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Just joined by way of a great deal on a somewhat tinkered-with FCS. over the last 35yrs I have played anything from 2-12 strings and owned more gear than I can remember. When work and chauffeuring 2 young kids around allows, I try hard not to buy any wonderful gear offered at a decent price.

After using a Behringer U-phoria 1820 for years, I just took delivery of a Solid State Logic SSL 2+ Mk2 and I am blown away. The Behringer has served me well for nearly a decade; totally reliable, well put together, the line inputs are decent, lots of connectivity and monitoring options and the headphone amps handle high impedance headphones easily. The only real downside is that it can be a bit noisy and that can be an issue with recording vocals and acoustic guitar (which I’m now doing more of). So I decided to treat myself to a new audio interface and narrowed down the choice to the Motu M2/M4 and the SSL. In the end, the SSL won out because GuitarGuitar had a decent price on it. It’s a different form factor to the Behringer so I’ve had to rearrange the desk a bit to accommodate it but that’s freed up space elsewhere and given me a bit more room overall. Construction is reassuringly solid with the exception of one of the low-cut buttons which wasn’t seated properly - a bit of jiggling has dropped it into place now and it works perfectly. Headphone amps are good and strong, as good or better than the Behringer, sound quality is excellent and the noise floor is virtually inaudible. I haven’t used it in anger yet but my quick tests have been very positive - the mix preamps in particular seem really good. There’s a “life” to the recordings that was missing from the Behringer and my acoustic guitar sounds fantastic. Well, up to the point where I try to play it. So, very happy….. …..and yet the GAS keeps coming I’m now after a matched pair of small diaphragm condenser mics specifically for recording acoustic guitar (and possibly as ambient mics for recording a choir). With a budget for the pair of £150 or less, I’ve narrowed it down to the SE Electronics SE7, MXL 603s or Thomann’s Tbone SC140. Does anyone have any hands-on experience of any of these? And, specifically, any issues I should be aware of? At £99 delivered, the Tbones are the cheapest and have excellent specs so I’m interested to know if there are any reasons to avoid them?

^ this I do this with our acoustic Americana’ish trio on double bass. I used to use the TC BG250 208 for ‘personal monitoring’ but now prefer to use in-ears with the bass going into FoH via the Stanley Clarke’s DI.

If I remember correctly, the Shaftsbury’s were bolt on necks?

Only two? I'm disappointed! 🙂

Oh alright then, if you insist. I'll blame you.

Thank you very much both of you! For the time being I will tell my friend to investigate the Shaftesbury trail. 🙂

Mute

I'm not an expert, but it looks like a Shaftesbury to me.

Met up with Lorenzo this morning to buy his Ditto Looper. Really lovely guy and a pleasure to deal with. Had a great chat about all things bass! Deal with confidence folks!

My hard rock band's first PA used a pair of Carlsboro speakers. At the time I really didn't like them, but in fairness to them the rest of the chain was awful, there was some ancient desk where half the channels didn't work, a rack of god knows what crossover and amps, and then some subs that had been made by some local DIY shop. They had the awful circular speaker grills. I think the tops were 15s and the subs 12s which is entirely the wrong way around. The only things in the PA were three vocals and a kick drum and yet somehow it still sounded awful. Was it the gear? Maybe. Or was it because it was my first stint as soundman and I didn't have a clue as Phil says? Yeah, that. Mea culpa. Anyway, my point is that we did several successful gigs with absolute cheapest of the cheap, bottom rung stuff and you know what? It was fine. Not the great sounding "why do people buy anything else?" experience I've had with some cheap gear like the Alto rig we upgraded to, but it was absolutely usable. I wish I could remember more about that mixer and amp rack but it's probably for the best to be honest. I know the mixer had wooden sides, a sure sign of quality. Since then I've had my grubby mitts on: Also TX10 Alto TS115A Alto TSUB118A Barefaced FR800 QSC K12.2 (still own these) RCF 705 as ii and been in bands that have used RCF 912 RCF 932 RCF 910 RCF 708 as iii For about eight years I was in both the above hard rock band and an indie rock band. The hard rock band had upgraded to the frankly brilliant Alto 15" tops and 18" subs listed above, whilst the indie rock band used the RCF 932 and the 905ii (I owned one sub, the guitarist another matching one). Both bands used my Behringer XR18 as a mixer, I'd have expected a bit of a jump between the two systems but honestly there wasn't much. Yes maybe you could do more with less of the RCF, we nearly always used just one sub with the pair of 12s, whereas the hard rock Altos always got the pairs of 18" subs and 15" tops, but maybe that's more to do with the band being louder than anything else. Certainly by the time one factors in the room, the other gear in the chain, and my deficiencies as a soundman I don't think there was much in it. The best pa I've ever owned as a band was my pop punk bands rig of a pair of RCF 910 tops and the single 15" sub. That was an awesome rig: played loud enough, sounded great and we were totally ampless. I would 100% recommend the Alto rig to anyone though. Ours must be about 15 years old now and I'm sure the newer stuff is probably even better than ours. There's a lot of posts on here about people being cautious about investing in a PA but it's not much more than a decent bass rig if you hunt for bargains, and it can certainly be a lot cheaper than two guitar rigs and a bass rig all added up. Thomann will do you this set for £1300, and whilst it may be own brand stuff, Thomann stuff is nearly always excellent and the same shop wants almost as much for a Darkglass 410 bass cab. Has anyone tried the Thomann DSP or DSX powered cabs? I'm really keen to hear hands-on reviews. Here's the Alto rig, as the Americans would say, getting it done. And doing it just as well as fancier speakers. Especially in what must have been a bad sounding room given that they're pointing at walls. Oh, bargain basement gigging...

What constitutes a woody tone? It's impossible to just go, 'just finger pluck a Fender Jazz with flats and push it through an Ampeg B-15,' because this alone isn't wholly how tone is done. You could give this set up to ten different bass players and you'd get ten different tonal results. There's dozens/hundreds of threads here from people going, 'how do I sound like <insert bassist name here>?' As @snorkie635 said, your opinion on what sounds woody would probably be somewhat different to someone else's opinion. What do you want to sound like?

Did you ever get around to trying this? I keep running into this and the ampeg micro vr during search binges and I haven't heard much about them.

Not sure what it is.....but, it isn't a Greco.