Should I be careful w synth bass into bass amp?

[I-missRichardTee]

In another thread about Left hand bass, one of the members ( garnermike) was emphatic about what he called burning out the various pre amps of his bass amps.

He later went into more detail.. basically that his keyboard ( Casio ) did not totally destroy the pre, but that their tonal character was changed from playing keyboard bass into them. He mention various amps that were all affected similarly. He felt that some keyboards have hotter signals, and that this accounted for the negative effects on his bass amps... burnt out.

 

Do keyboards vary in the hotness of there signal?

Would one of the hotter signal keyboard outputs, account for "burnt" out, negative effect on the presumed delicate, pre?

What is suggested to keep signal chain "non destructive"?

 

[The Real MC]

It might affect a tube preamp, but unlikely a solid state preamp.

[bluzeyone]

Hey tee! When I gigged with a trio I used two amps, one bass amp for lefty. I simply used a pro-grade splitter( still have it and it works fine after 13 years and an insane amount gigs!) and built a bass patch panned hard left and multiple other patches for comp and lead panned hard right. Now back then I sent the splitter from the head phone jack and ran the throttle in the board at like 3. Short story long..used different bass amps through the years for preference not for necessity. Never had an issue with the amps themselves from doing so. Looking back now my fave was a Peavy TKO guitar amp with an 18 in it. That baby sounded great!

[I-missRichardTee]

Peavey 18 eh, cool... I am just wondering about pre amp damage and how it relates to the hotness of a romplers output.

[bluzeyone]

Thats a thoughtful concern. As posted above maybe a tube amp would become problematic but I never had any issues with solid state.

Oops! That Peavey was a 15. I just thought it was an 18 because of how fat it sounded. Plus that "shelving" feature is awesome for those mid-rolling rooms.

http://www.peavey.com/products/index.cfm/item/811/116916/

[Steve Force]

I have run bass synths for years through my pro-grade bass amps with absolutely no issues whatsoever.

[garnermike]

My Carvin bass amp heads are/were hybrids, and the Casio's negatively affected both the tube pre-amp side and the solid state side equally. Also, adversely affected solid state Fender 350 Rumble Bass head, Eden E15 solid state combo, and totally blew out the amp sections of Ampeg PF-350 and PF-500 after 2-3 gigs. Just reporting what happened.......

[J. Dan]

You won't damage a solid state pre. Unlikely you'd even damage a tube pre. I wouldn't worry about it. You'll be able to HEAR if you're causing it problems before you damage it. If it sounds good, you're OK. If it's breaking up, you have issues.

[ITGITC]

You won't damage a solid state pre. Unlikely you'd even damage a tube pre. I wouldn't worry about it. You'll be able to HEAR if you're causing it problems before you damage it. If it sounds good, you're OK. If it's breaking up, you have issues.

 

Exactly.

 

If you're playing so loudly that you're destroying electronics - tube or solid state - you should stop and have your ears checked (and your head examined).

 

Because the more important issue is the acceleration of your hearing loss.

 

Remember when we were kids and we all thought we were invincible?

 

That was stupid.

 

Tom

 

[CEB]

Depending on what you are doing synth wise. If you get crazy with pitch bends and are trying to play brown notes with analog synthesis it can be harder that heck on some drivers.

 

But if you are just playing sensible bass lines you are fine. I ran a 360 systems MIDIbass and a Yammy TX81Z into a bass amp for a longtime.

[JeffLearman]

You won't damage a solid state pre. Unlikely you'd even damage a tube pre. I wouldn't worry about it. You'll be able to HEAR if you're causing it problems before you damage it. If it sounds good, you're OK. If it's breaking up, you have issues.

 

Exactly.

 

If you're playing so loudly that you're destroying electronics - tube or solid state - you should stop and have your ears checked (and your head examined).

 

Because the more important issue is the acceleration of your hearing loss.

 

Remember when we were kids and we all thought we were invincible?

 

That was stupid.

What? We're not invincible?

 

Oh darn.

 

Anyway, the above is spot on, for the electronics (including tubes). If you're overdriving any stage (power or preamp) you'll hear it distorting crazily. Even then, I've overdriven the holy hell out of preamps for years with no ill effects (especially on guitar amps, which are intended to be overdriven).

 

The point is, you can *hear* how hard you're driving an amp or preamp.

 

You can indeed damage speakers by sending it frequency content it's not designed to handle. Drivers are rated for the power they can handle. The assumption for that power is that the balance of high and low frequency energy is fairly typical for music. (Perhaps, for bass drivers, they use a different balance.) But synths can pound out signals with way more high frequency energy, that can burn out voice coils. On a 2-way system, it'd burn out the tweeter. On a 1-way bass cab, I can imagine it burning out a big driver. But you do have to be pushing the driver near its limits. If you have ample headroom, you should be fine.

