not the other way around. They also mix the band to THEIR preference not your's, because they are out in front not you.
A Fender especially a P bass is all mid along with the bottom, a Ric bass has much more bottom than a Fender but not as much mid, which is where you get your presence and which is actually much harder for a PA to reproduce, most Pa's are built for efficiency and do not really go real low, unless you have a damn good one.
Using flatwounds also makes a big difference, they are much smoother that rounds on a Ric and have more mid to them, and you can still get a lot of high end if they are fairly new.
One more thing I do is always insist (in a nice way unless they are curt with me) that they mic my amp, no DI's for me, I want my tone out there not the soundmans idea of what good tone is. To most of a them an inaudable thump along with the ridiculously loud kick drum is a great sound.
To illustrate the reason for my lousy attitude with soundman I'll tell a little story. I was doing a sound check a few months ago here in Lima and there was an incessant ring in thre monitors, it was a high E two octaves up from low E which is approximately 40 hz. so doubled twice that is about 160 hz. I told the sound man 160 hz. three or four times, played the note for him several times and finally had to go to the control room myself and drop the 160 Hz. slider on the graphic equalizer which immediately eliminated the problem. Now I definitely do not have perfect relative pitch, I just figured it out mathmatically, but the guy should have been able to find it right away because it was an obvious ring. These are the kind of people that we are entrusting our sound to. Many soundmen have their favorite tone positions, and because of all the fender clones out there they usually work well, bring in a Ric and they are lost and blame it on the Ric rather than on the fact that they are complacent and don't want to work to change the sound.

My band has started using the "Drive Rack" in our PA ... it emits a white noise and then sets an eq for that room ... you can then use your favorite eq settings and get a good sound in different rooms ... http://www.dbxpro.com/

We also use the in-ear monitor system ... this eliminates the old fashioned monitors from the stage ... therefore we decrease our stage volume ... this also pretty much eliminates feedback ... also the in-ear monitor has 5 controls for each user ... 1 master volume and 4 aux's ... so each band member can customize what he hears in his monitor ...

I also quit running an xlr out from my bass head ... I now mike one of my 10" speakers ... I want to replicate the sound from my amp out through the PA ...

We use small amps and have a lower stage volume ... and we let our high powered pa do the work ...

The problem is a dufass sound man can ruin your sound ... but the alternative is to do it the old school way ... a lot of real big amps and the pa is for vocals only ... then the stage becomes a battle ground for volume wars ... and everybody loses that war ...

Bob, you are right about Rickenbackers having more real bottom than a P-bass. I had a P-bass and it definitely fell off on the lowest notes of the E string. Some of that was probably my amp, as it was built for efficiency over bandwidth. The P-bass also falls off on the high end as well. I don't call my 4004 an Earthquake Generator for nothing, and a cheap OLP wipes both of them on the high end. The OLP continues to amaze (Ed Roman doesn't sell them either, which we now know to be a good sign for cheap basses). The only fault I found is that the open D string develops a metallic drone on a long note, but that's probably the cheap Ernie Ball strings. So for low end it's Rick, OLP, P-bass in that order.

Jeff and Bob, the answer to the soundman problem is to get your own soundman. He can also setup and breakdown the gear. You might could use a soundwoman instead, as women tend to have the best hearing. A retired roller derby queen would be hard for the crowd to argue against.

A good active bass with active bass boost will have more bass then a ric or fender ...

Also if you replace the stock fender p or jazz bass pickups with Seymour Duncan 1/4 pound pickups the highs and lows are both boosted ... a rosewood neck is darker sounding than a maple neck ... different body mass and different wood will change the tonal charistics as well ...

The main advantage of the Ric pickup location is you don't have to roll off as much treble as a jazz bass ... A Ric will have plenty of bass with the tone set to 10.

Hey Phil .. you sure do like those olp's ... maybe you can get an endorsement deal ...

I was at a local guitar center and playing an olp mm style bass ... it sounded good better than the mim fenders ... then I picked up a 5 year old jetglo 4003 ric ... it blew the olp's away ... but for the price the olp's ain't bad ...

Rickenbackers have extremely strong pickups, at least the humbuckers are strong in my 4004. Neither of my OLP's come close in the voltage department. The higher windings on the 4004 pickups will choke the highs compared to the EMG pickups. I say the Rick HB-1 pickups give about 6 more dB of output.

Jeff, if you try the SB4 you will get quite a bit more tonal range than the MM2 or MM3 can muster. I think the SB4 is definitely the better bass for my style. I want the tonal range of an Entwistle bass rig. The SB4 run through a SansAmp RBI into a clean wide bandwidth system delivers that for about $600 new street price.

You all are very helpful and I thank you for your excellent advice. Like I said earlier, I always get great tone onstage, so I think I'll try miking my cabinet. Can anyone suggest a good mic for this application? I think someone mentioned a Sennheiser e609 ?

AKG D-112 is a great mike too. I know some players also use Shure SM-57, but I never experienced it for bass amplification.

Cheers,
JL

D-112's are the way to go, It's also a great bass drum mic as well. I realize that the 57's have been around for years and people swear by them, but for a great bass tone try the 112. I've had the some issues with stage vs. pa tone, on stage my trace rig peels paint, but then I hear the tape that was ran from the board and the tone deaf soundman has dialed in a mid range honking, farty tone... time for a come to jesus talk.

The SM 57 is a good instrument / speaker cab mike ... but there are a lot better ... I am using a 57 these days ... I thought about running 2 lines into the pa ... 1 miked and 1 xlr out ... then mixing the signals ...

I like to set the tone on my bass amp and run the settings on my channel of the mixing board basically flatline ... then the soundman just adjusts the volume ...

I use a bass drum mic for miking my cabinet (I believe it is currently an Audio-Technica) and it has a clamp and a gooseneck so that I can clamp it onto the cabinet and adjust the mic into the perfect spot on the speaker. Works fantastically, and sound guys love it.

I've always used 57's or 58's but have also always wanted a bass drum mic, but I've always had good luck with the 57/8's though. Another thing I want is a wireless setup just to hear the mix from out front, I'm a little afraid though of what I'll hear, the last live tape I did was with a blues band that I played with a few times and the bass was almost inaudible, this was a place with no PA, except for vocals, and the singer complained so much about the moniters (none) that I turned my bass down too much.
We just have gotten our own soundman here in Lima, he's a guitar player though, but he likes Rics, I'll have to brainwash him, bass is best, bass is best, bass is best....tic, tic, tic.... boing!

> I thought about running 2 lines into the pa ... 1 miked and 1 xlr out ... then mixing the signals ...

At least from what I experienced, seems like that's the way to go. But it's up to one's personal taste.

Cheers
JL