JPJ

I do this all the time. Our channel settings have been dialled in on the XR18 for a few years now, so I use the six band semi-parametric eq on the mains to eq to the room. I also save scenes for each venue so I have the last gig at that venue as a starting point. My only other comment is subtractive eq is much more preferable to additive.

Took a quick lunchtime trip up into beautiful Northumberland to see local electronics wizard Dave Coates who diagnosed and fixed the issue in about five minutes. As suspected, one of the four legs of the volume pot board was loose in the main board. A quick whizz over with the soldering iron and she’s as good as new.

Most of the oils I’ve used have the effect of darkening the wood (tung oil, tru-oil, gunstock oil), would shellac not be a better option?

My first recollection of seeing an ‘Original’ Overwater was as a teenager, pressing my nose up against the window of Chris & Andy’s on High Bridge in Newcastle in the early eighties. One image that sticks in my mind was a window display containing an Original series fretless four string displayed alongside a JayDee Supernatural - that image caused unnatural stirrings in the trouser department.

Ah a journey I have been on recently but in the other direction. At one time, most of my basses were five string actives, which over a period of time I ‘upgraded’ to John East J-Retro or Unibass preamps. I had my sound. Then a tribute sort of gig came along which required a P bass, so in came a very nice early passive Lakland Skyline P with the Lindy Fralin pickups, quickly followed by a Fender Tony Franklin fretless P bass (again passive) for an electric Americana project, and that was it, I was hooked on passive tone, so much so that I built (assembled) a passive five string PJ. Passive basses became my main gigging instruments of choice. After about two years, I was feeling guilty leaving my John East equipped Overwater five string J series, my previous workhorse bass, unloved in its case. So I whipped it out for a gig and boom - I was back in love with active basses. For me, I think passives record better, but there is no substitute for the oomph of an active bass when you are playing live. What has changed is that I am now cutting the bass back much more and really dialling in the middle to get a really nice, almost passive, tone but with more balls. It’s funny how your tastes change over time isn’t it?

Replacing a 924 or 940 neck is going to be a challenge given that they are one of the best proportioned necks I’ve ever played. I’ve owned my factory fretless RS940TV since 1982 and it will have to be prised out of my cold dead hands.

Here’s a “guts shot” of mine. I’ve identified the issue as being a problem with the mounting of the volume control which is on a separate PCB to the main PCB. Looks like it might just need resoldering but that’s above my plumber grade soldering skills, so it’ll be off to a local electronics guru.

My Overwater Original 5 string used to belong to @BigRedX and is indeed fitted with the filter preamp although sadly this is a bit temperamental at the moment - probably due to me removing it to fit a John East Uni-Pre then reinstalling it when all the chat started on here about Wal’alikes and filter pres. It’s also a 36” five string with an almost piano-like B string. The pickups are the later Kent Armstrongs under wood covers.

Sorry, no photos but a good friend of mine used old solid wood chests of drawers and cupboards he got from a local charity shop for under bench storage. They worked out about a third of the cost of building his own and were a robust solution. I’ll be doing the same when I build my new workshop (shed) next spring.

As I understand it, Yes analogue should always be lower latency as there is no analogue to digital followed by digital to analogue conversion, but there’s then the issue of legal frequency and the old picking up the passing taxi if you’re on the same wavelength.

The only one I’ve had any experience with is the Xvive U3, which worked perfectly and played nicely with two Xvive IEM systems but is £170 so might be considered pricey.

Cheers John, I’ll certainly take you up on that coffee, but I’ve spoken with the venue and they can provide either a split or individual IEM mixes from their desk with personal control so immediate problem solved 😎

Hi Phil, In answer to your questions, insert leads won’t work with the Behringer XR18, or at least not to the best of my knowledge. Based on our usual setup, I’ll need to split 12 channels so I was going for 16 simply because it seems to be a popular format and would work with two of those MS8000’s for a passive split. Because the venue hosts up and coming touring bands I will check with them to see if they can provide a split from their stage box before investing but I think the MS8000 route is the way we’ll go.

Wow these look great. Any idea of finished weight and recommended crossover frequency, or is that covered in the download?

So, as we’re all using IEM’s and we have a gig coming up at a venue that has in-house PA and engineer, we were thinking of adding a 16-channel splitter so we could run our IEM’s from our XR18 leaving the house engineer free to do his thing with the FOH sound. But these things are bloody expensive in the UK with most we can find coming from the USA. Yes we have considered the MIDAS unit but that leaves control of the analogue gain with us, potentially getting in the way of the in-house guy. We’re now thinking of a couple of Behringer MS8000’s and a short loom to hook these to our XR18 for a full analogue split. My question, is anyone here doing the same or have a source for a reasonably priced splitter here in the UK?

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had a better sound than this combination gives me. I’m a huge fan of gentle compression when playing live and the Empress just gets the job done. The nerve centre of tone is the Jad Freer Capo which is just lush to play through, and then the Phil Mann with bass in mind version of the SushiboxFX Finally DI pushes out a lovely fat warm valve DI to FoH. The Thumpinator is there to protect my amp (I love this little box of tricks) but as I’m now almost always using IEM’s the amp is almost becoming redundant.

Back at the Old Fox, in Felling, a small town just south of Newcastle upon Tyne. This is one of those gigs you look forward to, a live music pub with an audience who appreciates your efforts. We’re all using IEMs now and that’s been an absolute game changer for us, and as one well respected local live music aficionado has just posted on FaceAche “Southern Incorporated were tighter than a nuns chuff”. Loads of folk we know out supporting us too, and a very happy landlady who stuck an extra £30 in the pay packet at the end of the night. Job done!

After much humming and haa’ing, I have taken the plunge and ordered a set of ACS Engage custom moulded IEM’s. Probably going to receive them after my last scheduled gig in 2025 so you might have to wait a while for a review.

Love it, great bass sound/tone. interesting to see he’s playing that with what might be considered to be an electric bassists right hand technique.

They may go down to 60Hz but the power will drop. Some speakers quote -3dB some even as low as -6dB for their low end figure. Personally, I cross over at between 80Hz and 100Hz depending on the system.

Give Chris or Martin a call at the factory. When Martin did a refret and setup on my original series 5’er, Chris replaced at least one of the knobs from NOS.

Love the idea of supporting a British manufacturer (hell my first proper bass amp was an Ohm GB60 combo back in the day), but no website and just a facebook page leaves me cold. The subs placement thing is a real thing. Of all the venues we play, there is only one where I can put the subs side-by-side in the centre in front of the stage and yes they sound measurably better when arranged like this. For the majority of our gigs, space dictates that we go one sub per side with a pole mounted top. I’m serious tempted by a pair of the RCF NLX24’s and single 905 sub as this will comfortably cover all of our gigs, and being a registered gear slut, I’d probably add a second 905 down the line just because I love chest thumping kick drum mixes.

But now I am thinking about it, the Jad Freer Capo has become my single point of failure in this setup - perhaps I need a second spare preamp pedal just in case 🤔

I have a foot in both camps. I have an amp on stage which is largely redundant as the PA is supplied from my rather excellent Jad Freer Capo preamp and we’re all using in-ears. The amp is really only helping the PA out, but at a recent gig, my amp died and with this setup no one noticed. The plan for next year is to upgrade the PA and ditch the backline altogether.