molan

I've run live sound many times for people and have to agree that it can be fraught with issues as far as getting a good bass sound is concerned. I always try to be sympathetic to to the players' requirements but sometimes you have to over-ride things simply because it sounds bloody awful out front. Obviously my view of 'awful' may be someone else's sonic nirvana so I'll always speak to them about changing things. Last time this happened I was working with a bass man with a fairly modern bass and amp set up who just sounded like mud out front. I had a go at tweaking the mix to cut out some of the low thud and horrible boomy tone and then had a chat with him about his sound during the break. Turned out that the sound he wanted people to hear was all low thud without much note definition etc so I ended up putting things back where they were. A couple of people in the audience moaned that the bass sounded horrible and was over-powering the mix but I tried to be faithful to what I'd been asked to reproduce This was one situation where I really wish more people had either really long leads or wireless set-ups to get out front & hear what they sound like to their audiences! A lot of people are really slow / unprofessional about setting up and only leave time for a short sound check (amazing how many people blame the sounds guy for this when they've just wasted loads of time arguing over how much space the drummer can have for his kit, whether the keys player sets up facing across stage to save space etc.!). Then, having got a decent balance on sound check, everyone turns up half way through the first song, lol. I usually try to take a DI feed pre-eq from the bass, had too many situations where a post eq feed has seen the bass player massively tweaking his eq to get a better on-stage sound and really screwing the front of house mix (instead of asking the sound enginer to turn him up in the monitors - obviously this only works if there is bass in the monitors!). When I'm playing I always spend time with the sound engineer - personally I've always found this helps in many different ways. Some sound guys really don't give a toss (and some of this may be because they've spent too many years having to deal with sh*tty band members who treat them terribly) but most seem to respond positively if you treat them well and get them a bit involved in what you're trying to achieve. Really helps if you have a friend in the audience who a) has good ears knows the sound you'r after and c) knows how to speak to the engineer the 'right way I guess what I'm trying to say is that sound man's lot is often thankless and a little bit of effort working with him can go a long way - as someone else has said, if you piss him off then he can simply pull your faders right down and make you dissappear or turn your sound to mud. . .

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='1099682' date='Jan 23 2011, 02:45 PM']Killer track.[/quote] Anyone know if the rest of the album is any good?

There's 14 pages of great funk here: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=70165"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=70165[/url] A lot of these won't fall into the easy category but loads of material to check out for some inspiration

Here's more of a 'groove' than 'funk' track from William De Vaughn - killer song: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTXljIqxRE"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTXljIqxRE[/url]

Umm, not enough Sly here Let's remedy that: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YXPJOUD7G0"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YXPJOUD7G0[/url] [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IPEQNYD6oI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IPEQNYD6oI[/url] And this one as much for the costumes as anything else

Some more Dexter Wansel from '75: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdvopZTLBi0&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdvopZTLBi0...feature=related[/url]

[quote name='alexclaber' post='1095451' date='Jan 19 2011, 06:23 PM']many other SMPS amps being able to handle any worldwide mains voltage and frequency without the player doing anything.[/quote] Pretty sure that's what my TC Electronics head does

I see the Tone Hammer has a Switching mode power supply (SMPS) - does that mean it'll run anywhere in the world without the need for step up/down transformers? I also see they are now officially listed all over the place in the US at $699 - that's about £450 UK price (obviously taxes & stuff will whack this up though!).