EBS_freak

....and your ears don't ring afterwards.

Indeed - entry point for IEM enabled bands is so low now. XR18 desk for example, with P2 and ZS10s... A 5 driver IEM with plenty of headroom, a XLR and a P2 power amp. Easy rig/wedge replacement for £60 a player all in.

Historically, I would have agreed... but theres some very capable tops out now. However, if you like the sound of a single cab working hard compared to a big rig that is on tick over... well, thats a completely different discussion!

Indeed - there is still something to said about just turning up with a rig. I've got a dep gig with a band that run the old school method... so I'll be lugging out 2x2x10s (cos I don't know how loud they are or whether they put stuff through the PA etc) and an amp head/powered kemper. I've had many discussion with a friend of mind trying to get him onto IEMs... and he totally gets it. Although he is a bit of a bass whore and plays with so many bands, for him, IEMs just aren't practical as many of the bands he plays with aren't using IEMs and integrating such a system with those existing bands is a bit of a technicality that for him, is just not worth it.

Quite surprised - are you doing an A/B test? Or is a perceived sound in your head that you're looking for?

And then the final stage is when you take a monitor rig that you split to foh. Silent stage, all on inears. I think the mindset is finally changing. I remember at the beginning of gigging career, sound engineers would tell me, "let the PA do all the work". I scoffed. Stupidly. Of course, he was right... but I had a band new Fender Twin that I wanted to crank. I know, I know...

But nobody mics up the cab... they usually mic up a single driver... which doesn't capture the sound of the cab anyway. In a band situation, if you want to capture the sound of the "cab", you are likely to have completely unmanageable bleed. If you want the sound of cab out front, as you know... modeller. Takes the studio sound of the cab on the road with you. Perfect.

It may do... just not at volume! 😛

Absolutely - the issue is, that due to numbers, if bass cab manufacturers upped their game in terms of drivers, they'd either double their prices and price themselves out of the market... or severely dent their profit margins. Lets not forget, bass cab manufacturers are in the game of shifting boxes rather than optimum audio but at a price that keeps them in competition with their peers. The plastic thing isn't ideal agreed - but it is light and again, good enough and probably not that a big an issue to be audible on a gig. And to be honest, even in a plastic box, lets face it, they still play a lot of bass cabs under the table anyway. Re: compression drivers costs - agreed, although it is freeing up headroom for the larger cone - and really, it's only the x3x and x4x models that are at a premium with those drivers. Anyway - as we've discussed a couple of times before, I still dont see how they are doing the 735 and 745 for the prices that they do! Hasn't an Italian Tonka looking brand done similar with their "tweeters"...? But of course, as a brand, good enough for Marcus and King... let the marketing and endorsement do it's merry dance.

Glad to see you still loving the alt. rig. Night and day over traditional rigs eh?

If you are handy with arduinos, it's not too difficult to knock up a switch to change between a slow fade programme and a moving head display. But ultimately, it's probably something that is an added point of failure, stress etc in the whole setup and running of a gig.

Haven't used it for a while - but no, I don't think you can. You are into the realms of DMX with that.

My first gig was caught on mini disc. No video cameras through. I think my first video recorded gig was with me on keyboards wearing a very, very tight black spandex top with an atom logo on it. I was hiding behind keyboards and playing the keys for a law society ball for Oxford University. Hopefully that VHS never surfaces. If anybody finds any photographs/video of a Oxford University law society ball with a keys player wearing a very, very tight black spandex top with an atom logo on, it ain't me... ok? 😛

Funny you should say that - but I was looking at the way the guitarist was strumming thinking that his style is pretty much a verbatim copy of John's.

Funny things can happen... A singer that was in my very first band managed to get herself an agent in London. No prior acting experience or anything - agent just saw potential. (Incredible singing voice) Got her a shot at auditioning for chorus in the Lion King in the West End. Got the role of Rafiki. Did a stint both in the UK in Paris before moving onto a lead role in Hairspray. Got film work singing on the soundtrack for Gravity. Got backing singer work for the Charlatans, Michael Ball and more notably - the Kate Bush gigs. She may have ended up having a lead role in Emmedale not too long back. Not bad eh? Keys player In my current band contacted Inglorious to ask to play keys for them on tour. They asked him to audition. He got the gig. No prior experience. Spent the last two years playing club, stadiums and festivals to thousands of people. Not a bad result form a tweet eh? The key thing is, he’d learned the stuff inside out and nailed all the sounds off the album. Job done and outperformed all the others that auditioned. Never sell yourself short!

Not really. I don't believe any false arguments have been used - just clarifying the difference between being swayed by marketing and endorsement... and physics. Why would anybody be protesting too much? I couldn't really care what anybody is using... I've heard good bands and bad. And that's with a mixture of expensive and cheap gear. But of course, my opinion of what is good and bad in itself is open to... well, you know what. But I still stand by the fact whatever The Smiths are doing, it sounds pap.

Interesting, thanks for the analysis.

I think it's more about what it sounds like when you put a stapler through it!

Yet he picks up a Stingray. Go figure.

A few thing from those quotes... "Well, I think it pretty much defined his sound in the 80s*" - as in "you" think? Or maybe the marketing spin is that it gives you instant King tone? Was he recording pre or post DI? Even so, by the time it got to the desk and the outboard, the TE influence is somewhat watered down. It wouldn't surprise me if the the DI was straight through and the tone shaping was all done via the desk and outboard and the speakers of the combo were merely providing monitoring. As an extra insight, if you look at the stuff he was using in '99, where he was using Ashdown with GB, you can tell he is going DI because the Ashdown simply won't produce the highs that you hear out front. Similarly today - with his move from Ashdown to TC to what is it now, MarkBass, out front there's very little change because it's all DI driven. As far as Mark is concerned, if he can hear himself on stage and the gear is put there for him, jobs probably a goodun. Anyway... moving on. "But using a radio link I get no signal loss" - not in the 80s you didn't. Just like the analogue systems today, companders are in play and hence, by the very nature of how they work, there will be signal loss and low and high end roll off. It's not like today where you can get full range but at the expense of latency. "Weedy" - that's capacitance in action... and a roll off in the top end. If you think about Mark's playing, theres lots of attack and transients in the top end. Capacitance will certainly kill the perception of that. What does "weedy" actually mean anyway? It's not a scientific measure - its a perception, in this case, Mark's and it's in comparison to the sound in his head to what he's hearing - or in this case, what he's not hearing. "I first started using Trace Elliot from 1981. Back then it was about as high end and high fidelity as you could get." - what Mark really wanted, is to go direct into the PA to get the most hifi sound that he could out to the audience.... oh. Of course, marketing would have played a big part of all of this. Mark listens to a TE and it gives him something more akin to a PA sound. Back then, there was only really two brands focusing on this - SWR and TE. TE gave him something close to what he wanted - although truth be know, anything plugged DI into FOH would achieve the same.

Remind me again - which is the combo that he didn’t DI to send to front of house? Or use in the studio with a whole host of post processing?

I'll have to take your word on the unprocessed sound being exceptional... but of course, you do realise that the sound of something being exceptional is all subjective anyway. With regard to post, I would normally agree with you... but with bass, you can mangle the sound so much that it's nothing like the source material, I would say its more an advertisement for the processing rather than the bass itself.

Totally understand - I was just being that annoying person that was chatting from the other end of the scale

Depends what you call a quality bass rig. Price up the Meyer rigs of Gordo, Anthony Jackson, Lesh... and Stings Clair Bros rig...