Gear Rig-Seasplash Rig Talk

Alexej's Bass Guitar Rig

Now since joining the band in 2007, I tried different things with my bass guitar. Actually I'm not really a geek. Today I play only my rare Godin Bass with 5 Strings and nice specs on it. I'll talk about those later. First of all, I want to show you my amp rig.

Working with Seasplash makes my Bass sound simple which is in fact our secret. A solid and tight bass sound. But only a few know that I'm able to play everything, I can even sweep with my bass guitar. Maybe I'm gonna perform a bass solo next tour. But however, I fit my sound to the guys ones. Besides playing with finger and plectrons, I once in a while slap or sweep my bass. To generate my bass sound, I use a Line6 Lowdown6 transistor amp. This my sound crazy because it doesn't have a warm sound with an tubeamp. This isn't the point. The Lowdown amp has a direct out which is connected directly into the mixer. But instead of not pulling out my sound off my guitar into a DI-Box, the amp DIs the amp programm as well. 
My amp therefore is set up with four channels. 3 channels are more or less the same classy undistored bass sound we know but the EQs are set differently for each channel. For each channel in addition, I can jump on the floorpedal which punshes up more of the low frequencies and with the volume pedal I adjust the sound level. The fourth channel has distortion in it which I use to sweep or to make some rhythm parts (you will hear this on the next record). Since the amp has a solid working compressor already in it, I do not use a crazy on the mixing console. Just a little peak controlling needs to be done on the mix. 

Now coming back to my guitar. It has more or less all the basic stuff every bass has got. Besides the 5 Strings (normal with the B-String on top), the guitar has a varity of knobs on it. Since the guitar has two active emg pick ups, one knob is to adjust the position of the pick ups (this is also nothing crazy). Of course one volume knob, one tone knob, but the highlight of this amp is the fourth knob. I have a push knob on it that pushes the tone setting a little bit up or a down. Furthermore, this push knob has on top another push knob for the push knob (you get it?:D). So I can push my bass two times up. Stupid you think? Don't think so. I made the experience that live you don't be aware of the bass sound often. This doesn't mean you don't hear the attack, but the sound in the mix is often bad to be conscient of it. 
So with my 4 options of pushing frequencies up or down I can adjust my bass sound to the song sound to make sure, that I am everywhere in the song where I want to be or have to be. And that's also the reason why I play only one guitar. To vary my sound, I do not have to change every time my bass guitar. Still, I have a Cort Bass as a back up. But don't use it often. 

Now you know all my gear stuff. I hope you enjoyed reading it and be ready to get to know more about Seasplash's FOH gear and mixing stuff next week. 

Stay tuned and keep rockin'!