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[b]Bareface SuperTwelve T[/b] Seriously, its as punchy as Tyson, staggeringly close sound to my Berg ae410 (just needs a little boost in the low end to be almost the same in a mix), if I was buying again I'd go in that direction like a shot, oh and it is SO light..... It will keep up with a 410, specifically my 410 (so anything on the planet) in terms of output too. Very very highly recommended from me (and a lot of other people too).

Not to put a downer on your efforts, but IME a desk mix is ususally so completely unbalanced in a smaller venue as to be useless, almost no drums, massive vocals, massive keys, almost no guitar ansalmost no bass being the usual outcome, all eq'ed to work through a PA in that room means it will only be of use as a notepad for the vocalist. IME. You would be far better off getting a Zoom H2 and having someone look after it and record the sound in the room - that way you actually get a mix of the gig in entirety. The only way to get a great mix off a desk is to multitrack the entire thing, which is way outside your budget I would think (unless you have a handy HD24 knocking about, or an RME UFX, in which case you wouldnt be asking these questions anyway).

[quote name='TRBboy' post='1320560' date='Jul 29 2011, 03:37 PM']No, I don't really know what the heck i'm doing which is why I posted on here asking for advice. So you're saying that unless I'm going to have complicated, pro-standard equipment, I shouldn't bother at all? My Trace head used to have two knobs; compression low, and compression high. I found that these made a subtle difference to my sound and had the desired effect, and as I'm not a complete moron, I was able to judge how much compression to use without killing the dynamics of my playing. I appreciate your advice, but I just find it a bit like saying that unless you buy a £3000 bass there's no point learning to play.[/quote] No I am saying that you dont know what you are doing so you need a tool that will help you see what it is doing when you are changing parameters. Simple pedals very rarely offer the metering required to help you learn what settigns do what, the result is they will actually confuse you, and make the situation worse not better. This is offered as advice, take it or leave it. The Trace Dual knob compressor suffers the same failings of any single knob compressor, just twice as much, in that it has a large number of fixed parameters (ratio & threshold of the lower or higher component of the sound being all you can play with, and they are connected in the circuit IIRC). That actually limits its use massively. I've been fascinated by compression for years, and even now I cant hear it accurately enough without some metering to help, so if you aren't absolutely superhuman, you wont hear it when its helping, instead you will hear it when its more than just helping, but also changing the timbre of your sound. You may like that change or not, thats not the point, a good compressor, set up properly should be transparent if you need it to be. I am not saying you need a £3000 bass to start playing at all, Silverfoxnik payed about £25 on ebay for his dbx. I am saying you need a bass with 4 strings each that can be tuned independantly, adn pickups that work with electronics that work. It can (and probably should) be a Sue Ryder bass if you are just starting out. What wont do the job properly is a one string bass with no tuner!

[quote name='essexbasscat' post='1318173' date='Jul 27 2011, 12:56 PM']Heard through a friend the same situation exists in Brighton[/quote] Nah, dont believe it, there is regular amplified busking in Brighton, all sorts of it too, from jazz to rock, even entire bands sometimes near the shopping center. Always has been.

[quote name='TRBboy' post='1319868' date='Jul 28 2011, 11:01 PM']Oh dear, I can see I've opened a whole can of worms here! It would need to be pretty simple to use, or I'll just get bored with it and not use it. Is it possible to get something half decent without spending a fortune?[/quote] Honest answer, you dont know what the heck you are doing, if you dont get a device with proper metering you wont get the most out of it, and you will end spouting nonsense like "compression crushes dynamics". Hell you wont be able to tell if its even doing something until its doing too much! You need a full feature compressor, cheapest sort of thing is an [url="http://www.alesis.com/3630"]Alesis 3630[/url], its not the best compressor in the world by a long way, but its about a million times more useful to you than some pedal that you cant tell what it is doing because it has no metering, and you cant actually tailor to what you are trying to do because it doesnt have the rght controls. Another good starter option if you can find one is a dbx MC6, its a desktop kind of design, proper features, sounds great, I set up Silverfoxnik's one at last years SE Bass Bash for him, and he loves what it does for him in a live situation now. Compression, learn how to use it properly, or just dont go there.....

