Phil Starr

It's probably covered in here, one of the most useful and comprehensive threads in BassChat FWIW I've found that this is the most difficult price range, there is either cheap analogue stuff, digital which has a bit of latency and the really good analogue which is more expensive.

No the Lekato did a good job pretty much. No drop outs at 50m on the way out but it dropped out at 20m when I turned my back on the stage and interrupted the line of sight with my body. I'm going to have to cut the double axel out of my dance routine

Problem solved it seems. I've put an 80Hz HPF on the guitar channel and Mike has made some adjustments to his fx, we gigged last night (at a different but still cramped venue) and not a hiccup. When we go back to the venue where the problem happened we'll sound check those patches before we start but I don't anticipate any issues.

I've been a Wharfedale user for years, I still have a complete EVPsystem with subs as a backup system. They are old and heavy but sound great and are very reliable, but also provide proper cutomer support. Wharfedale are now owned out of Hong Kong in a group with old UK firms like Audiolab and Quad. The Delta series were their 'quality' range at the top of to stuff they make for pub bands, disco's and clubs. For that you get wooden (MDF) rather than plastic cabs. I've not heard the latest ones but earlier iterations were very comparable with Yamaha cabs for build quality and sound but at a much better price. Ignore the specs, The Wharfedale specs for the AX range are true RMS/AES values, strangely the AXF range advertises inflated peak values. The AX looks very much like a smartened up re-vamp of the EVP's with the AXF's being re-vamped Deltas. If you can afford the extra the Delta AXF range will offer Baltic birch cabs and slightly better bass drivers along with FIR technology which improves the sound at the crossover frequency. If you want to go 'cheap' the Tourus range of plastic cabs seems to correspond with the AX and the Typhon roughly with the AXF but with platic cabs. Again I haven't tried them but I did own a pair of Wharfedale Titans which were great for vocals and really lightweight but the plastic cabs resonated like mad if you put bass through them at high power. I don't think you'd have that problem with bass through the MDF cabs. Hope that helps.

Interesting experience of feedback last Sunday. We were on the edge of feedback all evening which i just about managed to tame. It's possibly a good illustration of the problems anyone who gigs regularly is bound to encounter. Just to give some background this was a decent sized venue and it is expanding it's music evenings so was very much an event I wanted to work well. This was their first event with a 'band' in the bar rather than their function room. It was a big rectangular space inside an industrial unit and pretty crowded with people. We ended up in the corner at the back of the room with very little space. To one side was the door to the toilets so we couldn't expand sideways and we couldn't expand forwards because it was so crowded. We'd been hired as a duo because they knew space was limited so no point complaining. For them it was a test to see what could be done. So the space allowed for us was around 4m wide and 3m deep hard against one wall and the rear of the room. Set up is two of us, guitar and bass with self programmed drums. We use two RCF ART310's as PA and two more as floor monitors, no backline and monitors levels are quite low, to give you an idea I don't get any ringing in my ears after a set and the sound of our voices can be heard clearly over the monitors. Because of the lack of space we were only about a metre behind the FOH and so around 1.4m diagonally from them. There was a lot of bass coming back to our stage area from the PA easily drowning out the bass from the monitors which I filter at 50 Hz and also shelve quite heavily. The bass was at a level where it was setting off low frequency resonances in the acoustic guitar. The cause of our bass feedback was very simple; bass frequencies from the PA speakers too close to the guitar. Bass frequencies are omnidirectional, just as loud behind as in front and with the PA loud in a big room bass levels on stage were crazy. There's not a lot you can do, it only happened when Mke used certain settings on his pedals and then only when he wasn't touching the sound board on the guitar. We moved the speakers as far forward as possible and stuck some LED strips onto the speaker stands to reduce the chance of them getting knocked over. We couldn't really move back, I could have reduced the bass on the desk but couldn't have got out to the FOH to hear the results on the overall sound and I'm really reluctant to fiddle with settings whist I'm playing. I reduced the volume 1db pulled back the guitar a couple of db in the mix (my mixer allows 1db adjustments) and Mike tried not to let go of the guitar. We recorded the set so we can go back and work out which of his settings is causing the problems and see if it can be tweaked. Sometimes you just have to put up with a compromised sound and the solution cannot be done in the room. I struggle to multi task and my bass playing and contact with the audience takes precedence over mixing once the gig is going and the dance floor full. The gig went well the venue want us back and are sorting dates. The audience had a good time. I hated the sound being compromised but I'm not going to let that spoil a good gig and it was only two songs in the end.

Again you need to get back to us so we know what you are trying to achieve. If you just want bass through the monitor then you can take your signal from a DI or straight from the bass. If you have DI on your amp you could use that to feed the monitor or the mixing desk and you can also buy a splitter to send a feed to both at the same time. If you want anything else in your monitor then it would be better to take the signal from your mixer. I'm a little worried about your little Behringer as a bass monitor though, it won't go very loud and doesn't have a lot of bass. If it's something you own already there is no harm in trying it but it's not what I would buy for bass. Reports are that it sounds good but distorts easily when overloaded. You'd need to have it on a pole at head height for it to be useful. You couldn't use it as a bass amp/monitor on it's own except at very modest levels.

