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Phil Starr

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Everything posted by Phil Starr

  1. Phil Starr
    The bad news is that MB aren't really home repairable and that in the UK at least after sales support is poor. The good news is that it sounds like at least something is working and that there is a possibility of a few checks before you have to seek drastic and expensive repairs. It's possible that with sound coming out when you turn off that there is a power supply issue or it could be a contact issue. Turning it on and off when everything lights up and the fan switches on is encouraging. The fx send and return are interesting. The return gives you access to the power amp bypassing the pre amp and controls, Try just plugging something into the return and see if that comes out of the speaker, it might be quite quiet because you will have less gain at that point but if it is undistorted the amp section is working. Plugging in a jump lead between send and return as above might help too. They are linked internally with a switch which sometimes corrodes causing problems. If that re-establishes the connection you know the problem, it can be worth spraying a little switch cleaner into the sockets and wiggling a plug in and out to clean up the sockets. If not you are probably going to be in the hands of a tech.
  2. Phil Starr
    I use either with the bass matched to who I'm playing with. A passive J with my duo and an active P with the band. TBH I could probably swap them round and nobody would notice. I don't do a lot of tone shaping though and I have control of the desk so I adjust it there if I need to adapt to the venue. I use a SansAmp or my Zoom B1 for a little pre shaping to get 'my' tone. My plan is to get two or three pre shapes for the duo where there is less opportunity for changes in texture when there is just the two of us.
  3. Phil Starr
    Damn you now I have another job to do. I go ampless to most gigs but have 5 amps which is a bit excessive, now I have to clear some of them out. FWIW Bugera Veyron (my go to) Warwick Gnome (backup and open-mic) Peavey Minimax (now never used, I really ought to sell it) Hartke 3500 (probably my best sounding amp but too heavy and long in the tooth, again I ought to sell but it's worth so little) MB Tube (currently dead) (I need to fix this or sell it on for someone else to tinker with)
  4. Phil Starr
    I really didn't want to play this but then I actually listened to the bass and fell in love. So simple but made by the notes he left out. The under-rated Tommy Cogbill
  5. Phil Starr
    It's always a tough one isn't it? We lost our singer and drummer during "you know what" We took a punt on a singer who had sung in choirs and acapella groups but never with a band and our drummer is an old pro who was better than the old drummer even at the audition. She's moved the band on a mile and so far so good with the singer. Both are great to work with too. Having to re-build is a pain though.
  6. Phil Starr
    Mixing cabs is a bit of auditory cookery really. You can put unusual ingredients into your cake and it might taste delicious and it might not be very nice. the only way to find out is to mix it up and taste it. In all probability your first attempt is less likely to be successful than following a recipe but there is also the possibility of a happy accident. in any case my taste is different from yours. I've never liked advice that is categorical and its the never part of mixing cabs that is the issue with that sort of advice. In this case you've cooked up a couple of ingredients you had in and the result is tasty. Why wouldn't you try it out?
  7. Phil Starr
    I'm in your hands but it might be interesting, We've done speakers for the last two bashes, though I suspect the amps will be less varied, we might be surprised though.
  8. Phil Starr
    The crew got a bit iffy when I suggested taking a feed from the floor monitors, they were at the limits of their technical ability I suspect. They'd set up the subs under each of the flying arrays about 20m apart when they had plenty of space under the stage to acoustically couple them. They'd also set them to overwhelm the tops which weren't working hard at all and there was very little top end for cymbals. Sometimes you just have to smile, hope and get on with it. Nobody loves a smarty pants. Mind you having been very suspicious of the in-ears my lot wouldn't go back. I quite like the splitter idea though, we've got a couple of active DI's that would have done that. I see @Alfie Noakes was at the same gig the day before
  9. Phil Starr
    Aaaarghhh. Another mini festival gig ruined by the hire company. Too much through the subs so overwhelming bass out front and impossibly poor on stage monitoring. We were promised an in ear mix only to be told they only had one lead available and that had been given to the drummer. Not prepared to give me the feed from the floor monitor. We have an electric kit so poor monitoring is a real problem.
  10. Phil Starr
    Good luck
  11. Phil Starr
    I feel your pain. Replacing your singer is the most disruptive thing that can happen to a band. Any decent guitarist, bassist or keys player is going to be able to bang out most or all of your set. The human voice is just not that adaptable and your singer is inevitably your front person. If the songs don’t suit you will have to drop and replace them. That’s just reality, they have to sell the song not just sing the notes. It’s hugely disruptive and not really the singers fault. I really think you’ve answered your own question 80% of your songs are ‘male’. Look for a singer male or female but if 80% of your songs were written for male voices you have to be realistic about what the most likely outcome is.
