Phil Starr

Surely the thing to concern us is the disappearance of physical music shops. Nearly all the help I’ve had over the years has been from people who were performing musicians who were using the job to fund their passion. They were a great place to just hang out too. Now almost all of those shops have gone. This hasn’t been helped by decisions made far away by the likes of Gibson and Fender not to supply small outfits. This isn’t just true of guitar and bass either. Most of the shops selling and supporting classical instruments are disappearing too. The days when you could pop out and buy an odd string, replacement skin for your banjo and new reeds for a sax are gone. Sadly that also loses the advice and support these shops used to provide. To be part of a community of musicians. Not to mention the chance to physically try instruments out.

I think you've actually got this. Cabs, amps, pedals, strings and basses all add colouration to the sound. Amp/speaker sims are the equivalent of adding a coloured filter to a photograph. You can do this physically with a physical filter on the lens, use your phone or camera's internal processing or add it later in the studio or at the mixing desk. The think is that a sim is just adding extra filtering, if your amp/speaker already have a bit of bass boost and mid cut then a sim that adds a bit more of both in an attempt to sound like an Ampeg isn't going to work. Hence the comments about blankets being thrown over your sound and the need for multiple eq's. To continue the photography analogy using rose tinted filters isn't going to make everything in the picture pink. it sounds quite sterile when flat most cabs and speakers do some version of the smiley face eq, bass and treble boosted and mids cut back. The majority of people prefer that sound (there are scientific reasons for that) so any flat response speaker is going to sound very different until it is warmed up a bit. Whether you choose to use an amp sim or eq your own sound is really a personal choice. The amp sim is really the ready meal option, quick and simple, possibly made by someone who is a good cook and better than most of us could do, or maybe ready meals just aren't for you. Have confidence in your ears though, the end all you want is a good sound.

I think that the reason I reported back on that gig here is because It's the only time I've really pushed at the limits of what you can do with what is a pretty modest speaker. If I was doing vocal only PA or playing in a smaller venue or with a modest drummer I'd happily use them for bass with no backline. It kind of answered one of the early questions for me in the only way that matters, at a gig. I'd rather gig with 10's that sound good than go for bigger speakers that sound less good or which distort the bass at higher levels. I was pleasantly surprised. I suppose I'm saying absolute volume shouldn't be the question we should put first, or will the PA reproduce deep bass down to 20Hz or whatever. The questions should be how good will my band sound? Will their limitations really impact upon the audience's enjoyment. I was surprised just how hard I could push a compact PA, reminded just how good modern kit is. I've always said that the weak link in the PA is usually the fleshy bit. I'd almost ask you the same question about "what do you mean about"..... low end? If you mean frequencies below 80Hz then we probably do over emphasize it's importance, those frequencies are power hungry and demanding for speakers but add only modestly to audience pleasure for the sort of covers bands that you, I and @Al Krow play in. In a pub where at least some of the punters want to be able to talk, space is limited and acoustics often awful the lowest frequencies can be an issue with bass resonances and multi-path resonances distorting the sound.

