mrtcat

I don't suppose you ever travel south? Id snap these up in a heartbeat but won't be in the North East until Xmas and its unlikely my wife will have left a single cubic inch of space in the car at that point.

6 gigs in last 14 days, all weddings, and all without noise restrictions (absolute miracle to get so many non restricted ones in a row) and 4 were in marquees (so much better for sound) so we we've been able to use my PA for all.  Its a super simple setup of 2 x rcf 932a and 2 x rcf 905 subs run via a behringer x-air 18. All on in ears. Acoustic drums and i got to use my amp too. Lovely to have full control over sound with a simple PA that just does the job right. Pull up the band's standard scene, short soundcheck, tweak for room and away we go.

1 hour ago, EBS_freak said:

Or maybe it's just cos I got sick of it all... Dunno. But it was definitely getting less enjoyable every gig I did.

It's very rare that I really enjoy the playing side of it these days. Venues are getting harder to deal with, I've never liked the indie pop rock type covers that we play and brides / grooms / wedding guests annoy me more and more as time goes by. I do it because £400 for hanging out with my mates is better than sitting on the sofa. I have young kids so my wife and i wouldn't otherwise be going out on a Saturday night. The money pays for nice family holidays etc. I earn well enough away from music that I don't have to do it and im not playing in pubs which i have absolutelyno desire to do. I have other musical projects ongoing that I really love but thankfully they're not week in week out type things as there's no real money in it and I just want that to be for fun.

Venues are well aware they sound bad. They just have to comply with the local authorities regarding noise pollution. The problem is that they sell it to the clients as a positive thing. Conversely we advise them of the limitations of the system at the point where they book us. There is a whole section of our contract dedicated to absolving us of blame for the quality of the final sound when these systems are involved. It also covers them not informing us at the time of booking. 

In the world of wedding bands you just need to accept limiters and in house systems. If you refuse to play the game you just get far less work. Its part of why function bands charge more than pub bands. We are essentially just a pub band that are prepared to put up with more grief.

On 14/08/2025 at 08:42, Phil Starr said:

I havn't come across these, and not likely to with my band who rarely do functions and certainly not the posh ones. Ihad to look it up. There only seems to be one company selling them in the UK and for anyone not familiar it's a 'ceiling of sound' Lots of panels od small speakers forming a suspended ceiling directly above the dance floor. DSP is used partly for compression/limiting I suspect and also to do some phase control deliberately creating power alleys so the bass drops off rapidly as you move from under the speaker array. Reading between the lines there is probably some eq boosting the bass. To give you some idea there's a second hand system being sold for £17,000 with 64 panels totalling 576 tiny speakers.

 

I'm imagining that with all the DSP it deliberately creates the full disco experience with all the thumping bass that implies. Maybe @EBS_freak or one of the other sound guys may have come across the system so I stand to be corrected.

 

Where was your band positioned? I'm guessing outside of the array and that you weren't allowed to use backline or  floor monitors or that if you were levels were severely limited? Do you use lectronic drums? The system wouldn't work to keep the noise down if the band were just outside the Zone Array creating 100db sound levels. The only solution for you would be for you all to use in-ears in which case you could have the sound you wanted, I've played the opening number of the set with in-ears only to find out the PA is still muted :)

 

 

Yep all of that is entirely correct. 

We all use in ears, no backline and the venue only allows electric drums. 

The biggest problem is that the whole system sounds absolutely awful. Virtually no bass at all. Just all really harsh and mid heavy at a low volume. All of it compressed to within an inch of its life. @EBS_freak knows these systems well and I his opinion of them is much the same as ours if i recall.

It's gigs like that where the money we spend on iems and nice stereo monitor mixes really comes into its own.

Honestly? Absolutely atrocious.

Wedding at a prestigious "award winning" venue near Chelmsford. Zone array system that sounded every bit as bad as every other zone array system we've had to use. 

Client pays £12k to hire venue plus another £2k for a band and then has to put up with appalling sound quality as a result of the venue's in house sound system. 

No sleep lost on our account. As always we do what we can and point any complaints to the venue and point out where our contract states that we'll try our best but make no promises. We take the money and act professionally. It's not fun but it pays. 

I totally understand why venues need to control volume levels but im still baffled by how they use such poor sounding systems to achieve it and think it's acceptable. 

Thanks for the interest everyone. I believe this is now covered.

Dep bass player needed for a function gig in Bedford on 30th August 2025.

Indie / pop / rock set, bvs not required, usual function times (1800 arrival 0000 finish). Band use iems but will provide belt pack so you just need the iems themselves. Amp with DI or modelling fx unit both fine.

£280 fee.

Message me for details and ill put you in touch with the band. They're a great bunch of guys with no egos and it's always a fun hang. Drummer is great so easy for a bass player.

If it's still under the bed when i pass your neck of the woods on my way to the in-laws at Xmas, ill give you a shout and have it off you if you still want to sell it. Just what im after but too far for me to be able to justify making a special trip.

39 minutes ago, JapanAxe said:

I agree but the trouble is, matey will hear the guitar-and-kick-drum-heavy mix and say ‘Yeah, nothing wrong with that!’

This is the issue. He's really competent at mixing and the sound we have is the sound he wants. The problem is that it's not really the right sound for indie pop at a wedding. If we were a metal band it would be pretty good.

It all comes down to his personal preference. Getting a pro engineer in to mix would probably be a bit pointless because he wouldn't like the mix they came up with. 

