2 Signal processing

2.0 Introduction

In a perfect world, a bass amplifier sounds exactly like you want it to, and your bass guitar requires nothing but a device that just makes its output signal audible. Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated than this. The bass player usually does all kinds of equipment tweaks to get his or her personal sound, even if he or she plays a customly built bass guitar and/or amplifier.

First of all, bass guitars are rarely built to sound exactly right, right out of the box. The designer only does the basics as far as the sound character of a bass guitar is concerned. While the basic dry sound of a bass is obviously very important, it's not often that a bass guitar sounds THAT good without any tweaking.

Secondly: every player is different, and two identical bass guitars may sound very differently in the hands of different players, for instance because they use different playing techniques or simply have different personal taste. So what's right for one person, isn't for another.

That's where signal processing kicks in. Processing the signal from the bass guitar makes it possible to shape, bend and polish the sound to make it YOUR sound.



© Joris van den Heuvel 2001-2009