EQs/Signal Change Best Practice aka WTF?

Gear
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Ok, after spending some time trying to dial in a better tone on my bass, I feel like I’m just coming up with a bunch of different flavors of mud. This tells me I probably don’t know what I’m doing.

One thing that’s got me stumped is all these EQs! What’s a guy to do?

So, I have 3 band EQ on my bass (low, mid, high, plus a mid-frequency selector switch).

Then I’m going into a Behringer BDI21, which has bass, treble, as well as level, drive, presence, blend.

Then my Rumble 100 has 4 band EQ: bass, low-mid, high-mid, treble, as well as the Vintage, Contour, and Bright switches (which I never use).

So this is my first point of confusion. What’s best practice here? Do I adjust the EQ on my bass, and then leave the others flat? Adjust the EQ on my amp and leave the others flat? Or make adjustments to all the EQs?

Do I just have too many bells, whistles, buttons, and levers? It kind of feels that way, as I’m just finding a bunch of variations of mud, as I said.

I usually have the EQ on the bass flat, and adjust the EQ on the amp to get what I think sounds the best. (I usually don’t practice with the BDI21, as I feel it’s just adding to the confusion right now.) But then I heard some bass players talking, and it’s sounding like they’re adjusting the EQ on their bass, and then either having the amp flat, or adjusting that too (I don’t know for sure).

So how do you all approach this? Any tips or best practice advice?

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Related to this, I have got some real world experience on the weekend in regard to what is often said about the difference in playing alone and playing with a band.
My latest project bass is very bright with the pressurewound strings and I was reducing this with the amp settings when I practiced at home.
Playing with guitar and drums it was quite muddy; I dialed up a very aggressive sounding trebly tone (which I did not like solo) but when we all played together it was great.

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I play all my basses “Vanilla”. All knobs at center detent no cut no boost of any kinds. Same goes with my AMP. My bass volume knob usually at 70% or less.

Make small adjustment when you need to and go easy. The only time I go extreme end is when I need to figure out what’s what? and to recalibrate my ears a bit. When I’m recording I may splurge and adjust for desire tone but I hardly do that now, if I want a certain tone, I just pick the right bass for it. That’s the perk of owning a few basses. :rofl:

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I’m kind of the opposite and could probably get away with just one bass (only have two now) and then tweak the tone with EQ and effects to get almost any viable bass sound. That’s easier for me and I enjoy doing it; mileage varies there. Then again I have done a lot of synthesis and sound design as I come from synthesizers as a main instrument.

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This is true nowadays, Basses are so versatile that you can just tweak it how you want it, not to mention the effect and in post. I took me a long time about 12 months of not touching any knobs to be able to rid myself of the habit. It’s so addictive to just touch first evaluate later. If I’m down to 2-3 basses I’ll start doing that again, :rofl:

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Edit: I don’t know why it didn’t reply directly to the first post @GingerBug

I would start with the bass(es). Check at least:

  • string quality and wear
  • pick-up height

If the signal is “compromised” from the start, there is little you can do later.

That’s how I would do it:
leave the bass alone, add no effects, and adjust your amp only - at least at the beginning.

The amp in the video is (probably) a Rumble 40, but you should have the same controls on the Rumble 100.
I know I have linked this video a few times already, I just think it’s incredibly useful for all sorts of issues :grin:

After you start understanding what controls do in your specific situation, you can begin to “delegate” the settings from the amp to the bass preamp or dedicated pedals depending on your preferences and taste.

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this video was excellent, especially for beginners.

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Thanks for this. I’ve watched the video a few times already, and I made a cheat sheet that I keep with my practice materials.

My real confusion isn’t so much what the different frequencies do, or what they sound like. Rather it’s how different EQs impact the tone at different stages of the signal chain (on the bass, on a pedal, on the amp) and whether it’s best to only use one of them, some of them, or all of them.

Unless someone has some best practice tips to offer, or a procedure to follow to dial in the tone you want through the signal chain, I guess I’ll just keep experimenting.

EDIT: Oh, and I just recently did a setup on my bass for the season change, so I know strings or pickup height aren’t the issue.

