How was your PA last night?

[Rosie C]

5 hours ago, JPJ said:

How was your PA last night JPJ? Well it was pretty bloody awesome than you.  

 

 

Ah, that brings back some memories. It must be 20 years since I was last at "Stormin' the Castle". 

 

[Phil Starr]

5 hours ago, JPJ said:

How was your PA last night JPJ? Well it was pretty bloody awesome than you. Massive RCF line array setup with a wall of bass bins the width of the stage, centre fills sitting on the stage, Digico desks at FOH and monitors, and the best bit, a professional crew to run the bloody thing. Massive sounding rig and a couple of engineers who really knew what they were doing, Shout out to ‘Dave’ on monitors for accommodating our request to not use his rather beautiful Martin monitors and to use our in-ears instead. 

Sound enginers have sometimes had a bad rap on Basschat but there are some great ones out there too and a good monitor engineer just gives you confidence to play your very best. Here's to Dave and all the others like him 🍾

[Stub Mandrel]

On 01/09/2024 at 00:04, Phil Starr said:

The problem is pretty well known but I've never seen a band address the problem before and to be fair not very many venues. Full marks to you for thnking of the solution and finding the right product. 6db extra headroom before feedback will make a difference.

 

My 'regular' club finally did that for the upstairs ballroom - big window with a Venetian blind behind the stage! Now looks and sounds much better.

[Chienmortbb]

Over the weekend we had two gigs and continuing my monitor theme, the ups and downs of narrow dispersion have revealed themselves.

AS you may remember we had to put the two monitors that we use to the side on one gig bue to the depth (or lack of depth) of the stage. That worked really well and these speakers have a 60 x 60 dispersion angle. As a result our feedback issues all but went away.

This weekend, sideways positioning was not possible so the speakers went back to the front and... we could not all hear the monitors. So with narrow dispersion we need more monitors......obviously IEM is the way to go? NO, dinosaurs do still roam the stages of southern England so we need more monitors. I do have a third identical cab but with a powered  mixer, we are at our maximum.

 

I do have a solution that still needs testing so I will keep my powder dry for a while but...till then I must leave you in suspenders.

[Stub Mandrel]

On Saturday we used a house pa with alto tops and a single H+H sub.

 

Our vocalist used his desk and started by equalising with white noise and a reference amp. Then he let the system ring out any feedback automatically.

 

I asked him not to low pass my bass, he showed me the default curve which was a hpf about 40hz, a slight dip at 4-500 to make space for guitars, then flat.

 

Positive comments from the audience, which inclded a few musos. ! few people here have commented that my bass sounded 'really deep' on what are just phone recordings.

[Phil Starr]

Another gig last night with my duo. We really have a stable PA set up of two RCF 310 tops and two more as floor monitors, mixer is an RCF M18 digital mixer. We don't use backline and its bass,guitar and two vox plus programmed drums. It's the only gig I do without in-ears but we ahve full control of the floor monitors so levels are not ear ringing and I find it a lot easier to sing with air around me rather than with in -ears. We are set up so the monitor sound reflects the front of house sound. In practice that means careful HPF of the bass from the monitors as we get so much of the sub 120Hz region coming from the FOH speakers so we need nothing of that in the floor monitors. This was a big pub if a bit less than ideal acoustically being divided into 4 separate spaces. I reckoned we had nearly 200 people there at the end of the evening though we started to an empty bar.

 

The sound is bob on. You can't make more of a voice like mine but given the skill levels we have I'm pretty happy with how we sound. Having a fixed set up we stick with is such a help. All the settings are saved and recalled so set up is just plugging in. You can see the signal on the led meters on each channel so there is no irritating 'one-two' going on. Soundcheck is usually just 60 secs and the only thing I set is the master volume for the FOH unless the acoustics need a bit of eq. We were pretty loud last night with a full house and the two 10" tops were cruising with plenty to spare even though they were carrying bass and drums. This set up would carry most bands even with acoustic drums so it's surprising what you can do with reasonable quality but quite compact gear.

