EBS_freak

But am I right in thinking... and I'm sticking my neck out here... if you hadn't already owned your backline, your backline would be looking more preamp and PA shaped?

RCF über alles - no, not at all. I will reiterate, it's just those particular models and components that are in them. I'm actually a L-Acoustics, D&B and Danley nut... but realise they are perhaps another tier above the average PA speaker. I spend a lot of time looking and trying stuff out and these (73/45s) are unique among the competition for the reasons I've mentioned above a couple of times. The QSC and Yamaha stuff (and I guess JBL, EV and all the other likely candidates at that price point) is certainly of comparable quality but not performance - and if you ask and 735 or 745 user on here, they will all tell you the same, they never struggle for headroom or getting vocals heard. First hand experience with other cabs has shown me that not to be the case with other manufacturers examples in that price range. If any other brand put the same quality of components in any model of their cabs, I would be singing the same praises. I've shared a few conversations with @stevie about these specific cabs - we aren't quite sure how they are managing to manufacturer and sell them for the price that they are. They certainly don't appear to be making much profit from them per unit - or at least, we can't really figure out how they are doing it if they are. OK to clarify the subwoofer situation - the 735 or 745 will allow you to push out some serious bass without subwoofers. You wouldn't use small subs, so don't use small tops when you are expecting them to shift a lot of hard hitting bass. When I mean serious bass, I mean gig volumes of bass and kick drum. The 310s will definitely not do that... or at anywhere near he same volume. My experience with the 745s is that you can actually sack off all the backline, run IEMs and let the FOH speakers do the amplification for the whole band. This means less bleed on stage and better dispersion for say, guitar, where guitar amps are typically very unidirectional. If you are a member of the audience standing in front of a guitar amp, you are likely to be blasted. Two steps to the right or left and the guitar amp may be unbalanced with the rest of the band. By putting the whole band out of the FOH, you don't get any of these problems. My pitch for the 735 or 745 is that it can form half of a formidable PA but if you need a combo, it will more than happily do the job of a traditional rig also. I think there's a dual conversation happening in this thread which is muddying the water a little for some. EBS haven't done anything for a while... certainly nothing that makes me sit up and take notice! Still love their amps though - the HD350 is still my fave bass amp of all time and I'll still take it out on a whim from time to time (usually a dep where they aren't geared up with a beefy PA and IEMs)... although my personal main rig is now a Kemper (no speakers) and inears going into a beefy PA? Why, because it sounds better on stage (my IEM mix is coming from a dedicated mixing desk with full stereo, compression fx etc)... and sounds clearer out front (nothing to bleed apart from the drums into the vocal mics). Who wouldn't want to change?

EDIT - removed dodge links to Amazon.

A 15 is not particularly optimal... (speakers can perform as well as other models both larger and smaller than it) it's more down to the fact that with the choice of the particular hf drivers and 15s in the RCF 735 and 745s, it allows for a lower crossover, which means the horn can do more of the work and free up the 15s to take care of more of the lows at volume. It's not any voodoo going on - it's just that RCF for whatever reason, have paired a phenomenally good horn and woofer together in those models... components of a specification that should not coexist in a box at that price point. Have a look out there and try and find anything remotely comparable. Even the new Yamahas that dood mentions, don't have components in them of comparable specs (and I would wager they are more expensive too! Although that Dante option is drool worthy in those Yammies!). If you want the larger VCs in a smaller 12 package, the 732 may be the route for you to take, although you will drop down to a 2.5" VC in the woofer.

You could do worse than the 735s - up to bass duties without subs without any issues. Just to clarify, it's not RCF in general - just those two cabs in particular due to the drivers that are in them. You could ditch your bass rig altogether if you went IEM too.

I've gigged regularly with a band that uses the DL1608. They are a very straight forward mixer to operate with decent processing and decent enough fx for what you'd want. The compressors and EQ shaping on the pres are great and obviously the aux count in a small package is a big plus. I actually tend to operate a pair of DL32Rs (one for FOH, one as a dedicated monitoring desk) over a GLD80 based on my experience of using the DL1608. When docked, there are obviously no dropout problems with the 1608 - but having said that, I have never really suffered with wifi drop out problems when using an Airport Extreme router. Alot of problems with wifi usually comes down to a units inbuilt router not being up to the job (Behringer XRXX I'm really looking at you here) or the external router in use being placed badly or again, not really being up to the job. Also, having the iPad docked also opens up a direct connection to Spotify etc, if you want to use that. In todays age, I would always recommend using a digital desk over an analogue desk. They are smaller than the analogue equivalent (especially if you take into account the racks and racks of outboard gear it would take to replicate the onboard DSP of the digital desk) - and the processing is unbelievably powerful. You have the FX engines, but also you have compression, EQ, and a gate on every channel... and a 31 band EQ (for getting rid of problematic feedback frequencies) on each output (so thats EQ for your FOH and every wedge). The other thing to consider, is that if you are using an iPad on your UI12, you should be able to hardwire an ipad to it using an Ethernet cable, one of these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01DGDNL2G and one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00486070K

^gas

Youre right, you shouldn't sell out to Gregorian Chant. Be true to yourselves.

