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Walk in gigs equipment


la bam

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Hi all,

Weve been offered some upcoming 'plug and play' and 'walk in' gigs, as well as some decent local festivals this year.

However, for gigging i always use my barefaced cab couple with my markbass evo1 then onto the pa.

The evo1 is running a Sunn amp modeller and has a built in compressor that i use. So pretty much all my sound is there.

Question is: what should i take to these gigs? Do i just take my basses and use the inhouse amps and pa, or can i take my markbass head and di out of that? Or do you who do this regularly take another piece of equipment?

I do have a zoom b3 which i could use inline but not sure if these are good enough?

Any help appreciated.

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What’s your monitoring going to be like? If good then I’d say take your bass and Evo head since you have all your modelling etc in there. If there’s no guarantee of decent monitoring then take you cab too, just in case. Better to have it and not need it than the other way around.

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Hopefully monitoring will be good rather than these gigs just being backline based.

I was wondering if its viable to take the amp head (as it has my amp sound modelled, compressor and tuner in it) and di out? Or would some sound guys just give you a jack to plug your bass into?

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For dep jobs and walk-ins, I usually just take a bass and an AER Amp One (combo) - (bass) monitoring is frequently horrible, so the Amp One serves as a personal sound source and its DI out provides a high-quality feed to FoH.  All reasonably light and convenient for fast load-in/out.  If I know the engineer and have confidence in monitoring, a DI is sufficient (one of my personal favourites is an Avalon U5)

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When I was in a previous band I was using a Markbass LM3 and a Zoom B3. For gigs where there was a provided rig I`d just plug in the B3 with the Markbass amp-sim selected and hey presto, to FOH went my sound. The B3 is fine for this, plus having on-board tuner and compression it will make your life much easier. That`s pretty much what I do now, only with a Sansamp Para Driver, arrive at gig, plug in bass/pedal/tuner, ready to go.

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Personally I use a hartke preamp pedal with an optional di out so if I'm not happy with the backline I can go straight from the pedal. I also have a di out on my amp head I could use or I now have a fender bronco 40 modelling amp with a di. The lightest and easiest would be di out from the pedal board but that would take some rearranging of the pedals.

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1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

TBH your set up is so minimalist, you could have it up and running in less time than it takes for your drummer to set up his cymbals, so unless you are concerned about travelling light, take the full rig and use it.

 

That would be my approach too. 

Even when everything is provided, I generally I still have at least one of my cabs and my amp in the car. There's been enough times that I showed up and either there was a problem with their gear, or monitoring is poor for whatever reason, and I could run to the car and set up my little 210 cab and amp before the drummer is done. 

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5 hours ago, BigRedX said:

TBH your set up is so minimalist, you could have it up and running in less time than it takes for your drummer to set up his cymbals, so unless you are concerned about travelling light, take the full rig and use it.

 

3 hours ago, mcnach said:

 

That would be my approach too. 

Even when everything is provided, I generally I still have at least one of my cabs and my amp in the car. There's been enough times that I showed up and either there was a problem with their gear, or monitoring is poor for whatever reason, and I could run to the car and set up my little 210 cab and amp before the drummer is done. 

 

This.

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Probably the best move i think.

Im just a bit paranoid for 2 reasons...

1. If i share an onstage amp and cab, then ive no compressor and im at the mercy of that cab and amp sound.

2. I may be wrong, but im sure the last one i did, the sound guy told me to plug my bass straight into a di box which went to the desk, then one of the outs from the di went to my amp and cab (for monitoring). So i wasnt sure what bass sound i had.

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It depends... some of these things have a strict "you will use the backline provided rule" and you might have to put up with that. It's guitarists who usually get all upset about this. 

While I quite like the idea of walking in with just my bass and a strap I've had some variable experiences. Usually the problem is not being able to hear yourself. 

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37 minutes ago, la bam said:

Probably the best move i think.

Im just a bit paranoid for 2 reasons...

1. If i share an onstage amp and cab, then ive no compressor and im at the mercy of that cab and amp sound.

2. I may be wrong, but im sure the last one i did, the sound guy told me to plug my bass straight into a di box which went to the desk, then one of the outs from the di went to my amp and cab (for monitoring). So i wasnt sure what bass sound i had.

No 2 is the one of concern, and if you have a sound worked out on your B3 it`s easily avoided. Plug bass to B3, B3 to engineers DI box, engineers DI box to amp, all sorted. That way he/FOH gets your sound, as does whatever amp/cab is on stage. You then get to set that amps volume & eq to suit on-stage sound without messing about with the FOH mix.

