BigRedX

Sign of the times as they say. See all the other threads about amp-less stages and FRFR rigs... I'm glad I was able to sell all my big amps and cabs 6 years ago when they were still worth something.

One of my bands has gone entirely amp-less (although we're no on IEMs yet). We simply turn up, and set up in front of whatever backline is already on stage an ignore it. We have our own DI boxes for everything should the venue be short of them oversize the sound engineer can decide whether to use our's or his own. When we finally do go for IEMs the plan is to get something like a Behringer X18 rack and run everything through that. We'll do our own IEM mixes from that and then supply FoH with either a full stereo mix or individual instruments with the relative volumes already set so they can just EQ the instruments separately to suit the PA and venue.

For me (with my guitarist's hat on) once you've made the switch to multi-effects/modellers and IEMs, the only reason to still have an amp and cab on stage would be for feedback and sustain effects. I've shared the bill with a few bands now who are on IEMs and amp-less apart from something small and full of valves for the guitarist to do just that.

Depends on the bass to which it is fitted. On the Gus G3s the straps are both 1290mm long from strap button centre to strap button centre. On the Eastwood Hooky it is 1370mm On other basses I have owned in the past the straps would again have been different lengths depending on the design of the bass, the position of the strap buttons and how I played it. Regarding practicing sitting down or standing up, even in the days (early 80s) when I played with the bass high on my chest, I still found that I held the instrument in a different way when I was sitting or standing, and anything complicated that I learnt sitting down would require a bit of adjustment before I could play it as well standing up. Since I discovered this I have always played standing up.

I suppose if it makes them happy and it's do-able then get on with it. However you need to be playing a certain level of venue and have absolute control over the backstage area in order to make this work. That probably means some poor member of the road crew has to sit for the entire gig minding the amps (and listening to just the guitars at ear-splitting volume as seen in the video) to make sure that no-one unplugs them or otherwise messes with that rack. There are also some moments in the video where it appears that either the band or their tech have completely misunderstood some key aspects of signal chain order especially those regarding echo/delay/reverb and distortion, where most of the time you need all the distortion producing devices (including valve power amps and speakers if you are driving them hard) to come before your delays and reverbs otherwise your sound turns to mush as described in the video. Of course, occasionally that mush might be exactly what you want, but most of the time if you are going to be putting delays on the sound you want to be able to hear them as delays. That means running a 4-cable system between your effects and amps and maybe even adding the delays and reverbs post microphone at the desk. So all they seem to be doing is swapping one set of compromises for another. I can see this system being worthwhile if you are making a very detailed recording of the songs in the studio. However, ultimately I doubt whether a single member of the audience notices, hears, or appreciates the lengths that these musicians have gone to in order to be able to use real amps instead of modellers.

I think the Vox logo might be a bit of a red herring, although it is a Vox logo it's not the one that usually associated with their guitars and basses which uses script style lettering. Having said that the neck could well have started off life on a Vox Phantom 12-string guitar, the headstock looks like a modified version of that shape, and the middle two pickups also look like they might have come from the same instrument. As for the rest of it, who knows? To me it looks like an 8-string version of a Bass VI. The bottom four strings look like bass guitar strings, the top 4 strings might be paired but it is difficult to see from the photos.

From what I have seen with bands not using their own PA, IEMs and what you can do with them is a bit of a lottery. The plan for my band that have already dispensed with the backline will be to invest in a digital mixer that will allow us to do our own IEM mix and still send individual outputs to the PA with a 90% correct FoH mix on them. Technically all the PA engineer needs to do is push up all the faders to the same place and little corrective EQ to suit the PA speakers and venue and we're ready to go.

It's obviously less important if you also have to bring the PA to gigs, but for those of us playing venues with in-house systems (originals bands) ditching the backline makes transport a lot more cost-effective. One of my bands gets all our gear plus the band and our roadie/merch seller into a single estate ca. If you consider that the typical guitar combo takes up the same space as a full box of T-shirts, it means more stuff you can sell and less stuff potentially mucking up your sound.

But if you don't require your backline for your tone (I don't) then what is the point of it? Most guitar and bass cabs are far too directional to act as monitoring for the whole band unless they are positioned pointing across the stage rather than out at the audience, and almost no bands do this. Once one of your band members wants to hear more of a particular instrument in their monitor you might as well dispense with the backline and use the foldback to monitor the instruments on stage. When each musician can have exactly the mix they desire from either from the foldback speakers or IEM system. Personally I'm not a fan of needing "volume" to get the right feel - it always seems to be as thought there is a problem with the songs you are playing if this is what is required.

