ME2 2 band bass EQ- created 05-27-2008

Barson, Aryeh - 05/27/2008.15:57:44
Measure twice...cut...twice?

I got a ME2 preamp unit from ebay, but the wiring diagram I received is for a RBA04M, and they don't look comparable. The big difference is that the RBA04M includes a balance pot and possibly a phase reversal switch. The ME2 is volume/bass/treble for a single bass pickup.

Any information on who makes this unit?

So far, Google has turned up zilch, so any help would be appreciated.

Aryeh,

Meanwhile contact the seller and ask for the correct diagram!! <g>

Thin orange and red on the left, thin black and brown on the right.

The two thick black leads are soldered to the casing of the Volume pot, which I assume means that they are ground, with one lead going to the bridge, and the other to the pickup.

The thick white wire is soldered to the center wiper of the Volume pot, which I'm guessing is the input from the pickup, but I really can't tell. Oh, and I forgot to mention that it didn't come with a 9v battery clip.

Thanks for the advice so far, and if anyone recognizes this unit and knows more, I'd appreciate it!

I've already contacted the seller, who knows nothing more, and directed me to Guitar Jones from Korea, who have not responded to my inquiries. I've not seen any good comment about Guitar Jones on any of the other forums, so I'm not expecting much

Thanks for the photos. Yikes

What about GuitarJones USA??

Yeah... GuitarJones USA is the one to contact.

They seem to have the same preamp, the EP16-25.

Patrick is the guy there. He's been very helpful to me in the past.

Thanks for providing me with Pat's name, as I think it helped. I just got the original ME2 schematics from him today (Yipee!!!).

For those really curious:

Orange (thin) - pickup in

Oh, heck! It's a small gif!

Thanks for getting back with that, I had been wondering... If anything I hope we've all learned to take anything I say with a 6 lb salt lick. I'm glad you waited for the proper schema

Aryeh, did you create that drawing yourself

Ah, sorry! In my excitement I forgot the site policy of not posting stuff from vendors.

It's not a matter of vendors, but of *copyright* - you may not post any image here you did not create because that is a violation of copyright. Thanks

I'm curious to hear about how this preamp sounds. I'd also be interested in knowing the frequencies that each pot controls...

I saw someone on TalkBass who used a Guitar Fetish preamp on a bass, and it apparently worked out okay... the bass and mid frequencies were very similar to the Aguilar OBP-3, but the treble was a bit too high to really be usable, in my opinion...

Bass- 40hz

I agree, 8kHz is too high

Yeah, the Aguilar OBP-3 has 6K, and I think even *that* is too high..

If you get much below 6K that's not treble.. that's upper midrange!

When I was using EMG BTC's they have dip switches for 2.1K, 3.5K, 4.5K and 7K. I always like d the 7K setting best for the treble control.

On most consoles the treble is about 9.4 to 10K.

For a basses I think shelving treble controls between 2.5 and 5K are just about right. My 15" cab isn't going to have much ability above 6K and I figure the first guitar chord and cymbal crash is going to make anything over 200 Hz disappear anyway

I would agree that "much below 6k" is upper midrange for almost any instrument; I find it more practical shift the definitions to fit the overall useful range. For a bass, I think dropping everything an octave is a good place to start -- the midrange dividing line becomes 500, with lower mids below that and upper mids above that, up to 2k or so, when we can start call it "high end."

When I'm trying to EQ a bass into the mix, I usually need a swept mid of somewhere around 200-ish, if I need to deal with a "mudrange" pile-up that involves other guitars and such, or somewhere between 400 and 800 to bring out some "growl" or other character or flavor, depending on the instrument.

Midrange is where it's at, when it comes to cleaning up a mix and fitting pieces together. I'd guess that seventy or eighty percent of the time when I'm mixing, maybe more, I'm only interested in the midrange controls.

Overall shelf-like control from, say, 150 on down for the low end can be useful for "major balance" issues and rumble control. It may be possible to leave the midrange flat, and balance the low end with the midrange using the low control only.

Rarely would I do anything with the high end but roll it off entirely, in cases where the player is "clacky." Sad to say, but in live sound, unless the entire stage and house systems are

If it were possible to hear what was in the house, with the intention of making the bass sound right in the mix, for the audience, I suspect that midrange controls at, say, 300 and 600 would be pretty useful. Something in the lower midrange, and something in the upper.

It's usually

For radical, obvious changes in overall flavor, I think they are, but for a subtle or even moderate adjustment of this or that, I think the best way to make the decision is to be somewhere out there on the floor. If the bass isn't going through the house system... get a really long cable, and take a walk!

In any case, setting the tone while the band is playing is going to be way more useful than while hearing the bass in a more isolated way.

In a practical sense, it's nice to be able to enjoy your tone while you play, so setting it for personal taste from your own monitor amp is a reasonable thing to do -- assuming the signal going to the house system can still be EQ'ed into proper condition. If you're covering the house with your amp, I think it's your responsibility to set the tone for them, not yourself.

And in the studio, where you have control over all the pieces, the rules change entirely. A refined bass tone becomes possible.