19 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

Agreed, which I think is why it's best to simply tolerate it. I think our guitarist is way too loud, but he's a great guy and a great player so I tolerate it. At gigs musicians tend to say 'He's too loud' while punters tend to say 'He's a great guitarist'. Everyone has a different perspective/expectation, as bass players we're often just as bad as most other band members.

 

Note the most.......    

Sounds like you need to have a grown up conversation with your guitarist 🤣

There's absolutely no issue with having a grown up conversation. We're all friends and we have done well over 700 gigs together and none of us are the sort to get fired up. I've had the conversation with the guitarist and the rest of the band a whole load of times and generally there's an agreement that the guitars and kick need to be tamed a little and the bass less buried but it lasts a gig or two before it goes back to the same old same old. The drummer never knows what it all sounds like because he never gets to listen from out front and we're all on iems so it always sounds fine in our own iem mixes. The singer (who also plays guitar) does hundreds of gigs a year with various set ups (solo, duo, deps etc) and literally is only worried about getting paid. 

I don't particularly want to walk. It's decent money and they're a good bunch to hang out with. I just feel frustrated that, no matter how often we discuss it, it always slowly creeps back to the same noisy guitar fest and that just makes me feel like I don't add anything to the sound. We get good feedback from clients and we do a fair few corporate events where pa and sound engineer is provided. It always sounds ace then.

A lot of the problem is that we're largely playing wedding venues and loads of them sound terrible anyway. There's just this reluctance from him to bring the levels down and have more balance. 

Anyone else tear their hair out with the band member who does the band's live sound?

4 piece wedding band (guitar x2, bass, drums and occasional keys from singer guitarist).

Our guitarist does the mixing. He's a brilliant player but comes from a heavy metal background. We play standard wedding indie / pop rock at a huge variety of venues. He pumps the kick drum, buries the bass guitar (i swear he hates bass guitar and often jokes about it) absolutely drowns everything in his guitar and eq's the vocals so they don't get in the way. It absolutely kills me every time. I'm there for the money but it would be nice to feel like I'm part of the sound and I think we just sound like a blaring mess. I've offered to mix countless times but he complains endlessly and, as it's his mixer, he generally pulls rank and takes over.

If we get the usual venue complaints of "it's too loud and there's too much bass" it's usually a reference to the absolutely thumping kick drum but he laughs and just turns the bass guitar down even further.

Annoyingly, he's a lovely guy when he's not mixing. 

Last rehearsal we had was in 2023. Can't remember if it was good or bad but we're still gigging weekly so can't have been bad.

Hmm would love to find a way of making this work but you're a long way north from here. Will be travelling to Northumberland around Easter so, if it's still available I'll give you a shout. 

I'll be selling a Tricky F112 if i buy this so always the option of a part trade if it helped you downsize. 

Now sorted. 

Following the very sad news about Nick Smith, Genesis Connected are looking for a bass player who is based reasonably close to Northampton. 

This is a professionally run band playing lovely venues and the pay reflects the standard and commitment required. 

Please message me if you're interested.

Thanks

Tom

Devastated. 

1 minute ago, cetera said:

https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/508631-nick-smith-missing/

Ah thank you, hadn't seen this. His band mate just messaged me and asked me to post. Good to see the community are already on it.

Apologies, hadn't seen the post in off topic.

On 20/12/2024 at 20:46, acidbass said:

- I don't like the IPX cable. It's very tangly. Already spent way longer untangling than I ever did with JH 7 pin cable which was a beast to be fair. Also no memory wire on UE which might be interesting

Completely agree. The ipx cable is rubbish. I went through 2 in 4 months before sending my UE6s off to Lugs for him to replace the connector to allow me to use a better (and far more sensibly priced) cable. The IPX cable is just overpriced rubbish.

3 hours ago, BillyBass said:

Glad to see you are getting on with the Squier.

It really has turned out to be one of my favourites. I think it's just the simplicity of a precision and the fact that that neck is more J than P. 

22 hours ago, EBS_freak said:

Kills you in the end doesn't it?

It's the bloody venues. Feels like they just hate all bands and they all lie their thruppney bits off to the client about how their noise restrictions aren't ever a problem. You're constantly having to refer them to the contract the client has signed and you can never just enjoy the playing. 

Love December though. Lots of corporate Xmas parties so you get treated far better.

Literally nothing on my gas list. I'm back up to about 100 function gigs a year and it's kinda sucked the joy out of playing so I don't really care what gear I'm using. I have a nice amp, a squier 40th anniversary p bass and my in ears. That's all I need. I'll probably sell off some of my more valuable basses in 2025.

4 minutes ago, Gank Bass said:

That is actually genius thank you!!

A lot of venues are aware of this and will have a contract with the client forbidding bands to use them. One of the bands I dep with got caught out and the venue asked them to pack up and leave. They had to comp the clients their full fee so just be careful.

1 hour ago, Gank Bass said:

 

 

These systems are the bane of my life when playing wedding venues. Using DI outs helps, I got a little eden 2*8 just to give myself and the drummer some vibration to work with but i can't help feel that customers are being ripped off by venues who allow bands but don't disclose this information! Once people start singing and dancing it can quickly trigger a db limiter/cut out 🤦‍♂️

 

My favourite example of this was the wedding planner asking us during the interval to "tell the crowd to dance a bit quieter"... I wish this was a joke

This is exactly our experience too. Venues tell clients that "bands love it here and never struggle - it always sounds amazing" and then try to point the finger at the band when the limiter set to 89db trips just from the crowd clapping. We have clauses in our contract that squarely tell the client that we cannot be held responsible for poor sound in venues with these systems. Clients are definitely being ripped by venues that really should be clear that they're not suitable for bands before they take the customer's money off them.