I am listening to this really loud right now and it is good. Everything sounds good but man at medium to high volumes, that bass sounds phenomenal. Good job Olivier and Axel...!

Excellent cover. Thanks for sharing.

That's really, really good!

i love the interplay between drums and bass side! it just fits so well. great sense of groove and all that good stuff!

What are you using for amplification, especially on that bass side of the Stick? It's very organic and beefy, just like a good bass player!

Kudos on another great cover (Psycho Killer is still my Fave!)

Well, actually no amplification at all. Here's the signal chain:

Melody and bass channel into HX Stomp, each on its own channel.

The bass channel is slightly compressed, but not too much otherwise you lose dynamics.

Nothing special in the eq domain. I'll post the HQ settings later since I'm home and the HX stomp is in the rehearsal room (elsewhere).

Each of the outputs (bass and melody) then go direct to their inputs on a QSC TM16 mixer where there is basically no special treatment. (I'll have to check this out. I've set it once and never changed it since).

The QSC TM16 mixer comes very handy in live situations to feed the FOH and/or wedges. It also has stereo auxes which makes it ideal for IEM and allows multitracking. This is what we use when recording with Axel. The fact you don't see the hihat and cymbal microphones is simply a masking trick in Final Cut Pro (video editing software).

After playing a song a couple of times (generally 2-3 takes) we use the best take and transfer it to a protools HD system for the mix.

The bass and melody tracks are duplicated, panned equally right and left. Plugins on the bass are Bomb factory 1176 for a slight compression (it's always better to compress slightly twice than too hard once) and some eq (will also check it tomorrow).

So nothing very special except working a lot on both hands movement and touch. I'll never forget the advice of our dear late Greg Howard: «Don't typewrite, it's all in the hand and arm movement».

Stay tuned, I'll check the exact settings tomorrow.

Thank you for sharing!

I'm a complete newbie to The Stick (in fact, so new that I'm waiting for my strings to arrive from SE so I can get my first 10-string up and running!). So I've been studying just what everyone is doing on their respective instruments (from practice regimen to how and what amplification/recording gear)!

Of course, since I've been playing bass guitar for 35+ years, I'm trying to get my mind to "unlearn" all the preconceived ideas of how to play a strung instrument!

Thanks again!

You're welcome. And yes, you'll have to forget everything about bass playing. This is something quite different. But such FUN!

OK, so the bass channel in the HX Stomp has only 2 blocs:

Bloc 1: LA Studio Comp (optocompressor modeling, much sweeter than the other crushers): peak reduction 3 db, Emphasis 2.0, Mix 50% (that's 50% of the compressed signal and 50% of the uncompressed signal.

Bloc 2: 10 band graphic EQ. +1dB@31.25Hz / +2dB@62.5 Hz / +2,1dB@125Hz / +1,5dB@250Hz / +2,8dB@8kHz.

That's all. Since the recording in the QSC TM16 is prefader, there is no tratment there.

Now Protools: just the bomb factory 1176 (around 1.5 dB compression).

On the master fader, there is only a multiband compressor slightly substracting somme mids.

Thats all.

Stick pickup is the fabulous ACTV 2. Volume and treble knobs all to the max.

Thanks again for sharing.

I've been mentally trying to envision what I'll be putting where in my up-and-coming Stick rig, as I have tons of pedals of various things kicking around (or more likely around here, waiting to be repaired! LOL).

Might be thinking of treating the bass side with bass effects and the melody side with guitar effects. Then again, might run the whole thing in stereo in general with global effects. not sure.


Also, from the playing point of view, mentally gearing myself to remember that this is not like taping on a bass guitar (very physical at times). As Greg Howard once said, "we're not playing a typewrite!"

Baby steps...