Phil Starr

Hi @martthebass so I don't know if you are working on this yet? If you have some headphones then you need to try out some things at rehearsal, though you can work on getting the best seal possible at home by swapping out the ear tips until you get the best fit which should cut out as much outside sound as possible and not keep falling out. If you have some good closed back over ear headphones though it is quite useful to start with those. It doesn't matter about how you look at rehearsal and it will protect your ears and is much more comfortable to work with initially. And you can pull them off easily when you need to talk with the rest of the band. I don't think we've talked about what monitors you are currently using but you can just use the aux channel to drive your headphones if it isn't already being used. If not the headphone channel or the monitor out willl do. If however the monitoring is good but just too loud then there is an altermative and that is to use 'ambient' monitoring. Use an extra mic to pick up the band's sound feed that to a headphone amp and into your in-ears, the bonus of this method is you get to hear the audience noise and everything your band members say. A hack that works is to use a mini recorder to do this, it has the mic and headphone amp built into a single case. I've tried this with a Zoom H4N mounted on my mic stand and a little Olympus dictaphone type thing strung round my neck on a cord. Both worked brilliantly. You could probably use your 'phone if it has a jack socket. I found all of these work better than anything but the very best floor monitors and I could hear better than I could at 90% of the gigs I played. The ultimate though is to have your own mix

These were a staple of the pub band for years and the fact that so many are still going a credit to Yamaha, somebody (Peavey?) used to do a three amplifier version too. Yamaha didn't really overstate their specs in those days, I think they were 300W into 8 ohms whch matched their Club series SM112 speakers.

@thebrig you should feel frustrated at the ridiculous power ratings as well as the almost as ridiculous maximum sound levels. It makes rational choice almost impossible and is probably illegal in the UK but who has the power (no pun intended) or time to take legal action over false advertising. Power ratings are a moderately complex subject to negotiate/understand. The best advice is to ignore all the claims. Not least is that each speaker will have two power limits and the ratings for amplifiers are measured in a completely different way to speakers. Another is that to keep costs down people like Alto use the same amps in all their speakers in a range which is why they claim 2,000W in their 8,10,12 and 15" cabs. The reality is that the 8" speaker will handle around 100W (and not at all frequencies) the 10 around 200W and the 12 around 300W. The manufacturers build these cabs with digital processing that limits the amp power so the speakers never get near their limits and remain reliably in one piece. Remember that we are talking about budget level kit here compared with the £000's+ touring bands use. Even the best RCF/Yamaha gear pub bands use is more family car than formula 1. Performance at this level is clustered around a sweet spot of value for money. The idea that a £250 8" speaker is 2,000W is like saying your base level VW Lupo will go 0-60 in just over a second and has a maxumum speed of 900mph. 10 times reality. It's so ridiculous that it is laughable. Having said that since 2-300W will drive a 12" speaker to it's full potential and a lot of budget gear is really good there is no fear involved. I had the chance to compare a 10"Alto TS10 with my RCF ART310 on Tues and they are both really good speakers, I wouldn't have any trouble using either as vocal only PA. Alto make great kit for the money and Yamaha et al are all at it in selling with over-inflated claims. Incidentally it is very hard to get much more than 122dB out of a midrange 12" mid/bass driver so 132db SPL is a lie too. It's based upon the 2000W that doesn't exist. 132dB would almost instantaneously cause permanent hearing loss and be loud enough to be heard over a Boeing 747 20m away. So go away and have a look at decent used 12" active cabs from Yamaha, RCF, JBL, EV etc which will do you a job for a long while. Alto, Wharfedale, HH are cheaper but still good remembering you get what you pay for Alt TX's won't match the TS range for example and the Mackie Thumps aren't up to the Mackie SRM's. Don't worry about power

It's like so many things completely subjective. Old school thump, heft clean and so on mean different things to different people. No doubt people will come on to this thread and describe something as hi-fi when it is well know to add a colouring of it's own to your sound.Generally speaking it'll be as opposed to 'old-school' sound which in turn depends upon how old the person talking (typing?) is. Old school is usually boosted at 100Hz with little real bass scooped mids aroung 400Hz and without a lot of top end. Hi-fi then will generally be brighter sounding with less or no mid scoop and a lot more top end, but not everyone will agree of course. For me it's the sound of my bass but louder, and I practice at home with a Zoom and headphones or straight through the desk with studio monitors so that sound. I'd describe it as FRFR though (full range flat response) and it does me as a sound as it shows up all my mistakes which is what you want for a practice. Just like taste sound doesn't have very good adjectives. Try describing the difference between one curry and another, all different and there's a whole industry of food critics trying to describe food. We just don't have the words to accurately describe sound.

