EBS_freak

It’s ok, they’ve got a spare... oh.

In which case the engineer will just roll their eyes 😛

It’s common to use an external DI independent from the amp - so if the amp does die, the show can still go on. These may be a nice powered DI, or a passive/phantom DI. If the former and the DI dies, a quick change from the stage hand sorts it.

I wouldn’t say that personalities are the key driver. The sound reproduction needs of a bass and guitar are very different. The use of low frequencies from a bass player isn’t totally comparable to the sounds being reproduced by the guitarist. I know there are some exceptions - eg White Stripes/Royal Blood. 1 more mic could wreck a mix. Every time you double the mic count on stage you are losing 3dB of headroom. So if you are crammed on a small stage/performance that is subject to a lot a lot of reflections, chances are you are going to run into problems sooner or later. This is why it is super important that all the mics on the drums are gated as much as possible as they are singularly accountable for the most open mics. It’s not great to gate all mics when not in use. Gated vocals tend to sound clipped at the start - you can kind of get away with it on backing vocals but certainly not on lead vocals. This is what the video I posted of the guy riding the faders is effectively doing - taking people in and out the mix to avoid spill and greatly reduce the chance of feedback. Makes the mix sound way better. Naff vocal mic technique is another area where you can lose a lot of headroom. If your singers are not “on” the mic, you are pumping the gain and reducing to pickup the singer but also raising the amount of spill into your mix. In a pro environment, a sound engineer will always use their own choice of mics - not one that has been carefully selected by the bassplayer. From an engineering point, it is important that you know and trust your mics and their behaviours. Some mics will have naturally hot frequencies - and it’s about knowing that to be able to counteract them and avoid potential feedback. An open bass mic is particularly annoying is that you can’t high pass it as you want to capture the sub frequencies to FoH. Those low frequencies have to be present from the cab in order for the mic to pick them up - hence you are going to be introducing that low end mush onto the stage that makes hearing yourself more difficult and also increases low end spill into other mics. Yeah, you can high pass - but if you start hi passing evening, your mix soon starts sounding thin. As pointed out earlier in the threads, a male voice for example, has a lot of low end content that you don’t want to high pass. As an extreme example, imagine Barry White this a high pass filter on his mic. It just wouldn’t have sounded like Barry White. So yeah, you could lift the bass coming out of your cab speakers to avoid these issues - but foh will want a DI to have those low end frequencies for use. Anyway - back to the “if your rig tone is pleasing to the band mix on stage it will not be out of place in the room mix.” - this is all founded in a big assumption that the bass rig is not heard over the sound of the PA - and that it is not being detrimental to the foh mix (through spill) I’m not sure what you are quite saying in the last para - typically and EQing to the room would be via pink noise and prior to the audience coming in. Naturally the sound changes again once the audience is in so a good ear from behind the desk should be able to notch out any trouble some nodes. Of course, the big advantage of silent stages is that the sound of the room becomes the only major variable.

It is regularly done - Kemper, Axed FX, Helix is becoming more common place. Metal bands - eg those with historically loud stages - were amongst the first to cotton on. Have a look at my Katy Perry vid previously. Have a look at Metallica’s setup. They are backlineless - predominantly IEM with the odd wedge. Additionally, for touring bands that can’t afford to travel with their own kit, digital modelling is a god send. A rig can be carried on a USB stick abs loaded onto any hire kit.

Richard, you’re fired!

Bloody love Robocop. Nice one, Murphy.

I think I whizzed them off with a pic and a posting of Stephen Fry. Awkward.

Good news....! Cue the dormant BC accounts.

@BadHands - the use of FX is still achievable - you just tap the DI out to the PA post the FX. As above, if the amp is a big part of the resulting tone (through colouration, distortion, speaker etc), then go to a amp modeller, or speaker emulation that can emulate it. You can tap a DI (using a special DI box that allows for speaker level outputs) from a speaker output on the amp - and then you'd just have to EQ for the speaker, or use a speaker emulator. As for pushed air - it's the PA speakers that do that for you. The signal is the same, just the amplitude that changes - and arguably where Fletcher-Munson comes in. People tend to like and think that things sound better for being louder. This is where compromise I talked about comes in - you can run your stage volume loud - but it will have a negative impact on what you can do with your FoH mix - unless you have a big enough stage to get the separation between audio sources and mics. As for jazz/fusion - no different to what has been explained in the rest of the thread.

Oh wow. Nice. Counting Crows August and Everything After territory that.

On the amp block, look under controls, and you should find gate/release in there somewhere.

Yes, it should work as long as both pedals are triggered in the same way (either an open circuit becoming closed, or a closed circuit becoming open - if both pedals are different, only one will work)

I always wanted to try a Reeves and a Divided by 13 also. But I couldn't be doing with reliability/annoying nuances issues. I used to run a lot of guitar valve amps - and whilst awesome, they all had something about them which was annoying. Random pops, tubes going microphonic, random rattles - usually all tube related in some ways. I remember changing or ditching tube protective cases... buying all sort or rubber dampeners and bits and bobs. It's all good fun... but also slightly annoying. Others call it authentic, I guess.

