mrtcat

A lot of venues are aware of this and will have a contract with the client forbidding bands to use them. One of the bands I dep with got caught out and the venue asked them to pack up and leave. They had to comp the clients their full fee so just be careful.

This is exactly our experience too. Venues tell clients that "bands love it here and never struggle - it always sounds amazing" and then try to point the finger at the band when the limiter set to 89db trips just from the crowd clapping. We have clauses in our contract that squarely tell the client that we cannot be held responsible for poor sound in venues with these systems. Clients are definitely being ripped by venues that really should be clear that they're not suitable for bands before they take the customer's money off them.

Depends what type of gigs you play but in general we are seeing more and more of these. We do circa 100 weddings a year and there are noise restrictions in one form or another at probably 80% of these. A lot of venues are moving towards in house sound systems that have built in limiters that completely squash the life out of anything other than a whisper. The same venues usually have strict "no backline" policies. Any band doing what we do really needs to be onboard with working with a silent stage these days. When we get bigger venues with no restrictions we happily use amps though as its nice to cut loose a bit more from time to time.

I still enjoy the playing part but I can't say that playing covers at weddings excites me. It pays well enough for me to feel very fortunate to do it but it's definitely more about the money than the love of the gigs. I've done over 500 gigs with this band but it seems that the challenges (awkward venues, difficult clients, ridiculous noise limiters, rude guests etc etc) are becoming more frequent issues and it definitely has dulled the enjoyment side. It's a lot of driving too. That said, I'm a very average player who is paying bills by playing bass so I'm definitely not complaining.

Haven't bought anything bass related this year. I've done 112 gigs so far and all I've spent on is fuel and tyres. I just don't crave stuff anymore. Bass playing has become nothing more than a means of earning and the less I spend, the more profitable it is.

Last I heard, Lugs (based in Ireland not Devon) weren't doing any more reshells and were focusing purely on full builds. That said, the service is excellent and he has been known to have a good turnaround time. My Lugs pro 6 have been excellent and I'm really happy with them.

The NXL 24 is a world away from the evox range.

They'll have to prize my F112 from my cold dead hands when my time is up.

Sounds great but defo not too fast. Original is 152 bpm and you guys were around 140. Nice mix, can you have a word with our guitarist who does our sound. He seems to hate bass.

Buy a PA system and a van. As soon as word gets out you'll be swamped in offers.

It definitely saves a lot of hassle and is pretty easy to use.

So we're mostly doing weddings or corporate events. We don't do pubs but we are essentially just a glorified pub band with a good agent 🙂 Mixer is a Behringer XR18. We had an X32 rack at one point but it was just massive overkill for us. We have really slimmed down the amount of gear we take to gigs and being able to mount a mixer and 4 x wireless IEM transmitters into a standard 4u rack case is a win. We're a 4 piece with bass, drums, lead guitar and a singer who plays rhythm guitar and keys. Myself and guitarist also add bv's. Although we use acoustic drums we use a Yamaha EAD10 so the kit only takes up 2 channels. The EAD is the only real compromise we make because you can't separate the sampled kick and kit mics after they've been sent to the desk. If you turn the kit mics down to reduce cymbals & snare in the front of house you're also turning them down for the in ear mix. We have a cheap condenser mic in the kit box just in case we have to drop them right out in small or overly lively rooms.

Three gigs this weekend. All with the same band all with our usual PA (2x RCF 745 mk4 + 2x RCF 705AS2). All on in ears. No issues at all. One room was a bit lively but the usual rta eq trick helped along with easing off the volume. We don't really ever encounter issues using this setup because we all have control of our own iems, we all are on top of battery charging and everyone is happy to set and forget their backline volume. Drummer is a really decent player so can get the dynamics without having to thrash the kit on the days where we need to keep the noise down a bit.

Second hand Behringer DEQ2496. It also has the rta function built in. Just need to add the behringer reference mic.

Just read through this topic and feel like I'm the only one thinking that the room was the issue not the speakers / mics. I've just done my 600th gig with my wedding band (yes I'm that old) and by far the biggest issue we come across sound wise is a bright or "lively" room. The only real solution is, as @Bill Fitzmaurice has said, some form of rta and eq. The simple pink noise generator and rta app coupled with an outboard eq would surely solve this issue on a very small budget. You can do the eq adjustments before your bandmates have even taken their instruments out of their cases and take your time. Your rcf speakers are excellent and the issue doesn't lie there. Rooms that aren't acoustically treated can have a range of issues but harsh sounding is the joint most noticeable along with boomy. Correctly applied eq can really help to reduce both of these.

Just bought an excellent Squier P-bass from Bill. Absolutely lovely guy and a super easy purchase. Absolutely stoked with the bass. Thanks Bill

Yep that's Joe Wicks aka The Body Coach.

Wedding in Taunton. Largely unremarkable with the exception of meeting one of my heroes. This guy literally changed my life a few years ago and was an absolute gent last night. Spent a good 15 mins chatting and he even added footage of us playing to his insta.

Pretty much my dream bass. I feel I've earned the right to own one having played 512 gigs in the last 5 yrs but the prices are really high at the moment so I'm just struggling to justify pulling the trigger.

I've been through a few. Helix Floor - Does it all but I was only using 1% of the features so was wasted on me. Love that you can split signal at whatever point / frequency you want and then merge it again later in the signal chain. Made it really good for overdrive sounds etc that didn't lose low end. MXR M81 - Great clean sound, garbage distortion. Origin FX Vintage Bass Rig (the black one) - built beautifully but struggled to get the tone I wanted. Origin FX Vintage Bass Rig (the blue one) - Excellent quality and nailed the vintage Amgeg thing really well. Didn't like the inability to switch drive / eq separately. Sansamp Bass Driver - One trick pony but does that one trick brilliantly. These days we do a mix of silent stage and regular stage gigs. All on in ears but, when we have acoustic drums we also tend to use backline. I use a Darkglass M900 v2 amp and simply run it without a cab on silent stage gigs as the footswitch allows me to have 2 different drive sounds and clean sounds easily. Cab sim makes it great for di to foh.

Hartke, after they released the Kilo with a known flaw and then washed their hands of all responsibility, leaving me £900 out of pocket and endless hours wasted. Marshall. Worst build quality of any bass or guitar cab I've ever seen.

We have the same subs and they're extremely good and also nice and compact. A pair of them coupled together can out run our RCF 745 tops and therefore they do more than we need to do which is exactly what I want in subs. That way I know we're not pushing them too hard.

The advice is to high pass tops at no lower than 80hz. High passing subs at 80hz would really defeat the object of having them in the first place.