Phil Starr

First of all one of my favourite videos for the basics of speaker placement

Hiya, that's interesting, I'm using the Lekato at the moment, no real problems so far. I used a Line6 before and no problems there either, but I prefer the form of the Lekato, just a bit less fiddly. How is the Nux better?

Welcome to BassChat, it might be worth private messaging the OP via BassChat and asking them. Just hover over their ID and the messaging will pop up

Horses for courses, I wouldn't want to attempt to do what you do without physical controls In the dim and distant past I used to mix live shows and pre Covid I ran a few jam sessions with a Yamaha MG16. I'd love to sit down with the sort of mixers you are using. The M18 is smaller than the snake never mind the mixer and you are quite right about space being limited. I did think about looking out for an O2R at the time and I hesitated to buy something without physical controls for a while. I reckon in 15years+ of gigging we've had our own sound engineer maybe half a dozen times. Most gigs we are lucky to get 5 mins for a soundcheck so an iPad I can carry out front and place on a table beats running back to a mixer every time. Just being able to recall our best ever mix at every gig has transformed what we can do. Eq for the room and adjust the master volume and we are away. I've tried to engineer our PA for the gigs we do. I play in two four piece covers bands and a duo. I've never played in anything bigger than a five piece band and drums are currently all electronic. 8 mic channels and 8 line inputs have been more than enough for me so far with at least a couple of channels going spare and usually a lot more. If need be I can mic up drums with a three mic technique but if a drummer brings along a full set of mics they are going to have to do their own mix and give me a stereo feed. So far that hasn't been an issue. I've sets of cables for each band, boxed and ready to go and we all use in-ears except the duo where the volume is lower. I've a 10" based PA for smaller venues, 15's for bigger gigs and subs if needed. I've used those about once a year. The 10's double as monitors for any deps who won't use in-ears. Interesting what you say about HPF on the vocal channels. I've got 24db/8ve @80Hz on all the vocal channels and gently roll them off at 120Hz on top of that. Let me know if you think I can do better than that. So far getting the singers to co-operate with an extended session sorting their eq has been like pulling teeth so thats probably my next task. The presets are problemmatic as they all come with compression. Most of our venues have such limited space, we are inevitably on top of each other and the PA so gain before feedback is low and any compression at all will end up with acoustic feedback being an issue.

I'm using an RCF M18, which they've stopped making. It's a fairly simple stagebox mixer but really set up well for pub bands like ours. Really simple to operate whilst you are actually playing with straightforward menus and really well worked out glitch free software. the built in router works too. I'm quite fond of stuff that works

Theres two questions here really. 1. WTF is going on with the PA? 2. What 12" cab? Answering the second one first, you'll get 100 suggestions and we'll all say the same thing more or less. "This one is my favourite, so that is what I use so you should too". Given that I'm as biased as everyone else I use a LFSys Monaco and IMO it's the best It fits the lightweight bit of the brief and one cab will do all you want/need so you won't need to consider a 2x12 or a couple of 1x12's. Other speakers are available. So going on to the PA. I don't hink going back to using backline to reach the audience is a great idea now you've done the difficult bit of transferring to the PA and setting up in ears. You'll be back with everyone getting a bit of bleed from your bass cab however good their in ears are and the bass will then be feeding through the vocal mics and your sound from the PA will be compromised. Loads of what you say about the PA doesn't make sense to me at the moment, there's a piece of the jig-saw missing. I find it hard to believe that the bass alone is cut from the PA. Lot's of PA speakers are protected form overload but it's usually all or nothing, the PA cuts out and resets until you fix the fault or the bass triggers a limiter which turns the volume down in which case everything else would bee too quite. A few willlimit the bass only but it's turned down on the peaks only not all the time. Secondly if the bass is really good on recorded music then it should be just as good and loud with your bass, unless you are doing something odd with the eq or just trying to be too loud, louder than the Spotify bass. If this hasn't happened before, and no-one else has pointed it out at previous gigs could it be lead problem. Does the kick or floor tom set off the same problem? It's worth getting back to a rehearsal room and see if you can replicate the fault and then fix it before spending precious money. If you do try to spend then I'd probably go for a sub rather than a bass cab, you don't really need two and if one isn't loud enough then one big one is better than two small ones, so again save some money and space by getting that right too. I'm happy to explain this if you want but its a bit techy so I'll keep it short here.