Now wouldn't it be interesting if said supporting bass player ended up going down a similar route...?

Perhaps you should branch out into Gregorian Chant?

How is the baroque scene looking nowadays?

Not bad result!

Has anybody commented, especially on the originals scene, why are you using a "proper" amp? How did your band take to it?

But when you are using the subs, you are using a crossover that takes up the bass duties away from the tops... actually making your tops more potent because it hasn't got to struggle with the harder to amplify bass frequencies. For bass guitar, subs are actually generally too subby for bass guitar in most smaller venues!

Get rid of them then, get some in ears and put your money into foh speakers.

Has he got his own mic?

Indeed - carrying a dumb bell is easier than carrying a similar weight javelin.

No - you DI out from your amp modeller into the PA. The PA speakers should be transparent, exactly the same as your on stage FRFR speaker that you are using for a monitor. The whole point of PA and FRFR speakers (effectively the same thing) is that all the colouration is done by the modeller and not the speakers.

I remember you posting your thread... but even back then I still thought you had got it all wrong. This is what you should be running - 1x Helix LT = 12.5 lbs 1x inears = circa 0.07lbs 1x inear amp = circa 1lbs 2x735a (front of house) = 96lbs. Your ears will thank you for it for starters. Less spill on stage, your band will sound better for it. Less space taken up transporting kit. What's not to like? - and if you dep with another band, you take the Helix and a single 735 for a traditional rig.

Bass cabs... and especially guitar cabs colour the sound considerably. You have to consider the sound coming out of the modeller to be a recording of your instrument as it would appear on the CD. You wouldn't plug your CD player into guitar amp and expect it to sound as good as a hifi. This is the same... the FRFR takes away any further colouring. If you do want the colouring of the cab, you run a model of the amp without any speaker emulation or IR and let the non FRFR cab add that colouring back in.

Al Krow - I don't think that it would be any surprise to state that modelling with FRFR is still a minority portion of the market - I, along with many others, believe that the flexibility in a modelling solution, complete with a FRFR cab (that on the whole are far superior in at least a component view to a bass specific equivalent), should be at least on a consideration list when down to people choosing gear. If offers great flexibility - Your valve tone at any volume. Many amp tones and fx available in one package. The ability to run silent stages without compromising tone out front (or in ears if you use them)... the list goes on. For me, I think it would be foolish for anybody not to at least test drive one. As to how many bass players are running FRFR cabs - well, in all honesty, I wouldn't know... I don't really care. Even if that number is insignificant, whats wrong with being one of those people in the know - and making your life easier? I just know that it works well... and has worked out for everybody else that I know that has done the switch. What you cannot argue though, is that pound coin for pound coin, the technology and performance of a modern PA cab far outstrips those "bass" specific marketed cabs. Call this a thread of education and enlightenment that you can do things differently. At the end of the day, we are musicians that use tools to create our music. Does it matter if we use a cab or a specifically marketed "bass cab" in our rig? No. We shouldn't be confined to the marketing blurb. Anthony Jackson and Mike Gordon have been doing the powered PA thing for years with Meyer cabs - they certainly don't care that they aren't "bass cabs" and I don't believe they have suffered because of it (although their roadies may have some bad backs now). There's those people that will swear blind that analogue desks are better than digital desks too. But as soon as you have guys on digital desks, it won't surprise you, that these same guys are very reluctant to go back to analogue. There may be the odd dinosaur that doesn't get on with digital - but the advantages that digital offers far, far, far outweighs analogue. You can do with a shoeboxed sized mixer that just over ten years ago, would have taken a transit or two full of gear to achieve. Similarly, PA cabs have come on so much now... a single 12 or 15 - they don't do just do just vocals... they can do the whole band now... and at considerable volume. Why would you not want to embrace that technology?

That's insignificant. You queried how many FRFR cabs are being sold. "Oh please. LOTS of sales of FRFR gear. Really? Let's not get carried away. " The answer is to that original question is a lot. A lot of modeller users are using FRFR cabs as guitar solutions, some for bass and some for both as a guitar and bass solution.

Make sure that you try changing your £1000 bass for your £50 Sue Ryder too... and ask the audience again.

FRFR gear - why don't you go into a PA shop and try telling them that they are not selling any PA tops. Do tell us how they laugh at you. FRFR is a term that has been coined by the modelling community - but it's another word for PA speakers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/line6helixusergroup/ - 14k+ users. The vast majority of those users have paired them with PA speakers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/363954780291903/ - 10k+ users. The vast majority of those users have paired them with PA speakers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/23174569478/about/ - 10k+ users. The vast majority of those users have paired them with PA speakers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/headrushboard/about/ -1k+ users. (This is a minority share of the market but still growing) 35k+ potential FRFR users just in those groups - there's going to be none facebook people not represented in those figures... and all the people that are using PA cabs for PA use alone. I would argue there's a lot of FRFR solutions being sold...

Lots of sales and yet none come up second hand. Kinda tells you what you need to know.