If I can hear any bass in a live mix I'm pretty stoked. Luckily the days of reverb on the kick drum seem to have passed. This probably explains why half the live sound folks I know were former bass players. I've had more then one FOH guy tell me "Is that bass active? If you ever touch those eq knobs -I'm pulling you out of the mix" And they did every time. My solution to to leave the amp at home and use a DI. Most of the time the monitors sounded better anyway

>My 15" cab isn't going to have much ability above 6K

We obviously use very different tone settings. I like 12" speakers and HF horns or tweeters. I like using small PA cabs best. My Trace Elliot combo has a 10" in a bandpass enclosure, and a tweeter. My Mesa has 4x10 and a tweeter.

These days majority of bass cabs these days have 10" and tweeters.

When I record I never use an amp. My Roland mixer has the mids at 2.5K and the highs at 9.4K and that seems to work good for my tone. I mostly just boost the lows and mids a bit anyway. <g>

The solution for stupid sound guys is to play loud enough to not need the house mix! They never know how to do a proper mix anyway. They spend all their time on the drums, and then the drums don't fix into the mix, or leave any room for anything else.

Most FOH sound people need to find new jobs.

<i>The solution for stupid sound guys is to play loud enough to not need the house mix!</i>

Sorry, but that's just adding a stupid bass player to the potentially stupid sound man. If the on-stage sound is too loud, there's not a damn thing that can be done at the soundboard to balance anything.

It is not possible, which is to say,

It's not intuitive! As sound guy, I have gone up and talked to bass players about their stage volume, and had them get huffy in disbelief that they could possibly be too loud... and then as a bass player, I've had the sound guy come up, and I get all huffy in disbelief that I could possibly be too loud... :)

If you work with your sound guy on a regular basis, and you know (by hearing the mix "out there") that the mix is not as good as it should be, you can work together toward a better overall mix. Don't let it slide; if things don't change, they'll stay the same!

If you work with J. Random Sound Guy, I suspect the best you can do is trust him, and try to build a rapport quickly, and then you can make it clear you care about the mix, and you'd like to work together with him to make it the best it can be. One thing I'm sure of... alienating him isn't going to help! Au contraire.

The war stops here! :)

Hal, my point was that most sound men I have dealt with, even if the bass player is not using an amp, will a) have the bass so low in the mix that you can't hear it out front, and b) decide for themselves what your tone should be.

I remember one guy that ran the sound for a very popular club I used to play in saying he didn't like the tone the bass player was using... which was a burpy bridge pickup tone, similar to Jaco. There was nothing wrong with the guy's tone, just that the sound man said "I hate that type of tone" and he made the guy's bass sound like mud, and pretty much turned it down so low that you couldn't hear it out front, except as a rumble.

I know how I want my bass to sound, and also how loud it should be in the mix, so when I had a recalcitrant sound man that either didn't want to or couldn't get my tone out front, I'd just bypass them entirely.

Ideally you should have your own sound person who knows what your music is supposed to sound like, but in the end why does the bass have to come out of the house mix anyway? Speakers and amps are speakers and amps, and many house systems don't have enough power to adequately reproduce the bass properly. If it's a small club the PA is best suited to handling vocals.

The band should be able to balance their own sound. The house mix is really for things not loud enough to make it out to the audience, i.e., vocals, maybe drums, etc.

> The band should be able to balance their own sound.

But... but... the band can't hear the overall mix. Each member can only hear what's near them and/or loudest near them. How you can produce an overall balance of sound without being able to hear it? Intuition?

why does the bass have to come out of the house mix anyway?

This perspective sounds like it's coming from a guy who doesn't sing. If you are a singer, or a vocally reliant group, there is nothing worse than having to sing or to try and hear yourself when the bass player (and consequently everyone else on stage) is trying to play loud enough to fill the entire room right from their amp. Stage volume needs to be set by everyone, if one person such as the bass player is playing loud on stage then the drummer will BANG harder, and then up come the guitar amps....and the monitors are buried, and any control to do anything about it has been taken away from the sound guy.

>This perspective sounds like it's coming from a guy who doesn't sing.

This is back in the day.. but you get the picture. <g> I've been the lead singer in most of the bands I was in.

Everyone has to play at the level of the drummer on stage.. and the drummers I've played with were the loudest members of the band! Good floor monitors work wonders.

>How you can produce an overall balance of sound without being able to hear it? Intuition?

Experience. And not playiing too loud. I can play you live tapes that you would think were mixed, but nothing but the vocals and electronics drums were coming through the sound system.

You need sound men, but they should be reproducing what the band sounds like, not making them sound like something else. And I just haven't had much experience with live sound people that seem to be able to make a band sound good. They just can't do a decent mix.

OK.. I'm a recording engineer and producer, so I have opinions on this stuff that likely few other's agree with. But I know how to get a good sound. <g>

That is true in circumstances David and I don't doubt your experience, but I still have been in rooms that had PA's running just the vocals and maybe some drums, and you go further back from the band, and that's ALL you can hear, and that sounds nasty. People up front soak up the stage sound, and all that carries back in the room is the PA

I agree with that Mark. My comment were in the cases where the sound man is just too awful to deal with

Nice pants David

I was waiting for that... needless to say if I still had them, they wouldn't fit me now. <g>

Back to the initial subject of this thread:

Oh, and I'm leaving the discussion of the tonal qualities of black leather pants to be taken up on a different thread.