Many of the people who were discussing (tube) preamps for bass in TalkBass – I wrote about that here – were doing so because they nowadays go on stages without even using a real amplifier on top of a cabinet, or some kind of combo amp like I have it. With a bass you can do this theoretically using only a DI box to connect your instrument to the mixing console, and then the tone will be shaped there and sent to the P.A. system for the audience to hear it. What you get back from the mixer in that case is a monitoring signal which is a mix of yourself and the other musicians on stage, and nowadays more and more people are using in-ear monitors to hear that, so not even monitoring wedges are needed anymore. That way, stages have become pretty silent, especially when also using electronic drum kits instead of real ones.
Some people tho – normally guitar players, but also bassists, keyboarders, drummers and so on – want to create a sound which they send to the mixer, and therefore use pedal boards or all-in-one multieffect devices which also simulate amplifiers and even speaker cabinets, once for their own in-ears, but also because they want to have their sound sent to the mixer, and not having the mixing guys create that for them.
Here’s a guitar player explaining how he does that with one of these devices – interestingly it’s the same one which the thread owner on TalkBass also bought for his bass guitar:
Here the guitar player also uses a Radial DI box to send the signal to the house, and as I mentioned, in theory that’s all you would need as a bass player. And even people like Geddy Lee (Rush, Yes, and other bands) are doing it like this since a while… times they are-a-changing, aren’t they? 😉
As always, thanks for reading.