Al Krow

Perfection is often the enemy of the good! Get as good a sound as your budget and ability to transport allows: better than doing nothing right?

I'm guessing someone hadn't properly connected the lead to the desk output, which would account for both the hum and the lack of output. Didn't occur to me on the night it could be something as basic as that... but now noted for future reference!

Hmmm...just tried all possible combinations of desk outputs, PA speakers and PA leads and both the 912As seem to be working fine. The hum was there on both when I had the PA lead plugged into the speaker but not into the desk, so I can only guess that this was user error on my part and I / bandmate had not properly connected the desk to the PA speaker. All's well that ends well, fingers crossed!

And I'm guessing sounds better and fuller than without a sub and just 2 x 12 tops, Steve?

A lot of pub bands gig with just 2 x 12" tops and no sub and get a pretty decent sound. Are folk saying it's pretty pointless adding a 12" sub into the mix, to primarily put the kick through, for larger venues and / or outdoor gigs?

They do indeed, thanks John. And I'm planning on getting it repaired under warranty, but will involve shipping to Germany which could take a couple of month for the round trip and we will be needing a full PA in the meantime. Happened once before 5 months back - they couldn't find any fault with it and sent it back and seemed to be working fine since Jan, but 2nd time this has happened, so I'm thinking I may have a definitely faulty unit.

Have been using a pair of RCF 912As for a couple of years. One of them seems to be on the blink - giving out a worrying hum but no output at a recent gig, so we had to do the gig on one speaker! Not ideal, but a couple of comments about being too loud at one point put my main worry about a lack of volume to rest! I've got the possibility of picking up a used single 932A to replace the faulty 912A. Essentially same woofer, but better mid range coil which will be better for vox and guitar. Bad idea to mix two speakers even when their specs are pretty close? Or will the overall impact be a slightly better mid range from the two PA speakers, despite the mixed mid-range 1" and 3" coils/horns and potential interference? I'm guessing the interference may not be too bad, given the greater directionality of the higher frequencies, and not something the audience at a given location will notice, whilst benefitting from the better vox? Or should I just get a replacement 912A, instead?

Agreed! They really are a great piece of kit!

Just picking up on your excellent post on the "distortion that keeps the 'thump'" post: I'll need to give your recommended X-bass distortion a try out! I've been using the AIRD Preamp Orange stack which gives a very juicy fuzz that I'm liking a lot. As we were discussing, so much more weight to it with a clean blend parallel path, and with the EQ in the +125Hz bass/low mids given a boost on both paths, combined with using a comp as a sustain on the fuzz path but something much more standard on the clean blend path.

I think that's what's called an "open mic night" 😅

Our guitarist heard the exact same from a pro jazz drummer he knows, and I thought at the time there's much wisdom in that! Wonder who came up with that little gem originally?

Sure. The OP excluded function bands in his original query. The "grey" area where both amateur and semi-pro bands play is typically pubs - no DJs need be worn and, in my experience, considerably less grief than function work! But I'm guessing you and I would still want to be paid for doing pub gigs? I'm totally fine with that in my case - means I get to work with semi-pro musos, for whom the money is important, and which has been a privilege for me and helped me improve as a bass player.

Think that would work well for a tribute and originals band. Not sure whether punters would want pay extra for a "standard" covers band, though, unless there wasn't too much competition locally? Potentially mean playing to smaller audiences than if the venue is picking up the tab?

Oooh that's a really interesting perspective. But I'm not sure it has to be that way and I wonder if it's as much related to the time and effort involved as it is to the money? Fact is, for most musicians making a living from their music can be incredibly demanding - it definitely becomes work. But if you're good enough to make enough money to live off of your passion, whilst not feeling that it is a chore i.e. you really enjoy your work, does it taint your relationship with it or just make you grateful that you're one of the lucky few who's passion is also their job?

I've been thinking, though, that a number of our/my comments have been looking at this from a semi-pro musicians perspective where payment is the norm. @Beedster was asking about this from a talented hobbyist / amateur perspective and not sure that our (certainly my) comments have properly reflected that? So steering my comment back to the talented hobbyist: an amateur orchestra member playing covers of classical music (by Beethoven et al!) would not expect to be paid. They do it purely for the joy/passion of making music.

