Recommendations for Bass Preamp

[XPM]

I've been playing electric bass for a long time. Been doing the poor guy's high tech experimental rock, record at home thing for a couple years now. I go and play live PA gigs with a laptop and possibly a friend once in a while but mostly do this because I'm self compelled to keep on keepin' on my musical creativity and playing.

Built my own dedicated daw computer last year with the help of my best friend. Researched and researched the thing. (yada, yada)

In short I am now focusing on tone. The most killer tone I can come up with, third to my fingers and my bass of choice. It's weird, but after playing everything from Zons to Specters, to Alembics to Music Man basses, it comes down to the Fender P-Bass believe it or not. NOT with respect to tone, but because of their neck. I don't know what it is, but if I'm not too lazy and let my chops guard down, the neck just works for me. I like 'em set up fast, but mostly, I love the distance between the strings, I strum, slap and pluck a good deal and the necks just work. So I have two American Deluxe P-Basses set up by the same guy with GK pickups through which I play a good deal.

You know how you go through phases where certain things matter and certain things take a back seat? Right now for me it's tone and over all audio quality. It's a neat place for an old busy geezer to be because it's just outside the woodshed and frankly, I am a bit ashamed of how little time I've spent there over the last few years. So, call me an escapist!

As stated, I pretty much rely on a hardware module (old metal case V-Bass) for tonal diversity. I can get a nice audible fuzzed out p-bass, Marcus miller jazz bass, or Fleaesque Music Man tone no problem. Thing is, they don't really transcribe to a recorded signal accurately enough. The signal gets there to the hard drive, via e-mu "m" series outboard cards easy enough, but my tone is just not quite "real" enough.

At any given time I may be spontaneously inputing up to four different signals from the bass as I'm playing. If this were to be the case, there would be 1) The V-Bass, 2)The Active P-Bass, AN RC-50 floor looper & a midi interface writing midi to a computer through which everything is mixed and output.

Would members here that may know recommend a preamp for the purpose of recording direct into a quality external sound card? This being for tone control alone. It doesn't necessarily have to be a pre amp either. Maybe that's not what I need. Maybe there is another device of a different nature altogether that would better help me to achieve that recorded variance between a warm dark tone and a more attack oriented rick or Geddy jazz bass tone to a more defined midbass Beatles type sound.
Thanks

 

[blackba]

I have heard great things about the Tech21 stuff, like the RBI. http://www.tech21nyc.com/products/sansamp/index.html
I would start there, I think their stuff will meat your needs.

I finally got a chance to play a P-Bass a few days ago (long time J-Bass user). Sure it was only a squire, but I loved the punch and the way it sits in the mix. Its not the most versatile bass, but just sounds right. As far as playability, I preferred my Fender Geddy Lee Jazz bass, which has a nice thin neck (good for people like me with small hands). With all these cool modern basses, there is still something to a good P or J bass. Although, I would love to have a Musicman sterling 5 string at some point....

 

[Juggernaut]

Tech 21 RBI is a cool unit sounds great, the PSA-1 has some killer bass tones as well.

If you like the tone of your bass and want to push it, "relatively" uncolored get a Avalon M5, KILLER preamp for just about everything, and excels at bass. or if money is no object get the Avalon Vt-737sp.... Played through Johnny Aprils (Staind) rig, and was completely blown away by how dynamic is was, playing with fingers the thing was just fat as hell, grab a pick and the horns really kick in and is punchy as Tyson in his heyday, and he's using 18s and horns.... here's a pic. (The ampeg in the rack is for back-up, and the 8x10s are not used)

 

[XPM]

I have heard great things about the Tech21 stuff, like the RBI. http://www.tech21nyc.com/products/sansamp/index.html
I would start there, I think their stuff will meat your needs.

I finally got a chance to play a P-Bass a few days ago (long time J-Bass user). Sure it was only a squire, but I loved the punch and the way it sits in the mix. Its not the most versatile bass, but just sounds right. As far as playability, I preferred my Fender Geddy Lee Jazz bass, which has a nice thin neck (good for people like me with small hands). With all these cool modern basses, there is still something to a good P or J bass. Although, I would love to have a Musicman sterling 5 string at some point....

Thank you so much for the suggestion! I WILL be following it up I can assure you.

Yeah, the personal bass thing is a weird thing to say the least. Years and years ago I bought a '78 blond Fender Jazz Bass at a pawn shop for 350.00. I swore over and over I would NEVER play anything but. As time went on I got bite by the virtuoso bug and started concentrating on playing like a mad man. You know how it goes. You practice for 3-4 hours everyday and swear to yourself that someday you're name will be akin to the Johnny B. Goode of the bass. Yeah right.

I did get fairly strong licks and chops and honestly, all masturbating aside, it's where a good deal of what I recognize as my signature playing came from. I really don't care that much about that stuff anymore, although I love the style and originality that left it's mark on me. You get tendinitis a time or two and you find out real quick that it's best just to be you. At this point I figure it's best to leave the bass playing cape and tights to the younger crowd.

What happened though, not to loose site of my own point, was that I "out grew" the small necks. Don't get me wrong though. It's not that I became some body builder of bass playing or something, it's just that the style I took on best lent itself to a larger neck width. I parted company with my heavy rock/metal roots and ventured into slap and more classical guitar strumming and such. I think if one were to ultimately pursue the technocratic approach to playing bass, one might end up playing a smaller bass with extreme accuracy much like Clarke. It's hard to say though. Look at Bill Dickens for instance.

I owned a Sterling for a short while right when I was looking for basses apart from the Jazz I used to own. Thing was tiny and they're weird. (probably why I was originally attracted to it) They have a somewhat tense neck/string relationship, although that may have just been set up related, but it had incredible tonal diversity.

I sold that Jazz on eBay BTW, to a guy from Australia who was staying in Arizona for 900.00. It needed to be completely made over including internal wiring repairs and a fret job. I played Roto Sounds for many years on that thing until I started using Dean Markley Blue Steels. I am using mostly D'addario these days.

The best bass I have ever owned with respect to tone however was an older Chech Spector. NICE instruments and I should have NEVER sold either one I had.

The new Spector Euro plain wood models they have out now are really nice but I personally think they are OVER priced big time. Those are 1200.00 bases dammit. Goons want nearly 2K without a hardshell case. Lame, but NICE. Oh the pain.

 

[XPM]

Tech 21 RBI is a cool unit sounds great, the PSA-1 has some killer bass tones as well.

If you like the tone of your bass and want to push it, "relatively" uncolored get a Avalon M5, KILLER preamp for just about everything, and excels at bass. or if money is no object get the Avalon Vt-737sp.... Played through Johnny Aprils (Staind) rig, and was completely blown away by how dynamic is was, playing with fingers the thing was just fat as hell, grab a pick and the horns really kick in and is punchy as Tyson in his heyday, and he's using 18s and horns.... here's a pic. (The ampeg in the rack is for back-up, and the 8x10s are not used)

Man, I can't thank you enough for those suggestions. That is RIG!!! Holy geebus!

And no, money is NO object for me...










cause I have none.