la bam

Hi all, Just wondering if anyone could put my mind at ease.... Ive just bought a cheap second hand power amp to see if me vtrm preamp works well with a power amp. And it does. The amp is a Matrix ukp 500. Spec: 125w per side at 8ohm. 250w per side at 4ohm. 500w at 8ohm bridged. Now, being used for a one socket bass cab, the bridge mode seems great - get really good power, one speakon out into one cab. However.......... my cab is 6ohm (i know thats odd, but its a markbass 610). So is it safe to run it in bridged mode? or should i only be running bridge mode into an 8ohm cab? I fully understand ohmage and 8ohm and 4ohm etc - but bridge mode has always confused me.

Id get the following: x2 Vintage V4 basses - cheap as chips and very versitile. then id have x2 rigs, that were all interchangeable with each other - a light & small one and a big & heavy one - both able to give out and handle a lot of power. Heavy Rig: Cab: 6x10 - i love these. SO much power. Head - Tech 21 VTRM rack head. Literally ALL the sounds i could ever want and very easy to use. Loads of routing options for PA. Tuner - Korg pitchblack pro rack. Makes tuning on stage so quick and easy. Amp - any A/B heavy duty 800-1000w amp. Matrix/QSC etc. Light Rig: MarkBass EVO (contains all fx and tuner) and weighs 3kg. Cab: Any barefaced - super compact / super twin etc. This means they can be interchangeable too, so i can use the small head with the big cab or the big head with the small cab, depending on venue/load in/transport.

Those combos are not even that heavy. If it had been near me, id have snapped it up straight away!

I've wanted one of those for ages - can't find them anywhere now.

Completely agree. Isolated a lot of tracks sound rough - pretty uninspiring, clanky, and loose, but they really sound awesome I'm the mix. I mean, there's always discussion on getting a super sound on here, and what head and can to use, but who here would class that tone on there as fantastic and just what they want to sound like? Not many. Yet in the mix it's outstanding.

just to throw a curve ball in - years ago i switched from a 1x12 to a 4x10 and the whole sound changed. much tighter and defined. perhaps try the mb head with a tc 4x10 (or another cheaper 4x10) first?

What I meant before is that having a bad sound to start with is the be all and end all. Unless you sort that sound at base level, turning up isn't going to make it better. And bands keep going up and up trying to fix it.

Turning up a good sound = a louder good sound. Should be suitable as possible ng as it's not ear bleeding loud. Turning up a bad sound = a loud bad sound. Turning up does not make a bad sound, sound good. It just makes it louder.

For me theres a few things: Firstly, pub wise, it always seems to be the wrong pubs that have live music on. The small one out of the five in the town. The one with a couple of small rooms and limited visibility. The one surrounded by houses. Meanwhile, the massive pub down the road with no neighbours and massive floor area and potential has nothing going on. Hence for those venues - theyre up against it from the start. No real scope to get a good sound balance across the pub, not much chance for the band to get out and hear the mix (as the public are right on top of them) and smokers constantly having the doors open, letting the music out to upset the residents. Also the bar is usually about 20ft from the stage. Aside from that - it is amazing that the role of the sound engineer is pretty much neglected for pub gigs. Somehow, theres always someone in the band who either thinks they can do it from the stage area, or gets forced into doing it because no one else will. If every band had someone just with rudimentary understanding of mixing and appropiate volume level mixing for them, that would help everything. I dont know if its because of a lack of speople wanting to be sound engineers or the band trying to save a few quid, but it would be a massive help. Even just white gloving it - riding the volume and any obvious changes needed. I also think bands and artists can struggle from not understanding EQ themselves. You can be quite quite and sound really loud and piercing by having way to much mids on the vocals and guitars - thats awful for the crowd, and is what makes you wince. Likewise you can be really loud, but not sound it if everything is beautifully balanced eq wise. If bands spent more time getting their mix right between themselves without PA at practice, then it would be so much easier to balance through the pa at a gig. With not much need to be too loud, as it would sound magic at most volume levels. Kit wise, theres nothing wrong with large gear if used for the right reasons. I have used all kinds of amps and cabs, but now stick to my 610 as i know i can get a rich sound at both low and loud volume levels. Where it would be stupid is if i played at the same volume in a small pub as i did on a large stage. Same equipment - different volume. As for guitar valve amps- trust me AC30s can rip your face off if pushed! Id say 30w - 50w is max. Again, if guitarists understand why they are using a valve amp (for the break up tone) they would realise which wattage would give them the best sound for the venues they play.

Its a box of tricks thats for sure.

The markbass evo i have for sale at the moment, has x2 separate channels, each of which can be set to 12 different models, and have their own eq and fx. AND if you want you can blend them. You can select which one to use by a little switch, or there is a foot switch available. Both channels can be run and selected for one bass, or you can also input 2 basses if needed.

The MTP I have in my mb evo is head and shoulders above any class d I have used. It is seriously loud. I think it's their own enhancement of class d.

As a bassist in a Queen tribute band - i have to say that that looks fantastic! Great bass! Glad it all worked out ok.

It's classic old guy talk without knowing it. Unfortunately I completely agree regarding with doing led Zeppelin over Ed Sheeran.....and the lack of bands and creativity..... BUT ...... Led Zeppelin is nearly 50 years old. That's the equivalent of walking into the music room in the 90s and saying you want to do Vera Lynn stuff. What did you want to learn when starting out? the current cool artists you see everyday and are part of youth culture....or some 40-50 year old music you're parents liked? I suspect those of us who love 70s and 80s grew up in the 70s and 80s and that why we love that and not music from the 20s and 30s. Weve got to move with the times.... I quit djing for a living for the very reason I'd got stuck loving older music and being bored of newet music. Doesn't make me right or wrong.....just older!

id agree for big gigs valves are pretty unimportant, as they can be replicated better than ever, and sit in the mix great. however, for small gigs, i can still to this day remember 2 bass sounds in a pub that blew me away - a fender bassman and an ampeg svt. such a warm sound. but that was because we were about 20 foot away from them and they werent using pa for everything etc.

id love an all valve amp, but cost and reliability on the road kind of put me off, and the fact you have to let them cool before moving wasnt a good idea for festivals etc. i do like the hybrids (i have an abm600), theyre not as rich as an all valve affair, but can do a good job and give everything you want - decent sound, fair weight and reliability. but for me, technology has moved on, and im currently creating my rig of tech 21 vt bass rack and power amp. the amount of realistic valve emulation you can get from this tiny 1u rack is unbelievable and very realistic. likewise the markbass evo i have also does a fantastic job and thats only 3kg ! id love something like an ampeg v4 etc but was put off by the fact the di doesnt send the valve sound to the desk when cranked, just clean, which kind of defeated the point. You could mic it up, but thats more hassle and risk of knocking the mic over in small spaces etc. At least with the vt i can send as much tube emulation as i want to the desk from di. what really put me off the heavy valve amps is the fact that everything goes to the desk anyway....then is replicated on a class D amp anyway in the PA (unless we use our big PA) so it seemed a bit pointless. the next thing though is almost back to the same dilemma - do i power the vt rack with an A/B amp or class D, or are there freely available cheap valve power amps available?