 

PS: I played Juno 60 (and a Rhodes) through a bass amp head and a really cheap 15" driver (in a homemade cab) for years and years with no problems. But I wasn't playing synth bass. Loud? Oh yeah, probably! It was my "small rig" for playing at bars that had pianos.

[JeffLearman]

OH -- keyboards definitely have hotter signals than passive bass guitar pickups, but not active pickups (which are line outs, just like keyboards.)

 

A keyboard might have the hotter +4dBu signal, and I doubt active pickups would.

 

But, what do you do with a hot output? You turn down the first gain stage (or turn down the output level). Regardless which you do, you drive the preamp with the signal level that gives you the amount of distortion you want. Bingo: ideal gain staging.

[I-missRichardTee]

I don't recall ever blowing a speaker... this thread was about harming the pre amp!

[Tonysounds]

Should not be an issue. For years, I was playing keys and bass in my trio. Some tunes I played electric bass; when I played keys, I used my Roland S550 sampler and had sampled all of my basses. I ran my sampler and my guitars into an A/B box, which then fed my bass rig. NEVER had a problem. Never blew up gear, never fried an amp or toasted a speaker.

 

That being said, I think one thing most synth bassists forget is that key bass can be even more wildly dynamic than a fingered bass. I used to use a dbx ½ rack compressor between my instruments (even the bass guitars) and the bass amp. It was subtly engaged, just enough to taper off the extremes. The rule of thumb: if you can hear the compressor working (squishing the envelope), youre using too much.

 

[ITGITC]

You won't damage a solid state pre. Unlikely you'd even damage a tube pre. I wouldn't worry about it. You'll be able to HEAR if you're causing it problems before you damage it. If it sounds good, you're OK. If it's breaking up, you have issues.

 

Exactly.

 

If you're playing so loudly that you're destroying electronics - tube or solid state - you should stop and have your ears checked (and your head examined).

 

Because the more important issue is the acceleration of your hearing loss.

 

Remember when we were kids and we all thought we were invincible?

 

That was stupid.

What? We're not invincible?

 

Oh darn.

 

I apologize. It was not my intention to be snarky. The holiday season has ramped up my anxiety level a little. (I'll bet I'm not the only one.)

 

I've blown speakers. It was a Large Advent Speaker - as opposed to the "Small Advent Speaker". (These were marketing terms coined by Advent.) The speakers were driven with a Pioneer SA-9100 60 Watt per channel (RMS) integrated amplifier. I was providing music for a mixer in college. The speaker was pointed outside from my dorm room to the crowd three floors below.

 

As everybody who bought those Large Advent Speakers knows, the crossover frequency was really low at 1kHz. This required the tweeter to handle more of the lower/mid-range frequencies. And the original tweeter couldn't handle a lot of power to begin with.

 

When the 60 Watt RMS solid-state amp distorted, that tweeter was sure to fry. And fry it did! Had I used an amp with more power, it may not have distorted - and the tweeter may not have blown. I'll never know. That 60 Watt Pioneer integrated amp, which I still own, was the most powerful integrated amp available. If I wanted more power I would have had to buy a discrete power amp. Phase Linear and the Crown DC300 were popular back then.

 

OK wait. I remember. I did indeed fry the power transistors in that amp... and I replaced them myself. Note that the preamp section of this integrated amp never gave me a problem.

 

But I was abusing that amp by using it in a role that it was not intended to be used: for PA and/or keyboards in live performance.

 

But that was the early eighties.

 

And I was twenty-something.

 

Obviously I thought I was invincible.

 

I needed to have my head examined.

 

Sooooo stupid!

 

 

 

 

[Synthoid]

The holiday season has ramped up my anxiety level a little. (I'll bet I'm not the only one.)

 

Guilty as well. The weather here has turned quite cold... on top of two snowstorms. It took me an hour to get home (normally a 15-minute ride) from church during the first storm this past Sunday because two people in front of me were stuck on a hill. I ended up turning around and going the other way, facing near white out conditions and a couple Amish buggies to mix things up. Anyway, it was a horrible ride home. Yuck.

 

 

 

[Joe Muscara]

The holiday season has ramped up my anxiety level a little. (I'll bet I'm not the only one.)

 

I've blown speakers - but the one instance that I did was with a Large Advent Speaker - as opposed to the "Small Advent Speaker". (These were marketing terms coined by Advent.)

I see what you did there!

[bluzeyone]

OH -- keyboards definitely have hotter signals than passive bass guitar pickups, but not active pickups (which are line outs, just like keyboards)

vetty vetty intresting!

 

But, what do you do with a hot output? You turn down the first gain stage (or turn down the output level). Regardless which you do, you drive the preamp with the signal level that gives you the amount of distortion you want. Bingo: ideal gain staging.

