Isn't it terrible ...

[Father Gino]

That's the Leslie and a combination of the speaker/enclosure's tuning and the undersized power tube amplifier distorting.  The Hammond itself is happily putting out all kinds of fundamental

No, not true. The lowest octave one the keyboard does not have a fundamental. The oldest hammonds did but not by the time the B3 came out. There are no tone wheels for those notes. The pedals are a different story but most jazz players play bass with their left hand on the keyboard.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Hammonds (kinda fond of electric basses & guitars too). But Hammonds are even further from an acoustic instrument. They're really kinda analog synthesizers. Any fretted instrument or modern keyboard suffers the indignities of equal temperament (an affront to god and nature to many when first introduced) but Hammonds have what has been referred to as Hamburger temperament; manufactured, unnatural harmonics that coupled with a usually over driven 20 or 40 watt amp scream dissonant, fuzzed out bliss that is its signature sound. The Hammond was meant to be a budget replacement for a pipe organ. It failed miserably at this and most "real" organists would prefer to set them on fire rather than play them. But Jazz & Gospel (and Leslie) embraced and developed its sound. If you've never peered into a real tonewheel Hammond to see how they work, I'd highly recommend it. They're weird Rube Golbergian throwbacks. Rude, crude, howling beasts. Perfect for the devil's music (well I guess God's music too in a suitable church).

[uwe]

So you mean that all the people who laud their off-board preamps here play directly into a slave/power amp?  That wasn't my understanding. I thought they pre-amped their signal externally, to then deliver it to the amp-preamp and from there it goes into the amp's power amp. (I just refer to the in-built pre-amp as "equalisation" and generally don't use the term pre-amp for it.) And what I do not understand is why you would want to pre-amp your signal twice?

Of course I used Ashdown and Reußenzehn rack pre-amps with various slaves (= not a bass amp with an own pre-amp) in the 80ies and 90ies - that was en vogue back then,





(pictures not actual scale!  )

but that is not my understanding of what people mean when they talk about  "pre-amps" here in this forum: They then refer to little gadgets like the Sadowsky and MXR pre-amps. People feed those in their regular bass amps (with their own pre-amp), right? 

[uwe]

"Meanwhile, your passive bass with a single tone knob is again a kind of filter. The "pure" sound of the pick-up is with the tone maxed out to the trebley  side of things. Turn it down and you're cutting some upper frequencies."

On passive basses I never use the tone control and the vol control only to turn the bass off or for fading effects. Other than that it is always full tilt. Tone or vol down always sounds like a diminished signal to me

[Dave W]

So you mean that all the people who laud their off-board preamps here play directly into a slave/power amp?  That wasn't my understanding. I thought they pre-amped their signal externally, to then deliver it to the amp-preamp and from there it goes into the amp's power amp. (I just refer to the in-built pre-amp as "equalisation" and generally don't use the term pre-amp for it.)

No, of course not, whatever gave you that idea?
 

And what I do not understand is why you would want to pre-amp your signal twice?

It's another convenient way to shape your tone. And in some cases, to boost output.

but that is not my understanding of what people mean when they talk about  "pre-amps" here in this forum: They then refer to little gadgets like the Sadowsky and MXR pre-amps. People feed those in their regular bass amps (with their own pre-amp), right? 

Right, right, you're bloody well right.

[uwe]

That brings me back to my initial question then: Why boost the signal via a pre-amp before the (other) pre-amp? All you hear is more pre-amp then and less bass.

If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad ...

PS: Dave knows Supertramp songs - that is worse than the usually lambasted stadium rock, that is stadium pop!!!

[Dave W]

That brings me back to my initial question then: Why boost the signal via a pre-amp before the (other) pre-amp? All you hear is more pre-amp then and less bass.

If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad ...

PS: Dave knows Supertramp songs - that is worse than the usually lambasted stadium rock, that is stadium pop!!!

You do know that your bass amps have more than one preamp gain stage, right? While a separate preamp isn't exactly the same thing, it's just another piece of a signal chain that some of us find useful.