That's a monster set up. I used to own a Marshall 200W amp with four KT88's. It's crazy isn't it, I can't be bothered to take my Hartke 3500 to gigs because of the weight and don't use back linbe at all at most gigs but still hanker after stuff like this. Just typing KT88 makes me go all weak

Good man

I'm in a four piece covers band and like so many bassists I own and run the PA. Drummer and I arrive first and set up and are always last out at the end. Just like @Dan Dare I'm please don't try and help. The last thing I want is to sort out the mess they make. I've done everything I can to cut down set up and break down times. Mains leads are run first and are 6-way sockets wired on cables just long enough to run three sides of the stage (two 5m for the sides and a 10m across the back) leaving a 6-way in each corner. Any audio cables that need to run to the far side are run after that. The drummer has a mat the exact size of her kit and the cables are run just behind that. I have spares of everything incuding most of the things that band members forget and it all packs into a single storage box. Leads are all wound 'properly' and all have cable ties. I play with other bands and each band has it's own box with counted and checked leads. Our new guitarist had me down as obsessive/OCD but in everything else I'm quite chilled and relaxed but after 50 years of knocking down a stage you just realise having a system and all the right bits in all the right places saves you so much time and hassle and somebody helping by 'saving' you 30secs of lead winding and costing you 5 mins of untangling at the next gig or when you get home isn't a good deal. On the plus side all the band help out with the carrying and lifting I just don't let them pack the van any more than I let my wife pack the dish washer. Maybe I am a little bonkers

I believe you may be over thinking this. These Peavey's are pretty robust and repairable if they do go wrong. Leaving this amp open circuit won't cause a problem, that is for valve amp power stages and the odds of a momentary short from a jack causing damage with an amp turned down and with no signal going through the amp is miniscule. The real risk is the one you have identified, to your speakers. I've had a quick look at the circuit and it looks like there is a triac circuit which might be a pop suppressant. You've also got a split rail power supply and the two smoothing caps may be charging up at different rates giving a DC offset on switch on so there may be a problem there, i've had to replace these before. You'd see the cones jump and then slowly return if that was the case. It could be all sorts of other things including the mains switch. The mains switch would probably have some signs of arcing if it was that and yes you can use a capacitor/resistor circuit to supress that. I wouldn't advise anyone to start playing round with mains or the power supply caps unless they really know what they are doing. The power supply caps can store a significant charge for quite a long time and 150V DC is going to give you a much more significant shock than the mains. There is a small risk of death. Unless you can read the circuit diagram and are confident working with potentially lethal voltages your choice is simple either put up with turning the amp down on switch on and then connecting the speaker or take the amp to a trusted repairer.

