Al Krow

My little gigging pedal board with Zoom B1-4 very much at its heart! Couple of additional pedals for filter and synth which, together with pitch shift, tend to be weaker areas for many multifx: Tip: I've recently found that layering a little drive pedal before e.g. the Xotic BB patch I've made** on the B1-4 is giving me a drive tone that seems juicer (apologies for the lack of a technical term!) than pretty much all of the bespoke dirt pedals I've had over the years (and I've had a few, haha!). ** My Xotic BB patch combines the following B1-4 sims: Demeter Comp --> Xotic BB --> SWR SM 400 amp, and has boosted bass to compensate for the low-end loss on dirt sims.

Great post, thanks Mike! What's your view on IEM and silent stages vs using stage monitors in delivering a really good FoH sound? Is the benefit of a silent stage / IEM route more pronounced for smaller venues when the stage bleed into the FoH mix is likely to be relatively much more pronounced?

A&H do more budget desks too eg their Zed / ZedFx range. Not many aux out, but well built and very decent quality. Several pub bands I know, including my former band, use them. I don't think we should assume all pub bands use only budget desks though, any more than we can assume that the bass player won't be taking a high end bass rig and £1k+ bass to their pub gigs.

Yup. We can get 4 individual outputs from our Soundcraft MTK12 desk, which is all we need as a. 4 piece band. Fully tailored output on two, more restricted on the other two eg headphone out gives the FoH mix. Around £450. Our next desk (whenever we decide to upgrade) is probably going to be digital, but with faders / ability to tweak on the fly mid song without needing a tablet. There's a whole separate dedicated thread on compact mixers for you to dive into 😅

But any particular need to do that when it comes laden with actual mains out?

MixWizard WZ4 14:4:2 | Allen & Heath (allen-heath.com) - 6 aux outs

Well my £40 'Sennheiser' IE300s arrived and they work, so that was a good start. And the box came "fully laden" with all the gubbins you might expect of the real thing including a choice of silicone and memory foam tips Actually a better over ear fit than the KS ZS10 Pros Don't seem to have quite the same volume of the ZS10 Pros which is minus, but a slightly less boomy bottom end which is a plus I'll probably continue with the ZS10 Pros for live use for now. But these are a decent back up to have Just wonder if Sennheiser would be able to confirm whether the units being sold from the Sennheiser Digital Store are genuine - I'm very tempted to ask them, be good to know either way. The price appears to have gone back up to around £95 (inc P&P) since I ordered mine.

Cheers for that. #2 I'm actually thinking of working with a line up with electronic drums and guitarist losing his amp and going straight into the desk via a decent pedal board / multifx set up (Russ is going to be amused to hear me say that!) Probably means getting a new drummer and guitarist in the process, but they do say change is as good as a rest 😅

Was interested to understand what led you to giving up on the IEM route / why they didn't work for you? This is the path I'm looking to encourage our band to go down - and if there are issues or problems that you found couldn't be solved be good to hear in case it's the same for a couple of them too.

Couldn't possibly comment. Given that I'm not in one, surely that would be trolling...trolling, trolling down the river...? Although I'm sure @Dad3353 would approve of us all leaving a good job in the City to spend our time doing that?

Nah, I think the consensus on this thread is that we're not. Phew!! Although there's nothing like marking our own homework, is there? 😄 More seriously - there's been some corking discussion/comments along the way and I've learned a thing or two about the freedom to be playing covers without having any obligation to pay to do so, whilst flagrantly nicking other people's original material, as a performer. Guess I'd best get onto learning some of the new covers material my band's agreed to try out at our rehearsal on Thurs...

As you say the world doesn't work that way and while it might seem at first blush to be fairer, it wouldn't really incentivise creating stuff that other people want as opposed to what we would like to spend our time doing. So someone designing a crap <whatever> but sold once would get paid the same as someone who came up with something that others find amazing and everyone wants. Having said that, when you imply that our time on this blessed rock is the most precious thing we have...well no argument from me about that whatsoever, I am also of that view; just wish I had come to that realisation much, much sooner!

Good shout. In 10 years of doing paid covers gigs, I've never been asked once for a set list from the venue. Sounds to me that none of them are paying PRS fees. Also clearly not worthwhile for the PRS to actually enforce this either?

