Kinda OT question about preamping

[Kramer Ferrington III.]

At the moment I'm playing a lot of trumpet and I've bought this thing called "the Yamaha Silent Brass System" which seems to be a fancy name for a mute with a pickup and a headphone amp to run it all through.

 

Anyway, I'd like to run the trumpet through effects. I can run the headphone amp into the guitar amp but when I do that, it sounds really tinny and compressed and so I've been trying to plug the mute straight into my amp. And I get no sound at all.

 

So ok, it wants some sort of preamp.

 

I run the mute into a portastudio (Zoom MRS 4) and crank up the mike boost. And nothing happens. Tap the jack and the cable's fine. Meters go wild and all that.

 

I run the mute through a Danelectro Fab Metal overdrive and I STILL get nothing (except for a bunch of white noise from the OD).

 

I plug the mute back into the headphone amp and it all works fine.

 

 

Now, I can understand the headphone amp being really powerful, but more powerful than the boosted input jack of a portastudio? And more powerful than an overdrive???

 

So here's my question...

 

I still want to get a preamp or some sort of booster pedal but, from specs, how will I know it will work?

 

It's some sort of input sensitivity problem? I notice the 4 track has an input level of -50dBm

http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/mrs4/index.php

 

and that the headphone preamp has an input level of (0dBm=0.775 Vrms) -30dBm

 

http://www.yamaha-europe.com/yamaha_europe/uk/10_musical_instruments/20_orchestra/30_silent_brass/10_silent_brass/20_personal_studio/10_ST_9/index.html

 

Does that mean anything special? Sorry to be such a klutz but I'm really puzzled and frustrated by this.

[The Geoff]

Sorry Vince, I have no idea about all this kinda stuff.

 

Geoff

[Kramer Ferrington III.]

Originally posted by Geoff Byrne:

Sorry Vince, I have no idea about all this kinda stuff.

 

Geoff

Neither do I (he rejoined with simplicity)

 

Thanks for reading it through though.

[Fumblyfingers]

The ST9 says this on the list of features....

 

"Output/phones jack

The Output/phones jack allows the Silent Brass system to be connected to earphones for private practice, an external sound system for sound reproduction, or to a recording system for recording."

 

The ST5 says the same in the manual and shows a picture. So it should work.

 

As for running it through a stompbox that signal needs to be Instrument level and you have Line level signal on the phones output so in my opinion and limited knowledge, that is not going to work.

 

If you run it straight from the headphone jack using an 1/8" mini jack to two mono 1/4" jacks cable, and put it into the MRS4 with each channel panned Lt and Rt, does it work or not...it should.

 

The MRS 4 is pretty limited in I/O. If you had an insert point perhaps you could use it for the stompboxes I think.

 

Or you could record some clean trumpet and then use a reamp device ( Reamping ) to get the signal to Instrument level and send it through a distortion or whatever, bring it back onto a new track through a DI box and get the sound you want hopefully. But you have to have a direct out. I would consider getting a mixer with more features to give you more flexibility.

 

I am not an expert at this, just going by what I have read. I could be wrong so don't trust me entirely.

Good luck.

[Kramer Ferrington III.]

Originally posted by Fumblyfingers:

The ST9 says this on the list of features....

Yeah, the prob is that the ST9 sounds pretty ok through headphones but not when I run it through an amp. Going through my Vox AD30VT, it sounds really compressed and tinny. So I'm trying to find someway of bypassing the ST9. Also because the AD30VT models and modelling amps don't like processing other complex signals. I've had to get rid of a zoom multiFX for this very reason.

 

So the manual is absolutely right... YOU can hook up the ST9 to an amp. It's just that it doesn't sound very good when you do And it sounds even worse when run through a modelling amp.

 

 

Originally posted by Fumblyfingers:

If you run it straight from the headphone jack using an 1/8" mini jack to two mono 1/4" jacks cable, and put it into the MRS4 with each channel panned Lt and Rt, does it work or not...it should.

Ahhhh... Now THAT is a new idea. I'll try that thisa afternoon. Thank you so much, I was completely out of ideas!

 

 

Originally posted by Fumblyfingers:

Or you could record some clean trumpet and then use a reamp device ( Reamping ) ...

No, that's not really me. I want this to work for jam sessions and so on.

 

Originally posted by Fumblyfingers:

But you have to have a direct out. I would consider getting a mixer with more features to give you more flexibility.

I'll look into the DI box, I was intersted in the specs bit so I don't wind up ordering a dozen useless boxes online. But thank you, that's two ideas you've given me so far.

[Bluesape]

Hopefully, ya can find a knowledgeable vendor, Vince. The guy who's gotta sell it should have some insight here. Doesn't Yamaha have a help line?

[Kramer Ferrington III.]

Originally posted by Bluesape:

Hopefully, ya can find a knowledgeable vendor, Vince. The guy who's gotta sell it should have some insight here. Doesn't Yamaha have a help line?

They've got a Knowledge Base which doesn't make any mention of this stuff at all.

 

I guess electric guitarists are unusual in that we're born tinkerers, to an extent that a bassoon player, say, would never dream of. So we ask questions that don't occur to other musicians

 

Anyway, I've been "invited" to go see my favourite mom & pop store next week and blow through everything they got until I find something that I can use to replace Yamaha's poxy preamp.

 

Thanks for getting rid of the *bump* posts, Reif!