I'm just revisiting this thread after our gig last Saturday which kind of demonstrated to me just how far you can push modern PA systems. I probably took the wrong speakers to the gig, we were booked to play in a pub garden in the early evening whilst people were eating. We describe ourselves as a semi acoustic duo and the landlord was making plans to move us inside because of inclement weather. Then the sun came out. The pub is on a regular walk we do in the middle of nowhere with the best views over the Dorset AONB, absolutely stunning. Music is a new venture for the pub and 5-30 on a Sat seemed madness to me. Indoors the rooms are small and I wasn't expecting a big audience given the expected rain. I decided to take the RCF310's and not the 15's. So we set off and the sun comes out before we get there, the pub absolutely knew what it was doing. They'd closed the restaurant and set up a barbeque ended up with at least 70people spread around the garden in pods and at the usual pub picnic tables, some of the tables were 40m away from us. New situation for us but two RCF 310's were looking very inadequate. So we are two vox, guitar and bass with programmed drums for some songs playing cheesy covers. No backline with two ART 310's plus another two as floor monitors covering around 12,000sq ft in the open air with no backline, hmmm So set up and out front using all our saved settings there is a distinct lack of bass and with the sun on the speakers I can see the cones are moving a lot, I'm not going to have a lot of volume left. I roll off the bass below 50Hz fairly sharply and boost a bit of everything in the upper bass/low mids and I've got the bass itself with a 24db/octave filter that I move from 30Hz to 40Hz and just turn it all up a bit more. The bass has warmed up a bit and with a couple of extra db is sitting better in the mix. It's the best I can do. So we start and the first thing that happens is we are asked to turn down, the oldest people in the pub have chosen the table closest to the band. the staff see what is going on and the people on that table disappear inside to finish their meal. I wandered down into the garden a couple of times to check the sound, and also if I'm honest to see how far I could get with my new Lekato wireless thingies (about 30m as it happens) the sound is stunning, vocals guitar and bass all crystal clear. The punters are all happy and people 30m away are singing along now they've finished their food. It's loud enough that they are not self conscious. By the end of the gig we have some dancing. I ask around at the break and everybody says that the sound level is about right and the people at the far end say we have been louder than anyone else so far and that was good. The overload lights on the speakers have flickered a few times but it isn't noticeably distorted out front. So there you go bass and eDrums through a couple of 10" tops in a large garden outdoors and it can be done. The same system indoors would have been deafening with 70 people and we would have backed it off quite a lot.

I wonder why? It is still listed on RCF's catalogue.

There is no way I'd go back to an analogue mixer. Just the size and the ability to store your settings rather than just remember them is enough to make the change. That's without all the extra bells and whistles and separate monitor mixes or each band member. I'm afraid I chickened out of the XR18 learning curve and dodgy router and plumped for the RCF M18 which is a lot simpler, designed specifically for live mixing and has a router that works 100%. It sounds wonderful and there is virtually no learning curve, everything is pretty much completely intuitive. I had a mix set up in minutes straight out of the box. Having meters on everything means you don't need a line check with the audience having to endure endless one-two's I can see straight away if anyone has any hum or noise and if I have a signal and then I can just walk out into the auditorium to do the soundcheck starting with all the saved settings. I can see the advantages of the XR18 but if you only want your mixer for live gigs with a pub band and have everything working first time then this is an easy transition from analogue. I'd buy another tomorrow.

You've gathered by now that the Crown 1502 is the go to for this sort of set up. More power than you'll ever need and the DSP means you can set power limits and have 24db/8ve HPF saving you the cost of a Thumpinator. Reliability comes as standard though to be fair most PA power amps are reliable, even Behringer if you are on a budget. You can also go stereo or run a mix of cabs with a proper crossover to get the sound you want. I wonder if you are going through the PA why you want to have a lot of sound on stage which you will feed into the vocal mics (to be fair maybe you don't, I'm probably reading too much into this) If the PA is what the audience hear then all you need on stage is monitoring, preferably pointing away from the mics. The other factor is that taking a graphic to create your sound is a great choice but could be overkill too. The biggest problem on most stages is too much bottom end. If your speaker is up against any hard surface (floor or rear wall) then you'll get a 6db boost at least in the lower frequencies, more if you have more than one hard surface, on top of that the FOH speakers will radiate the bass in every direction so the PA bass adds to your onstage sound and because of the time delay will muddy the bass as well. It's going to be be really hard to mimic the FOH sound exactly however good the eq. The only way to take room acoustics out of the equation is to use in-ears. The next best option (stating the obvious here) is to use a PA speaker to mimic the PA speaker. You'll have to trim the bass but at least the rest will be 'PA sounding'. Unless you go for one of the new FRFR speakers changing the amp isn't necessarily going to give you all you want. The power amp will remove the colouring from the bass amp but not from the speaker. You would probably be better off using a good quality active PA speaker as a floor monitor to achieve your FOH sound. Better still use in-ears The trouble is that monitoring in that way involves the whole band. If they are relying on your backline for monitoring your bass then you'll need a traditional 'stack' and what you are suggesting is a good solution potentially with more power than you'll ever need. Maybe you should also consider an active PA speaker as backline too.

crikey I didn't know it worked!