Sorry, I was back home at 2am this morning from a function/covers gig in the Midlands last night which was a huge amount of fun and very decently paid, so I wasn't able to jump in to comment earlier. Some great posts on here already! Loved the phrase from @DCS222 that "You are the sound track to their well earned time off" Wow - this thread has been worthwhile for that comment alone. @Norris - yes absolutely right, it's an incendiary title. But no apologies, mate - obviously pop/rock music was never meant to ruffle any feathers or cause anyone to think about what we're actually doing, haha?! But why raise the question at all given that I'm the BL / founder of my own pretty active covers band? Well tbh I was a little annoyed about the pomposity that we covers/function band players can sometimes have when looking down at struggling original musicians, and this post in particular: Did it make you laugh? It made me think that the first three categories only have any work because they are effectively stealing the material of writers of original material. Yes Elvis did covers, but I bet he paid royalties. Dolly Parton is super happy that Whitney covered her song. But I bet none of us on BC are paying a paying a penny to make use of other people's material? Also true of most DJs I would have thought)? Aren't we therefore being parasites of sorts? @Pirellithecat Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed and they are, in any case, maybe a year or two out of copyright by now. Similarly Bach/Beethoven/Mahler etc and classical music orchestras. But did the Killers write Mr Brightside for others to incessantly play? Maybe they're actually cool because they are getting free air time and there is something incredibly heart warming about writing something that then gets played all around the world? I wouldn't know. And maybe we should change our band name to LA Nik-Tracks or The Tapeworms.

What say you the collective BC hive-mind? Would you say the same about a well known artist covering a track and making it their own?

Bill some very useful points there, thank you. Just picking up on one point if I may - given the consensus is that the main benefit from using a sub is to enhance the kick drum which is typically going to be in the 50Hz to 80Hz range, why should it matter if there is a cancellation notch centred at 42Hz? Ok I appreciate that is very close to the fundamental of the low E string on bass but a lot of us will be HPF'ing our basses below 80Hz, in any case, to deliberately avoid a boomy low end, and certainly wouldn't want the 40Hz region to be being boosted by the sub.

But is it fair to say if you're dispensing with floor monitors altogether because you're using IEMs, and also using just one sub rather than two eg because that's all the size of the venue warrants or your budget/boot space allows (delete as applicable), then the phased source cancellation is another thing you don't need to worry about? At which point does it not become a choice of: do want the additional bass reinforcement by placing your sub adjacent to a wall, or do you prefer a neater floor footprint and more stable top placement by mounting your top above the sub? And if the latter is a significant step up over not having a sub at all, have you pretty much not hit bull's-eye by doing so? Just asking for a fellow darts player I know.

That makes sense with unfamiliar kit. On the other hand if you're using the same desk and PA, you'll have a pretty good idea of what settings work for your band and can use that as the starting point, so you're not having to reinvent the wheel each time, and can then tweak it for the venue.

Agreed that having wireless kit does make for an easier process as you can hear the full band including yourself up front. We will get the sound as good as we can during sound check, but either the singer or myself, who both have wireless, will wander out front and have a listen during the set to double check. There's often more energy and volume to the band during the live set compared to the sound check, which can affect the balance.

I do have to agree with you. We were playing at a function gig recently going through the DJ's PA set up: he had two RCF 705s with tops on poles directly above. Can't recall our band sounding better overall - we normally don't use subs. I particularly loved the drums and audience were loving it / very complimentary. And, in practice, you're never going to be able to A/B your set up because it will only be truly compared once the audience is there absorbing your sound waves - hugely different to an empty venue as we all know. I think tbf from some of Bill's recommendations (eg paying someone to be sound engineer at gigs), he's coming at this from the more pro end of the market. We're doing pretty well as a band, but certainly wouldn't be able to afford to bring a sound engineer on board for our gigs. I totally recognise the much greater expertise from Bill and others when it comes to this stuff - it's just that it won't necessarily translate into the semi-pro or hobbyist band set up many of are involved with. So if it works and works well, I'd say crack on! Perfection can be the enemy of the good. And a neater, potentially more secure set up taking up less floor space will often trump a marginal improvement in sound quality. If it means you're using a sub to enhance the kick that's likely to be a noticeable improvement to your sound, certainly in larger venues, than not having one at all.

If they also sound 100% (or even 70%!) as good, I guess that works...

In which case putting it against a wall ain't ever really going to be a thing then? 😁

Well I guess if they're pants they can serve as a spare set for our guitar deps 😅

Crossover of 110 Hz? Your point is probably, however, fair even if your vocal mic is responsive only down to 80 Hz. But as you say it is the kick, which is benefiting most from the sub, and kick drum mic position viz the sub would have been a likely culprit. The low-end stage bleed is going to be more range dispersed as well, agreed?