[I-missRichardTee]

"But, what do you do with a hot output? You turn down the first gain stage (or turn down the output level). Regardless which you do, you drive the preamp with the signal level that gives you the amount of distortion you want. Bingo: ideal gain staging."

 

I wondered that too. I am not in habit of playing so loudly that I blow a speaker.. but the person who started me thinking about this was specifically speaking about, not burning out, but merely damaging the pre amp.

He said they still played, but he noticed a difference in the tonal response.. I forgot how he put it.

So it is a subtle thing that can easily go unnoticed.

[RABid]

Maybe he just noticed the difference in sound after the burn in stage.

[Synthoid]

I've blown speakers - but the one instance that I did was with a Large Advent Speaker - as opposed to the "Small Advent Speaker". (These were marketing terms coined by Advent.)

 

How Adventageous.

 

http://www.thecatholicconnection.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/1212advent-300x199.jpg

 

[CEB]

The thing with synth bass is you have infinite sustain ability as long as you have electricity, not so much with a bass guitar. If you start holding big pedal tones you can overheat the voice coil a lot easier.

 

It isn't necessarily a volume thing. It is a not giving the speaker a moment to breathe thing.

[Synthoid]

you can overheat the voil coil

 

Ah yes, don't boil the voil coil.

[CEB]

I can't type for ****.

[garnermike]

Look, guys, I greatly appreciate these conversations and your thoughts, but please don't tell me that I can't somehow adversely affect bass amp pre-amps playing the Casios through them. I have listed the the half-dozen or so amps that do not function/sound like they should and once did. I also have 4 bass EQ pedals in my attic that likewise do not work anymore, again via playing the Casios through them. Unless you have had the experience like mine with Casios, please don't make blanket statements that I can't damage a solid or a tube bass amp pre-amp --- I indeed have with the Casios. And I do not overdrive these amps. Never have played any of them beyond 4 out of 10 on the volume dial, and have never blown a speaker ever. I am simply reporting my experiences. OK, maybe it's not the preamp being the affected part, but I made the assumption that it is because the "issue" has occurred at the amp head and also at any preamp or bass EQ pedal I may be using. Again, no issue with the Roland E-09 for near 40 gigs now.....

[J. Dan]

Well I've never experienced that, and as an Electrical Engineer, cannot think of a component in the circuit that would be damaged in a way that would change the character of the sound without an out right failure, do to putting a keyboard sound through it instead of a bass guitar sound. What do you mean, sound different? Can you be more specific? I don't know what you were doing with that casio, but you're the exception.

[garnermike]

Simply playing one of the factory Casio CTK-5000/6000 bass voices through my system--nothing more, nothing less. I don't need/want much in mids/highs (this is a reggae/rockabilly band), so it's pretty much played on the heavy deep low frequency side. As for the change in sound characteristic, it's goes like this. After some number of gigs where it sounds terrific (big fat low thump), suddenly the attack/responsiveness of playing the individual notes lessens (bit of a delay happens), a sorta echo/reverb effect sets in, and some notes are squarely there, full-force, while others are distant sounding and delayed in firing/sounding. I know it sounds a bit vague, but I can say that, with all my Casio experiences, with many bass amps and bass EQ pedals, THE CHANGE/LOSS IN SOUND CHARACTER THAT OCCURS HAS BEEN CONSISTENTLY THIS WAY. And, buy/use a different/new bass amp head and/or EQ pedal (into the same or different bass cab) and all reverts back to normal---until that head's sound undergoes the same corruption over time. BTW, I have changed out all cabling and used different cabs trying to eliminate the variables that may be at work, but these changes never seem to tell me anything......

[ITGITC]

 

 

I used to play with a bassist who claimed that his bass sounded quite different on stage - before vs. after he took a big dump.

 

I think that's a bit odd, but...

 

Once our guitarist broke out in hives right before a gig at the Railroad Museum in Baltimore. It had something to do with him being allergic to shellfish.

 

He puffed up really bad. We had to pack him up and ship him off to the ER in an ambulance.

 

I never understood why this hadn't happened to him before.

 

That same guy was always complaining about the sound he got from his guitar. He never could get it right, it seemed.

 

Before a gig in Seattle, he said Delta broke the headstock off his Fender. So he ventured out and bought a beautiful new $4,000 PRS that afternoon.

 

Maybe that was just an excuse to treat himself to a new axe.

 

I dunno... can't explain it. All this sounds a bit vague to me.

 

 

[Synthoid]

Well, that was interesting.

[I-missRichardTee]

That's ok garnermike, these guys can be rather dense at time. Does any intelligent minded member know why Casio keyboard would be doing what garnermike reports?