From harjoy@elknet.net Fri Nov 25 11:07:38 2005
Subject:Re: "Beefing up" a clonewheel...


----- Original Message -----
From: jake92028

>I love the BBE Sonic Maximizers. When I get lazy and don't put one in
the gear bag for my line-ins, I forget how great they sound. They had
some advertising quite a while back that said something to the effect
of "You only notice when you turn it off," which is so true.

I hadn't expected BBE to come up here! I went to place a BBE stereo unit with one section inoperative into consignment and two people opined that "That's something you don't need anway"!

Similar to the Speakeasy preamp units in that you have to turn it off to notice what it does do.

Have had the experience of bumping the BBE pypass and not really noticing it maybe leaving the rig then after turning it back on here came that feeling of "I can really sound good".

In re. the level settings- how hot the output of various makes and models is comes into consideration here too- huge variations- some need to be full on at the source. And you have the effect with acoustic piano "cloning" that many tend to sound very blah until you cross a certain volume level.

A cliche is that you avoid amplification early in the signal chain because any errors, artifacts, or deficiencies in the first level will be magnified. Being aware of that thinking I called Mackie and spoke with one of the Mackoids and his personal useage used a reasonable amopunt of gain at the input level rather than going for a high amount at the main mix.

Then there is the matter of whether you use a Speakeasy preamp. In order to get benefit from mine that is positioned between my Mackie 1402 and a BBE as last element- I ended up reducing the sliders at main out on the Makie to below unity gain.

First time I got really satisfying acoustic piano sounds!

I do set most keyboard or module volume levels at max for best signal to noise ratio from the units. My EX-5 has a hot output so its at about7/8 ths. My XK-3 is actually 50% at the volume knob- its output is plenty hot going into the speakeasy through the mixer and helps with adjusting program switches that are not the same level. Of course the Hammond expreeion pedal set right is what takes this out of the "imitator" category a bit!

Do what works for you! Everyonce in a while reading how someone else does it is a help though!

Harold

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