  12. Phil Starr
    Spend wisely and spend only once. £800-900 is a good budget so you should be aiming for good kit. Of what is suggested RCF and Yamaha are good and pretty much bombproof. QSC too but I’d go for RCF for the best quality for you vocals. RCF have recently discontinued the 300 series which was their base level kit but you may just still find some discounted. The 700 series are really nice and 900 even better. The numbering is fairly simple the 712 is 700 series with a 1” tweeter and 12” bass speaker. So a 935 is a slightly better 15 with a 3” tweeter. You can just about afford an RCF 712 system new but I’d probably look for used. There are three pairs of 712’s on FB Marketplace today for£600 for example. I’d happily gig with 312’s as well which should be cheaper. If you do want to save money then the old passive speakers can be found really cheaply but you’d need to know enough to match the amp and it’s just a little more fuss to set up. A good option if you know enough and money is tight though.
  13. Phil Starr
    kozfest
  14. Phil Starr
    You said yourself that designing cabs is like modelling balloons. You press down on somewhere for an improvement and something else pops up. MDF is fantastic for cabs, it's a completely uniform and consistent material. compared with other boards it is self damping and largely non resonant as a result. The extra mass helps too in a cab. It's also reasonably tough. The big problems are weight, how badly it deforms with even a little moisture and the dust it produces when you machine it. Chipboard (particle board in the US ) is good too but it needs to be high density and have fine particles at least on the outside or it is a B****r to finish well. If it isn't high density it's too soft and doesn't take knocks well but high density means just that, it's heavy. So then there is plywood which comes in so many grades but is essentially lighter and tougher than the other man made boards but acoustically more resonant and will need more bracing for a similar performance. Useable is a good word, bracing a cab extensively pushes up the time and labour costs so every cab is a compromise between price, sound quality and practicality. These things go in fashion a little too, we aren't entirely rational and at one time it was never mind the quality feel the weight
  15. Phil Starr
    That's the problem with baked in loudness equalisation, you can eq most of it out but it's a huge task to do it well. Hoping this isn't a thread de-rail but I've been using FRFR for a while and the first thing you have to do is roll off the bass, preferably with a shelving filter if you are using PA speakers. The 6db floor reinforcement of the lowest frequencies is a killer. I use RCF310's both as PA and floor monitors with my duo (Sorry Russ no in-ears there, but we operate at much lower sound levels and I love the freedom) Bass through FOH needs no tweaking but I shelve 6db from 200Hz and use a 50hz HPF to get the balance with FOH back for the monitors. On resonant wooden stages I'm even more aggressive. FRFR needs a mind shift.
  16. Phil Starr
    OK that's really interesting, I'm really contemplating trying custom fits, it is a big layout and i couldn't afford the £800-1000 some of the pro ones cost, but if they really stay put and make a better seal I'd be happy with the sound quality of the IE100's or thereabouts. Did you try the MEE's with custom moulds or universal plugs? Which ones worked best with your piano? I'm guessing those would also work best with vocals?
  17. Phil Starr
    Damn you Now I'm going to have to lend mine to our singer, she's already commandeered my radio mic, now I'm going to lose my in-ears.😂😂
  18. Phil Starr
    There you go, they are obviously different depths but the profile is ear shaped so similar, you can see that the plug goes off at a more acute angle on the zx10's, whether that is a good thing depends upon the angle your ear canal leaves your ears. For me the ZX10's are probably a better match but there's not a lot in it. All of us are different and the obvious solution is to get proper fitted custom in-ears. You can see I use the triple flange buds, they are a bit surgical in insertion and from time to time I can leave them behind in my ears but the seal is really good, the little flange goes right into my ears. Dave is right though; the buds are the real problem, and getting a good fit is all importan. I've tried dozens but unfortunately my two ears are completely different sizes and shapes
  19. Phil Starr
    I'm using the IE100 pro. single driver but plenty of bass and to be honest a lot more detail in the bass due to the mids being more present. I couldn't get the sound I wanted out of the KZ10's. I sing as well as play bass and the huge midrange suckout of the KZ's just made my vocals sound horrible (well more horrible than even the reality) The IE 100's are much closer to my Sennheiser HD595's I use for personal practice. The lead vocals are much better too. I want as much isolation as I can get and then I don't need extreme volume. I want to save what's left of my hearing. the IE100's go much louder than I can handle without distortion and have more bass than I really want, nothing below 80Hz suits me for monitoring. It's the harmonics I need to tell how well or badly I'm playing. The live monitoring sound is now really pretty damn good and getting better as I climb the learning curve. That doesn't mean the KZ's are bad, if I didn't need to monitor my own vocals I'd be completely content with them. If cheap really is your aim I found that the KZ ZSN's are really rather good, my drummer pinched them to use and I realised I preferred them to the ZS10's
