JPJ

My experience was generally positive until I needed a repair. I owned both the Briefcase 2x5” combo until redundancy forced sale and the Bass Buddy preamp (basically the front end of the Briefcase amp). All was well until the Bass Buddy developed a fault and went off to Selectron, the so called UK service centre. After almost a year and numerous chase ups Selectron decided my Bass Buddy was unrepairable and wanted a ridiculous amount of money to return it to me that I didn’t bother, swearing to never touch another piece of PJB gear. Might also be worth reading the thread “Phil Jones in crisis” posted in the general discussion section by @cetera here before parting with any cash.

We took our southern rock covers band to Trillians, a small independent venue in the centre of Newcastle. This venue has in-house PA and engineer. We took our Behringer XR18 to run our IEMs using a passive split. Gearwise, I used my Overwater 5 string jazz, Shure GLXD16+, Empress compressor, Jad Freer Capo, and SushiboxFx Finally DI. I did have my Ashdown ABM 500W 1x15 combo on stage but that was more for show due to the aforementioned in-house PA and our IEMs. Despite being down a fiddle player, we still had a great night and the punters seemed to enjoy themselves with the venue full from the get go. One of those gigs you wish you could play every week 😎

So tonight was the night. Venue provided the 10 y-splitters we needed to run our own IEM rig and we provided the XLRs from the splits to our XR18 and the gig went off perfectly 😎

If I can get in early enough ie before the punters, and if the venue doesn’t complain, then this is what I do with the DriveRack auto eq feature. But, as the majority of our gigs are pub gigs, this rarely happens.

Slight change of direction, at least in the short term. I’ve managed to snaffle a couple of EV ELX18P bass bins that are the ‘perfect’ match for my EV ZLX15P tops (at least they are listed in the DSP) so I will be going with this setup for at least the next six months. I still like the look of those NLX24’s and may well still take the plunge once the 2026 diary fills up a bit.

I did once, and the cables were clamped in place mechanically, two prongs bent over the exposed cable ends which themselves had an aluminium sleeve over the copper wire. Looked like it had been done in a press.

Check out the TC Electronic BG250 combos. Great for home practice but loud enough to jam with mates and even gig. They come in 2x8”, 2x10”, and 1x15” formats. I’ve got the 2x8” version and I love it, and yes I’ve gigged it albeit in an acoustic gig. They seem to go for about £120-£150 secondhand and will be more future proof than a 30-50 watt practice amp.

Congratulations and welcome to the (addictive) club. The best advice I can offer is get help with hand / body position before you start to bake in problems that can even result in permanent injury. If there’s no tutors near you, then there’s some great advice for free from Discover Double Bass on YouTube. That said, I’m sure your cello experience will come in useful 😎

Not quite, but typical of what you can face on the UK pub scene. It sort of brings the whole speaker placement discussion into sharp focus.

Every now and then you get a gig that completely defies logic. This was the “stage” area we were presented with last night. We were basically in a corner with a 1 metre (3ft 3”) partition in front of us with the main ‘audience’ watching through the window, and a small bunch of music lovers off to our right. Solution, one top pole mounted on a bin facing right and running at about half power, and one top facing through the window running flat out. The problems were compounded by ceiling beams and a low ceiling. Did we get a great sound - er no, did we get an acceptable sound at an acceptable level for what was a small’ish villiage pub, then yes. Sometimes life gives you lemons and you just have to get creative.

Not in theXR18, but I use a dBX DriveRack that can auto eq the PA in a room using pink noise, however you can’t really do this at your average pub gig as I don’t think many landlords would be happy with you pinking their bar full of punters whilst you move a reference mic around the three positions the DriveRack requests. I’ve used it to set up a user presets (one with subs either side, one with centre subs, one with no subs) that cover our usual setups, then select the correct one as a starting point, and correct for any room imbalances using the main eq and my ears.

They are quite simple once you get to grips with them. The difference is that you can’t get the extremes you can with a two or three-band active eq, which is probably a good thing. One thing I can say is that the Overwater filter pre does not do the Wal sound, or at least I can’t make mine sound like a Wal.

Well it took a while to get an appointment but yesterday I had the customer impressions taken at Boots in Newcastle; the wait begins.

I do this all the time. Our channel settings have been dialled in on the XR18 for a few years now, so I use the six band semi-parametric eq on the mains to eq to the room. I also save scenes for each venue so I have the last gig at that venue as a starting point. My only other comment is subtractive eq is much more preferable to additive.