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Active and Passive Instruments Matching Levels


WarMesa
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My apologies if this has been covered before. New to the HX Stomp and loving it so far. My question is what is the best way to deal with two instruments with different outputs? I run one active bass and also a passive fretless. I plan on running a present for that fretless and to have that preset compensate for the lower output of that instrument. What's the best way to achieve this? Thank you for any help.

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First thing I would try is adding a Gain or Boost block at the very beginning of the signal chain. You want something that will raise the input level of the fretless to something similar to the active bass while not affecting the tone. Try the Gain block in the Volume/Pan category or the Boost Comp in the Dynamics Legacy category. Experiment with the settings.

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Input pad is fixed to be exactly -12 db.  Quite useless IMO to have something so drastic.  What if you want something less severe?  Line 6 decided to not give users the option of how much of a pad it's providing--stupid! 

 

Do what others have suggested--add a simple volume block and match the two instruments' levels.  Each instrument is different.  Simply leveling up a Jazz Bass on the bridge pickup against a fat hollow body EB0 is apples to oranges.  In other words, you need to play with the levels, use your ears, and simply identify where to set the volume so they are matched.  Analyzing the db level is not enough, since the EQ is going to be different.

 

I have 3 guitars, and I manually matched them all.  For example, I know that if I want to use a different guitar at the gig as opposed to my usual one I'd need to add a 3db boost at the beginning of the chain. 

 

To identify how much to add or cut, I have a certain preset that has a very specific envelope filter.  I know that sound very well. So I basically play the same passage and find the ideal setting where every one of my 3 guitars trigger that one envelope filter the same way.  Even still, each guitar has a different EQ, and cleans up better/worse... Each guitar model has its own character and color.  This is to be expected unless you have 3 identically-spec'ed guitars. 

 

also FYI..

 

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Thank you everyone for the tips. Not sure why I originally thought it would be a more complicated solution. I made a preset with a couple different blocks EQ, comp, boost, etc to try and see what works best. I got a sort of baseline difference between the two basses using Reaper so it gives me a place to start.

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