Going ampless...DI?

[geoham]

Both my keyboard player and I tried something similar at our gig on Saturday - ran a DI to the PA and kept our amps muted. I used an amp sim on my Zoom B3n, ran it to the input of my amp and took a DI from there to the mixer. It sounded great on stage, and had a few musicians in the audience confirm all was well out front.

I'm thinking about ditching the amp altogether for the next few gigs, but since I used a DI from my amp, I need to think of how best to replace that part.

• Go straight to a 'line in' on a mixer channel. Probably my preferred option, as it's the most simple - but is it a bad idea?
• Use a cheap Behringer DI box - there's a couple in our PA cable box (inherited from our singer & guitarist's last band!)
• Buy a slightly more robust DI
• Upgrade to a better amp-sim solution with a built in DI. Been considering a Helix LT for long enough, but keep telling myself the Zoom is good enough!

I'd appreciate your thoughts! What are the rest of you doing? 

We're a covers band, playing mostly pubs with the occasional function thrown in, we always use our own PA and don't have to deal with multi-band sets or anything like that. 

Our next problem to tackle is to get the guitarist through the PA somehow - he's insistent on using a Marshall 4x12 up loud and un-mic'd - I'll keep that battle for another day though!

Cheers,

George

[Len_derby]

Very sensible, and this sounds like the way to go for you.

Playing festivals and multi-band set-ups, which is what I'm doing mostly, I always take my own (lightweight) rig. Even though it stays in the boot most of the time.

Experience has taught me that you can't rely on the PA or supplied back-line promised by the promoter. 

[EBS_freak]

48 minutes ago, geoham said:

Our next problem to tackle is to get the guitarist through the PA somehow - he's insistent on using a Marshall 4x12 up loud and un-mic'd - I'll keep that battle for another day though!

Oh, you play with Joe Bonamassa?

[geoham]

1 minute ago, EBS_freak said:

Oh, you play with Joe Bonamassa?

Hehe. It needs to be loud to get a decent tone, so it'll be too loud if we mic it. It'll give too much feedback if we fold it back through the monitors (even though the keys player and I struggle to hear him on the other side of the stage.) I'm sure we've all heard it before!

[Happy Jack]

You can now easily source a high-quality Class IV head with a good DI that will weigh not much more than a Radial JDI. Take that to your gigs, preferably with a lightweight 1x10 in the boot of the car, and you're sorted for all eventualities.

 

[thodrik]

If you always have a good monitoring system or are running your own PA with sound engineer you trust then great. I would run with that. Lots of pro level players use that kind of set up rather than using an amp. 

I have generally played multi-band originals gigs. From gigging venue to venue, PA to PA and sound person to sound person, I found that I always preferred having an amp I could rely on for monitoring purposes. Usually this was(and still is) a 300 watt 1x15 combo. 

In terms of the guitar, I am a big believer in that driving a valve guitar amp hard can result in the best tone. However considerations as to the power of the head and size of the cab are necessary, both with smaller venues and with larger venues. An unmiced 4x12 Marshall will be too loud for a small venue and not loud enough in a large venue with a powerful PA. I would suggest a smaller cab and lower wattage amp. That way you can still mic it up and the stage volume will not swamp everything else. Or if your guitarist insists on using his current set up, get them to buy an attenuator.

[paul_c2]

Personally in your situation I'd see how it goes with the Behringer DI box. They aren't so much about "imparting a tone" as "being reliable". To that end, might be worth buying a more robust one and keeping the Behringer as a backup. I'd not worry too much about amp sims etc unless you really need it (do you need overdrive/distortion?? Or any other effects? What bass is it coming from? What genre of music? etc).

Regarding the guitarist, I believe you can buy (excuse me if I don't get the terminology exactly right) a "load box" which takes the full-fat speaker output from a head working hard, and provides a much lower speaker output and/or a DI output suitable for the PA. Might be worth trying one of these together with a mic'd up cabinet anyway, and seeing if the load box can get near to the tone of the amp/cabinet (of course, the speaker itself will create some amount of the 'tone' which the load box might struggle to simulate well.

[Muppet]

Run direct to the desk as you suggest and try it.  Then your only issue is monitoring.

[Lozz196]

8 minutes ago, geoham said:

Hehe. It needs to be loud to get a decent tone, so it'll be too loud if we mic it. It'll give too much feedback if we fold it back through the monitors (even though the keys player and I struggle to hear him on the other side of the stage.) I'm sure we've all heard it before!

Get him to buy Fender Champ or something similar from Marshall, really crank it and it will sing at probably a decent (as in not overbearing) volume. Then mic that up and you’ll sound immense. 

Re the bass, well the B3n has lots of amps/sims so all you need is a straightforward DI box (or maybe a second  hand B3 maybe).

[Skybone]

What I would do, is use the B3 as your preamp, and plug it directly into the Effects Return of your amp. You can still run a DI from the B3, and you get the advantage of having an on stage 'monitor' to hear yourself.

I'm running a similar set up, using a Line6 HD500x into the effects return of an Ashdown 300 combo. Sounds great to me, and I know that the amp is easily capable of handling the low end, where I was never that sure about an active PA speaker / FRFR setup being able to. Pretty sure they are, but I didn't have a big enough budget to get a 'decent' speaker. The Ashdown was not only affordable, but is fairly uncoloured (to my ears).

[hooky_lowdown]

Used to run a sansamp bass driver to PA, and had a small lightweight combo as a monitor. Always worked a treat and sounded awesome.