[quote name='phil.i.stein' post='1319801' date='Jul 28 2011, 09:52 PM']live ? in my experience, no. slap can benefit from some compression, but otherwise you're just crushing dynamics. ..and the guitar will win.[/quote] Oh god, here we go again.......... Live, absolutely! Crush the dynamics? No. Not possible with a compressor at all. Unless you set it up to be completely absurdly over intrusive, in which case its really getting closer to a limiter. A brickwall limiter can, a compressor, particularly a well set up compressor is virtually transparent, even delivering over 6dB of gain reduction. In other words a good compressor can really help even out the perceived level in the mix of your bass when playing with different techniques. Set up really well you wont even feel it compressing your signal at all. Do a search on here for posts I've made about compression, they are many and varied and should help.

[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' post='1318491' date='Jul 27 2011, 05:55 PM']I don't understand why people think that gain needs to be set just below clipping point on a bass amp, especially with valve amps you use input gain to control the drive and grit. In a studio (on studio preamps, not counting instrument amps) you set the gain as high as possible to reduce the noise floor but live, so long as your amp isn't fuzzing loudly it's fine.[/quote] You have a point, but if you provide too little gain then you are hamstringing the poweramp section, it can only amplify what you give it. If you are talking valve amps then by the time you are soft clipping (overdrive) then you are already past that point anyway.

[quote name='Prime_BASS' post='1318463' date='Jul 27 2011, 05:30 PM']Ah!! Exactly what I was thinking. The later was working since I was playing pretty damn hard but it's more than likly a sure fire way to develop some hand issues, hopefully the blisters will stop soon aswell. My only worry about the one song the band does once in a blue moon involves a slapping section for a verse, would I have to develop a better slap technique to fit in with the gain setting? It's not a major issue but I'm not one to fiddle, I lick to set my amp and go with no worries. So it's fair to say I'm going the right way around this now?[/quote] Slapping doesnt need to be louder than even moderately quiet fingerstyle, however much you see Flea bashing the cr*p out of his bass, it isnt necessary. However a decent well set up compressor/limiter can help you control the difference in level, I would suggest you work on the technique first and foremost.

Bilbo has pretty much hit the nail on the head. The gain is the to get the amp operating within its optimimum conditions. The factors that act as boundaries on the gain setting are the signal to noise ratio at the low end and distortion of the signal due to clipping at the upper extreme. There is no point setting the input gain lower than you need to just because you are capable of hitting the string harder than you ever would, for one thing you are lowering your signal to noise ration, and for another you are lowering the maximum output of tha amp, since the gain is lower than it need be. So try the following (best done in a full mix situation - ie in reheasal with everyone playing):- Set the eq flat and the main volume minimum. Play at a level you would consider a loud accent in your technique, not as hard as you possibly could, rather as hard as you will ever play in the real situation, and set the input gain based upon that. Set the output volume to justy right in the mix. It can be a godd idea to just try nudghing the gain down and the output volume up to see if it is beneficial to the tone, usually you cant hear any difference, but some preamp circuits sound best at not quite the optimial s/n ratio setting. Eq the sound, aim to cut the stuff you dont like rather than boost what you do. The most important point here is to [i]use your ears and [b]not[/b] your eyes[/i]. Make the bass fit into the mix, try and be aware of mud (too much low mids) vs warmth (enough low mids) vs thinness (too little low mids), enough bottom withput it being boomy, some presence in the upper mids without harshness, and the right amount of 'zing'. In a mix situation less eq is usually (not always) more if you have a decent instrument and amp IME. If you get the band to stop playing and listen to your bass on its own dont be surprised if it sounds very different from what you would normally expect. That is fine.... Double check the input gain. You are now set.

Isolate rhythm reading practice away from normal bass playing practice. Just read the rhythms for a good while (clapping like a demented happy clapper in the car helped me)

[quote name='Jase' post='1303716' date='Jul 14 2011, 04:31 PM']They sound very, very naughty...who are they?[/quote] Its a single chap called Jeff Schmidt's side project. Its very very good too:- You can download the complete album free [url="http://www.ruinerseverhead.com/"]from here[/url] I recommend you do, its excellent, and Jeff is a top fella....

2 stereo tracks IS the only option. But in any halfway decent DAW you can seperate the stereo tracks into mono and then pan them as you will....

