Questions about bass amps & pre-amp

addicted

New member
Hi I have some questions about bass amp recommendation for home practice. Currently I am using Vox Pathfinder 10W which sounds okay but I want a bass head + cabinet combo for upgrade and as subject to learn about modular amp+cab connection. Any amp+cab to recommend for home use? I am eye-ing at this hartke 2500a, I think one of the cheapest one I can get but does not sacrifice much for quality. What about cabs?


Also I wanna know why do we need a bass preamp stompbox? If I am using passive bass, I can control my tone partly through my bass and largely through bass amp. If I am using active bass, I have the control on my bass. So why do we need a bass preamp stompbox?

I have question about uses of D.I. boxes too but as far as I read, it is used more for studio recording purpose more than anything which means I may not need it for home use (I do record at home but I have scarlett audio interface which have internal amplification to bring up the signal to necessary level).
 
Any amp+cab to recommend for home use? I am eye-ing at this hartke 2500a, I think one of the cheapest one I can get but does not sacrifice much for quality. What about cabs?

->as long as your house allow you to get it? as in let says you get a 4 X 10 cab with like 250 watt that will be quite loud and living in HDB might not be the best thing for you to do. Anyway i personally prefer hartke cab and amp. if you are getting a cab and head try get something of the same brand as the head. that way you dont need to worry about impedance and all the technical things, read more on impedance loading etc here:http://www.talkbass.com/threads/amp...overunderpowercabs-diy-techtalk-links.166225/

Preamp pedal>

->i am using a passive bass now and have three different preamp pedals on my board, reason is because i want to have different tones for different songs during gigs. I set them up and switch in between the three pedals between different songs. If you are using an active bass and let says you are doing both finger and slap in one song, you can set your bass preamp for finger tone and do a mid scoop on your preamp pedal for a slap. Most preamp pedals like the sansamp/aguilar tone hammer/shadowsky have a very specific tone in them and most people use it as a tone enhancer pedal thats why you can see people like marcus miller have a preamp pedal even though his bass has a preamp on it. I think he is using the basswitch eq di if i remembered correctly. To be honest is really up to you on how you want to use a preamp pedal it really can be used in a lot of different ways.

Di Boxes?
->DI boxes is not only for recording, it can be used for live gigging too. i do use my di for recording also and rarely use it for live gig as i just hate to ask the soundman take the di signal (just in case he is not familiar with the DI). Anw, if you are doing a very small bar gig whereby you dont have a backline/amp like the one at Fives whereby you only have a mixer and PA, the preamp will come in handy as you will plug the XLR out to mixer. Most places have their own DI but some of their quality is a bit questionable, if i see a radial/avalon (think Ebenex use them), i will just let the soundman do their job. but if it is a chinese di, i will want the soundmen to take it from my DI pedal instead.

Anyway a preamp pedal and a di is two different thing, a di might not have a preamp, a preamp might not have a di.
 
Good questions.

Firstly, the role of a preamp is to bump up the signal so that your amplifier does not have to work extra hard to get the sound from your bass up to a suitable volume. Preamps affect the tone of your signal due to different circuit designs as well as the tonal differences between solid-state and tube/valve circuitry. It is worth noting that any standalone amplifier has three basic stages: preamp, EQ, power amp.

In terms of what a preamp pedal does, as mentioned above, a preamp will help to shape your tone. Some people find the preamps in certain active basses lacking a certain character that they are looking for. So a preamp pedal is essentially just to get a specific sound that they are looking for in their head. It is a modular piece of kit that is a lot easier to replace in the signal chain compared on an on-board instrument pre-amp or the pre-amp section in an amplifier, unless you're into rack units.

A DI box provides electrical ground isolation between input and output, and matches impedance of the source to the load. In most cases, DI boxes are used for live sound to ensure that an unbalanced signal from an instrument is balanced before it goes into the sound board. There are a lot of preamp + DI combo pedals out there, the MXR M80 (which I personally use to great effect) comes to mind.

For your purposes, a basic 12" or 15" bass cab will do the trick, especially for home recording and practise. After all, most cabs out there are suited to live music applications and are designed to drive up to a significant level of volume. So to answer about cabs, as long as you know the output impedance from your amplifier, you can then pair it with a cab with matching impedance. Standard output impedance for bass amps is 4-8 ohms. You should have no issues finding out specifications online.

I believe that for home recording, you can get a lot of tonal shaping opportunities by finding a decent bass combo and use the DI from the amp into your interface, whist simultaneously mic-ing up the speaker to get both a direct sound as well as the speaker sound. I believe your Scarlett interface will have at least 1-2 inputs, which will suit this recording method adequately.

Hope this helps!
 
I almost thought nobody's going to pop in my thread and answer me but I guess I am wrong and these answers really worth the wait :).

Thanks willbassyeahindo and Crawldaddy for the replies!
 
Back
Top