The tone control is probably just a simple capacitor (which passes high frequecies but not the lows) Turning the knob will short the signal to ground cutting out all the high frequecies. If the capacitor is short circuit then it cuts everything. The capacitor is probably wired from the middle prong on the control to the round case of the potentiometer. check that only one wire is touching the metal case and only at the soldered joint. If not the capacitor may be damaged internally (a capacitor costs a few pennies)

It works! My duo had our first gig using the settings recommended by @VTypeV4 last night. I'll copy them below to make it easier to follow but if you want the full story go back and read his full comments. We had the best vocal sound we've ever had and it's definitely moved us on a level. We started with the settings below exactly as recommended starting with the reverb. I messsed around with some of the available reverbs and settled on a 'warm room' set to 1.2s as the sound that worked best with my voice but I guess every mixer will offer different options. The delay was set up at 180ms and 30% feedback which sounded a bit artificial at first listen, but then I was only talking into the mic and it worked much better once I tried singing. I started monitoring though headphones (Sennheiser HD595 so reasonable quality) and played around with more extreme settings to see what that sounded like. The recommended settings were sitting within the sweet spot. Once I'd played a bit I called in my duo partner who is the real vocalist and switched to my monitors (RCF Ayra 5's) His immediate response was 'it's a bit too much' and it was the delay he struggled with most. I pointed out that it would be far less noticeable when the instruments were added in and suitably mollified he carried on singing and relaxed eventually becoming engaged. It was a lot easier to fiddle and tweak with a real singer and you could hear changes but I kept returning to the original settings as the best compromise that worked in different songs and with both of our voices. By this stage Mike my vocalist had relaxed and was just enjoying the sound of his own voice suitably enhanced The real benefits came when I stopped playing with the reverb and delay and concentrated on the mix of wet and dry signals. Mike's voice was better with a bit more reverb and less of the delay in his send s and my bv's benefitted with a bit more of everything but a greater proportion of delay to reverb. Conclusion: if you are a live band and don't have a dedicated sound engineer sitting in the audience area then use these settings and concentrate on getting the mix of wet and dry signal right, then relax and concentrate on the music. this is set and forget territory. Many thanks to Matt for the advice 👍

It's a bit sad that RCF are no longer making the M18. I'd buy another tomorrow if mine ever went down. We've recently switched to a Behringer and set up time is much longer as the control software is so much less intuitive. Our guitarist runs the mixer whereas I ran the M18 which is so simple to use. There have been a few mutterings from the rest of the band about going back to my mixer as it 'sounds better' if it's true that is down to simplicity because said guitarist is every bit as competent as I am, probably more so. Having it's own reliable wi fi is a blessing too, the M18 was designed from the start as a live mixer for small bands and it shows. Let's hope it's reliable as I won't be able to replace it. I guess the CQ20 would be my choice of the current crop of mixers.

Our guitarist uses an Alto TS410. He looked at the Headrush and found very little difference between it and the Alto, but he wanted a 10" cab. He didn't feel any difference in sound was significant.

I'm in the "just in case" bracket. I don't gig with backline but I keep my options open with backline that stays at home most of the time. My experience so far is that the gear is more reliable than bands which tend to run for only a few years so I keep back line just in case I need to dep or audition again. None of my three current bands use backline and two of them use an electric kit. I'm lucky enough that I don't need to spend the income from gigs on anything other than music so I can pretty much afford what I want. I also design and build cabs as a passion so I'd find it hard to give up backline completely even though it stays at home. My backline is an LFSys Monaco and a Bugera Veyron. The Monaco is IMO the best 12" FRFR bass cab on the market and I chose the Veyron as the most neutral sounding of my amps. I've also got a BC110T which I use more often as it's even lighter and smaller and more than enough as a stage monitor. The Monaco will go conveniently louder than any drummer so my initial thought of one 12 for smaller gigs and a second for bigger ones has been shelved.

This ^ It distresses me a little that people pay quite a lot of money for an isolation pad that doesn't do much and might fix a problem that only exists in really exceptional circumstances. It's so much more likely to be acoustic feedback and may not be the bass cab at all, it could be set off by the PA or any other source of low frequency sound.

