Jack

Hi all, Recently I have 1) been gigging lots more than before, and this is set to continue 2) downsized to a small and light Fender Stage 800 combo 3) been totally unable to find an amp stand that isn't terrible 4) watched my guitarist buy an excellent flight case for his Vox AC30 all of which has made me think I might fancy one of the rolling flight cases for my amp. I'd like to use this as a stand when on stage, with my amp on top. But I'm thinking, would it resonate? Like would it boom on certain notes and such or are they sturdier than that? It didn't when I tried on my guitarist's case but that's not really a complimentary shape and my amp overhangs a little on his case. Would a similarly sized case to my amp resonate? Does anyone use a case like this? What's your opinion on them both as a stand and as a method of transport? There's no way I would have considered them before but I was surprised at how light my guitarists one was (a case with my featherweight Fender 800 in will still weigh less than some amps do naked) and how good of a stand it makes on stage. All input is much appreciated.

That is exactly the model from my 'dropped the combo onto the protruding cables' story.

Yeah, the helix has 3 fully-parametric bands as well as high and low pass filters. It's easy to notch a tiny bit of mud out when switching from a Stingray to my P for instance. Great for taming room boom.

I had a quicklock one that lifts and tilts back. I really, really baby my gear and it wasn't worn out or abused at all but after about a year it went between soundcheck and the start of the first set. Entire combo landed on the back panel, or more appropriately the cables and jacks sticking out of the back panel. I consider myself very lucky that that only damage was the XLR out to the PA was bent inwards, it still works just fine but it could have been so much worse. I'm back to using a Markbass wedge. It isn't as good but it won't collapse.

I've been using mine for a few months now, replacing a rack setup with a Helix and a couple of Barefaced cabs that I just got tired of moving to the local Dog and Duck. All in all, it's a very capable unit. I play in a gentle indie rock band and a very ungentle hard rock band and it does fine in both of them. The amp unit is very much more capable than the speaker cab, I have a feeling I could easily send the drivers across the room if I wanted. Whilst volume is more than sufficient for indoors venues (I'm usually around 10am on the dial fwiw) I'm planning on buying the matching cabinet for the big outdoors biker rallies that we do every summer. When it comes to sounds and emulation the in built overdrive sounds have a tendency to be fizzy and none of the comps are subtle enough for me, but with that those aside (and at least the overdrives can be tamed with work) I think it sounds great. I use the first two banks of three presets as a smooth finger sound based on a GK, a driven pick rock, vintage fuzz, synth, really subby and deep and a modern od sound. That covers a lot of territory for two covers bands and there's loads more presets there if you want them. If you're not into the emulation thing than it does a pretty good impression of most major amp brands and generic sounds, so there's nothing to stop you just picking one you like and treating it like a normal amp. I was a GK user for years before I went digital, and the GK impression is particularly on point. I'd prefer this amp, set to the GK preset, over and actual GK combo and that's coming from someone who's owned 5 GK amps, 3 cabs and the plex. The tuner on the built in screen is brilliant, but the LED version on the pedal leaves a lot to be desired. My largest complaint is that I miss the global eq that the Helix has a lot, as it was really useful for applying a room or a bass specific eq to every patch all at once. Obligatory low-light, low-ability gig photo. Please note, after putting the phone down I tidied the cables.

Nice setup, Jakester. I keep thinking it can't be that hard to do a feedback destroyer in software for the X-Airs. I wonder why there isn't one, especially as I'd hazard a guess that most X-Airs are used by bands running their own sound, often from the stage.

I'm sure you'd have been happy with the Ashdown (although I'm not familiar with that particular amp) but you also won't be unhappy with the GSS. Far from it, everything that Didier makes that I've tried has been fantastic.

I'm familiar. The rest of them, two whole band's worth, are still having to think about it very hard indeed. I even made laminates about a year ago and still at every gig it's "where does my wedge come out again?", "what number's my guitar DI supposed to go in?".

This is of course true but I find that a lot of time is saved by knowing that the gain structure, effects routing, monitor mixes and eq are 75% rather than 0% done. That's a HUGE difference at every gig. As you'll know (but others may not so I'll type it our anyway!) it's possible to save nearly everything in the Behringer software. Either the whole deal all at once or just indvidually. I have the profiles of the main mix EQ saved for most of our regular venues. Yes, they always require some tweaking, but they're infinitely better than starting from scratch and having to figure out that there's room boom at 200Hz to take out and a horrible squeak at 9.2kHz that needs pulling.

