EBS_freak

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).

Guessing you haven’t read the rest of the thread then? 😛

Yup - ok so you don’t see this down your local music venue but this is certainly common place with bands touring with their own engineer where the set is known inside out. Not saying this is required for your average pub gig but demonstrates how the engineer can be a big part of the performance and not someone who is subservient to those on stage.

Not wanting to go against what cuzzie has said - but it depends. Depending upon the driver and the cab design (which becomes of minimal importance if the speakers are close miced), the speaker can be flat(ish) or display certain characteristics, such as pushed mids, recessed highs, recessed lows or a combination of all. A bit like a mic really. The thing is, speaker emulations are generally EQ based - so if you do take them out of the equation, you can get a fairly decent approximation without too much effort, certainly good enough for live situations. If you want to go further, then yeah, you can get some very comprehensive modelling on the go - with IR response and all! All this stuff is built into your modern modellers. The idea is that the modeller gives you the sound of the amp and cab you would hear if it was miced up in a studio... and then that sound is plugged directly into a live sound desk and off you go. Plug it into a FRFR powered cab (e.g. a cab that is flat and characterless - hence doesn't influence the sound) and you have a traditional rig replacement where you don't have to run it stupidly loud to get all the valve drive etc that people desire.

There's nothing wrong with amps - I love amps. Tech has moved on, which gives people more options now, options that actually sound good (unlike modelling solutions of yesteryear) - and depending upon your situation, you can make life so much easier, both in terms of moving gear about and getting a better band sound. If you haven't figured, I'm all for silent stages and IEM mixes. Being able to hear all the detail (and no post gig tinnitus) in your monitors and cleaner feeds to mix the front of house with. To be honest, between the big name modellers, they can all produce great bass sounds. I use a Kemper - and actually use a channel strip profile instead of an amp. I can plug that in, any volume, I know it will deliver the goods. Same with a Helix - I know plenty of people using Helix now, both for bass and guitar. They don't miss their amps and enjoy the additional flexibility of carrying around a load of modelled amps and fx. The key point is, these things are indistinguishable from the real thing now, especially live. Anybody who thinks otherwise, is kinda kidding themselves. Blind tests have confirmed this! If you look around on bass chat, theres a fair few that have made the move to modellers and IEMs, or modellers and FRFR setups. I don't know anybody who has regretted the move. In fact, a great deal of them have sold off all their traditional bass rigs.

You rotter, you.

I watched his youtube video earlier. That was a long video to regurgitate the same as what the hosting company put out!

Indeed - you got to start somewhere! In a modelling world, if you get it right, then assuming you are playing with moderately consistent gigging volumes, then your desk is EQing to primarily cater for the room. Of course, if you have the ability to tweak these sounds in a band context, you are making the sound guys life that bit easier (assuming you have a good ear that is!)

Brilliant - good to see you round these parts again

To our American friends. Buckfast is banned in the US. Apparently mixing large amounts of caffeine with wine is not good for keeping the peace.

Oh crumbs. Looks as bad as my neck of the woods. All I can say is, thank the heavens it's Little.

Surely the Scots have their own category?!

Yet more unwanted noise to mess with the mix.

I'm not sure that you would have dug on the offerings of ART and co from back in the 80s...

Skanks post reminded me of this blinder - https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/tips-for-american-servicemen-in-britain-during-the-second-world-war

and chicken that smells of swimming pools.

Why? Have Meg and Harry boarded a plane?

Bostin' ta.

Am I only person that is disappointed that proper fish and chips aren't served up in newspaper? I wonder if we can reinstate it now we are out of Europe? Oh, and to our American counterparts - yes, we do eat food that looks like that it has been consumed previously.

Listen, I'm from Wolverhampton. I know my place in society.