Onboard control preference?

[The Bear Jew]

As far as I am concerned, the fewer knobs, the better.

 

That's why I like my P-bass--two knobs, dimed out, all the time.

 

I think a knobless bass might be neat...

[Snowdog79]

I'm about to add some custom control knobs to my Kent hollowbody--and by "add custom control knobs," I mean velcro a Boss ODB-3 pedal next to my bridge so I can adjust my gain in real-time and get some really gnarly feedback. How's that for "out there?"

[jeremy c]

Originally posted by C.Alexander Claber:

A question close to my heart. I'm going round in circles with this...

 

Three questions for y'all:

 

1. For those with passive basses, do you notice much loss of highs by not running the onboard volume all the way up?

Yes

 

2. What value capacitor is on your tone control?

Whatever the Fender factory put on there....since I never use it, it doesn't really matter does it?

 

3. For those with passive tone and active EQ - how often do you actually use the EQ?

On my active eq basses, I rarely use the controls, but they are occasionally nice to have in emergencies or in the studio.

 

I think you are looking for advice on your custom bass. Since you are going all out on this bass, my recommendation is for the maximum active controls: treble, middle and bass...and possibly a two or three way switch to give you options for the what the middle frequency is. And one more switch to turn of all the active stuff so you can run your bass completely passive with no tone controls.

[Max Valentino]

I have right now, on loan(but methinks I must buy one soon...) a Rick Turner Renaissance Bass. Of course, if you know me you know that it is another semi-acoustic ("ampli-coustic" is the correct term) with RT's exceptional piezo/preamp system. The pu itself is active (keeps noise down and works as a good line driver), on an 18v system (mucho headroom), but the tone control is passive: a simple treble cut which is completely disengaged when turned up. Quite a fantastic setup that sounds devine.

 

Max

 

 

9

[ArwinH]

Originally posted by C.Alexander Claber:

A question close to my heart. I'm going round in circles with this...

 

Three questions for y'all:

 

1. For those with passive basses, do you notice much loss of highs by not running the onboard volume all the way up?

 

2. What value capacitor is on your tone control?

 

3. For those with passive tone and active EQ - how often do you actually use the EQ?

 

Alex

1. Very much so, I always try to keep the onboard volume all the way up on passive basses, though I did experiment with having a volume pedal first in line on a pedal board to control the input volume and gain of distortion boxes. You'll see a lot of guitar players with their amps turned the frick up and their onboard passive volume down to about 4 on softer more clean sounding parts, they can control the gain in their sound with this volume knob.

2. If I knew.......

3. My warwick has passive pickup blend and active bass and treble. I used to play it passive exclusively, now I play it active with bass and treble set flat and pickup blend for the most part centered. It could have no controls for all I care, I would just set a reasonable tone on my amp (um..flat) and control the sound with my hands and sometimes feet.

My Rob Allen has an onboard volume control and tone control accesible on the back. I just turn the volume all the way up and leave the amp flat (Unless the room is boomy; this bass simply does not like overly boomy rooms, I usually cut the bass and treble and boost the mids in these situations...not at all drastically though.)

 

....knobs are for wussies

[Gruuve]

Originally posted by C. Alexander Claber:

Originally posted by bassdrummer:

I also wish the tone knobs had center detentes (sp?) to set the treble and bass at center more easily.

Aren't the G&L's controls cut only, so the 'flat' sound is with both tone controls at max? Hence no centre detents, IIRC...

 

Alex

Alex, you are correct. This is kind of nice, as they work the same whether you've got the preamp on or off. As I understand from GB, the bass rolloff is some sort of coil...presumably the treble is a standard passive tone control.

 

My Stingray5 has bass, treble, mid, and a coil selector switch (parallel, series, or single coil+phantom coil).

 

If I ever get the old Hohner Jack I'm hot-rodding finished, I'll be putting an EMG-BQS preamp/EQ into it...bass, treble, sweepable mids over a wide range (don't recall but I think it's something like 200Hz - 2KHz), and it can be wired bypassable. I don't know how good it actually sounds, but it sure looks good on paper and several folks have told me it's very transparent flat. I hope to see soon!

 

Dave

[g.]

Any time you use passive, only cuts are possible. But for bass guitar bass freq cuts are not too useful - they impact the bass role too much and a big difference in output. I don't even care about treble cuts, I just use my hands and pickup selector - or outboard. On bass, I'm not real keen on single pickup parallel/series/coil tap because there's too much amplitude difference, and the tonal changes can be gotten elsewhere.

 

That's the story of passive for bass generally; most changes cost in output disparities. An exception that proves useful - especially when driving distortion, can be found in the Blue Qube or similar circuitry - a coil in series with a cap. Bill Lawrence uses this, and due to interactive resonance there isn't too much apparent volume drop when it's engaged.

 

I use active tone boosts or cuts very seldom, but they can be useful for swells, feeding overdrive, etc. Beyond that, I do it outboard, even sometimes using static flanging to carve out the midrange and deepening the lows without losing sparkly stuff on top. This doesn't neccesarily even sound like classic flanging since the time is not being modulated.

 

EDIT: Like to have TWO pickups, a blend, and a volume.

[dhomer]

I vote for simplicity...My dream bass would have one knob only, volume...Have to be able to set it down on breaks...lol... Would also be passive design-wise, but with a unity-gain FET preamp as a buffer. My current fiver is all active with boosts/cuts and a parametric mid. I keep everything on the center detent, on certain tunes I might cut some highs. I prefer to EQ at the amp only. Too many things that can get messed up, forgotten or overlooked otherwise. If I sense a crappy tone, I'll first make sure the tones on the bass are at center..

[_Sweet Willie_]

Random thread bump.

 

Feel the luv.

 

Peace.

--s-uu