[geoham]

2 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

You can now easily source a high-quality Class IV head with a good DI that will weigh not much more than a Radial JDI. Take that to your gigs, preferably with a lightweight 1x10 in the boot of the car, and you're sorted for all eventualities.

 

My current setup isn’t a million miles away from this... got a TC Electronic BH550 head, which is pretty small and class IV, plus a pair of RS112 cabs. I just hooked up one cab with the head, and kept the volume down.

A big issue is that we’ve got a LOT of gear and we’re trying to reduce it as much as possible - a lot of our gigs are in busy city centre pubs, and we need to lug it through groups of punters. So, the less gear the better!

From my perspective, we have really nice FOH speakers, good quality rack amps and monitors, so the keys player and I wanted to test the theory that we could run without amps - and it worked!

[EBS_freak]

24 minutes ago, geoham said:

From my perspective, we have really nice FOH speakers, good quality rack amps and monitors, so the keys player and I wanted to test the theory that we could run without amps - and it worked!

You should hang out in the IEM thread. We will get your rig in a glovebox... with room to spare. And it will sound better than any monitoring setup or backline rig you could imagine.

[markdavid]

I hate going di but one piece of advice I can give is get a cheap backup di box, I was using one for a while and one rehearsal it died without warning, inconvenient at a rehearsal but if it was a gig would have ruined the whole night.

[Lozz196]

In my old band, which had two bassists, if we were playing small venues that had FOH, as there were eight of us in total I used to DI straight to FOH from my Zoom B3 and just request some bass in the monitors. Given that that`s really not my preference as I`m old-school I have to say I was surprised with how well it actually went. Of course you`re at the mercy of the sound-man so a small combo for stage monitoring as a way of making sure you can hear yourself is a great idea.

[geoham]

37 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Of course you`re at the mercy of the sound-man so a small combo for stage monitoring as a way of making sure you can hear yourself is a great idea.

I forgot to add... I double as sound-man for the band, and the mixer is right by my side the whole time.

[paul_c2]

Slightly off-topic but out of curiousity....what mixing desk do you use and how many pre-fade aux's does it have?

[stingrayPete1977]

I've got an Orchid DI box (on ebs_freaks' recommendation), that's it, nothing else, bass into di, di into mixer, mixer to FOH and in ears. Awesome! 

Edited May 31, 2019 by stingrayPete1977

[stingrayPete1977]

[geoham]

45 minutes ago, paul_c2 said:

Slightly off-topic but out of curiousity....what mixing desk do you use and how many pre-fade aux's does it have?

I can’t remember the exact model, but it’s a 16 channel Soundcraft with two aux channels, both pre-fade (though think one is switchable to post-fade). Just use one to run monitors from.

[mrtcat]

1 hour ago, stingrayPete1977 said:

I've got an Orchid DI box (on ebs_freaks' recommendation), that's it, nothing else, bass into di, di into mixer, mixer to FOH and in ears. Awesome! 

I have a helix where you have a di. Essentially the same thing tho and love the simplicity. 

[paul_c2]

2 hours ago, geoham said:

I can’t remember the exact model, but it’s a 16 channel Soundcraft with two aux channels, both pre-fade (though think one is switchable to post-fade). Just use one to run monitors from.

Aaaah I see. I was wondering, without the bass amp, whether you'd need your own monitor mix (thus, 2 or more pre-fade aux outputs on the desk). Or in other words, on the one hand you've eliminated the bass amp, on the other hand you're tied to a monitor a bit more. I guess if you had the monitor too anyway.....(because everyone has also eliminated their amp) then you're kinda back full circle to where you started from?

[stingrayPete1977]

Time to go wired in ears, ditch all the heavy boxes! 

Our entire stage setup for a four piece function/pub band is two RCF 735 speakers, mixer and two di boxes, guitar pedal board,  drumkit, three mics and stands, kick drum mic, bag of leads and four sets of in ears. 

I've never been able to hear myself so well and the FOH mix is the best it's ever been, I've actually had random people in the pub say they've seen us lots of times and the sound is the best it's ever been by far and better than all the other band's, ha. 

[Cuzzie]

Loads of DI options as people have stated,  Tech21 DP3x pedal is a massive winner for me, new Fender ‘multi Fx’ unit which has EQ compression and DI capabilities, Trickfish Trilobite, or even just a DI box and nothing before it, my radial JDI is great (and it has 2 inputs/outputs).

I agree with what the others have said about a load box, you guitarist can crank and keep the volume controlled. Two Notes do great ones (captor) and their cab sim Torpedo could work a treat for him.

Or if he likes new kit, Friedman have just released the JJ model either head or combo which was made alongside Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains, and that is 20w tubes with an internal load box, so you can just go straight out and have no speaker connected - it sounds bloody immense!

[geoham]

19 hours ago, paul_c2 said:

Aaaah I see. I was wondering, without the bass amp, whether you'd need your own monitor mix (thus, 2 or more pre-fade aux outputs on the desk). Or in other words, on the one hand you've eliminated the bass amp, on the other hand you're tied to a monitor a bit more. I guess if you had the monitor too anyway.....(because everyone has also eliminated their amp) then you're kinda back full circle to where you started from?

We already have two good quality monitors that were being used for vocals only. I just put the bass and keys through these - sounded great! The guitarist did grumble a bit that he didn’t want keys and bass in the monitor, just vocals - so may be an idea to use both aux channels next time rather than run both monitors for a single aux.

George