Sorry though you put this up just before i posted my initial response and i missed it. It's a very clear picture of your band. I've seen many bands like yous managing with just a vocal PA and sounding pretty good. It's the hard way of doing things but for years was just about the only option, PA's werent up to much else within most bands budgets and it's the years of experience that make it work "Because we feel that our years of experience has resulted in knowing our equipment well, and how to get the best out of it without blasting the punter's ear drums," I'd never discount the importance of experience so if you wanted to stick with plan A there are loads of really cheap analogue mixers you could use to make a start with gigging. It sounds like the PA is going to be your problem though, it usually devolves to the bassist I'd stick to the advice of a digital mixer though but maybe reduce the strength of that recommendation. You can achieve what you want more cheaply but it would be better this way. It'll make your job easier. The digital mixers will be familiar to you in that they are usually stage box format. The same form as the lump on the end of a snake with all the sockets on. For your band members they just plug their leads into this. From your point of view you get something that looks like a tradiutional mixer but on your tablet or laptop screen. If you can use a mobile 'phone you can use the mixer. This all simplifies the work flow at the gigs. Switch on the mixer, checking everything is muted and recall the settings from your best ever gig, one button to press and all the controls on screen jump back to where you want them. As people plug in you'll see that everything is metered on screen so no need to go round shouting 'one-two' into mics. If somebody has a dodgy lead or a broken amp you can see that on the meters too usually, all without making a sound through the PA. You can take your tablet or laptop to the back of the room or a convenient table when you are ready to sound check and do any adjustments without having to go back and forth to the mixer. You can even ask most mixers to eq for the room. Your life will be easier even if you decide to go for vocal PA only. The mic pre-amps in most digital mixers are better than similarly priced analogue ones so there can be a sound advantage too. It's a win even if you never do all the hundreds of extra things available to you. Where it will really work for you though is if you do start getting bigger venues, you won't be loud enough with your current gear and it's a lot cheaper to have a capable PA do the heavy lifting than to have to change the backline and asking the drummer to have to work harder on a bigger kit. If you buy the right kit it's reassuring to know miking up what you have can do the job and as the person mixing you can add in extra functions without having to learn a new system when you are ready to make improvements. You can probably buy a cheap used analogue mixer for £100 and a digital mixer used for £300. The Behringer XR12 is £325 (with just enough channels) at Thomann, a used XR16 will do what you want and an XR18 would give you a lot of spare capacity you'll probably never use but at only marginal extra cost. If you want simple and reliable there's an RCF M18 on eBay at the moment. Have a quick look at Soundcraft too.

There's a good thread already on this forum and another one elsewhwere. The only two I've actually used are the Behringer XR18 and the RCF M18 now discontinued, which was what I bought. It's hard at the bottom end of the market to go past the Behringers. Re- reading your posts here the XR16 would probably do all you want and the XR 18 would cover every eventuality. At this price point I think the only other option at the moment is the Soundcraft Ui series, possibly the Zooms but they are more geared for studio and podcasting though some people are successfully using them for gigs.

And I note two guitars, bass, drums and vocals. I'm assuming you have back line and some bits and pieces like mic's and stands. I'm not going to try to tell you how to do it, that's probably another question and another thread. You'll need to make some decisions before you buy though. So as a minimum you'll need a couple of speakers, mixer and amps, stands to hold up the speakers and all the associated leads. Just like bass you can buy separate speakers and amps or a combo with both built in. In PA you can buy active speakers (the combo version) or separates passive PA speakers and amps. You can even buy a mixer with the amps built in. Almost everyone buying now will be buying active speakers with a passive PA mixer. You'll also need to think about monitoring. You ask what sort of power you'll need, that's a bit of a minefield not least because the manufacturers are in an arms race of exaggeration (lying?) about the power they rate their gear at, so much so that you should probably ignore any power figures. I'd say just go for a couple of the best active 12" speakers you can afford, most 12" speakers can only handle aroudn 300W before overloading so If you go for any of the decent brands they are actually only going to be running up to that sort of level before they start to distort and most will be plenty for the average UK pub. You can go for 10" or !5" units but 10's will probably struggle for most bands and 15's are just unnecessary weight (I have 15's, trust me here, I used to run 12's!) A pair of used but good 12" active PA speakers are going to cost you £300-450 for a pair and if you are lucky you'll get the stands thrown in. The good news is that there isn't a lot of rubbish out there and even some of the cheaper brands can sound OK. Before you choose your speakers however have a think about your mixer. You can fill a room from your backline and go for vocals only through PA and if you are goodat PA even get a reasonable sound but it's tough to do and the on'stage sound levels are going to be damaging to your hearing. What the audience will hear will be poorer too as the vocal mic's witll be picking up all that noise and distorting the audiences sound. Even if you don't do it from day one you'll eventually want to put more through the PA and turn down the on-stage levels. That means you'll need channels for everything so you need to buy a mixer that will grow with you. Inputs for all the instruments and mics and probably at least three channels for drums. What I'm leading up to is that if you can possibly afford it buy a digital mixer, they offer everything you need into a compact package and for the same facilities they work out much cheaper. The reality is that they will offer so much more, More than enough channels for any pub band, comprehensive tone controls on every input, flexible effects on every channel, graphic equaliser on the output to compensate for room acoustics and deal with feedback and a lot of automation to help you set up quickly, at a minimum you can save the settings that work and use them again at every gig. All I do at most gigs now is recall my settings and adjust the master volume. You'll also have an output so each band member can have their own monitoring if they want it. Most of them will record the gig for you and let you mix it down later. You'll also be able to mix from anywhere in the room. If you are starting from scratch they are probably simpler to learn than an ana logue desk.