Don't forget to adjust the DFA knob.

Yeah anything to do with PA is scattered over the site and difficult to follow and find as a result. It's certainly my experience that the bassists get lumbered with a lot of the technical stuff but we are all musicians and part of that involves at least some knowledge of how the PA works. Actually we have no home for the practicalities of performing live, The section on Performance has a section called 'gigs' but it mainly duplicates the 'how was your gig last night section. Accessories has the wonderful thread on IEM's but a PA is a bit big to be considered an accessory There's actually nothing in Performance about actually performing, recording yes, technique and tabs yes but performing live no. maybe that is where the site designers meant to see discussion about the practicalities of performing but if so it could be more clearly labelled/flagged up. C'mon lets add a sub-section about PA into the Performance section and maybe add a bit about PA into the reviews.

Your mix isn't bad at all, I've heard a lot worse. It's almost impossible to mix perfectly from behind the line as you'll find you play and sing with more energy as you warm up. I agree that keys are a bit forward, but it's not awful. I might have pulled the vocalist back a tiny bit but that might be taste. You do want vocals forward it's just a question of how much. The biggest issue for me was the backing vocals. They are both moving their heads on and off the mic so you aren't getting a consistent sound and they pull away before they've finished the note. I struggle with that myself, you try to put energy into the rest of the performance and forget to centre for the doo-wops. It's probably not far off when they address the mic properly but most of the BV's are too quiet. Set up with something simple you all do everything on, not an instrumental, embarrassingly we use Teenage kicks but it's simple enough that they keep going when the bass stops for me to adjust and we all sing on that.

Given your video of the other day there's a health and safety reason why I put my tops on the subs if I use them Bill is right that sonically it is not the right thing. Close coupling or using a single sub would be better. If there is a space between the subs then the sound from one will arrive later than the sound from the other. Where the distance is a half wavelength or other multiples you'll get cancellation. the result is a lumpy frequency response in the bass. The frequencies which cancel will vary depending upon the spacing and the acoustics of the room. In practice in a pub I don't think the punters are going to notice. If the punter is much nearer one sub than the other then they are only going to hear that speaker and any adjacent walls are going to give multiple pathways and phase cancellation too so you aren't in an acoustically good situation from the start. Also most subs by definition only work at frequencies where our hearing is poor. It's worth being aware of the problem but when you have half an hour to set up at the Dog and Duck on a 'lively' Sat night I wouldn't lose sleep over it. However if @Silvia Bluejay notices the bass changes in different parts of the room that is what is going on.

It's a failsafe for any band to be able to use the floor monitors for PA in an emergency. I've known people use matching speakers for both to give versatility but I have to say I have had zero failures of any of my PA. I use my ART310's as PA at some venues and with my duo. I wouldn't go with a mix of active and passive monitors simply because not many people make them so you will be limited in choice to systems designed at a budget. Just about all modern speakers are built with DSP taking care of crossover and speaker protection/amp management and are better for it. If your active cab went down you would have no monitors. If I was designing a system from scratch I would plan to go in-ears though. Using floor monitors means you are accepting poorer sound quality for your audience and sound levels on stage that will permanently damage your hearing unless you wear hearing protection. In-ears will also mean you will have studio quality sound to play to at every venue irrespective of the room acoustics. The tablet dropping out is a problem with the router, many of the main brands like Behringer have a poor built in router and most users take an external router with them and don't get that problem. Yopu can usually use a Cat5 connection if you are worried. I chose the RCF M18 because stuff not working irritates me and the whole point was to reduce the boxes I had to wire in. That has yet to drop out ever.

