Am I talking out my ar*e ...

[gafbass02]

I've been thinking of a rig idea which I reckon would suit me perfectly on any size stage, and believe me I've covered em all. But it seems obvious so I'm probably talking pants.
Using the barefaced cabs as an example would this work?
Imagine a set up where you have behind you a standard head/cab set up, let's say a compact and little mark 2. All good, when I go towards the backline/drummer there's my sound all nice n fat. But when I'm on a big stage or the onstage sound is cluttered when I move forward to sing/change fx/ show off I no longer get as good a sound, my rig is too far back to feel. ..ok ask for bass in the monitors? But honestly that dosnt often happen and causes issues and often sounds awful. So what if I had, at the front my 2nd cab? Let's say a midget/t but with a kickback cut away so its angled up at me right at the front by my fx. So wherever I move on my side of the stage, front or back my tone is there. The front, kickback cab would ideally have fitted a volume attenuator knob so i don't p1ss off the guitard on my side too much and would have to work well off a longer than average speaker lead of course.
From recent gigs and festivals this sort of arrangement would really suit me. In my 'glory days' in double cross I used to use a laney kickback 2x10 combo at the front on a line out from my trace stack. Although to be fair we were lucky enough to play some huge places with perfect monitoring so it became less nessecary but recently at festivals etc where my amp is 20ft behind me but the monitors are all vocals I'd have loved this set up.
Can/could it work? Should I just shut up?

Edited July 13, 2010 by gafbass02

[ironside1966]

have you triad the side using the amp as a side fill., less spill of stage when using a PA

[gafbass02]

Yeah whenever I can tbh but nowadays there is a guitard between me n the side so it's a no go. Putting my amp at the side caused Don Dokken to go flying off in a backstage comedy rock star rage at his bassist Barry Sparks when they used our backline when we supported them on tour in '05. It was pretty funny "the bass was crushing my skull!!" (a trace ah400smx set to two) heh heh.

Edited July 14, 2010 by gafbass02

[Ian Savage]

I don't see why it wouldn't work, it's a nice idea for bigger stages with less-than-great monitoring/engineering - an additional idea, rather than getting a kickback cab made you could just pick up a cheap secondhand wedge monitor and ram a bass speaker into it?

[alexclaber]

I'm not convinced it's a great way to go. For starters there's the whole issue of how when you put bass cabs in close proximity the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (due to coupling), whilst when splitting the cabs you not only lose the good coupling but you also encounter destructive interference at certain frequencies. Most small cabs are unlikely to provide quality thump on their own, plus more output near the mics is never a good thing for the FOH sound. And you couldn't control the monitor cab with a passive volume knob, you'd need to run a dual channel power amp.

I'm used to standing way away from my rig whilst singing but I've always tended to use BIG rigs, or at least high output ones. Obviously the closer you stand the more thump you feel. But if you have plenty of output that thump shouldn't diminish too badly. If it is diminishing so badly that you can't feel the bass at all then you're fighting the room's acoustics and/or the rig is too small for the gig. Once the gig gets to the size where there is no hope of your stage rig being felt when you're at the mic then there should really be enough FOH subwoofer output bleeding back to give you the thump you need, even if there's no bass coming through the monitors.

[gafbass02]

That's pretty much a top answer :0) I figured there'd be good reasons why it wasn't the norm. Cheers Alex, lemme know when that midget T's ready as having lived with the compact a bit I'm pretty sure it's the way forward!