Stingray active bass output levels? What do you look for in a bass dist.?

[sfr]

I have a friend who's asked me to build him a bass distortion pedal.  Fair enough - there's plenty of info on this board and other places I should be able to make something fairly easily, but it seems like a good candidate for my first attempt at "rolling my own", effect wise - I've built enough different distortion boxes that I feel like I can piece together the building blocks from other basic circuits, tweaking it along the way for lower frequencies and come up with something nice.  A good way to get my feet wet in making something from the ground up.

One thing, however, is he plays a Musicman Stingray bass, (with the single humbucker pickup and the 3-band EQ) and prefers to usually have all his knobs dimed.   As a result, one thing he's complained about with commercial offerings (I have a feeling he's only tried pedals aimed at guitar usage, but I could be mistaken) is that the distorted signal coming out of the box is often significantly lower in volume than his bypassed signal.  Makes sense - a box designed for passive pickups is only attempting to add enough gain at the end (after volume lost by clipping, etc.) to match/somewhat exceed the lower outputs of those.   I get the same effect when I run the very hot signal out of my LPB into some distortions.   When I was still trying to weasel out of this project, I tried convincing him to simply roll back the volume on his bass until this effect was minimized and set his amp from there.   He wasn't having any of it.

Anyway, I'd really like to start playing with this project now, but he's leaving for the road today or tomorrow, and I won't have access to his bass for a while, only my own home-built one with (fairly low outut) passive p'ups.  So I'm curious if anyone on the board knows what the maximum output levels of these basses are so I have more of an idea of what sort of outputs I have to match coming out of the last stage of my pedal. I suppose it's not *too* hard to tweak after the fact, but I'd hate to start prototyping and realize I needed to go to a higher supply voltage. 

So anyone know what these put out?  Somebody with access to one want to take a quick measurement?  Thanks!  (I suppose I could find out from a schematic, but I haven't been able to find any)

Also, what sort of things do folks here think would be cool in a bass-centric distortion?  I'm kind of intrigued by the new(ish) MXR Blowtorch (whose 18V power supply also makes me wonder about the levels that active  basses put out) with the clean blend and mid-range focused distortion.   I've heard bassists tell me they want to keep the low end clean, and others tell me they want to keep the highs clean (I think what they really want is to avoid adding too much harmonic content)  and I think the distorted midrange may be more of an ideal solution.   But I don't really play bass all that much in a "rock" context - what sorts of suggestions would bass players here have?   It sounds like this fellow particularly wants a fairly saturated BMP-like tone, although ideally he'd like something rather versatile.

EDIT: I suppose I can find this info out on my own fairly easily, but while I'm asking a bunch of stupid questions, I might as well ask what frequency ranges would you center tone controls around for a bass?   I.E., around what areas would you center "bass", "middle" and "treble" knobs on a bass?  Just move the notches all down an octave from where they would be on a guitar-based pedal?  My original thought was to consult the "cheat sheet" I've written down many a year ago of values I tend to tweak when EQing instruments in a recording, but my experience with guitar has been that the places you play with EQ after recording a signal are not the same as the places you EQ a signal before it hits the amp.

[AL]

I've built a few pedals for bass players. The one thing that they found extremely helpful (and me too - I play bass) is to put a pot on the input ala Joe Gagan's Easy Face. Since bass players aren't used to rolling back their volume knobs like guitar players this does essentially the same thing except it's on the pedal. If the signal is too hot (ie active pickups) you just roll back the input.

AL

[davesisk]

Hi...great question on what kinds of distortion do bassists look for.  It seems to me that different folks have very different tastes...in fact, I often use a mild overdrive to get some "grittiness" to my tone (a more midrange-oriented overdrive....think Ampeg amp with the gain cranked), and sometimes use a more full-spectrum distortion (fuzz?) like the MXR M80.  I've been looking and listening to the MXR Blowtorch with some longing eyes and ears as well.  If you want to hear some great samples, check Ed Friedland's site http://www.edfriedland.com/edrocks.htm...there are three mp3's in the bottom third of the list.

Personally, one type of overdrive I really like is what you can get out of a Gallien-Krueger bass amp...there's a "boost" section on the output that overdrives the lows but is crossed-over to leave the highs totally clean.  I personally think that sounds pretty awesome, and it's somewhat similar to the Blowtorch.

Here's the thing for me (and probably for quite a few bassists)...if you really fuzz the lows, then you lose a lot of distinct-ness in the playing...it starts to sound "mushy" for lack of a better word.  If you can keep some of the very low frequencies clean and/or mix some clean signal in with the distorted signal, then the lows have more definition.  Also, quite a few bassists like to switch between fingerstyle and slap in the middle of a song...distortion sounds good with warm fingerstyle, but I personally really don't like having distorted highs when slapping (I think it sounds aweful, and just looses all the definition and articulation).  In my opinion, the place to concentrate distortion on bass are the lower mids (say, around 250 Hz or so) and the upper mids (around 750 Hz or so). 

This may help with the EQ voicing question too...around 250Hz +/- is a frequency that is high enough to be clear rather than boomy but still low enough that you can feel a little bit of it in your gut.  If need more lows when playing live, I reach for 250Hz lower mid knob rather than the low (sub-100Hz) knob.  That frequency or thereabouts adds some thickness without adding boominess.  In a lot of cases, it sounds really good live to cut some 40Hz signal and boost 200Hz to compensate.  I think this area is a good frequency to accentuate for distortion as well.

If I need to cut through or sound more clear OR really accentuate the growl in my basses, I usually reach for 750 - 800 Hz or so...this is where the "growl" lives in a lot of basses, so again I think this is a good frequency to focus distortion around. 

You'll probably notice those two frequencies are selectable on the Blowtorch!  That's not a coincidence.

Here's an idea I'd love to figure out how to build:
1) Split the signal going into the pedal. (Probably have an input trim/gain adjustment.)
2) Route signal A (clean) straight a 3 or 4 band EQ.
3) Route signal B to a distortion circuit with a gain control, then to a 2nd 3 or 4 band EQ.
4) Mix to the two back together via a blend knob.
5) Set the final level via an output level control.

With this, you'd gain a lot of flexibility (even beyond what the Blowtorch can do). 
- LF distortion?  Cut the clean lows and boost the dirty lows.
- Lower-mid distortion:  Cut the clean lower-mids (250Hz) and boost the dirty lower-mids
- Upper-mid distortion:  Cut clean/boost dirty around 750Hz.
- Fuzz (HF) distortion:  Cut/boost around 3000Hz.

It would have a lot of knobs (8, unless I count wrong!), but it sure would be one flexible distortion.

Post and let us know where you are with this project!

Dave