I came across this tutorial from Marcus Miller on his new bass preamplifier.

The Video tutorial has two parts:

The role of EQ, and the detailed MID section in his pre-amplifier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hx-UYcUHQI&feature=related

The role of compression -- what it does and how to set it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljEuObKHYFw&feature=related


I thought it was interesting, not only to hear him articulate how various features on his amp affect your sound, but also to see his personality. He also describes how it was in the studio in the 80's and 90's and what led him to put on-board preamplification on his bass. I also enjoyed the transition clips which show him jamming out with a drummer with very little accompaniment. Also interesting was his reference to new owners of his bass pre-amplification system reaching him at Fender.com -- I didn't know that Fender had bought or had a relationship with SWR, one of my favorite bass amplification products companies.

Marcus isn't wearing his "signature" pork pie hat throughout the video -- instead a toque -- maybe to also market to the younger or non-cjazz/jazz crowd?

I can't image how we got by without YouTube! I've seen so many artists I'd only listened to back in the 80's and 90's, and its such a great outlet for musicians in general to not only showcase their music, but also their products.

Bward- yeah, that was interesting; he's very relaxed and easy to understand.

Looks like an interesting box, but for 800 bucks, I don't know....I'm pretty happy with my SansAmp for 600 less. My only gripe lately is the ground hum- I don't think it's the SansAmp, but it doesn't appear to be my bass either. I've tried ground lifts, new cords, etc. My next attempt will be to use phantom power from the board, and see if that grounds it; the school we're using the auditorium in has some flaky wiring apparently.

At one time Ampeg made a tube direct box (basically what MM's preamp is minus all the controls) but there must not have been much demand for it, they stopped making it a couple years back.

I really like the idea of a tube preamp/direct box, and have looked into it before; there's another called the REDDI, that's about 700 bucks, highly regarded by sound engineers. But by comparison, MM's is a better buy, gives you more ability to shape the sound.

Anyway....interesting video, I think we can learn something just from paying attention to what he has to say about what makes a bass sound like it should in a studio or live situation.

I'm very anti-compression, (I've heard it said that a skilled player shouldn't really need it- guess that's not me ) but it really is useful in a live situation, to "level out" the string noise, squeaks, volume level differences between finger picking and slapping, etc. We use it some, but keep it very mild- it can sound way too processed if you use too much.
Thanks for the links.

TonyY