Mr. Hellborg says...

Gerry

Gerry

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In Bassplayer mag. Mr. Hellborg says "Onboard electronics is not possible because you have to run them on batteries, which means you cannot get the voltage and battery time required to run anything that sounds halfway decent. Primarily, a preamp needs enough headroom to deal with the extreme dynamics a bass guitar can produce." The man is clearly an expert and I was wondering if this is a matter of fact or opinion and wanted to know your thoughts on this since there is so much discussion here about onboard preamps.
 
I think both my active basses have better tone control than the passive ones. I have an old Washburn Stage bass that used to be active (I had it refinished and the shop that disassembled then reassembled the bass fried the electronics, it's now passive with an EMG Select) but could also be played passive, there was a huge difference when the preamp was turned on.
 
I've never played through a high end rack preamp. He says if you have a good preamp(outboard) and a good amp and speakers, that's all you need. He says eq is for fixing problems and leaves it flat. I have to try a high end rig.
 
gerrywarwick said:
I've never played through a high end rack preamp. He says if you have a good preamp(outboard) and a good amp and speakers, that's all you need. He says eq is for fixing problems and leaves it flat. I have to try a high end rig.
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You have to try a Hellborg amp Gerry,it'll change the way you look at amps.
 
I have to try something! Until now I've been a liv.rm player and went outside to a 3 car garage to practice and couldn't hear or feel any low end from my Jazzman. The drum and guitar wasn't even that loud. I know I'm inexperienced but wow, playing up loud is waaaay different from modest volume indoors. Good thing I have other basses but I always thought my first gig would be with the Jazzman. We'll see.
 
Can someone direct me to an independent review of this fantastic and incredibly expencive amp/cab combination please.
 
3 car garage to practice and couldn't hear or feel any low end from my Jazzman. The drum and guitar wasn't even that loud
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That sounds more like an issue of room acoustics rather than the lack of performance of your rig.

I've played in rooms that have completely sucked the life out of my low end and others where it was uncontrollable and I had to play with the craziest of middly sounds for it to work.
 
So maybe with an unbelievably expensive amp the onboard electronics make less of a difference. But I live in the real world. I go to work, and actually do think about the money I spend on gear.

Besides that, John Entwistle (RIP mate) and Tony Levin go for/went for basses with active onboard electronics. Good enough for me.
 
I plugged in a different bass the same day and it was fine. My Jazzman is just not made for bottom. I doubt if I'll ever own a $4000 preamp either and many have been fine with thier onboard pre, myself included. My Thumb and 18v Fender did better so I'll probably just use the Jazzman for recording. It's too beautiful not to play and I'll be getting my EBS valve drive soon so we will see. I do get Mr. Hellborgs point. Once you engage your onboard preamp, your sound is limited to what the pre can handle so it's better to shape your tone with an outboard high quality preamp. When I get my EBS I'll throw my bass on passive mode and see what happens.
 
Imho there are at least two perspectives with on board electronics...

Some people don't like active electronics or active pick-ups and they don't use them...

But other side of the story is that in some situations you don't need on-board electronics to balanced the sound of your bass but you need it to add extra layers of some particular sound ( freq. ) just to change the sound of your bass in some parts and to make it more in your face :=)...

For example...for one part of the song you slap and you leave your electronic flat with both pickups and in another part of the song you dial in just bridge pickup and add a little bass and middle and cut down some treble...so in blink of an eye you have totally different sound...

I know that some "Hi-Fi basses" react very well depending on how and where you put your right/left hand while you play them...but nothing can change it when you add some particular freq. with your on-board electronics...

P.S. Ofcourse I am talking about live performance...
 
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