u/MoltenReplica

I'm looking to get an AB165 Bassman, and I'd like to know of any manufacturers selling modernized clones. So far, the only one I've found is the Carr Impala. Are there any others out there by smaller builders?

I'm looking to get an AB165 Bassman, and I'd like to know of any manufacturers selling modernized clones. So far, the only one I've found is the Carr Impala. Are there any others out there by smaller builders?

I got a Wes ngTubeEQ recently and decided that I wanted to use it in M/S for a project. It's the first time I'm using outboard in M/S and I noticed pretty early on that my mix felt a little... strange. Weirdly narrow. I figured it was me not differentiating guitars enough, so I pressed on through the first deliverable.

For V2, I figured it was time to look at the mono mix and to my horror the guitars practically vanished! Despite setting very different tones and hard panning them! I set about poking around, trying different combinations of settings and got some baffling results.

First things first, my mix bus analog signal flow is this: DAC -> SSL Fusion's Drive block -> Fusion insert point in stereo mode -> SSL Bus+ in M/S -> ngTubeEQ in M/S -> Fusion insert return -> Fusion Violet EQ -> ADC

Using this setup my guitars sounded panned apart, but not fully. Bypassing the insert and skipping all the M/S stuff brought things back to hard stereo, as expected.

I tried a bunch of permutations of signal flows on both the hard panned guitars and the straight-down-the-middle bass; the compressor by itself, the EQ by itself, the compressor and EQ together, Fusion by itself. What I found was some really weird behavior.

First, using this chain with only mono content. The bass stayed right down the middle with any outboard permutation... with one exception. If I put the Fusion in M/S mode, the image leaned to the left. I can't figure out why, but that probably doesn't matter; the Bus+ and EQ have their own M/S encode and decode, so I want to feed each of them L/R signal anyways, right?

Then I tried hard stereo information with just the guitars. With only the compressor and EQ, the guitars were somewhat wide, but narrower than the pure digital signal. With those two in the Fusion's insert loop, things got a lot narrower. However! When I set the insert loop to M/S mode, the full wide stereo image was suddenly back! What? Why?!

I made a set of renders showing the behavior of the whole chain on bass and guitars, with both the M/S insert engaged and disengaged. There are also a set with the Violet EQ off, as that comes before the compressor and Wes EQ when the insert is in M/S mode; I thought it may have been the culprit for the difference in behavior somehow, but it doesn't seem to change much. There's a screenshot of the Wes EQ settings too, which gives some insight into why the mono mixdowns sound so different. It's clear that without the Fusion insert point in M/S mode, the Wes EQ will put more of the guitars in the sum channel and boost much more low end.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fISSv_5JWn_71C8PSs2Srf1iwfNzCWmY

I'm kind of at a loss for how to proceed. My gut says to leave the Fusion insert in stereo mode and push things hard elsewhere to make up for the narrower image. But continuing the mix this way, there's a lot more masking and the mono sum is really shit. If I put the insert in M/S mode, the guitars and vocals become gloriously wide and there's vastly more clarity... but the kick, snare, and bass all lean to the left channel.

Why are these stereo image issues happening? Am I doing something wrong? Why do I only keep hard panned L/R guitars when I feed an M/S encoded signal to processors that should have their own encode/decode? Is the narrower stereo field just a consequence of mid/side processing? (I thought it was supposed to make things wider!)

Edit: Poking around a little more. I think the left lean is due to getting a signal that's still M/S encoded after the Fusion if I put the insert into M/S mode. But then why are the guitars correctly left and right???

Edit 2: Decided to start over on 2bus with Fusion in M/S and the others in dual mono. Guitars still drop a lot, but not as much. Is just an inherent drawback of mid/side? Though it's also similar in mono if I skip the hardware and M/S processing altogether so... I guess I don't understand mono as well as I thought? I really don't know at this point.