Given the nature of your band, there's a couple of things to really consider - I presume that you are loud... and micing up a drummer is always a challenge due to the spill. What I would recommend is making sure that your mic technique is absolutely bang on and your lips are centred on (and lips touching) the grille of the mic. This will greatly improve the signal to noise ratio and give you more gain before feedback. I would recommend an Audix OM mic - something like an OM3 for SM58 kinda money or something like a OM7 (this is where the sweet spot of the range is for me) or more if you want to splash a bit. Audix mics have great off axis rejection - but as a consequence, will punish you if you dont sing with your lips up to the grille. As for the drummer, I would go the same - but also budget for an optogate... this will enable you to gate off the mic until the drummer approaches the mic to sing. If the gate is set to the right distance, the bleed from the kit will be minimal and you won't hear the gate open or close. Again, this relies on your drummer adhering to the "right on the mic" techique. Personally I'm not a great fan of the SM58 or Beta - I'd always go towards the Sennheiser 935 or 945 instead. In this situation though, I would use Audix - because the ability to control the bleed and avoid unwanted feedback is more useful than a mic that, although I may prefer the sound of, give me or the engineer a nightmare when mixing. Forget about condenser mics - unless you are on big stages, their sensitivity is going to give you more problems than benefits - plus stoner/doom rock really doesn't point to condensers! Echo above though - if you do go Shure, don't buy used - buy from a reputable dealer - because the amount of fakes now is just ridiculous. And yeah, if budget is a concern, the AKG D5 is defo the go to mic. You can't really get better for the price imho.

I bet many people would have lusted (and still would) lust over that. Peavey stuff tends to be forgotten - but it's Classic series is certainly full of tone, and made very well. I'd be intrigued to hear what this setup sounds like! Yeah, I 'm thinking that the LXII with a real high end studio pre would beat a lot of these high priced bass centric offerings hands down.

@tonyf - here you go. I don't think it's the same video I was looking for - but it's got a lot of the key parts in there. All being played live - but all the events being controlled digitally.

It's nut's isn't it? I remember sitting in on a desk in the West End - the sound crew are definitely one of the hardest members of the crew there. The engineering line by line scripts are amazing - everything cued by slider number, scene changes etc... and you have to keep your eyes on the stage, and on the score giving you all the cues, whilst actually listening very careful to make sure that everything sounds smooth and perfectly balanced. This is a pretty cool watch - (and imagine missing a cue) Of course, similar happens on band gigs - but there's usually a lot less going on fader wise. Basically, you are going to be riding the faders of the lead vocalist(s) and have a grouped backing vocal on a VCA. And then of course, the slider pulling back the guitarist for when the gain goes through the roof as the solo is taken. A lot of pop shows are automated now - and I really dig on it. I managed to get a sneak peak of the Katy Perry gig when she was in Birmingham... and you would not believe the amount of automation going on. Yes, they are playing to a click - but thats a midi sync - so all the patch changes etc are done for the players so that they can concentrate on their performance. I seem to recall there was a video on it. I'll see if I can find it, it will totally blow your mind and make you rethink how gigs can be done. Of course, off the same sync track... you can control your lights and stage fx. It's freakin' amazing. I'll see if I can find the video for you.

Especially for you - I found out the Ryan Adams track I was referring to earlier. Although, given the sexual and emotional abuse allegations, Im not sure whether he's completely socially acceptable to bring up in conversation. Anyway... Amp on the right channel, miced up electric guitar on the left. As for micing up the instrument, yeah, you'd need to be micing it up on the side of the string that vibrates to have it make something representing a usable sound. You did remind me of a period where I was experimenting with piezo pickups. It was one that I made from a bottle cap, a piezo from Tandy mounted inside, with a jack on it. And you know what, I used that for recording all sorts of stuff... from violins, acoustic guitars... and.... an electric bass not plugged in. I had it mounted on the body with a cross made out of masking tape holding it in place. I haven't got any recording of it anymore (they were all on hissy tape anyway) - but it produces a kinda overly trebly bass sound. I bet on a real double bass with some processing, it would do just grand.

I always quite fancied having a go with a fryette rack power amp and some crazy nice tube mic pre.

You've seen the folk that mic up Marshall amp heads and SPDSXs though...?

I'm not sure if this is tongue in cheek or not... 😕 I know Ryan Adams did some stuff where he was recording his electric guitar acoustically in the control room whilst his amps were in the live room. In the mix, it was raised quite high, so it was quite clearly there, sounding like an unamplified electric guitar. This was a recording thing though - I can't imagine bothers doing stuff like that live, certainly not with mics anyway... far too much bleed in most situations for starters.

Can't argue with that!

This is all very true - and as stated earlier in the thread - you are compromising. If you are running just a bass amp, you are flooding the stage with low frequencies and reducing the ability to hear yourself as clearly (and others ability on stage as bass is very omni directional - the common side effect is that everybody starts to turn around to their amps and turn themselves up... and this gets worse as the gig progresses as your ears begin to tire and the high frequencies response begins to get lost - hence the guitarist is more likely to turn around and meddle first). If you were to cut the lows on stage, then the front of house may sound bass light. If the only thing coming out the vocal PA, you will be able to hi pass the relevant vocal mics - but more often than not, the inbuilt hpf on analogue desks are too high (especially for male voices) and can make the vocals sound thin. That's not to say it doesn't work - because it does and is good enough for most bands. But it won't get you as good a sound as you could. But having dedicated FoH and monitoring brings challenges - like who owns the PA - and the shift in "but I want to play through this massive rig, it looks cool". If people have invested heavily, or play with loads of different bands, there is that inevitable reluctance to change. - I dep with lots of bands (or at least used to) - but my rig is modular enough to work as a separate bass rig, or part of a foh and monitoring setup... or silent stage. Your second point contains a key point - you are working with the sound guy and have trust in what they are doing. I guess that has been one of the key messages I have been trying to land (well, for anybody who cares to listen at least!) As is your third point - you have to trust that these people know what they are doing. A lot of them are cowboys, granted - who have just gone out and bought a load of PA to be part of the scene - but it's there ears that are out there, not the people on stage. Of course, this all depends on the size of festival and band - because again, if you are big enough, you bring your own engineer who knows the deployed desk (or at least knows how to press start on a playback).