cheddatom

Are you the Tom I think you are? The minimum load your amp wants to see is 4 ohms. Running at 16ohms will certainly compromise it's ability to go loud, but shouldn't damage it.

[quote name='Kiwi' timestamp='1418119542' post='2626934'] ...changing amp settings between songs is going to drive any sound engineer nuts. Plus you'll sound awful through the FOH until the engineer has compensated for any changes in eq as a result of changing the settings... [/quote] When I play bass I always have at least 4 sounds in every song, let alone between songs. It takes time to set them right, but once they're right, it's done. Why would switching amps or amp profiles be any different?

[quote name='VTypeV4' timestamp='1418123140' post='2627000'] And if cheddatom is who I suspect he is, I'd like to think he'd vouch for my integrity as an engineer.. [/quote] Yo Matt, I didn't know you were on here! Yes, you are ace... I still wear ear plugs though

Lol, well played

So many times I've seen a singer on stage, singing in to a mic, but totally inaudible. I turn to look at the soundman, and he's playing with his phone, or grabbing a drink from the bar. In what other profession would you get away with that?

It's not clear, are you playing fretless?

This might sound stupid, but how far is your practice room from your home office? I'm just thinking a USB/Firewire cable might stretch, in which case, you have your interface etc in the practice room, and then remote control the iMAC using your phone or another computer to record

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1418049557' post='2626275'] You would think. However from what I could hear coming out of the amps on-stage (I was right down at the front) by the time all the low-mids had been cut you'd have been left with the sound of a gnat in a jam jar... [/quote] ahhh, yes, I think I've heard that sound :-/

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1418044753' post='2626215'] I think that a fair portion of the blame can be laid at a lot of "modern" bands and their choices for individual instrument sounds and arrangements... [/quote] Yes, I think you have a good point, but when he's faced with this situation, isn't it down to the sound man to EQ each instrument? If the guitars have too much in the low-mids then this should be cut, surely?

In my studio I always get the band to play together at first, and use this for the "guide" track. Sometimes, depending on how much bleed there has been, I will keep the guide drum track. Quite often I'll keep the guide bass track. Sometimes I even keep the guide guitar track too, but depending on the music will double that. Bleed isn't necessarily bad. Check out this track [url="https://soundcloud.com/rifffactoryrecordings-1/the-jukes-superstition"]https://soundcloud.com/rifffactoryrecordings-1/the-jukes-superstition[/url] Everything except vocals was done at once, just a couple of guitar overdubs after. (It's our [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Bassfunk on bass by the way)[/font][/color]

In a pub, it doesn't bother me, except for the front person/lead singer. I'm sure they could have the words discretely hidden away - taped to the back of a PA speaker for example. No problem with that, but standing at the front with words right in front just doesn't look cool If it's a session/function/background thing then it really doesn't matter at all.

There are some great sound guys around, but it seems to me, it's one job where you don't HAVE to be good, especially if you stick to smaller/local gigs. There's a local guy who gets loads of work round here and he just doesn't know what he's doing. He's really bad, but I've come across plenty of sub-par sound men too. The impression I get is that they've been running their gigs way too loud for years, which has f***ed their hearing, which leads to bad mixes. I'm not making any generalisations about sound men, and I wouldn't claim to know that X% are good and Y% are crap, but, bad sound men do seem pretty common, at least around here.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1417650652' post='2622803'] ...As far as how creative is playing covers? My response, fact, I never play any cover song the same way twice... [/quote] That's weird. I only play original music, and I strive to get it the same every time. I love a good jam, and don't mind jamming a song at a gig if it's under rehearsed or a last minute thing, but I'd much prefer to know the part in and out, and to be able to perform it consistently.

I think your reasoning is fair. A lot of small practice amps for bass are sold, therefore there's a market for them. I think the problem is going to be down to price. Clearly they can't build a valve one at the right price point/margin. Although I disagree with icastle (I think there is a market) he is right in that if the opportunity was there, it would have been taken by now. Incidentally, if you plug one of these small all valve guitar heads into a bass cab and play bass through it, how does it sound?

Interesting, I've never played with the internal pots on mine. I've never had your problem either though

I see dirt as essential, but obviously some amps can do this. Octave I don't find essential. If I don't have room or time to grab my octave, I just play the octaves. It doesn't sound as synthy but who cares? So if I had an amp that could go dirty, I'd take a fuzz pedal and a delay pedal.

I always wear earplugs as I find any mix fatiguing at gig volume

A kick drum can be well "defined" in the low mids, in fact it normally is, despite the problems regarding reverberation in the lower frequencies. Therefore, it stands to reason that if you cut these frequencies from the kick drum, and leave them on bass guitar, you'll be able to hear the bass guitar more clearly. That's my POV anyway. At the local gigs I go to, the soundman has a big boost on the kick at 10KHz and no cuts, then turns up the kick so loud that almost everything else is inaudible. It's much easier to get that "click" by cutting the low mids on the kick

[quote name='ezbass' timestamp='1417611367' post='2622186'] All the bass being lost in an overly predominant kick drum is the bane of many gigs. I once posted a complaint about this on the Thunder website (Chris Childs is one of my fave players) they were not receptive to my gripe and got very defensive. [/quote] I've got no problem with a loud kick drum, it's just that if you have it that loud, you can cut everything out of the kick between 100Hz and 1Khz, and this will free up loads of space for the bass

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1417610757' post='2622177'] Please explain further. IIRC distortion devices work by boosting the signal in one part of the device so that they get clipped further down the signal path. Surely this is just the same? [/quote] Yes, I often overdrive the pre-amps on my desk to get a bit of distortion. I wouldn't advise it in a live situation as it'd cut down on your headroom before feedback, but I don't see why it would damage anything I guess if you distorted a signal so much that it was practically a square wave it might blow an under powered power amp?

There are a few small venues around me and they seem to echo some of what's being said here. Extremely loud bass drum, guitars quiet unless you're hearing them from the stage, and vocals that are just muddy. I'm not sure engineers are cutting the mids from the bass, I think the problem might be that they're NOT cutting the mids from the kick drum, and turning it up so loud that it masks the definition of the bass. The last gig I did (on drums, 200 capacity venue, big modern PA), all I could hear was bass drum, some subs from the bass guitar, and some muffled vocals. On stage they had the floor tom mic so loud it was resonating so there was a constant low end rumble throughout. I asked them to take all drums out of the monitors, but he said there wasn't any. Apparently it was that loud FOH! When I used to gig on bass, I would give a DI feed, and ask for a mic as well, and for the mic to be high passed. Most engineers were fine with this.

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1417564322' post='2621912'] Does sound like a line level v mic level kind of thing.Try it in a full chanell strip a opposed to the aux in... [/quote] See post #6!!!!!

If the output of the phone isn't loud enough, plug it into some channels instead, where you can add extra gain

It's widely accepted that the appearance of a plate of food influences how we perceive it's taste, so it stands to reason that the appearance of a band on stage will influence how we perceive the music.

are you certain? Try it with your amp very loud. It's just that the compressor (depending on settings) will raise the noise floor, making any existing noise more noticeable The fact that touching the knobs and strings on your bass affects it, means that it's probably nothing to do with the pedal, but the pedal is making an existing problem worse