Al Krow

@Dood thanks for that video! Intrigued that the Zoom H2N doesn't distort even at loud volumes! Do you need to adjust the input levels manually to achieve this or does it do so automatically? I'm guessing the former otherwise you would get variable volume recording? I guess the fly in the ointment is that this set up isn't going to add too much if the band have gone for a silent stage approach and are putting as much as possible through the PA with no backline.

If you can pick it up for a price that you're going to get back on it, seems like you've not much downside? Treat it as a free rental opp - who knows you may even like it 😅 I mean you're putting the PM2 to far better use than I ever managed! Polyphonic and very tight "tracking" makes it quite usable live IME.

You finding it's sounding better than your B1-4?

"You get a sound you like." Grab a coffee. Get on with your practice.

Oh I feel your frustration here! Our journey hasn't been an overnight success - it's taken us nearly 18 months to get to a consistently balanced FoH sound with this current line up. And even that's a first with any of my bands over the years. Are you the band leader in your crew? Are you the only one who's bothered about the situation? Is getting louder impacting on how the band's being received - I mean it is a common trick to start at a lower volume and build up once audiences have got used to the volume, but obviously within reason! From what you've said there is a solution, but not one that's going to get a smile from the drummer: ask him to (i) not increase volume during a gig or (ii) use an electronic kit so his volume can be controlled via the desk. PS apologies to the OP for this side-track! Although tbf at least we've established that this isn't really a concern about IEMs - they can and should work really well when used properly!

As a 19 y/o in college the only pedal I'd really come across was a dirt pedal 😅 It's very much a funk bassist's pedal eg Bootsy Collins, although also often used in combination with other pedals eg check out the bass line on Fratellis' cover of Bacarra's "Yes sir I can boogie", which I think is very cool, or on several Tool tracks. I'm sure the filter pedal users on this thread will be able to give plenty of examples of where it's been used tastefully and well. Obviously YMMV as to what's tasteful!

Yeah - that's going to be tricky if you're standing at the back and your bandmates are turning themselves up during the gig and getting louder and louder during the gig causing things to become unbalanced, rather than them having the discipline to leave their sound levels where they were at sound check. Sounds like a band chat is needed to point out what's happening, and see if you can get them on board? You're pretty good at recording gigs so that should hopefully help in getting the message across? And maybe another option is for you to stand nearer the front? You were sounding pretty good and in balance on that clip you posted recently with your new DJI camera - was that at the start of a gig? Good luck!

I've now got a set of Sonicfoam tips for my KZ ZARs based on your recommendation thanks Alex - they seem pretty good value (as are the ZARs). And I'm hoping your enthusiasm for IEMs rubs off on my crew when you're depping for us on Friday! 🙂

I kinda get what you're saying. The key point for me was what you said in your post - the band who sounded terrible had "no real out front mix". That sums up the issue in a nutshell! The starting point for any gig has got to be how the band sounds out front to the audience i.e. the FoH mix, right? Sorting out what it's sounding like on stage / via monitors or IEMs is then a separate issue which is obviously also important. Do you guys play a song at, or close to, gig volume during sound check with one of you out front listening to what the FoH mix is sounding like? We've found our FoH sound has been improved a lot by putting as much as we can through the PA - the guitar is finally not stupidly loud and in balance with everything else. We're also getting much less feedback from not having backline. The most common complaint we used to get was "your singer can't be heard over the band", that also now seems sorted, so all in all a very positive journey. In the main line-up for the band 3 of us are using (or planning to use) IEMs and the guitarist who's not keen has a small monitor for his guitar and is standing pretty close to a PA speaker which gives him pretty good monitoring for the rest of the band.

IEMs make really good sense when you have a silent stage, or at most acoustic drums and no backline, and put everything through the PA to get a really nicely balanced FoH sound. It's pretty common in the function band scene. If you're using backline then, agreed, there's much less need for IEMs for the instrumentalists. The vocalists obviously need to be able to hear themselves and be heard by the band but a small stage monitor should deal with this. I don't think how good the two bands you mention sounded had anything much to do with one using IEMs and the other not though? Much more likely to be down to how good the two bands are. As you said, your mates (i.e. the better) band use IEMs when the need arises - I'd be very surprised if IEMs made them play / sound worse.

"will be great"...and won't be cheap! But then if folk are prepared to pay 3Leaf prices then fair enough, there's demand for a quality filter (although did anyone mention EBS recently? 😅) That thought then just made me wonder how common filters are on pedal boards? We're probably going to agree that drive/fuzz will be be the most common effect, but would filters come in second? Or get pipped by chorus and octavers? Dunno! (I'm not thinking of EQ and compression/limiters as being "effects" in this context).

Sounds great! Guessing being digital it will come with the ability to store several presets, which would be ideal when playing with different basses and swapping between up and downsweep?

Had a Stomp (twice!). Will defo be checking out the MS-60B+ ie the souped up version of the 2013 MS-60B

[Deleted comment: a much more useful / straightforward suggestion by @gazhowe below 😊]

Brilliant! Clearly could do with a bit of make-up gain applied to one of them though? And the saturation looks way too clean! 😅

Let us know if it's living up to (our) hype!

Nice! What does it sound like? 😀

Wingman – Ninjafox Engineering Maybe worth checking this contraption out which was recommended by @jaythemusicguy and looks useful as an alternative to midi?

Fyi I much prefer the Tonelib software, which is also free, to Zoom's own patch editing software. They've done a great job! It's something I'm going to greatly miss when I get the MS-60B+

Obviously too cheap - just had my order cancelled and a full refund paid! Ah well...

...in fact, because of your post @dave_bass5, I've just seen a mint used G2-4 on Reverb at a "let's pay you to it try out" price (just £55 inc. P&P.) and couldn't resist it!

I'd had the exact same thought!

Good shout...you know that the MS-60B+ is coming out in a couple of months as the replacement for the 60B which was originally released back in 2013? Might be a nice one to upgrade to down the line - will also have the same dinky footprint but the upgraded chipset found in the B2-4. I'm looking forward to getting mine 😊

That's fair Russ, but I think the counter is that sound to light can give a band some additional visual energy for the audience? No? Having said that: - lighting is a missed trick for many bands and certainly not an area of great expertise for most; - our lighting rigs tend to be fairly basic (and yet another thing for the put upon bassplayer to have to sort!).

I totally get you not wanting to be too reliant on an audience member - we just stand mount our camera and try to remember to stop it going into standby mode every 30 mins!