To be fair that was for a particular hall and given that space and access to top quality kit and lots of it most of us would do something similar. The useful thing about this video is the heat maps which illustrate the dispersal patterns. A picture is worth a thousand words I guess

I can't see it making a difference so long as the gain isn't set so high that you've introduced some clipping. some of the cheaper mixers back in the day struggled for gain and everything was set to 11. Modern digital mixers have oodles of dynamic range and really quiet mic pre's so you don't need to set the initial gain high and gain staging becomes less critical. As Buddster says you wouldn't normally touch the channel gains once you'd done an initial check. There's a lot of folk lore from the old days still kicking around. I just recall the settings from memory for all our gigs now, except for the drummer who is always fiddling with her send on the elecric kit. She insists she doesn't but the meter says she does

I think it was John, it makes a lovely cable just the right balance of flexibility and toughness, it feels great in your hands and is a joy to coil and uncoil. Sounds trivial to rave about a piece of wire but I absolutely love it. Yeah it is just a an LPF I never used it at a gig but I compared it with a 10m cable when I first bought the Line6 and it did what it said on the can, made it sound like the cable. The wireless connection was just a little brighter. I'd compare the difference to comparing new Rotosounds to ones a few days old. For me that was a gain which could be eq'd out elsewhere if I needed to

This was a big garden with picnic tables scattered around. It was rural Dorset with lots of space and not so many people. I imagine it's also about angles, I'm only a 32"waist but at 3" away from the transmitter I block maybe 170deg of radiation

The Line6 has a 'cable' setting. Whisper it quietly it's the cable you gave me Which is great by the way.

Oh come on C is 262, Bis 247Hz maybe the pub only employ guitarists who tune to Eb

Thanks Al, I hadn't noticed a lot of noise though my Line6 was actually much quieter than a cable. My first gig with the Lekato was in a pub garden. It still connects at 100m though not it you get your body between it and the receiver.

I don't think people are reading your post properly. It's unusual to get a sub with power amps for passive tops but not unknown. It is after all what the subs in a lot of the current ' stick' PA systems like the Bose and Evox J8 do. Without knowing which model your cab is I can't be certain but it sounds like it is designed to be a stereo PA system with a single sub. You should be able to use it with bass with the two passive satellites or even with one. It should have a way of adjusting the realtive volume of the tops and the subs but certainly that is something to check before you buy/go ahead. As a system it seems a bit over the top, though it would double as PA for your band. I wouldn't want anything bigger than a couple of 12's for my bass rig. there is another problem that in many live situations you don't need the lower frequencies coming out of your bass rig, I often filter the bass at 50Hz to allow the drums some space and to clean up the bass in a resonant room. However I've tried playing bass through pretty much every speaker I've owned and I've no idea what sort of music you will play so if you don't mind carrying three boxes where one will do and this isn't too expensive it might be fun to try

It's imbecilic. They don't need your word they can check this themselves in seconds by just speaking into the mic from the front, sides and back.

Hi John, the secong part is that no I don't think that's a good idea generally. Note the generally. Most of your feedback issues if you are talking about high frequencyhowlround comes from what is going on close to the mics. Sound falls away with distance so the shortest route is the one you need to suspect first. Toeing in the speakers will probably make things worse. The horns (all speakers in fact) don't have a cut off point at which nothing spills to the side. The sound radiated sideways falls off slowly and starts to lobe off axis. the further off axis generally the less high frequency content but remember those off axis lobes. Turn your speakers in and you decrease the angle to the mic increasing high frequencies and you may even reach the mic with one of the lobes so statictically you'll increase the chance of howlround. It might be better to toe out but moving the speaker forwards is going to be your best first move. The other cause of feedback are room resonances. Moving the speakers away from reflective surfaces may help here but it's really difficult to read a room in a few minutes whilst setting up in a new venue. that's much more appropriate for permanent installations or a touring band with sound engineers and time to set up properly. Speaker placement does make a difference but a set toe-in is a bit like setting your graphic to a smily eq. I'd also be looking at the microphones first. What is their pickup pattern, cardioid or super cardioid? The former may be picking something up from the sides but not from down the barrel. the latter is more likely to be getting it from along the axis of the mic and not from the sides. Watch your vocalist too, they tend to wave the mic around and point it into corners at random. You can often spot the direction that creates the feedback issue. they will blame you for the feedback though Place your speakers to give the audience the best coverage, not to anticipate feedback you might not get. Good coverage and you might be able to turn down a notch. We've played places with L shaped rooms before now or even two separate rooms. You just have to deal with what you have when you get there.

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 👍