Pretty much ALL classical music is covers! No one disparages professional orchestras for their musical talent.

Thanks Steve, that makes sense. I guess I was going on a Tim Weatherspoon's comment (Jan 2023) that: "the biggest threat to the hospitality industry is the vast disparity in tax treatment between pubs and restaurants and supermarkets. Supermarkets pay zero VAT on food sales, whereas pubs/restaurants pay 20%. This tax benefit allows supermarkets to subsidise the selling price of beer" Is the above still correct in terms of VAT on food?

Competition with supermarkets is a major factor also, right? Don't understand the thinking that says that the supermarkets get a relative subsidy on beverage sales in the form of lower VAT/duties compared to pubs? If someone can please explain the reasoning on that one - seems pretty misguided to me?

Nicely put

It depends on the venue? Eg if 100+ punters stay an hour longer and each buy 1 or 2 pints, which certainly can be the case in several of the venues I know, the sums do add up pretty quickly. Which is why they have live bands on 2 nights a week often followed by a DJ and many such venues are doing very well. They know what they need to be doing to be a destination pub. Totally appreciate that's not going to be true for all venues.

Not necessarily. A decent band, even without a following, can keep punters on site. A number of venues get their bands to start and finish later - ideally as close to closing time as possible, because they know the venue starts emptying pretty rapidly when the live music finishes. A pub makes a very decent [typically around 70%] gross margin on wet sales, and they can easily figure out whether it's worth their while putting on live music, or whether they're better off with a DJ or no music other than the JukeBox or their own playlists.

Interesting discussion - I personally don't see too much of an equivalence between an open-mic / jam night and a covers band pub gig, though? Open mic/ jam night: organiser has venue hire costs, typically provides all the PA equipment and lights, performers will be a pot luck standard and typically have around a 15 minute slot, give or take, and audiences will be chilled about the quality of the music ? Pub covers gig - typically 2 hour performance time, band provides and sets up PA and lights and packs down at the end of the night and audiences expect a decent standard; if you don't come up to scratch you don't get invited back. Can involve a couple of hours of travel to and from the venue and another couple loading / unloading kit and setting up / packing down. Seems entirely fair to be paid for the time and effort involved in being able to deliver all that? Sure it can be a really fun night out, but any reason a pub should expect the musicians to provide all of that for free just because they enjoy the work? I note you excluded function bands from playing for free, but many function bands will also be doing pub gigs and my experience is that pub venues are keen to book them precisely because they are a good enough standard to be doing functions.

I've tried soooo many dirt / drive pedals over the years (like many other BC'ers!) and currently have a collection of 6 or 7. Within a couple of weeks of starting to get to grips with the GT Core, I found a couple of dirt/clean blend tones that was a ton better than anything I had got on my much loved Zoom B1-4 and, for my own tastes, better than my current dirt pedal collection which I need to get around to moving on at some point! An unexpected / welcome surprise! The Core's not the bees knees at pitch shift though!

GT1000 Core Parallel path Job done (again 😅)

Have spent a bit more time getting my head around the Focusrite - v. easy bit of kit to get to grips with. But also had a detailed trawl through the A&H user forum and several other bods have also struggled with the no output / DAW issue. Perhaps that pointed me in the right direction or something else triggered the solution, but it's proven to be a ridiculously simple fix in the end! I'll share it in case of use to anyone else: On the CQ Config screen all the inputs have an "Input Source" selection. This has default set to analogue (for instruments and mics). The easy fix, when using the DAW is to set the playback input (in my case Stereo In 17/18) to USB. Playback is automatically set up that way on the Focusrite, with no choice in the matter. On the desk, likely to need to swap back to "analogue" if you want to get other input sources from the PC through the Stereo In (e.g. from Spotify) which is where my confusion possibly arose. But seems super obvious, now I've figured it out!! And if I set the buffer at 512 instead of 1024 the latency also halves from 10.7 to 5.3ms, which is then comparable to the Focusrite's 4.0ms. Thinking my little love affair with the Focusrite could be short lived - great bit of kit but (fingers crossed) going to be superfluous! They have an excellent 30 day return window for online purchases.