I've not read the whole thread but thought it worth sharing. Probably the best drummer I ever played with had Alzheimers. It was a startup band of experienced musicians (god knows how I ended up there) and some of the best music I ever played. We didn't know about this initially. He absolutely nailed the songs of his youth but struggled with anything he didn't already know and the problem was with arrangements, his muscle memory was fantastic and all his licks were completely intact. That was 10 years ago and he is still playing but sticking to 60s and 70's standards plus a bit of blues. If he is struggleng with memory it doesn't necessarily progress quickly and being a musician is genuinely protective, yet another study reported in this weeks New Scientist It looks like you want to support your bandmate and that is terrific. Just playing will slow the advance of Alzheimers if that is what it is and he was probably really scared of telling you. If I had a tight band doing 43 gigs a year I'd definitely keep it going. It gets harder to find new bands as you get older, I'm in my 70's and still fit but you don't know what is round the corner. New bands can be so political too until everyone settles in. Treasure what you already have.

The SW Bass Bash in Taunton has been running for several years. Again it's a village hall but quite sizeable and with side rooms. We've had Luthiers and small manufacturers on display and I've run amp and speaker shootouts but the main event* is everybody setting up their favourite gear and people getting the chance to try things. It's wonderfully noisy and cheerful and reaffirms your faith in humanity. You can track all this in the Events section of BC. *Actually the main event is the magnificent buffet lunch, but the SW has Mrs Scrumpy and you won't 😁

Hi @ped I think this is one of the threads that should be pinned, it's a matter of operating legally or illegally after all, surely information we should all have available to us . I'm a heavy user of Bass Chat and had never found this thread until today. I do take your point about forums (fora?) needing to be organic places but Bass Chat has grown to be so much more than that and surely there is a place for the more considered 'Wiki' pieces where someone with expertise has taken the trouble to write a more cosidered post. Is there a way to have the more 'substantial' contributions available to newcomers to BC rather than some of the (ahem) less well informed kickabout that happens in the general debate that goes on. It's the nature of something this well written that we just need to read it and out questions and comments become less frequent and it disappears because even people as voluble as me realise there is nothing to add.

This is probably your best place for information Your choice is fairly simple; digital or analogue. The digital systems hava a tiny delay called latency, it isn't enough for you to hear or to put you off on its own but all the delays in the chain add up so if you have digital wireless in-ears and a digital mixer it might become a problem. Some people are more sensitive to this than others. Analogue loses this problem but then the problem is that the signal is compressed for transmission and expanded when it gets to the receiver, in the best systems you won't notice but cheaper systems degrade your sound a little. Some of the best systems work on frequencies that need a licence. You probably need to look at what other band members are using, wireless kit share frequency bands and you can run out of space and get interference. 2.4G will run out before 5.8G for example. @EBS_freak is our expert on all things wireless so have a look at that thread

It's insane just how much amp you get for your money nowadays. I use my baby Gnome as first choice amp nowadays as it sits in my gig bag. It was meant to be backup but the 'real' amps usually end up left in the van.

You should just use an ordinary XLR 'mic' lead to connect to your interface. If you are already using a mic and don't have a spare input you can use an XLR to TRS jack to plug into the guitar input on the interface but a mic lead is better. I use my Gnome's DI out at every gig and it's a good'un. Keep the volume down when you start but the output from my (non-pro) Gnome isn't very hot, much lower than that from my SansAmp so I doubt you'll have trouble. The USB is at the end of an inbuilt interface so it's a digital output and should work plugging into a USB input in your computer but won't work with the audio inputs on your interface. That speaker looks very familiar Have fun