I sold my real Gramma Pad a long time ago. There were a couple of places where my band played, where putting the rig on the Gramma Pad caused it to sway alarmingly in time with the action of the kick drum pedal, so I stopped using it at these venues. Strangely there was no difference in sound without the Gramma Pad, so I stopped taking to all of the gigs with no ill-effects, and finally sold it.

And from my two bands:

I think a lot of it is to do with inertia because that's what bass players have always done. I acknowledge that my journey has been very different to the typical one - spent a lot of the 80s playing keyboards in an electronic band where everything went straight into the PA, and when I retuned playing bass guitar most of my rigs were a combination of multi-effects and PA amps. The only time I was really interested in the cabs I was using was when I had a bi-amped rig and that was done so I could run chorus and other "bass-sapping" effects just into the high frequency cabs and again was based around the multi-effects I was using at the time. For me the sound is sorted out at line-level and the amp and cabs are just there to make it loud. And if I can get the PA to do that bit, it means better FoH sound, better on-stage sound and less gear to take to gigs. I can totally see why if you play small pubs doing covers with a vocal-only PA that your choice of amp and cabs is important, but for if your playing originals and doing gigs where you are sharing backline and the bass goes through the PA, it's, IMO, an unnecessary distraction. As I have said in other threads I found that my rig was most of time a big, heavy stage prop that took up room on stage and in the band van, and beyond the point at which the DI feed was taken contributed little to what myself, the rest of my band or the audience heard. For illustration my backline journey has been as follows: 1981 - 1982 Carlsbro Wasp 10W practice amp - fine for recording and rehearsing at low volume (the band used a drum machine), and if we weren't able to use the headlining band's bass amp at the gig we'd simply mic it up into the PA. 1982 - 1983 No-name 100W transistor amp into home-made 1x18 and 2x12 cabs. 1983 - 1987 synth straight into the PA. 1988 - 1989 guitar and synth 1989 - 1995 Roland GP8 multi-effects via stereo graphic EQ into home-made 100W a side stereo power amp feeding home made 2x8 and Carlsbro 1x15 cabs (bi-amped). 1995 - 2002 Peavey Bassfex into Carlsbro 300W a side stereo power amp feeding home made 2x8 and Carlsbro 1x15 cabs (bi-amped). 2002 - 2006 Line6 BassPod 2 XT into Carlsbro 300W a side stereo power amp feeding home made 2x8 and Carlsbro 1x15 cabs (bi-amped). 2006 - 2017 Line 6 BassPod 2 XT into Tech Soundsystems Black Cat amp feeding EBS 2x10 and 4x10 cabs. 2018 to present Line6 Helix Floor direct into the PA with RCF745 as a monitor when required. As you can see fairly unconventional most of the time.

Exactly what I was going to suggest.

And what is the genre and line-up of your band? No great tone for any instrument exists in isolation, it is great because it works perfectly for the arrangement of the song and the instrumentation of the rest of the band.

As you are all probably tired of hearing I've gone the FRFR route and I'm completely sold on it. In the majority of my rigs for the last 35 years all my important sound shaping was done at line level using various multi-effects and therefore my amps and cabs were supposedly there just to make the sound loud enough for me, the rest of my band, and very occasionally (when the bass didn't go through the PA) the audience to hear. Most of the time I was using PA amps to drive my cabs and therefore in was only a small step for me from that to an FRFR system. I haven't really wanted my choice of amp and cabs to influence my sound. It's fine if you always use your whole rig every time you play live and if the bass is going to be going through the PA it's done by mic'ing up the cab(s), but in the real world of equipment sharing and DI'ing the bass that simply isn't going to happen, and if your sound is important to you then removing as many variables from the equation as possible has got to be a good thing. The typical PA-type FRFR isn't going to be perfectly flat, but it's a lot less coloured than a standard bass amp and cabs, so if you can sort out your sound at line level using something like a SansAmp or Helix then you're going to get a more consistent sound FoH and in the Foldback. Theses days TBH even my FRFR is mostly redundant when I play live. For one band we've made a conscious decision not to have any amplification on stage and to rely on the foldback of the venue's PA. Even at the one gig we did where the "foldback" was a tiny personal monitor for the vocalist, because we have an otherwise silent stage we could hear everything else perfectly well from the PA speakers. For the other band the FRFR is only used at rehearsals and as a personal monitor for the smaller gigs where the quality of the foldback is unknown. Because of this I'm not particularly bothered about the sound coming out of the FRFR so long as it is sufficient for me to be able to hear that I am in time and time tune with the rest of the band. Because I love the songs that we play, I find that is all I need to give me the right vibe for putting on an excellent performance and I don't need to agonise about the on-stage mix not being perfect. I'll save that for when I've had a couple of million selling albums. Finally since I switched to using an FRFR I have done two gigs where I needed to use it to supply the bass guitar sound FoH. In both cases it did a much better job than my traditional bass rig which on the few occasions I have not the bass in the PA had to be so loud to get decent bass guitar coverage in the venue that I could barely hear the rest of the band on stage. Using the FRFR with its better dispersion and projection means that I am only slightly louder than I would choose for personal monitoring levels.