I've got 2 mikrotik products at the moment and I've had a couple of older models in the past, they've been consistently brilliant. They're one of those brands that does one thing and does it really, really well. The operating system that they run, RouterOS, is the most amazingly configurable and detailed firmware you can ever imagine. As an example, not only is the wifi network that my little hAp mini kicking out password protected (as you could do on any router) but it's also set to only allow connection from certain MAC addresses. Meaning that even if someone knows, guesses, or sniffs the password they still can't actually connect unless they're physicall using my laptop, recording PC, tablet, or the band member's phones (they do their own monitor mixes). If someone tries to connect to the router without the password it's logged, if someone tries to connect with the right password but the wrong MAC I get an instant email. I can actually view a report of people trying to connect to our router's wifi at a gig. At home we use our router to ensure that my PC and the gf's mabook always have priority access to the internet, regardless of phones and stuff trying to update silently in the background, photo collections updating to the cloud, regular backups rsyncing to our server or whatever slowing the network down. The antennae thing is hotly debated by people even nerdier and sadder than myself. At a basic level, antennae like the ones in a router give a signal in a doughnut shape with the physical antenna sticking through the hole in the middle of the doughnut. In an ideal world (or outside) you can move and angle those antennae to give you coverage pattern that you want. They're also kept slightly farther away from the AC power that a router uses which can sometimes interfere. However, to me many of these potential benefits are lost when you're not outside on a clear day with nothing else around. In a noisy pub with 50 different punters' phones, IP security cameras and a dodgy hacked android running the TV I can't see it making a difference. Mine has never once missed a beat and mine's only 2.4GHz.

I'm a lot like Happy Jack, although admittedly not as happy. An external router is a MUST. I'm also a pc nerd so I can thoroughly recommend anything from Mikrotik. Particularly something like the hAP AC lite. A gig is not a good time to learn how to do something. Not only does the Behringer have way more features than an analogue mixer, they're all more hidden, harder to find in a pinch and smaller and fiddlier to control. Book a large hall in a community center or something, set up like at a gig and get gains, basic eq and things like noise gates set as good as you can. Then you can save this as a scene and and work from there at a gig. Lastly, do please set up a rack with everything in. I have the mixer, a multimedia music player (permanently wired into 17/18), a router (an older 2.4GHz that I keep meaning to upgrade but it works ok) and a power strip. I've wired the ethernet into the router and put a USB trail on too.

I have a Harley Benton 51 p bass that gets just as much playing time as any other bass, more than some actually.

I just saw an advert for this and came on here to post it, but it seems that most people aren't as excited as we are!

Good eq points. So many micro heads essentially have a 1-band eq because the low are too low and the highs too high.

There are a few DI boxes that take 9V. I actually made one that uses this board because there wasn't one that did what I wanted. Having said that, as long as there's at least one buffer on either your pedal board on in your bass then you'll be just fine with a passive box.

As you'll consider other methods, then RightOn straps are what you want. I have 3 and wholly recommend.

I have the Rumble 2x10 cab and the 800 combo (which uses the same speakers and cab) and whilst the speakers are fine, they're perhaps not up to the power output of the amp. It's definitely a better amp than cab in the combo if you see what I mean. They sound good, and they're plenty loud, but you'd certainly be able to blow the drivers across the room using that Ampeg amp if you weren't careful.

I can't help with your specific query (I put Will Power pups in mine which the exact opposite of what you're after) but seeing as you asked about Aaron Armstrong: he's AMAZING. My Stingray pickup came back exactly what I ordered and for cheaper than many off the shelf brands.

12k? Child's play I tell ya! £22k EACH.

I had a 2-band twin to that and it was sublime, enjoy it.

I'm not sure they're actually constructive thoughts, mind. Yes indeed. That above picture was from early this summer when my indie band's mongrel PA consisted of the drummer's RCF 712 tops (he doesn't have subs) and our guitarist's Samson sub (he has a full Samson PA in which the tops aren't as good as the RCFs). We've since bought a nice pair of RCF 702s as a band to go under the drummer's tops. In our setup they're a necessity really. That pic above isn't representative as we've all got our big rigs out to be silly with in the marquee but we're usually a really quiet band and we try to put as much through the pa as possible. Without the subs I'd have to be blasting away on stage super loud, and that's going to bleed into all the mics and just ruin everyone's day. This way we're all always at 'drummer loud' on stage and the master fader on the desk just goes up or down depending on the venue. I'm trying to get the guitarists in this band to switch to DIs rather than mics as it's really cleaned up the sound in my other band to no end but it's less pressing as these guys are pretty quiet anyway. These guys, however, are not. Heavier band use an Alto system of two TS115A tops and two TSSUB18 subs. It's alower-quality system perhaps but it sounds great and the subs really do add to that rock music kick drum that adds a lot of energy to a mix. Means I don't need so much amp as well.

The Boss tuner is buffered for sure, so as far as the DI box is concerned, you might as well be playing an active bass. Having said that, given that you can use a passive DI, then I think you're doing the right thing by doing so, one less thing to have to worry about as I find asking for phantom power a real minefield and I don't like relying on battery-powered anything.