Also, someone somewhere on here mentioned how to adjust the EQ on a Rumble amp to make it truly flat. I can’t find that post. So if anyone knows what those settings are, I’d love to know. I figure that would be a good place to start from and adjust from there.

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Oh, ok that’s a bit more specific. I would say, it depends :grin:
On a Bass, the EQ changes should be broad: not just the specific frequency on the control but rather a large spectrum around such value. However, the center value of EQ settings on your amp, your bass/preamp, and pedals are probably all slightly different… and good luck finding the documentation in certain cases (i.e. the Yamaha TRBX series :tired_face:)

So if you use the video as a reference, you’d probably have it easier if you changed EQ on the amp: it has exactly the same controls. With a switch for the mids on the bass preamps, you might get (depending on the model) the mid-mid (500Hz), which is missing on the amp.
Without effects in between, it is the same on bass or amp (gain levels and center values notwithstanding). With (more) pedals in between, it actually matters more where - that’s why I suggested keeping it simple at the beginning and just adjust EQ on the amp.

Also, the first reply has its merit too. Something else you could try is to record yourself, like when recording a cover: adjust your EQ in the DAW, while hearing the bass in the given context. This might give you some more clues on how to address your tone problems - in this way, you can focus on the tone only and have more fine-tuning available to work out an EQ-based solution. After that, you have to implement it with your gear, but at least have some directions to follow.

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Here is a simple ‘best practice’:

Start with the amp eqs to get near the tone you like

Then just use your bass eq to tweek for certain songs or if you have multiple basses you could tweek each bass eq so they all sound good with your fav amp eq setting from above

Pedal eqs might relate to the pedal sound e.g. on a fuzz eqing the fuzz tone, so use these to adjust the pedal sound itself,
or they might be extra controls for your main tone (e.g. on a preamp pedal with eq parts or a dedicated eq pedal) in which case you have extra options to tweek your tone or leave them flat

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yes that is more specific. i personally have a pet peeve with stacking eq’s (using my active eq on the bass and then eq on a preamp pedal and then eq on the amp for example. i can never figure out what is doing what when there is too much involved). i personally try to set everything flat and then eq one source only, in my case the eq built into my hx stomp. i fully understand that my preference is unusual and i don’t really know anyone else that does this, but it is what i prefer. i would say that for simplicity’s sake too just set everything flat and introduce one eq source at a time before moving to other sources.

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This may be the reference you need:

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Thanks for that explanation. I didn’t know the EQ would be more broad on the bass than the amp. That’s very helpful.

Also a great idea to try adjusting it in a DAW first to figure out what to do on the amp/bass.
Yeah I can switch the mid on my bass to 450 Hz, which is hpefully close enough to 500 Hz. :slight_smile:

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Thanks. Setting the amp to what I want for my stock sound, and then adjusting the bass for different songs/genres makes a lot of sense.

I think I’ll leave the pedals out of the mix until get a sound I like dialed into the amp and bass. :slight_smile:

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Yeah, adjusting one EQ at a time makes a lot of sense to me.

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Another way to put this: Use the amp EQ to make everything sound good in the room you are in. Then use the bass or pedal preamp EQ to change the tone for songs. This is how I usually describe it; amp EQ for the room, effects EQ for the tone.

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this is the norm for almost everyone. btw as for difference between 450 and 500 hz remember like it says in josh’s video that 500 hz is just the center of the affected frequency curve. the curve might be affecting frequencies from 400 hz to 600 hz or something. so it makes no audible difference if your amp says 450 hz instead of 500 hz. close enough is definitely good enough.

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Yes that is super helpful. Thank you!

This is exactly what I was looking for:

  • Bass, Low Mid, High Mid, Treble Clock Knob Settings at 10, 1:30, 2, 9:30
  • Approximated to easy-to-remember: 10, 2, 2, 10
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It will 100% be doing so. The peaking/bandpass filters in the EQ will have a Q/bandwidth closer to an octave than to 50Hz.

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Sorry, that was confusing on my part. I just meant to say that on bass you don’t need/want sharp eq peaks, hence all bass gear should work in a “broad” fashion and exact specifics don’t really matter (until they do). And documentation is usually poor anyway :sweat_smile:

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