Al Krow

Don't disagree about balancing drums and bass. That's always gotta make sense. The moaners will be fine as long as the vocal monitor is blaring and they can hear themselves! 😎

I've had some sense knocked into me yesterday by a couple of mates on the forum with a very sensible suggestion (alternative 1). Alternative 1 - normal backline set up Guess I just need to get over my concern/prejudice that our 310A tops won't handle a bit of bass & kick drum plus full-on vocals & acoustic guitar/sax. My concern here has always been that as they are just 10" speakers and not particularly tuned to handling bass it's going to compromise the most important bit of the sound which IMO (and with due respect to everyone else on this forum) are the vocals. "put some bass through the PA: you don't need much, just a hint of it to get it out over their heads of the audience. The rig can supply the low end and the PA the definition. And then just turn down the volume from the cab so that the stage volume is not too loud." Bingo - great advice! Alternative 2 - keeping the cap at the front? Turns out that the DG AO 900 amp has a very versatile DI & headphone out set up. The headphone out and "post" DI out are both taken post comp, drive and EQ. The gain knob impacts both DI and headphone out, but then there is an additional independent vol control for the headphones and the master vol only impacts what is being sent to the cab, so in effect I have 3 independent volume controls to DI, headphones and cab. So should I want a personal IEM for bass monitoring, I could in theory just make use of the headphone out.

The one issue that @GisserD and I both encountered with a T65 pedal which I sold to him a couple of years back, was the fact you can't get a completely clean octave i.e. there's always a slight bleed from the dirty octave-up which can't be dialled down to nil; which maybe ties in with Lee's comment about the T16 being better at clean tones. Tom at COG confirmed this was not a fault in the unit but a "design feature" (or flaw depending on your perspective!) I posted a detailed write up of the issues somewhere(!) in the Octave multi-thread:

With regard to the Stomp vs HX FX, won't some of the amp and cab sims be really useful if you're trying to emulate Tech 21 kit e.g. that new SH1 pedal?

@Corto14 never had or played a 2000 myself. But I've heard folk say that they were the very finest of the BB passive range. You got your eye on that one then?

He's way cuter than me.

It's a very interesting point you make. The subject of 'tone woods' is obviously a divisive / controversial one with many (me included) being sceptical of the impact of importance of the wood choices in the mix other than to look / feel good as a playing instrument rather than impact per se on the sound. But the point you're articulating of woods + pups => key combination for delivering 'growl' has been more scientifically presented than anything I've recently come across on the topic, so very well done in arriving at your insight.

Yup this one:

The SC caps out at 4kHz. Which tends to limits top end 'zing' if you're looking to slap. As a bass cab it's a lovely piece of kit.

I'm going to turn the cab upside down. All fair points, matey. And IEMs are something defo worth discussing. We've kinda shot ourselves in the foot on this though as we upgraded our mixer only a few months back and the band (primarily the drummer - he and I are the ones who tend to deal with the PA and mixing issues) wanted to keep it analogue and simple and not go down the digital mixing route, so we ended up getting a big brother Allen & Heath mixing desk. We don't have a dedicated sound guy so it's a case of getting everything set up and doing a quick sound check before gigs and tweaking a touch as we go along - the beauty of an analogue mixer with just one monitor is that it is really easy to tweak. I think to get individual tailored IEM outputs we're going to need to get a capable digital mixer - or have I got that wrong?

Having said all that, this talk of IEMs has reminded me that there is an additional very neat feature on my DG AO M900 which wasn't present on my M900 v1 and which could get around the limitations of having just one A&H monitor output. I'll check that out later today to see if it provides an alternative temporary fix which I might be able to combine with an IEM for just me and report back.