But having your amp and cabs as part of your sound only works if you always use your amp and cabs every time you gig and either your rig is used to supply the bass guitar sound FoH or the cab(s) are mic'd up and the mic'd sound is one the one the PA system uses to project FoH. Everything else will compromise what your audience hears.

Pitch to voltage or MIDI is a complete non-starter for the bass guitar for exactly the reasons your have described. The very best system when coupled with a suitably clean sound and playing technique could at best detect the pitch from one and half cycles, but that is a best case situation only and a lot of the time it is much, much worse. On top of that delay you need to factor in the additional processing time time required to generate and transmit the MIDI information to whatever synths or samplers you want to use if the sounds (if there are any) built in the converter are not suitable. There are systems that get around this by using fret sensing to deprive pitch information such as the Peavey MIDI Bass and it's most recent incarnation in the Industrial Radio systems, but they all require you to use the bass guitar they are built into, and from recent reports on here Industrial Radio are having problems fulfilling orders. The Roland V-System is, as you have identified the one to be looking at and hopefully @ped who is a long time user will be along shortly to tell you everything you need to know about it. One final point, the Roland pickup needs to be installed right next to the bridge for decent results whether you are using the V-System or attempting pitch to MIDI conversion, so fitting it instead of a conventional bridge pickup won't put it in the optimum location. You may well be better off looking at something like the Graphtec Ghost system which replaces the bridge with a piezo equipped one to drive the V-system.

The problem for me with bass amps (and cabs) is they add too many extra variables into your sound when really all they should be doing is taking your sound and simply making it louder. To this end I have dispensed with my traditional rig and where ever possible I always go from my Helix directly into the PA. I also have an FRFR powered cab which gets used when necessary as additional fold back and on very rare occasions to deliver the bass guitar FoH. I have noticed that the FRFR due it it's significantly better dispersion characteristics compared with the typical bass cab performs these duties far better, and now on the those few occasions when I haven't been able to use the PA for the FoH bass sound, it allows me to be only slightly louder than I would normally need to be on stage, instead of so loud that I could barely hear the rest of the band.

I currently play in two goth bands...

Brilliant! We've missed your builds on here.

If you like the sound of the bass you have already why did you get a different one? If you need a second spare bass then sell the Precision and buy another Jazz.

When I first started playing I managed to avoid all those "difficult" chords like F Eb Bb C# etc. by simply transposing the song up or down a semi-tone.

As I said in a previous post, if your band image requires it, there's nothing wrong with having fake amps on stage, if not having actual backline makes you sound better both FoH and your IEMs. Before silent stages and IEMs became a thing for anything but big touring bands, The Terrortones used to regularly gig with a band that had the typical "rock band" image. That included a full stack for both guitarists and the bass player no matter how big or small the venue was (it was fairly hilarious watching them trying to get this setup into Nottingham's tiny Jam Café venue). Their reasoning was that the full stack had the same stage footprint as a single cab (and TBH they took up the same space as a typical 30W combo on a tilt-back stand), the top cabs placed the drivers closer to their ears and the bottom cabs didn't have to be plugged in if the venue/stage didn't require it, plus each rig was run through a Marshall PowerBrake and so could be as loud or quiet as needed while still providing the right sound. Once you have the right mentality, it's only a small step from this to fake cabs, modelling pedals and IEMs...

And let them know why you are going direct to them, because IME they'll try and direct you back to their UK retailer/distributer.

Then it depends how important music is in relation to the other things in your life; and you either move to where to opportunities are less limited, suck it up and make the most of your current band situation, or pack in being in bands until one that you find comfortable being in comes along.