 

Of cours it's never perfect, guitarist said at the end that he couldn't hear the guitar as well when playing the acoustic, the electric sounded great. I worked out last night htat normally we have the monitors lower so he can hear the acoustic partly from the direct acoustic sound. Somehow we'd turned the monitors up too high so other things were drowning out the acoustic guitar. I'll have to confess this morning

[Stub Mandrel]

Last couple of gigs we've done with a pair of Mackie tops, just for vocal and a bit of drums. Have had a lot of positive comments, told our gig on Saturday was the best we've ever sounded.

[JPJ]

Our gig for our acoustic trio was in a pub made out of three separate but connected rooms arranged in an L shape, where we play in the corner of the L. 

 

I’d spent the afternoon uploading a new profile to my DriveRack for just the two EV ZLX15 tops (no subs required), and I also built a completely new scene file in the X-Air XR18 for the trio rather than using a cutdown scene from the now defunct electric band. Result was a back-to-basics cleaner sound without the layering of previous tweaks and adjustments. Overall, I was very happy with the FOH sound, and this was also both my first gig using an acoustic upright double bass, and my first playing without any form of backline. Relying on the FOH sound for monitoring my bass playing was in hindsight a mistake, and for future trio gigs I will use my in-ears for personal monitoring. 

[Woodinblack]

`On the saturday night we had a gig in a local working mens club, we have played it many times.. Got a new rickenbacker on the friday, so it had to come, so going from the bass -> Mod Dwarf (svt model) -> X18 -> 2 x Evox 8.

First setting it up for some reason it wasn't right, the microphones weren't at the right level, the sax was down and nothing was clear, 5 minutes before gig start it wasn't good, so I leveled all the microphones and started again, and then it was show time. 

All worked well, great gig and we were told it was the best bass sound they had heard in the club, not booming and filling the whole space.  I am not sure how true that was but it was certainly the best bass sound that we had had, so I will take that!

[Phil Starr]

1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

`On the saturday night we had a gig in a local working mens club, we have played it many times.. Got a new rickenbacker on the friday, so it had to come, so going from the bass -> Mod Dwarf (svt model) -> X18 -> 2 x Evox 8.

First setting it up for some reason it wasn't right, the microphones weren't at the right level, the sax was down and nothing was clear, 5 minutes before gig start it wasn't good, so I leveled all the microphones and started again, and then it was show time. 

All worked well, great gig and we were told it was the best bass sound they had heard in the club, not booming and filling the whole space.  I am not sure how true that was but it was certainly the best bass sound that we had had, so I will take that!

I often find that simplifying things gives the best sound. Too often you can twiddle to solve one problem only to find you’ve created others. I’ve stopped saving settings at the end of a gig. They are rarely better than the basic mix I’ve set up in rehearsal.

 

Don’t be surprised, i too get my best bass sound out of the PA on poles. You get several db of boost of the lowest frequencies from the floor and adjacent walls with backline and it just muddies everything.

[Woodinblack]

23 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

Don’t be surprised, i too get my best bass sound out of the PA on poles. You get several db of boost of the lowest frequencies from the floor and adjacent walls with backline and it just muddies everything.

 

Thats what I found. I also have a BAM200 amp and gnome 10" speaker that I put on the floor by the drum, but that not loud, it is just so that the rest of the band can hear it clearly. It is the PA that does the heavy lifting. Its also nice to have the stage space!

It is true to say that the ric sounded fantastic out the front - well, and in my in ears - I am sure that some of the sound of the gig was because it was just really enjoyable and you just play better if you are having fun don't you

[Phil Starr]

8 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Thats what I found. I also have a BAM200 amp and gnome 10" speaker that I put on the floor by the drum, but that not loud, it is just so that the rest of the band can hear it clearly. It is the PA that does the heavy lifting. Its also nice to have the stage space!

It is true to say that the ric sounded fantastic out the front - well, and in my in ears - I am sure that some of the sound of the gig was because it was just really enjoyable and you just play better if you are having fun don't you

I use a Gnome with a 10 (BC 110T) for the poor snowflakes who can’t manage in-ears in the same way you do 😄😂 

 

Glad you had a fun gig.