High / Low filters

[Rowan S]

So basically im making a bass, and its gonna be designed for a good slap tone whilst still being able to sound thick and bassy when i want it to... preferably a passive bass.

I was thinking about standard volume controls for each pickup, and tone for each pickup, but also a kill switch and high / low pass filters in a 3 way switch..

Anyone recomend this? Anyone have samples so i know what im getting myself into? lol

Cheers! Rowan

[Rowan S]

anyone at all..

[ToG]

Give it a few days for response, checking periodically. The boards members span all time zones.

[Aes820]

You could experiment with differnt capacitor and inductor values for use as a simple passive band pass filter.

[Rowan S]

Whats an inductor? what values would you think of messing around with..

I dont quite understand capacitors.. how does the value effect the tone? Or output..

[NavyBass]

Passive tone controls are cut controls only. What that means is that they take certain frequencies and pass them to ground, thus eliminating them from the output. That being said, they usually don't make an effective shaping circuit, since they will cut certain frequencies below or above a certain point. Think of the standard passive tone control, it cuts all the high end out and only lets the low end pass through. Having a few different ones in a circuit won't matter. If you want a nice tone shaping circuit, the only way to go is active, since it doesn't eliminate any one frequency.

This is a very simple explanation. To get into the whole reason why would take up a few pages.

[Aes820]

Where capacitors let higher frequencies pass through them to ground while blocking lower frequencies (resulting in less high end in your resultign output).
Inductors let lower frequencies pass through them to ground while blocking higher frequencies. (resulting in less low end in your resulting output).

Experimenting with either or a combination of both can give you options around simple passive low-cut, high-cut and band pass filters.
It's all possible, but how you use it and incorporate it is up to you.

The only problem is. Inductors are a lot harder to source than capacitors are, especially ones of the correct value (measured in Henries).

[Rowan S]

Cool ill have a look about that.. Someone mentioned an EQ thing to me, to have inside.. i could be wrong but dont u programme them to sound a certain way? Would they be any good

[Aes820]

An actual proper EQ would require active electronics.
Obviously not possible if you want to keep it all passive.
Not to mention it'll be quite difficult to build your own and get it to fit inside your wiring cavty.

An EQ in itself is a fantastic option to increase your tonal versatility. But I think the best option with those would be to run an EQ unit or pedal in your amps FX loop.

[NavyBass]

If you want to stay passive, then you're limiting it to a cut only circuit. You can't boost any frequencies if you would like to. You can only cut all frequencies below the Q of the RL or RC tank circuit, or with a bandpass circuit you,ll only pass the frequencies that the circuit was designed for.

Many bass guitars come with active eq's in them. Also, it's not hard at all to make one yourself if you have some electronics background. If you don't, there are many active EQ's available from companies like EMG, Aguilar, and Bartolini. They are fairly easy to install and work great.

If you really want to make the bass with a versatile tone circuit an active onboard eq is the way to go.

[Rowan S]

Yeah i only said " preferably" passive.. Ok so now its gonna be active to give me a whole lot more options.. Im getting a guy downtown to help me build it.

Would i be able to have a switch that can switch it from active to passive? Like a true bypass or something.. So i dont still lose a bit of tone or whatever..

Im gonna go with the EQ, set it to two different sounds if i can.. sort of like a thick, jaco style ( maybe) finger style sound, and a brighter slap tone.. When its off itll sound very 70s.:thumb: