Bongo HH/p settings spreadsheet

[shakinbacon]

Everyone,

Every few weeks I find I get lost in the vast amount of control in my Bongo 5HHp. I've combed through the forums to see what suggestions have been made for settings for either a HH or an HHp. I did my best to formalize this list so if you see something that you don't agree with, well - sorry but that is how I interpreted it... but feel free to post a correction.

I'm doing this in case others find a use for this as I often refer to this list for help. (yes, I realize strings, setup, amp, room, etc all effect tone so please take these settings with a grain of salt)

Enjoy,
shakinbacon


NPU Mag LM HM Bass Treb Member
-70% 100% 0% 0% -20% 20% mfallmann
-30% 100% 20% 20% 0% -20% cellkirk74
-40% 0% 0% -30% 0% 20% Gramps
100% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% Pbass – Grand Wazoo
0% 60% 20% 20% 0% 80% Jbass – Grand Wazoo
0% 20% 30% 30% 20% 0% Nickjimbass
0% 100% -20% 20% +TT -TT% Manfloozy
-100% 100% 0% 0% 20% 20% Stingray
50% 100% -30% 85% 0% -30% five7
-100% 100% 0% 0% 30% 0% bovine
0% 100% -20% 0% 30% 30% stu42
0% 60% 0% 20% 20% 0% duarte
0% 30% 25% 25% 20% 0% shakinbacon
-50% 100% 0% 0% 25% TT Steve O
0% 0% 0% 20% 20% 20% Alvaro
0% 30% 30% 0% 0% 0% adouglas, shakinbacon
0% 70% 0% 0% 30% 30% Grand Wazoo

All Settings in terms of Boost for a given parameter (0% = center detent).
TT=to taste.
NPU=neck pickup, Mag = Magnetic pickup, LM=low mid, HM=high mid
(ie. -100% NPU means no neck pickup and all bridge pickup)

[cellkirk74]

Nice idea! Thank you!

[adouglas]

Nice effort. I hope it helps you and others. I suspect you'll be relying less and less on it over time, which would be a good thing. Something like this is a great starting point but IMHO relying too heavily on "cookbooks" is a blind alley because it gives you form, but not substance.

Speaking only for myself, something like that would only get in my way… I'd be worrying so much over the settings that I wouldn't get around to actually playing well (not that I ever do, mind….).

It's a digital approach to a fundamentally analog activity. There is no "right" answer that can be written down.

Think of it like cooking. You can mechanically follow a recipe and it'll work. But a really great cook doesn't operate that way. A great cook has a deep understanding of cause and effect and an intuitive sense of what will work and what won't.

I've found over time that it's far more useful to learn why a given control does what it does and get a feel for it than it is to rely on arbitrary settings that I really don't understand. A "well, I know that if I do this, that will be the result" approach, if you will.

It's about understanding what you're hearing. I know, for example, that if I can hear plenty of myself but I can't tell if I'm even playing in the right key, then I've got the lows cranked too much and probably not enough mids. I know that if I'm getting a "wall o sound" from the guitar player then I'm getting in his way with too much treble and maybe too much hi mid.

And so on. None of which can be codified in a chart. It just comes from experience.

So yeah, you've got my settings written down there. But I'm as likely as not to deviate from them.

FWIW, here are my rules of thumb:

1 Play the damned thing. That's what you're there for. Stop worrying so much… chances are very very good that nobody's noticing but you anyway. If you screw up your part because you're thinking about tone control settings, then that's a clear warning sign that you've got your priorities backwards.

2 A little goes a long way. Start flat and don't do anything drastic. Don't dime anything unless that really works for you. If you've got crap, set it all flat and start over. Don't make five changes at once.

3 A lot of the time simply not being loud enough is the problem. Turn yourself up and see what happens.

4 Listen to the whole mix and think of it from the point of view of giving everyone their own "space." You don't need to push huge amounts of air down at 20 Hz. The drummer's doing that. You don't need shimmering, sparkling highs. The guitar player lives there.

[drTStingray]

I agree with A Douglas on this - just play it and tweak to match your own playing style and taste.

I used my HHp Bongo 5 for a gig for the first time Friday night, and whilst my normal start position is 0, 30, 30, 0, 0, 0, on A Douglas's v useful advice, I do now vary this quite a bit, dependent on the song, and equally importantly, how hard I dig in. As with a Stingray, I found the Bongo becomes almost a different beast when you dig in - so a few examples, using your headings, from memory from Friday - remember it's all personal preference and all of us will have different playing styles:-

1) Bluesy rock (eg Tulsa Time + others) - 0, 50, 20, 0, 10, 10
2) Stand by me (bass, vocals, drums only - guitar barely playing) - -20, 0, 20, 20, 10, 0
3) Funky rock (eg Long Train Running) - -100, 100, 30, 0, 0, 10 (digging in also - produced natural compression a la Stingray but with Bongo sound)
4) Slow ballad - 10, 30, 10, 0, 30, 10 (attempted sound as per Broadway/West End Show in theatre - ie quite bassy and full - worked pretty well)
5) Full on 70s funky slap (used on Mustang Sally) - -70, 30, 10, 10, 0, 75 (the bass has worn out rounds!)

I would say using the Bongo for a gig has been a life changing experience!! Seriously good and lots of compliments from audience and also the band I was depping for.

My start point is now 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 - I find now I am used to what boosting/cutting each control does to the sound it is easy to adjust between songs from that start point to the sound I hear in my head for the song I'm about to play - what I haven't got used to is adding the level of attack, hand position and also the interraction between the EQ settings to the equation - I'm guessing this baby has so many tones I will be playing and tweaking for years to come - but for general use it's quite an intuitive set up and frankly needs little adjustment.

My amp (Ashdown ABM 500) was set Valve mix +20%; bass EQ + 10%; low mid 0; mid - -5%; upper mid 0; treble + 10%.

It was a pub gig with a wooden panelled floor - the whole sound of the band was v good and the Bongo sat in the mix superbly.

I hope this assists - I must try the Bongo for rockabilly/rock and roll sometime!

[shakinbacon]

As with a Stingray, I found the Bongo becomes almost a different beast when you dig in

My start point is now 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 - I find now I am used to what boosting/cutting each control does to the sound it is easy to adjust between songs from that start point to the sound I hear in my head for the song I'm about to play - what I haven't got used to is adding the level of attack, hand position and also the interraction between the EQ settings to the equation - I'm guessing this baby has so many tones I will be playing and tweaking for years to come - but for general use it's quite an intuitive set up and frankly needs little adjustment.

drTStingray,
I agree with your experience of digging in. Perhaps that is one thing that I have not been factoring in.

Its funny you mentioned all controls at 0... I've been trying that lately too, but my experience in listening to the recordings of band practice have been inconsistent so I'm not sure what to think yet and hence didn't include it.

adouglas,
Lots of great points - thanks for the response. Hopefully I'll get an intuitive understanding of this beast yet


shakinbacon

[five7]

Good work and good luck. All settings work well and sound great, it is a bongo!

[drTStingray]

Its funny you mentioned all controls at 0... I've been trying that lately too, but my experience in listening to the recordings of band practice have been inconsistent so I'm not sure what to think yet and hence didn't include it.

To clarify, I think as a start point to develop a specific tone, this is good - I haven't really used the bass with the 0 settings across the board - I always boost or cut one or other controls and usually more than one, sometimes marginally, to match the song I'm playing.

I used the 5HHp at a jam session the other day and the guy who runs it always records the session and places it on a site on the web - the sound is quite compromised as the recording is through an ambient unit in the room (quite a boomy room), the bass amp is a small combo which is half the power of the guitar amps so is working bl**dy hard, and it's much less powerful than the PA - needless to say I don't often bother to listen to the playback but I was curious what the Bongo would sound like.

At some stages I played in a setting with 3 saxes, one semi acoustic guitar, harmonica, drums and vocals, and the Bongo can be heard reasonably well in the mix on the playback, in fact it sounds quite fat and bassy at times - obviously better when people soloed and the pseudo Stax horns had a rest! I boosted bass and low mid to achieve this, probably + 30 on low mid, + 20 at times on bass - bridge PU soloed - the sound in the room was OK but frankly rubbish compared with a band setting with my own rig - however the point of the jam session is really enjoyment and social and is not intended to produce super clear sound, though I do get frustrated with the perception that guitarists need better sound equipment than the bass player (but hey, what's new!!) - the point of all this is to indicate how good the Bongo is even in such a compromised setting. It still made me smile and got compliments.

I believe the low mid range knob is the major weapon

[rizzo9247]

Flat please. I just need a volume knob on my HH Bongo.

[ivbenaplayin]

The biggest thing I've learned with my Bongo 5HHp is that once I get it EQ'd to taste for the stage I'm playing on, right-hand technique/position takes care of most of my tonal variety needs. Anything other than that on my end of things would be slight adjustments to the mag pup pan knob if anything, but I seldomly touch that either. It's pretty easy to mess up a sound guy's FOH mix with the bass and low-mid controls on a Bongo since they're SO powerful...

[drTStingray]

It's pretty easy to mess up a sound guy's FOH mix with the bass and low-mid controls on a Bongo since they're SO powerful...

I guess this is possible if you make major adjustments mid set, and I +1 that those controls on the Bongo are really very powerful

- however, I thought the point of FOH was to deliver the band's sound to the audience - the band's sound including the bass player's own sound, guitarist's own sound etc etc?? What you are saying might suggest that FOH decides what the band's sound is rather than just 'amplifying' it and mixing it?

[shakinbacon]

I guess this is possible if you make major adjustments mid set, and I +1 that those controls on the Bongo are really very powerful

- however, I thought the point of FOH was to deliver the band's sound to the audience - the band's sound including the bass player's own sound, guitarist's own sound etc etc?? What you are saying might suggest that FOH decides what the band's sound is rather than just 'amplifying' it and mixing it?

seems like most FOH soundmen I've dealt with feel its there job to make the bass sound good, whereas the guitar tone gets untouched. It is frustrating, but the truth is usually the bass is a big factor in the overall sound so they need it to fill the room correctly. He's got a job to do, as do I.

I stumbled upon a "Jaco-ish" tone last night
NPU Mag LM HM Bass Treb
100 -100 30 -100 20 0

[ivbenaplayin]

I guess this is possible if you make major adjustments mid set, and I +1 that those controls on the Bongo are really very powerful

- however, I thought the point of FOH was to deliver the band's sound to the audience - the band's sound including the bass player's own sound, guitarist's own sound etc etc?? What you are saying might suggest that FOH decides what the band's sound is rather than just 'amplifying' it and mixing it?

I guess poor choice of wording on my part, what I mean is the overall sound of some of the rooms we play changes drastically with what I/we do on stage with our sound... alot of the rooms we play are small & pretty crappy acoustically, and if I make major changes on the eq of the bongo, which really doesn't take much rotation of any give knob (especially the bass and low-mid knobs... they're wicked powerful) the FOH guy tries to compensate for it and from that point on, everything just fights everything & gets really boomy and turns to mud. It can get out of control in a hurry & in essence, the stage starts to overpower FOH which is never good... that's what I meant... Some of the EQ settings on this beast that sound excellent when I'm playing at home in my living room sound like a$$ in a band mix...

[Aussie Mark]

Can you import a spreadsheet into the Gamechanger via USB?

[drTStingray]

Some of the EQ settings on this beast that sound excellent when I'm playing at home in my living room sound like a$$ in a band mix...

Thanks for clarifying and I know what you mean, it has to be used v carefully.

From my perspective, it can be quite irritating when a sound guy says 'just give me flat sound with no EQ and I'll do the rest' - sort of defeats the point of having a bass with EQ control on board etc.

When you think of some bands in the past whose bass sound is v important to the overall sound - an example is Free - imagine if that bass had been sat down in the mix with EQ settings, say like Fleetwood Mac of the time. It just wouldn't have sounded like Free.

Or RHCP - I remember Flea trying to use a Jazz bass live................

Imagine Tim Commerford giving a flat sound to the FOH............

Not that I'm in the league of any of these guys of course, but just to reinforce the point, the bass player's sound and tone is part of the musicianship IMO. The EBMM basses help me do that and I don't want them toned down by some sound guy who never heard anything but a Fen**r before

[oli@bass]

When I came to the point to need a computer to manage my sound settings, I knew it was time to sell all my equipment and get back to the roots. Bass. Cable. Amp. Cab.