To hell with it, one more for luck I'll stop now!

Another example, this one is Larry Graham again, with Betty Davis:- If bassists had stuck to this as the template for good slap funk bass lines we wouldnt all be bitching about it!

Slap can sound phenominal, and very restrained....

[quote name='silddx' post='1303608' date='Jul 14 2011, 03:02 PM']Mate you can't black-up these days, it's racist.[/quote] Nige, thats a new keyboard and some screen wipes you owe me!

Reminds me of Ruiner Severhead's Jesus Fist Tapes, which are brilliant!

On a lighter note I really wish more pop-rock bands had just a tenth the creativity of plus tech squeeze box:-

Best gig I ever saw was Ground Zero, they were the most incredible thing I have ever witnessed on a stage:- Warning this one is an hour long! I could go on....

[quote name='mcgraham' post='1300764' date='Jul 12 2011, 11:14 AM']So what would people like to hear at the Bass Bash?[/quote] People enjoying all things bass....

If the settings are set right for gain (ie the gain overload lamp isnt coming on) at low levels, and you get no speaker flap, then if you get speaker flap when you turn the master volume right up then you are exceeding the limits of the speaker. The wattage is merely an indicator of the thermal rating of the speakers, it is in no way a real indicator of the excursion limits of the speaker design. You have effectively reached the excursion limit of the speakers when trying to cope with very high transient levels. You need either new speakers that can cope with the transients, and also work correctly with the cabinet in question - not an easy thing to guarantee, or you need to change either your playing style, or eq and gain settings to no longer exceed the design of the speaker. If you dont you will damage them.

[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='1300697' date='Jul 12 2011, 10:06 AM']It can get that way when people play non-stop punk riffs.[/quote] Fixed for you

[quote name='SlackAlice' post='1299161' date='Jul 10 2011, 06:13 PM']Being the stupid bint that I am the wedding is not on the 24th ........so I will be able to come along - although[b] I'm very rusty in comparison to the rest of you guys[/b]......& my 'gear' isn't exactly going to set the bash on fire! [/quote] Doubt it, I havent played a gig in over a year, its getting rather embarrasing really

[quote name='Basszilla' post='1297166' date='Jul 8 2011, 01:17 PM']Something else that has been bothering me. How do I visually monitor my input gain when recording a track, say bass? My interface doesn't have meters. I'm assuming the meters are on the software are they? I'm going to be bugging people on the reaper forum a lot I guess! Thanks [/quote] Yes use the meters on the track. Record at 24 bit and leave yourself a good 6-12dB of gain above your highest peaks for drums, and everything else. With 24bit you wont lose any resolution at all. With reasonable gain staging and so on you wont have any S/N ratio worries. Dont be tempted to drive too hard into the front of your interface, the AD wont handle it well near 0dbFS, and its often the weak point in the chain. The reaper forum is a superb place to read info and ask questions, very cool people on there as a rule.

I'll expect that I'll know when you are getting your head around this when you ask how to make the fader on the tracks within the group control the send to the reverb... Consider this though, with Reaper you can add any effects you want in a chain on a track insert, you also have a wet/dry level on every effect in a chain. You can control pan and volume and muting of any track by programming control changes, or automating their control You can control any parameter on any effect, either manually by programming them or setting up automated controls. You can choose any opne of 7 pan laws for the project, and any track within that project can be set differently. Given a decent set of ears, a reasonable monitoring environment some free vsts and the time you can make a track do anything you like. I have just completed the most complex mix I have ever done. At one stage approximately 30 parameters in the mix are changing to control the sound of the drums and the levels of the instruments over about an 8 second period. Literally, independant control over ratios, attack times, thresholds and releases on various compressors, effects sends, effects return levels, different eq parmaters, all at the same time. The result is completely seamless, and you would think it was just the sound of the musicians playing, in reality its a hugely complex mix automation to make it sound like that. Turn off the mix automation and it sounds nothing like as emotionally powerful within the mix. Turn off all the effects and it sounds a site less impressive again. I'm thoroughly proud of it actually And its only possible because of the power of the modern DAW, you couldnt fit enough people around a desk to turn that many knobs and push that many faders in an old school mixdown, not possible.