There's no panacea to all this. IMO the best thing is that the audience don't hear your cab. If you are playing to 50 people then for them to hear the instruments from the backline means the sound levels on stage would need to be so high that your hearing is being damaged. On top of that it would also be bleeding into the vocal mics. On stage should be just for monitoring and the audience should just be hearing the PA. However most of the time with live music you have to compromise especially if you are a bunch of weekend warriors on a limited budget. Tilting the cab is unsurprisingly all about angles. If your ears are 1.5m above the floor and you are only 1.5m in front ot the cab then it would have to be tilted 45deg but if you are at the end of a 6m guitar lead that angle woudn't need to be so acute. If you are on a 1.5m raised stage then your backline may well be pointing at the audience's ears but if you are at their level then tilting the cab a little might improve their experience, but only for the front row, anybody at the back is going to find the sound had been absorbed by the bodies in front of them and some of the sound is reflected off the ceiling and walls anyway. The other thing is that whilst speakers do 'beam' the higher frequencies it isn't all or nothing. We use the analogy of a torch/flashlight but sound isn't focussed as sharply as a spotlight, there is loads of 'spill' off axis. Even if your speakers were perfect pistons driving the air they just aren't pinpoint spotlights, more like floodlights. 15deg off axis you might not really notice any huge change and neither would the audience.

My favourite monitoring was an old Hartke Kickback10. I rolled off the bass quite hard and pointed it at my ears, which picked up more than enough bass coming from the FOH. Not a nice sound on its own but in the mix with the band going hard it sounded great. It got ditched in the end as the drummer wanted more bass so it was back to drowning in a warm bassy mush until I went in-ears. Your best bet would probably be to tilt the combo back to point it at your ears, that gives you 'more-me' but won't change things too much for the audience or the rest of your band. I've got a stand that will do that going spare if you want it.

True bass sound is an interesting concept Like so much in life it's 'whose truth' is the truth? What you hear and what the audience hear are very different Bass frequencies are omnidirectional, they are reflected by the floor and by any nearby walls and ceilings. Bouncing round the room they take multiple paths creating valleys and peaks where the bass is quieter of louder so even different bits of the room et diferent bass sounds. Meanwhile the treble and mid ranges are beamed out like a torch beam very bright/loud stright ahead but with little sound leaking out at the sides. If any of your bass is going through the PA then you'll hear all of the real lows just the same as the audience but just about nothing of the mids and tops So it depends upon what you want to hear, If you want to hear what the audience hear then you need to point the peakers at your ears. If you want to hear every nuance of your playing then again you need those mids and to point at your ears. If you want to warm yourself in lovely bassiness that you don't get any other time than on stage then that's just your preference and f you raise the speakers or tilt them you'll hear something different.

Yeah it's a good stage tone, most of the top end will just end up competing with the guitarist and vocalists part of the frequency range, so with a bit of high mids added in you'll sit nicely in the mix. Who needs extra string noise anyway

Just in case people don't know @VTypeV4 has been a professional sound engineer for 24 years and counting. The sort of quiet experience that we should all listen to. I'm going to be busy every evening next week taking his advice and tweaking the results in the studio. It's worth visiting his long thread and seeing what he does. It's a real eye opener about how touring shows operate their sound and a festival of great mixers, not just the Yamaha he started out with. You will have mixer envy.

Thanks for this, I've been hoping you would come along, I've been stalking your long Yamaha mixer thread for years. I'll give that a try as a stating point

Hi Dave, most of the 'hot' pickups are going to have a lot more windings in the coils. You'll often see this in the specs with the higher impedance or DC resistance of the PUP's. More wire and thinner wire=more resistance. This has a secondary effect, coils have something called inductance where the impedance (resistance which is frequency dependant, sort of) rises with frequency and acts as a low pass filter. More turns means less treble and a darker sounding pickup. That may be what you are hearing.

So how to go about getting this sort of sound, any ideas?

That's what I do, to be fair it's the monitor feed he worries about.

I can see the attraction of building a cab inside this case, it's a convenient size for a cab and you wouldn'tneed to worry about the finish as it already looks like a bit of pro gear. A 2x8 would work and so would a 10 maybe even a 12. youc ould easily build a bass cab or a guitar cab based on this. If you decide to go ahead PM me and I can help with dimensions and tuning. The only problem I have that is if the vocals /guitar are sounding a bit thin it's the low mids not the bass that needs addressing.

Funnily enough, I'm helping someone else out with a disguised built in cab. and i was also thinking of advising your to damp the rack cab with expanding foam. A lot depend supon what you mean by: There isn't really any significant 'low end' in guitar/vocals so perhps you could explain a little more about how you picture using this.

I have loads of presets available and started up with the most basic of them in place. I got terrible feedback issues and realised that all of them applied quite a lot of compression which isn't really helpful with my sort of pub gigs where the complete set up often has to be done in 30 mins, there's little time for a proper sound check and any mixing has to be done when I can get out in front on a wireless connection. It would be great to hear what you have done here when you do copy the settings across.