Sorry to upset you by mentioning Supertramp. 

[uwe]

Do SVT, Orange Little Terror and Markbass 500 have multiple pre-amps? I honestly don't know. I thought in my little world one gain control means one pre-amp and the other volume control is the master. They are not Mesa Boogies you know.

But I'm ready to be enlightened!

Supertramp can be incredibly twee, but I liked Crime of the Century (the album). Breakfast in America (the album) was already too much cherry pie for me.

[Dave W]

Not multiple preamps. More than one gain stage.

My point is that it's not that simple. It's not as if you have a pure and pristine passive signal going into a pure and simple preamp circuit.  A preamp in your bass or in an external pedal isn't some fiendish device that complicates simple things. Don't need the versatility? Fine. Don't like them? Fine. But they're not products of Satan's workshop.

[Father Gino]

Do SVT, Orange Little Terror and Markbass 500 have multiple pre-amps?

Multiple pre-amps, not really. Multiple stages of amplification yes. I'm no expert on this so maybe someone who is can chime in. Heck, I'm just the bass player; one step above a drummer.

Here are some hints from previous page of this thread:

The SVT (even though it's a CL) only "sorta" has an active preamp. In most tube amps, the preamp gain stages are just straight voltage gain and the tone controls are all passive cut only after that stage except for the midrange, which is a band pass filter with its own separate gain stage to allow boosting the mids. Most tube amps work this way sans the active mids, which is why tube amps are so much more sensitive to pickup tonal differences (and generally brighter overall BTW) than s/s preamps. The pickups are directly impedance-coupled to the first half (most preamp tubes are dual triodes) of the first preamp tube and the passive tone controls come AFTER. There are exceptions: the Fender Super Twin/Studio Bass actually has an active EQ for its tone controls and Mesa's bass graphic EQ's split the difference: the knobs are a normal passive filter network, but the graphic EQ is a completely separate split band active gain stage after the fact.

Onboard (or pedal) preamps also provide a more robust current/power drive. Dig into a passive pickup and its electronic resonance starts getting VERY prevalent and low end starts dropping off: pickups magnets are simply too small to provide an equally induced current at extreme voltage swings (transients) and current is where low end comes from. There is a very real difference in the type of signal put out from a passive versus an active bass.

Note the talk about stages and where different parts of the EQ come in. I don't doubt the veracity of the last sentence in the above quote. I just don't quite understand the disdain some people have for active basses when any electric bass is wholly dependent upon amplification. Certainly when you're hearing a recording of any electric bass, the signal path goes through much more than an amp, some speakers and a microphone even back in the olden days before 5 strings came to be. Personally I think I strive to get close to the classic bass sounds of my mis-spent youth; P's & J's & Bassmans and SVTs. But the sound in my head came from recordings. Back in those days many basses sounded like crap live, I think it's easier to recreate those classic sounds in a small club on a realistic budget with an active bass.

[chromium]

How about two cascaded preamps *in the bass*, one on the pedalboard (technically two, if you count the EQ pedal), and one in the amp.  Some might perceive this as taking the long way home... or even the crime of the century 




Seriously, though, I am generally of the "keep it simple" camp... but some pickups+onboard pre combos do have the magic.

[slinkp]

Now I gotta know... What's in the bass?

[chromium]

Now I gotta know... What's in the bass?

Haven't looked at the boards in the Bich, but I suspect it uses the same pre as the Mockingbird - a simple single-transistor affair (2N5088).  The Bich just has two of 'em, and they can be switched on/off independently with one overdriving the other for some mild grit... or all out fuzz.

Hardest part is remembering what all the controls do 

[Highlander]

I didn't know MIT produced instruments... or the training to use them...

[uwe]

Not multiple preamps. More than one gain stage.

Multiple gain stages yet just one gain control? I never knew. So there are cascaded gains operated by just that one gain knob?

[gearHed289]

Some might perceive this as taking the long way home... or even the crime of the century 

NICE! 

Off topic, but that 8 string bridge/tailpiece sure looks like Hamer hardware.