Welcome to Basschat Bass fashions change all the time and as music changes bass tones change and manufacturers have to follow those trends and of course people like to use the same gear as their idols/role models.The cabs you mention all have a midrange 'suckout' so what you are hearing is the midrange being put back, nothing to do with the neo magnets. You'll also notice a tendency to add in horns and to give more at the top end which will add to the brightness. The theory is that if you start with an uncoloured sound then you should be able to eq any sound you want. Your choice is to add in a 'dull thud' effects box or to accept that you are going to have to just dial in your own midrange suckout. Having said that there are cabs out there that attempt to create an 'old school' sound with lightweight speakers. Have a look at the Barefaced 10's as suggested as the most obvious attempt at an old school sound from really lightweight speakers but if you just mean smaller and lighter rather than the ultimate in light then there are still loads of options in modern gear even if the tendency is towards less coloration. BTW it's nothing to do with neo magnets which are just magnets but smaller or with class D v's AB which are just amps with different 'sauce' applied in the rest of the amp.

And @EBS_freak knows a lot more about this than I do. I used his advice in that long thread a lot on my journey to in-ears. All I can do is summarise my journey and what I found helpful and give you some practical tips. I too have some hearing loss and tinnitus as well. My journey started partly because of that and was partly stimulated by my experiences in the studio. Everything about my playing in the studio was better to the extent that I believed someone had dubbed over my bass with theirs. All that had happened was that playing through headphones had cut out extraneous noise and given me my best mix so that I could hear myself clearly and play with precision, my ears and brain just took over and the sounds in my head were what my fingers were actually doing. I could also hear everyone else much more clearly. I'd strongly recommend you start at rehearsals with some tight fitting over-ears. You can get the mix right for you and know that is the sound you are going to feed your in-ears is spot on. Start off with that studio sound. Tip 1. make sure you get good isolation. People who give up on in-ears are going to do so because they don't do this. You have to block out as much as you can of the drums and over-loud guitar or whatever. If you don't you'll have to turn the in ears up loud enough to drown out an already too loud sound. The stage sound will also be out of phase (I can explain that if you ask) with the in ears and make everything even more distorted. Isolation is about fit: the better the fit to your ears the less sound will come in from outside. In order of seal best is moulded in-ears> moulded ear buds>self selected ear buds>the buds that come with the in-ears. You can get as much as 26db of isolation with moulded in-ears, 18db is the most you can get if you seek out the best fitting universal plugs and the provided ones will probably give you 6-12db isolation. 6db means a 75% cut in the power reaching your eardrums. Tip 2. Finding the right ear buds. I have boxes of plugs in all the shapes and sizes, they are dirt cheap and you can buy boxes of mixed sizes on Amazon and eBay. Everyones ears are different and most people's ears are different from each other. You know when you get the best fit because you'll hear the bass better. If there is any leakage the bass is lost, it depends upon a good seal. If you get better bass when you gently push in the headphones then they haven't sealed. Obviously if they drop out they haven't sealed and if the world hasn't gone quiet you haven't found your fit. I've ended up with triple flanged buds that push right into my ear canal but everyone has different ears so you'll need to go on looking. So the next thing to consider are the headphones, I've used some cheap domestic Sennheisers with success but you are limited in the volume you can get and live music is uncompressed usually so the difference between the average volume and quiet bits is much greater than recored music and domestic in ears are going to distort, OK to test the concept but you'll need an upgrade sooner or later. Fortunately there are reasonably priced options. The Linsoul ZS10 Pro X are probably the way to go as they are bargain of the century, they have five drivers a side and will handle everything you throw at them and are priced around £45 if you shop around. Moderately bulky but a good fit for most people. Shure's SE215's (around £100) are used by a lot of singers but can struggle with bass and drums, Sennheiser IE100's are similar, both are single driver phomes which limits bass handling but both handle mids well. Shures are famous for fitting well but everyone's ears are different so no guarantees. I have IE100's and I prefer the midrange to the ZS10's but use the ZS10's more often. If you are determined to make this work and money is no object then go for moulded in ears from the start. Otherwise I'd go for the ZS10's. The other thing you'll need is a headphone amp, something to put on the floor in front of you or to have on your belt to power the phones and give you a volume control you can reach. Most of us are using the Behringer P2. Reasonably robust in a metal case, runs on AAA batteries and has a bit of rudimentary ear protection £50. Or you can go wireless which is another can of worms. Now you have to get the signal from the band to your headphones. You have a problem here as your Dynacord only has one Aux so you are stuck with the front of house mix or the monitor mix. You can get round this in a few ways but nothing beats a mixer with at least one aux per person preferably with tone controls on each output. Since none of your band are interested yet you are probably stuck with a workaround. If you can cope with the front of house mix then you can take this from the Headphone out or from the Aux out which will give you the ability to have a special monitor mix if no-one else is using the aux channel. I'll come back and deal with work rounds for limited mixers

