Music videos that feature Thunderbirds

[Stjofön Big]

Full bass, full treble. Maybe a little midrange. 4 on the channel volume. Almost full blast on the master. That's how I like it. With the bass sound creeping up from the floor, through your feet, and up your leg. To wherever it want to go.

[morrow]

Here playing the mid sized venues you're going to do three fifty minute sets , and you are the warm up act. As often as not you will not be in the PA , and you'll mix the stage sound from the stage. 
And most people manage a good stage mix and room sound.
So your amp becomes everything.
I've come to prefer the sound of a good live band to everything going to a board and having separate stage and front mixes. 
There's no back line provided. Just a small PA. Often without monitors.

[gearHed289]

This is why I had a preamp pedal for an amp I really like made for me, to keep on my board. Since I play out in NYC, usually have to use the house amp, and rarely use the same amp twice, I need to have all my tonal stuff on my board.  So more often than not, I'm using a GK 800RB.  But if the amp has no FX loop, then I have to settle for what I can quickly get out of the amp du jour.

I use a Tech 21 VT Bass DI to mimic my amp tone in an all-analog format, and it is amazing. I don't worry about a mic anymore, but I'll welcome one if offered. This gives me the "all tonal stuff on the board". Even if I'm dealt an amp I don't love, I can run the affected 1/4'' out of the VT Bass into the power amp in, or even the front end if I have to. For my own rig, I run the parallel out (unaffected) to the front of the amp.

[Ken]

Agreed!

Have you seen my boost pedal I use? Kinda related.

https://www.modulargrid.net/p/other-unknown-bsri-audio-sick-set-dude

[lowend1]

"But for lots of bass players the amp is just a monitor. They want it to add zero color. In which case a DI is enough."

Guilty as charged. Decently fresh strings, my pick, the way I play & and a rig that is not broken and has sufficient headroom (it doesn't even have to be my own one, I'll gladly play over someone else's). Bass setting between 3 and 6 o'clock, mids between 12 and 2 o'clock, treble/presence again between 3 and 6 o'clock on any amp. That's all I need. No preamp. I don't even really have a preferred bass. And I still sound so much "Uwe" over each and every amp I play it is sometimes pitiful/laughable. (That said, I don't like to hear my bass over the monitors, possibly just because I like to hear my bass sound coming from behind and not from upfront.)

When I read about your discerning and particular tastes in amps and preamps, I always feel terribly inadequate and wonder what is wrong with me. I have never been attached to amps. And in my 44 years of bass playing I've only owned about ten of them (Dynacord, H&H, Reußenzehn Mk I, Yamaha, Reußenzehn Mk II, Ashdown JAE Sig, Ampeg SVT, Roland, Markbass and Orange).

Come to think of it, speakers are more important to me than amps. I frown at rigs that don't have at least one 15" inch speaker, I even coupled my Ampeg "refrigerator" with a 1x18" subwoofer (from Ampeg as well) because the sub-lows of the 810 left me unconvinced. I've never seen anybody else do that, but the gain in oomph was marked.

Currently, I play 1x15", 2x12" (or 2x2x12" to be exact as two speakers are packed behind the other two) and 2x10" speakers. I've downsized. My peak was 2x18", 1x15" and 4x10" with occasional addition of a 1x or 2x12" mid bin(s). That offered reliable headroom and moved some air.  You didn't even need to turn it up loud. You simply were EVERYWHERE when you played over it. I know it's against the trend of the times, but I don't like to stand in the 'sound tunnel' of a comparatively small speaker cone area blaring at me (like many guitarists do), I like to be immersed in a (not too loud) indirect sound all around me.

Uwe, it surprises me that you have never owned a Hiwatt. It seems that an old DR would appeal to your proclivities. The SVT is an unusual choice for someone who doesn't seek coloration.

[uwe]

A guitarist friend had a Hiwatt double 12" combo. Other than that it was brutishly loud, I found it unforgiving and unremarkable. There is a reason why Pete Townshend played those things and Peter Green didn't.

I knew the Ampeg would color, I bought it because I wondered whether its signature sound would do anything for me. Not really, it made all my basses sound samey. But the compression at high volumes was nice. Not the most reliable amp on earth, it needed regular repairs.

[lowend1]

A guitarist friend had a Hiwatt double 12" combo. Other than that it was brutishly loud, I found it unforgiving and unremarkable. There is a reason why Pete Townshend played those things and Peter Green didn't.

I knew the Ampeg would color, I bought it because I wondered whether its signature sound would do anything for me. Not really, it made all my basses sound samey. But the compression at high volumes was nice. Not the most reliable amp on earth, it needed regular repairs.

Yeah, for guitarists, there's nowhere to hide with a Hiwatt unless you're using pedals or have an attenuator (like here). They make great bass amps, though.

[uwe]

Thomas was our lead singer and rhythm guitarist and back then, he mainly played chugging power chords with zero effects (and I mean zero!) with a relatively undistorted sound (with a humbucker Les Paul of all guitars, an unlikely choice for a rhythm guitar as he would realize much later, but as a 20-year-old he liked the silverburst fin of it, when it invariably turned green he was aghast and sold it  ). For that, the Hiwatt was reliably fine. But as his playing matured (he plays more in a Keith Richards vein these days), the limits of the Hiwatt combo became glaring. It didn't sing and it wasn't creamy, no real texture too, just crude amplification, doing what it said on the tin: high watt!

I always thought Townshend's solo sound pitiful - there I said it.

[patman]

I have a passive direct box on my pedal board that goes to the PA...the amp is just something so I can hear on stage...

If I wear in-ears...the amp is not really loud, just "there" so the drums and bass stay in the pocket.

I most of the time just use a 100 watt Roland cube.

Have been thinking of trying an old Peavey powered mixer and a JBL Eon...so that I can get a decent EQ on both my NS Design upright and electric bass, and start using the upright again...EQ issues were too difficult with a one channel bass amp and the electric upright.

[lowend1]

I always thought Townshend's solo sound pitiful - there I said it.

Well, you won't get any argument from me on that one - but then Townshend was never a "lead" guitarist in the vein - nor in the same league - as his contemporaries. I saw in an interview (Ox documentary maybe?) where he said since Entwistle's death, he has been forced to work on his lead playing and feels he's gotten better - or something to that effect.

[westen44]

I agree with everything that's being said here and have always felt that way. 

[uwe]

All credit to Pete for never making any bones about it - he did after all state that JAE is The Who's true lead guitarist and that his (Pete's) role is to hold things together with Moonie who followed Pete, not JAE in his playing. There is no shame in being a good rhythm guitarist. But I found it curious that in his eternal quest to flesh out The Who's sound, he never thought about adding a fluid lead guitar player in the Mick Taylor/Clem Clempson vein who would have taken nothing away from him, yet added to the group sound.

[uwe]

In their day, the Four Seasons made good money and could afford the newest, state of the art gear.

[ilan]

A Thunderbird and a Firebird look good together.

[Dave W]

That's the late Nick Massi on bass. He left the band in the mid-60s.