The case of the disappearing bottom end

Bob-Dubery

Hi all. Another thing that happened last week whilst I had to deal with a drunk heckler (see elsewhere in the forum). Usually my guitar, when plugged in, has a pretty good bottom end. This has been the case even when using my lone stomp box (a Carl Martin chorus). Now I have checked since the gig and all the batteries involved have juice in them, and everything seems to be working just fine when playing through my PC's sound card and into it's external speakers.

But on the night... playing with the chorus pedal off was fine. Everything sounded good. The pedal is built so that the bypass is a true, absolute bypass. The moment I engaged the pedal I lost volume. OK... the pedal has a gain control so that you can have a volume boost when you enage the chorus effect. I was able to compensate for the volume loss by turning up the boost. However irrespective of the boost setting there was a very noticable loss of bottom end with the pedal turned on.

Hasn't happened before. Hasn't happened again. Very odd.

The guitar was plugged into the stomp box. The output from the stomp box went into a combo mixer/amp via a regular mono lead with a jack plug at the guitar end of things. The pickup in the guitar is a Baggs and it has a pre-amp built into the end-pin. With the chorus off it sounded great, with the chorus on there was a loss of volume which could be compensated for and a loss of bottom end which could not be compensated for. I have previously played at the same venue, with the same PA and the same sound guy, using the same guitar and pedal and (between guitar and pedal) lead.

Anybody got an idea what happened here and how I can guard against it in the future?

Heath

could be a few things , a not so great connection either on the guitar or the pedal , or from the pedal to the pa . or a bad connection on the battery (assuming you running batterys) . but imo a dodgie connection somewhere

Bob-Dubery

Tail0n wrote could be a few things , a not so great connection either on the guitar or the pedal , or from the pedal to the pa . or a bad connection on the battery (assuming you running batterys) . but imo a dodgie connection somewhere

Thanks. But wouldn't that tend to be kind of random or to cause problems ALL The time? This was very distinct - pedal off everything sounded great, pedal on everything sounded less than great.

Spyke

Might sound silly, but did you check that the jack pins were properly inserted? ie: all the way in?

Neps

Bob.. Mono output or stereo output? Reason for asking, it could be a phasing problem.. But maybe it wont be that.. Don't know if the pedal when bypassed still plays sound out of both output sockets..??

Bob-Dubery

Neps wrote Bob.. Mono output or stereo output?

Both guitar and pedal have a mono output.

And Spyke... I can't vouch for it, but I'm pretty sure that they were in securely. Again I can see this being a problem, but would expect it to be random. In this case sound degradation ONLY occured when the effect was on.

Neps

ummm.. well if the pedal is mono out it can't be phasing..damn.. Jacks not in properly wont be it, that would have affected the clean tone as well..

Neps

wait.. me idiot.. does the pedal have a L & R output?

Bob-Dubery

Neps wrote wait.. me idiot.. does the pedal have a L & R output?

Hi Neps. Pedal has one input, one output, nothing stereo about it at all. It's a Carl Martin "Classic Chorus" - the metallic sort of pinky/red box. All jack plugs involved were mono.

Neps

OK.. I went to the website and silly me thought it could be the stereo one.. If that was the case, the Right will be the cause there..

MONO.. Let me sleep on it, and see if I have an answer tomorrow.. Going to a recording session tonight, will fly it past the guitarist of the band.

Bob-Dubery

Thanks to Neps, Spyke and Tailon for their help and replies so far. Much appreciated.

Neps

hahaha... just realized.. our profile pics look almost the same.. Hand on chin pondering the reason why nothing will ever sound like Electric Ladyland.. ?

Riaan-Combrink

Bob, this probably does not relate to your specific problem (as it occurred only when you used the effect), but relative to the heading of the thread (and thus for benefit of guys searching the topic):

I once, for a few gigs, kept on thinking my backing music was very flat and lifeless. No bottom-end, whilst in the past I got a nice ballsy sound. Kept on increasing bass, and generally now had an atrocius overall sound (as extra bass was washing out the mids of that channel).

Huge was my embarrassment when a friend, whom I was discussing this with at a gig, asked me why I had engaged the "Lo Cut" button on my backtrack channel. This button essentially sucks out the low range, and is particularly useful on your vocal / mic channels (avoids vox being too bassy - which often leads to feedback).

So while I always have the low cut filter engaged on my two vox channels, I have it dis-engaged on my guitar and backtrack channels. I had inadvertently engaged the low cut filter on that particular channel, and it sucked all the bottom out of my music.

So when you play at an unknown venue, and you don't know the sound guy, check that the low cut filter is not engaged on the mixer (and apropos good idea to have it engaged on your vocals).

Gearhead

Since I'm too lazy to look it up myself: what's the output impedance of your pedal? And of your onboard preamp?
Just to check as well: Am I to understand you were running the pedal on battery? Low supply voltage combined with inadequate power supply can also wreak havoc on your output buffer(s).

Bob-Dubery

Neps wrote hahaha... just realized.. our profile pics look almost the same.. Hand on chin pondering the reason why nothing will ever sound like Electric Ladyland.. ?

I know EXACTLY why nothing ever sounds that way in my case ?

Bob-Dubery

Gearhead wrote Since I'm too lazy to look it up myself: what's the output impedance of your pedal? And of your onboard preamp?

All you get in the box these days is marketing bumpf - no specs!

But a bit of googling gives us....

Output impedance of the pre-amp is 800 ohms
Input impedance for the pedal is 1M ohms
Output impedance for the pedal is 100 ohms

Gearhead wrote Just to check as well: Am I to understand you were running the pedal on battery? Low supply voltage combined with inadequate power supply can also wreak havoc on your output buffer(s).

Yes I was. But the batteries are pretty new. And post-gig testing at home (with the same batteries) I couldn't reproduce the problem.

MoJo-JoJoe

Bob-Dubery

MoJo JoJoe wrote Bob I really think that Neps was onto something. I believe it was a phasing problem. Unfortunately you can't verify this now (after the gig), but I'm willing to bet there was a touch of on-board effect from the PA mixed into your guitar channel. Probably a touch of chorus ... making your stop chorus and the on-board one be partly out of phase.

That's certainly a possibility. I've known them to add effects before in order to make things easier on open mic nights (presumably because there's not time to soundcheck everybody - if they knew who was going to arrive to play, which, of course, they don't). Usually this is a combination of a little reverb and a little chorus to give a "big hall" sort of sound.

Neps

Bob.. I totaly forgot to ask the guitarist last night :-[ I ended having a tiff with the vocalist cause he broke my one golden rule.. DONT DRINK ANY DAIRY PRODUCTS BEFORE YOU DO A SESSION WITH ME!! (that includes orange, guava and mixed juices as well) The gruff voice thing comes with time, and I hate to hear a flemmy vocal take due to self induced dairy consumption.. >☹

But ja, I'm still tempted to say phasing.. But not being there and not knowing the gear personaly I'm still a bit devided on my ideas..

Bob-Dubery

Neps wrote Bob.. I totaly forgot to ask the guitarist last night :-[ I ended having a tiff with the vocalist cause he broke my one golden rule.. DONT DRINK ANY DAIRY PRODUCTS BEFORE YOU DO A SESSION WITH ME!! (that includes orange, guava and mixed juices as well) The gruff voice thing comes with time, and I hate to hear a flemmy vocal take due to self induced dairy consumption.. >☹

George Martin used to lecture John Lennon about drinking milk in between takes.

What drinks do you allow in the run up to a session? That's not a facetious question BTW.