Calm down Actually not suggestions but just examples I'd picked out from reading the thread. The AER was just an example of something off the scale pricewise to illustrate the point and was in any case only mentioned on a You Tube video so nobody here is demonstrating their taste. The PJB is an example of something which would make a great practice amp but not a gigging amp. I also didn't jump to the conclusion that the OP might be hard up or that although new they were new to bass they might be an experienced musician on other instruments. The OP asked about small size and practicality not price and it is surely up to them to decide whether they want to set a budget or say whether they prefer a combo or not.

Wellcome to BassChat. I'm guessing from your name you play guitar as well as bass so may have some experience? I think the first thing which would help us all to home in on suggestions is your budget. The AER Amp One in the video would solve all your problems but at £1939 is beyond most of our budgets. No 2. on the list would be how you intend using your new amp. There are a few really nice sounding practice amps like the PJB's but they sacrifice sound levels for sound quality and if you intended jamming along with a drummer won't quite cut it. If you intend playing acoustic music something like that willbe really portable and room friendly at home. No 3. Combo's are great, grab and go and nice and tidy with fewer leads and boxes to trip over if space is limited. Separate amps and speakers are a lot more flexible and the Micro amps like the Elf and Gnome are tiny enough to fit in a gig bag leaving your hands free to carry a speaker. If you narrow it down a little then you'll get more relevant suggestions.

We've gone the same route which I think we've talked about on other threads. The thing is that when you get the fit worked out and sufficient isolation both can work well and of course the bass response depends more upon the seal than upon the drivers. The mid range on the IE100's is much cleaner though. When they are seated properly at the beginning of the gig both give crazily good sound compared with floor monitors, so far I've struggled to keep that sound for whole gigs. Hence the move to moulds which I hope will solve the problem of keeping the seal/isolation and the same response I have at the beginning of the gig. This ^ My hearing is already much reduced and I have constant tinnitus. Since wearing the in-ears I don't get the ringing in my ears the day after each gig. Any ringing in your ears after a gig is a sure sign of damage. I so wish I had started wearing them earlier.

Lugs and Snugs do moulds that fit generic/universal headphones. It's a bit cheaper than buying 'proper' moulded in ears but there's a lot of cost in taking the impressions so I'm not sure how much you might save. Equally spending hundreds on in-ears without being able to give them a proper audition first scares the pants off me. At least using your own earbuds means you get to hear them before the big expense. I'm about to try this route too so fingers crossed.

I had no idea such things existed, I've never seen one.

Welcome to BassChat If you have time look out in the events section of BassChat for a bass bash, annual events where you can go along and try everyone's rigs in one place. You've missed them for this year but it's the best place to try out a wide range of gear in one place. You've got a couple of mini amps in there the Elf and Gnome. I've got a Gnome and have tried the Elf. Remember they are only 130W into 8ohms. The gnome is my go to for stage monitoring but it won't fill a medium sized venue so will be limited of you don't have PA support. From your list I also have the Minimax which sounds great fresh out of the tin, plenty of power and lots of useful tone options. Beware the cooling fan though if noise from that bothers you, it won't on stage but at home it might be intrusive. I'm using the Bugera Veyron Bugera not 2000W but 700W well made and cheap. Anything Ashdown you like is worth considering because of their legendary after sales support. Barefaced stuff is excellent but I would have thought was in the 'break the bank' category. More affordable , better IMO and almost as light is LFSys https://www.lfsys.co.uk/ made by a basschatter and if you go to the affiliates section here you can get a discount. When I was looking I went round watching as many pub bands as I could, you might not get to play the gear but you can get to hear a lot of different kit and you don't have to stay long if you don't want to.