  20. Phil Starr
    Just a heads up that this is a slight design fault with the P2. It's very easy to slide into the stereo position when either inserting batteries or sliding the outside sleeve back on, all of our band have done this at least once. Really simple to fix once you know and to check but the first time it happens can be a panicky moment
  21. Phil Starr
    It's a great set list for me. It says straight away that this is a band who want to entertain an audience and gig a lot. Sure it's a bit cheesy and not what I'd listen to at home but the audience will love it and also love you if you play it with conviction. For me they aren't Dakota's they are Mustang Sally's and every covers band has a few of these in the set if they have the sense they were born with. Solid reliable songs that most audiences want you to play, floor fillers but also songs that cost you nothing to learn. It's like the posh restaurant that won't put salt on the table as the chef knows better than you, why be in hospitality if you don't like being hospitable. Personally something I try and avoid is being in a band with people who think a particular song is beneath them. It's usually because their part isn't up to their own selfish needs, no high C for the singer to show off their range, no guitar solo for the guitarist, straight 8's for the bassist and so on. You are in a band, being paid to entertain an audience who want to have fun. I've happily gigged We Will Rock You (no bass) and Seven Nation Army (even I'm bored with that, but the audience think it's my favourite song) Being in a general covers band isn't about you the musician it's about delivering pleasure, being in the centre of a big happy room. Of course there are other approaches, you can go down the tribute band or genre band routes or have a bit of identity, nothing wrong with a blues/classic rock/ska/soul/reggae band either. Dakota has great lyrics by the way and Tommy Cogbill's bass on Mustang Sally is a joy to play as is his line on Sweet Caroline. There's nothing as powerful as cheap perfume and cheap music.
  22. Phil Starr
    Great advice above. OK you only mentioned a mic, a mix of the piezo and a mic like that is a great way to go. Your original post also implied both bass feedback and problems with mids and top end so I was trying to address both. The QSC is a great speaker, I was going to suggest that a PA speaker would be a way to go, the flatter the response the less chance of hitting those resonances. Few dedicated bass speakers or amps are truly flat response and the whole point of PA speakers is to only reproduce what they are sent. We've been looking at speakers for DB recently and a restricted bass response helps a lot. We had good results with a 'shelving response' where the inherent characteristic of the speaker starts to cut the bass fairly high up but then sees it fall slowly down to cover most of the fundamental frequencies.
  23. Phil Starr
    With any acoustic instrument the problem is down to resonances. There are frequencies at which the body of the bass is going to resonate and other frequencies at which the air inside will also resonate. It's what makes an acoustic instrument sound different from a solid bass. If your amplification also has peaks at those frequencies you'll get feedback earlier as you turn the volume up. Your speaker will have frequency peaks and yes, some speakers are flatter than others but largely that isn't due to the diameter of the speaker. A lot of those frequencies are affected by distance, starting with the mic. Have a look at You Tube for videos on how to mic an acoustic guitar, the positioning of the mic is crucial to getting a good sound and avoiding feedback. I'm assuming you are using a vocal mic? That may have built in frequency boosts to enhance the human voice. Ultimately you might need to look at buying a new mic or going for a fitted pickup. Worth also visiting the UB section of BassChat and asking there. Don't go rushing out and buying stuff though, try and get the best out of what you have and study how other people are doing this. I remember from my PA days back in the early 70's the nightmare of mic'ing up acoustic guitars and the joy of semi acoustics with built in pickups when they first appeared. There's a learning curve I'm afraid. Good Luck
  24. Phil Starr
    Brilliant enjoy it 😀
  25. Phil Starr
    This, it’s probably true for most of us that our peak period for forming musical tastes started mid teens and went on for about ten years from that. Don’t underestimate them though you don’t lose interest in music just spend a little less time listening to new stuff as you age. If they are bringing instruments then they are interested in music at least. you probably want to think about pedagogy a bit; how you will teach them. All working on the same songs? Small group work? What skills do they bring? What do they want to achieve? What’s your class size? How long do you have. What instruments are they bringing? You will get to know them fairly quickly. The best advice I can give as a retired teacher is to teach the class you have. And make it fun. Good luck it’s a great thing to do.
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