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20 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

No 2 is the one of concern, and if you have a sound worked out on your B3 it`s easily avoided. Plug bass to B3, B3 to engineers DI box, engineers DI box to amp, all sorted. That way he/FOH gets your sound, as does whatever amp/cab is on stage. You then get to set that amps volume & eq to suit on-stage sound without messing about with the FOH mix.

Yes, i think im going to try and dial in a close copy of my sound on the b3 just in case this crops up again. I dont use my b3 for this band, but its a eeally useful tool to have.

Ironically im now looking at taking more gear to a walk in gig than i would for a proper gig! :)

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5 hours ago, thepurpleblob said:

It depends... some of these things have a strict "you will use the backline provided rule" and you might have to put up with that. It's guitarists who usually get all upset about this. 

While I quite like the idea of walking in with just my bass and a strap I've had some variable experiences. Usually the problem is not being able to hear yourself. 

 

Not being able to hear yourself is far from ideal, and it removes a lot of the fun of playing that gig... so that seems like a good reason to avoid falling into that. 

I've played quite a few gigs where they 'prefer' I use what's provided, but when I show up with my stuff I never had a problem. Of course, this is because in those cases I wasn't bringing a 410 or something, but something small that could easily be set in an already busy stage without causing trouble (A little MarkBass combo or a 210 cab + head, generally). On big stages they were always very accommodating and let me use whatever I wanted.

I played a festival gig once through a 30W Gorilla practice amp. Yup. I would have loved having my amp nearby that day...

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5 hours ago, la bam said:

Probably the best move i think.

Im just a bit paranoid for 2 reasons...

1. If i share an onstage amp and cab, then ive no compressor and im at the mercy of that cab and amp sound.

2. I may be wrong, but im sure the last one i did, the sound guy told me to plug my bass straight into a di box which went to the desk, then one of the outs from the di went to my amp and cab (for monitoring). So i wasnt sure what bass sound i had.

 

when sound engineers give me their DI to use, I give them my signal after whatever pedals I use, so you don't have to lose your effects. Watch for your overdrives 'though... an overdriven bass DI'd often sounds really fizzy out on the front. If you warn the sound engineer, he may be able to tame it somehow, but chances are it won't sound great, so best get a microphone for your cab in those situations, or use some kind of speaker simulation. I've recently started to use a DSM OmniCabSim which is pretty cool, it allows you to model the sound of a speaker cab, and sending that to their DI gets a much nicer overdriven sound. There are other units out there.

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2 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

Venue equipment is generally tired, knackered and will not deliver the sound/tone you desire.  In a ton of places I've played, it's only there to allow for quick changeover and sound-guy convenience. Always take your own gear.

Yes. It's tempting to take just a bass for reasons of convenience, but from experience I'd say take your own gear if possible. You only need to play one gig where you can't hear yourself properly to realise this. And that gig seems very long! All the way through it, you can think only one thing: 'Wish I'd brought my gear'. It doesn't make for an inspired performance to say the least.

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On 1/14/2018 at 09:41, CameronJ said:

What’s your monitoring going to be like? If good then I’d say take your bass and Evo head since you have all your modelling etc in there. If there’s no guarantee of decent monitoring then take you cab too, just in case. Better to have it and not need it than the other way around.

Yes, I'm with CameronJ here (and others) definitely take your cab & head with you for monitoring. I mean, it's small, lightweight gear anyway....

Re the gigs, are they at the same venue? or Venue(s)? I'm just thinking, if it's the same place, you could turn up 1st time with all your gear,
then try just going through the house PA during soundcheck (with your rig set up, for a quick comparison). Even if you use a Sansamp (or other D.I. Pedal) you don't know what on-stage monitoring will be like

I've relied on in-house gear a couple of times, and usually end up regretting it.... Even when all seemed OK, I left the gig thinking it could have been better if I had my own amp......

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Further to my previous post, if a bass rig is supplied at the gig, you could always take a post-EQ line out of your amp into the house amp input (either main in or effects return - whichever is easiest to access), and that way you still have the major component to your sound, with only the cab element being different.

Check with mark bass first but IME most class D amps are perfectly happy to be run like this. I have a TecAmp Puma, that I have used in the is way a couple of times to get my sound with the minimum disruption to the bass rig I am borrowing.

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Just reading my markbass evo manual (re 1 sheet of a4) there are 2 xlr outs, both which can be configured for the output from both channels.

Would i be able to send one output from the amp to the di / desk (xlr) and the other to any stage amp?

With it being xlr out would i need to run an xlr to jack cable or is this not recommended?

Any help appreciated. I would ask markbass but they never reply.

Edited by la bam
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