It's a real shame we have no home for PA issues but I suppose the techie people hang about here so you should get lots of opinions. The first thing is that the weak part of the PA is usually the soft fleshy bit that twiddles the knobs You can easily spend thousands on a PA so I'm not going to suggest a wholesale replacement, I'm kind of assuming you will use what you have first and you will grow your PA rather than welcome the suggestion to bin stuff. The Soundcraft mixer is decent enough for a basic PA. 2x15's are overkill for most PA's now but if they are really old, and a 450W rating suggests they are then you may have limitations, but the BOX speakers are fairly well regarde and you won't know until you try The current 2x15's are rated 700W. Just play some recorded music through them at volume and make a critical appraisal paying attention to the sound of the vocals. How big are the venues you are playing, I've never fully mic a kit for a pub gig, the most I do is mic the kick. The drumkit is usually the loudest sound for most pub bands downing out the rest of the band and bleeding through the vocal mics, the last thing you need to do is amplify your loudest sound. Obviously there comes a stage when the venue is too big for unamplified drums but if this is your first PA I'd expect it to be a while before you reach that stage. Amplified drums rarely sound as good as they sound acoustically. It's really quite a technical job to mic the whole kit and takes a lot of time to set up, a lot of venues won't welcome you taking that time especially if you are in a pub where people are finishing meals before the band comes on. Monitors are crucial, if you can't hear each other you can't play tight as a band. If anything you need better quality monitors than your PA. Because they are closer to the mics than the PA Mains they are likely to cause most of your feedback problems. A flat response here really helps. Fortunately you don't need them to be particularly loud, you are close and almost any monitor will take you beyond the point where feedback means you have to back off the gain. You don't need extended bass or treble either. In the days when I used monitors I used my RCF ART310's, not exceptional speakers but no sonic nasties, despite being 10's they could reach ear bleeding levels on-stage. Why you would want to make your ears bleed baffles me though!!! That brings me to another aim you ought to be working towards; reducing the sound levels on stage. You can use what you have to give you a vocals plus backline system which people have used since the dawn of rock'n'roll. You really don't need 15" speakers for vocals only though. The problem is having bass and guitars loud enough for the third row back means they a re deafening on stage and will swamp the vocals in the vocal mics which will be picking up more drums and instruments than human voice if you aren't careful. Plus your choice to wear ear plugs or lose some of your hearing. 2x15's were basically built for disco's not for bands but they should handle bass, kick and obviously guitar so I'd be trying to put as much as I could through the PA. So when you are buying I'd always be looking to buy once, to build up the PA you ultimately want. I really wouldn't buy separates now, I'd be looking to replace things with active speakers. I'd also be looking to replace the mixer with a digital mixer as a next step. They are so much more versatile and will unlock all sorts of potential whilst ultimately being easier to use.. Monitors first though in all probability. First step is to set up a technical rehearsal, Hire a decent hall and set up as if you were gigging, Take your time and try and get the best sound possible out of your PA, note your shortcomings and try what solutions you can. I really wouldn't get bogged down in miking the drums at this stage, kick only Good luck

On the subject of finding band members it would be extraordinary for anyone genuinely experienced to have no video or recordings of themselves at all. I've seen plenty of poor video's of good bands or home made recordings poorly mixed by a band member where no-one had the heart to tell them it wasn't great but nothing at all says either they aren't what they claim or they are incredibly disorganised.