Hah! I think fair to say the main beneficiary here is me as the bass player, being able to hear myself better and also my sound for the audience in that I'm not having to cut the volume so that it's not too loud on stage. A £1000+ cab is indeed a princely sum. But the fair comparison for me is something like getting a Fearless F112 which is £800+ combined with a RCF 310A as a dedicated bass monitor which costs around £300, plus upgrading our A&H Mixer, which I think only has one monitor output and certainly only one master monitor volume control. The approach I'm trying to adopt is a very incremental / non invasive one i.e. just replacing an existing bass cab with another one rather than proposing a wholesale change to the band's set up involving possibly a digital mixer and IEMs, which is a battle for another day.

Superb post @Kiwi - thank you.

Yeah the Fearless F112 is a great option and from my research of folk who have had both, the Fearless has edged it sonically, with an additional mid driver & speaker, plus having the very useful wedge feature John mentioned. https://www.talkbass.com/threads/comparing-f112-bb2.1245612/ The BB2 wins on build time and also weight. I thought the BB2 was the more expensive of the two, but let me double check. [EDIT: they're actually pretty comparable on price - the more expensive silver cloth BB2 is £20 more expensive than the most expensive spec'd F112]. Both great brands. The other cabs that get a lot of love, for good reason, with similar or greater power handling to the BB2 are the Vanderkley 210s. As a former Markbass cab owner who now has a BF SC, you're not going to be disappointed if you get a BB2.

Haha, very true dat Dave. For IEMs to work well IMO, we would need a set up where each IEM output can be tailored so that eg the vocalists can hear themselves individually boosted, I can hear more of the bass coming through mine etc. I'm guessing that's a relatively sophisticated system and not cheap? But it is what our simple non-IEM set up currently already allows us to do with just one monitor.

This your first BB? Thought you already had a couple? Either way, pic please! Trouble with the bottom end BBs is that they're so blo*ody good, you end up getting suckered into going up range pdq!

Haha yes "one" could! But out of interest how many of you boys and girls buy your bandmates their gear for them? It's certainly not the way we operate in my bands. A fair number of us on this forum are very fortunate to be able to afford great bass gear, but that's entirely our choice on how we spend our spare cash, whilst our (and certainly some of my) band mates might just have a mic and stand and may not want to or indeed be able to spend too much more. IEMs are definitely worth considering at some point. But I think to get the most of going down that route, is going to require a fair bit more investment than you've touched on so far. Eg it will depend on the mixer output capability and, unless I'm missing something, I don't think our otherwise excellent Allen & Heath Zed60 FX14 would handle IEMs in addition to a monitor for the vocalists.

We haven't, but sounds like we maybe should start thinking about this. I suspect budget constraints may come into play and cost / benefit considerations etc.

I was simply doing a mate a favour. The end!

I am! Sounds like a day out to the Midlands could be in the offing! Would that constitute a Fatberg if we both went to check out the cabs?

Aha! So should we more properly know you as YammysTu instead? 😁

@AndyTravis will be able to point you in the right direction on PGs, he's defo our resident expert! I take it that you're a Yammy 1024 & Spector bass lover? That's a club (well at least the 5 er versions) I'm delighted to have joined!

@dave_bass5 - but you have rightly raised the single BIG flaw in my proposed use (which I think John and others also raised earlier in the thread) which is the inability to independently control the volume of the rear facing speaker in the way that you would a monitor. Why I still think this should work is as follows: Bass cab will be positioned on the right / front side next to the right PA speaker; It will be angled-in towards the audience and the rear speaker will be angled away from the band => reducing stage vol All band members have ear protection => reducing stage vol The singers are in front of the full drumkit => bass stage vol shouldn't be overpowering compared to that and I will be nearest to the bass cab anyway to give myself the max benefit Overall that should comfortably mean that the volume to the audience can be what we need it to be without the stage volume being too loud for the rest of the band, and any stage vol will be an improvement over no bass monitor. @bassfan - it's taken me three years(!) to persuade our singers to use ear protection and they finally are, so we're not at the in-ear stage yet, but that would indeed be the solution to a lot of this, I know. I think Bass Direct are the main dealer for Berg cabs, but don't think he will necessarily be keeping something as specialist as the HG series cabs in stock.

Haha! But something kinda cool about an upside down Berg methinks? 😁