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comp/gate for kick drum


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Hi all:

 

I just got my DBX 266XL today. I plugged it in and ran kick drum on one side and bass guitar on the other.

 

The improvement in kick drum is phenomenal. Thank you Audioeast for the suggestion. The kick no longer gives a rubbery boom at high SPL's. It is tight and thumps the chest nicely. I had to play with it for a while to understand it. My wife could not stand it. She said it was making her sick!

 

The bass guitar also benefited from compression. Tight.

 

The kick drum is every bit as loud as the drum machine and sounds powerful. I will be looking for a quality kick drum mic now...

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Be careful not to overdo it... a compressed signal has more thermal energy, so a heavily compressed bass for example could cause your subs some problems if your amp is sized too high for the speakers. I recommend no more than 1.25 x RMS speaker rating if you will be playing highly compressed material.

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Thanks for the tip, aged horse. It is tempting to push it higher and higher because it sounds so good.

 

I lowered the output so the DDT light does not go off on the PV 2600.

 

Each sub gets 450W. RMS is 300, so I am a smigen over your recommendation.

 

I played with the bass compression. Too much does not sound good anyway.

 

Nice to hear about your good results Tremendo.

 

flip

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Originally posted by flip333



I played with the bass compression. Too much does not sound good anyway.


 

 

Somewhere around 1.5:1 to 2:1 is usually plenty for bass guitar. You really only need enough to make the dynamics consistent. If punch is still lacking, blame the rig not the compression.

 

You can use the compressor to get specific effects on bass, such as how Chris Squire (Yes) compresses the snot out of just the bridge pickup, then overdrives it through a tube guitar head and cabinet, as part of his signature tone.

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HI twostone:

 

Kick: ex/gate: thresh: -20 ratio 3:1

comp: thresh: -10 ratio 4:1

attack 8 o'clock release 9 o'clock

output gain +5

 

bass: ex/gate: thresh: -60 ratio 1.5:1

comp: thresh:-25 ratio 1.5:1

attack 8 o'clock release 9 o'clock

output gain +10

 

Remember, no one is greener than me with this thing! But I did read compression 101 from DBX.

 

Thanks Craig, its interesting to hear about the possibilities! I always thought it would be fun to have a little overdrive on the bass sometimes. An old bass player I once played with had a Zoom bass effects thing. Some of the settings were kinda cheezy, others were OK.

 

flip

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Originally posted by flip333

Thanks Craig, its interesting to hear about the possibilities! I always thought it would be fun to have a little overdrive on the bass sometimes. An old bass player I once played with had a Zoom bass effects thing. Some of the settings were kinda cheezy, others were OK.


flip

 

 

IMHO as a bassist the only good-sounding overdrive for bass comes from an all-tube amp. I've yet to hear a stompbox that does it right, and that's coming from a guy with a Boss GT-4B at his feet. It's got all sorts of compression and distortion emulations, but nothing sounds as good as my SVT when you agitate it a bit.....

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I prefer the sound of limiting on the kick, which I usually get by running my sub amp up against its built in limiter.

 

The old Peavey CS-800s had a very nice sounding DDT limiter. The kick actually sounds much better when the lights are flashing constantly.

 

What was very cool was having a rack of CS800s and a four way crossover. That way, the various bands kicked the limiters in at different times, making a nice multiband compressor.

Terry D.

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Originally posted by MrKnobs

What was very cool was having a rack of CS800s and a four way crossover. That way, the various bands kicked the limiters in at different times, making a nice multiband compressor.

Terry D.

 

Agreed, especially when sizing amps to speakers appropriately. I've always preferred that myself.

 

But... these 2000+ watt power amps make running against the limiter like that a very bad idea with typical speakers (but very good for reconers).

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