WE need video

This really We have a female front person and most of my bands have been this way. I guess I started with a group of friends and our best singer by a distance was Lorraine and I learned a largely female led set list. Once you've got 50+ songs under your belt changing is a steeper learning curve. One of the factors when I'm looking at a new band is how much of the set list we know in common. If you are going to be gigging within a couple of weeks or so you don't want to learn 30 completely new songs. There are a lot of 'rival' bands playing our sort of repertoire who are a bunch of old blokes and a young female singer. There is no shortage of young people who want to play in bands and who are basically just dreamers. Wanting to front a band comes with a big ego. Youth comes with fewer strategies for coping, higher hormone levels and often more drama and that may be a function of youth not gender. Cynically I can see why bands like an attractive young woman out front. The same group of old blokes would probably think twice about recruiting a young male, would they fit in? Recruiting band members is fraught, they need to play/sing but it's a fairly intimate relationship in most bands, one of the attractions is that in a band it is a bit of ''all for one and one for all', us against the world. You really need someone who has the skills and that you can at least rub along with. I find adding the words 'experienced' and 'gigging' to ads weeds out the dreamers and anyone who doesn't have at least some audio and video to show you isn't likely to be worth seeing Just as an aside I've been wondering why I've found this an uncomfortable thread and I think it's the implication that any group of people are in some way all the same. It's a bit Henry Higgins.

I was always a believer, but the band were sceptics. I'd get lynched now if I asked the band to give up their in-ears. Many thanks to you personally Russ both for what you put up here and helping to steer me in the right direction with the odd pm. You are one of the best.

I've kept the front port in the design I've sent off. When I write this up properly I'll just mention it as an option. I want this to be as widely built as possible, as in all our designs, and people are just more comfortable with front ports. Equally I want to demystify cab building, partly because it is fun and partly so they can understand what they are buying from commercial builders. If @chyc wants a bottom port he should try it. I suspect it will make very little difference in practice to the sound though if he is going to use a bigger port he probably needs to think about making the cab bigger by the same volume so the air in the cab stays the same 20l

If I were building this for myself I'd rear mount the port, I'm not keen on downwards because it could potentially introduce a resistive element at the end of the port. I don't think that would be very significant but it would depend upon the length of the feet and possibly the surface underneath. It's been done successfully though. Rear mounting is convenient and it helps make a stronger baffle if you cut less of it away. What's the problem with you BC112 mk3? We might be able to help.

Funny you should raise this. My band are all helpful enough but it leads to mistakes. I also use the mixer with two different bands so there are two labels on the top of the mixer, but there's no space for colour coding by the sockets. Having got rid of the snake I'm now wondering if a short loom, properly labelled might be an option The aux outs on the mixer are balanced jacks so I already have four jumper leads to gender change to XLR. I've thought of lacing these together and putting their names on the plugs but I've got some old looms from analogue days I could cannibalise. It might reduce the strain on the sockets long term too, I'm thinking if I do that for the Aux outs I might end up doing it for the mic ins too.

I've been meaning to update everyone on here on last weeks gig. I'm hoping it will be a bit of encouragement for those who are considering this journey or who are part way through. It's the first time we've managed to get the monitor mix perfect first time and throughout the gig for all the band members. Keeping this in perspective we've never had anything like so good a sound from floor monitors even on a professional stage. It's been a long journey in time because we've had changes in band members and a lot of gigs with deps but probably only half a dozen gigs with our permanent band members. Most of the deps are more comfortable with floor monitors. First of all the experience as a band, set up was a doddle, fewer trips when loading/unloading. Really grateful for this as I was gigging with a broken foot. The digital mixer is such a boon as you don't need a line check, the meters show everything including identifying a broken Active DI creating a lot of electrical noise (I carry a spare). My own in-ears confirm the sound without a lot of 'one -two ing' the band all know how to mix their own in ear mix with their phones apart from the drummer who never remembers to log on to the network "it's not working again Phil". Today we have someone mixing out front but honestly we've saved a successful mix so actually very little twiddling is ever needed. Sound check was a minute of one song and it all sounded good, well as good as we ever do. The gig goes like a dream, having that sound in your ears where everyone can hear just what they want is so liberating. Halfway through the first song you forget they are there. No struggling to hear what the guitar is doing because you have a nasty bass trap/resonance in the poky corner of the stage with the wooden floor and low ceiling, no feedback from the floor monitors. It's the tightest we've ever played. We are all watching the audience and the interaction is ramping up, guitarist is grabbing an extra few bars in the solos because the sound is right and it's a great night. The confidence you get from a great sound relays out to the audience, frankly the fears of feeling isolated with in-ears are forgotten. You don't realise how much extra concentration you need to compensate for not being able to hear properly. It's you ->music->audience->you and nothing in the way. It's actually relaxing when it works and I sang more than I ever have before with this band, I had a little 'more me' in my ears and was confident of pitching OK. Smiles from our singer so I knew she could hear me and was happy. Yeah, it was a good gig, added to by tech that worked. So tech wise we are all in ears, ZS10 Pro for singer and guitarist, I use Sennheiser IE 100 Pro and I'm not sure what the drummer uses, Shure I think. Guitarist and I use Behringer P2's and singer my ancient Trantec wireless system. Drummer has her own mixer with a feed from the desk. Desk is an RCF M18 which is reliable and idiot proof. I've swapped out my ZS10's for the Sennheiser IE 100's because they have a flatter response and a more honest presentation especially across the mid range which helps a lot with vocals. They are a single driver unit but I've had no problem with bass or kick distortion and volume is absolutely fine they'll run way louder than I'd ever want or use. Speakers are RCF ART 745's So that's it for me, all the promises of studio quality sound in my ears, freedom from poor room acoustics on stage and preserving what's left of my hearing have been achieved by the in ears and a convenient, easier set up by the digital mixer. Any fears of feeling isolated and cut off from the audience turns out to have been unfounded. I won't be going back.

That's a lovely job, really love the grille

Looks like @Silvia Bluejay beat me to it. Rock has been essentially a male preserve, partly a reflection of it's time. Without making any assumptions about the OP's set I've never really understood why so many covers bands have women singing songs written for/by male singers. The range is going to be awkward and the lyrics a bit odd. This includes my own band by the way. Come to that I don't get why someone with an essentially soprano range wants to sing a tenor part without even a key change. I'm almost surprised there are any female singers who want to sing with a rock band. It's not as if there aren't a wealth of brilliant songs by female singers and given that in general female audiences are less self conscious about getting on the dance floor why bands with female singers don't have a set designed to match their skill set and capitalise on what they are going to do best.

In a sense there is no difference between using a PA speaker and a flat response bass rig. The technology is the same, you still have a big speaker in a box with a horn and driver to cope with the higher frequencies. To an extent you get what you pay for good systems of either type with the extra money going on a better box and a better bass driver which will handle more bass and track the bass more accurately. If you are lucky you will also get a better crossover to clean up the mids and a better horn drive. So the first question is what is your budget? When it comes to power it's also the same deal. the advantage of an active speaker is that the amp and speaker matching is completely sorted for you. Amplifier watts are so cheap now that 3-500W is pretty normal and will drive most 12 or 15" speakers to their peak. Be a little wary of PA amp claims though, they routinely double or quadruple the power in their advertising claims. A common trick is that they use the same amplifier in multiple cabs but throttle them down within DSP speaker protection so that their littlest speakers dont see the same power as the big ones. They'll still tell you its a thousand watt amp. that happens with bass amps but more rarely. in fact unless they say its a thousand watts and are not charging thousands then it isn't a thousand watts. That doesn't mean an RCF745 as mentioned above isn't capable of being incredibly loud, it's what I use for PA. Generally you'd have to pay over £1k for a new bass speaker specifically designed for FRFR, have a look at Barefaced and Vanderkley. But, there is another option @stevie of Bass Chat has launched a range of FRFR bass speakers under the LFSys brand. Cheaper and better sounding than the above. If you contact Stevie he might be able to arrange a trial for you (He's on holiday this week coming) I'll declare an interest though Stevie is a friend of mine.