mingsta

Only you can decide whether portability or tone is of more value to you.

...but personally I'd go the middle road - send back one of the One10's and keep the other + vanderkley.

For the gigs where you're going through the PA, then a single One10 gives a great and highly portable stage monitoring set up. Not sure why you'd want the extra hassle of bringing two if its just for monitoring. For the gigs where the backline is doing the heavy lifting, then you have your preferred tone going out to everyone with the Vanderkley.

See, with mentality like that, this is why I currently have 4 x amps/speakers!

There seems to be a fair bit of love for this pocket rocket and I'm looking to get one to complement a Gen 2 Midget that I've recently picked up.

While this is all going to be a bit subjective, I'd appreciate your thoughts on a few questions I had:

Will the clean volume when paired with a BF Gen 2 Midget be enough for stage monitoring purposes (moderate vol - no loud drummer (e-kit) or marshall stacks involved - it's just competing with 2 x 10 inch active wedges)?

Also, what are your experiences of not having seperate gain and volume knobs? How well does that work in practice?

I'll also be DI'ing in to the band's PA from the head. People have referred to the "GK sound" and I guess I have slight reservations about whether the amp is going to excessively colour my sound. We cover a lot of different genres, so having a head with doesn't have too much of a signature sound would be desirable.

For reference point, my other heads are Genz Shuttle 6.2 and Streamliner 600 and I don't find either to excessively colour the tone (more so with the former!) if you're sparing with the EQ and gain.

Thanks!!!

Top man. Sent me a Genz Benz shuttle accessory for price postage only.

[quote name='PaulGibsonBass' timestamp='1467579082' post='3084689']
I play when the band are rehearsing or gigging, and I play at home if I have a new song to learn. And that's it. It'd be nice to have the time to play every day but life stuff and other musical endeavours preclude that.
[/quote]

What he said!

I'm in a cover's band so it's pretty robotic...learn new songs...rehearse...perform. The payback is the gigging and being in a tight, well drilled unit. If there's a quiet spot then I'll have a break for a few weeks and not play, but always mindful that you need to be fit enough to play for 2-3 hours and I'll do plenty of exercises in the lead up to the next batch of rehearsals/gigs.

I'd love to be able to spend more time learning and creating, but I just don't have the time so focus what time I do have on the thing that I get the most enjoyment out of ie gigging.

Hi there, is this the sleeve for the Genz Benz shuttle? If so, I'll take it!

So we played a wedding on Sunday. The venue manager gave me the walkthrough in the afternoon as I was setting up the PA. There was one of those DB-meter cutout devices, set to 90db and about 6M away from the PA main speakers and mounted on the ceiling.

I've never had the chance to play with one of these before, so I took the PA to a decently loud level (playing some pre-recorded band tracks) to see if I could trigger the power cutout. I could see the first green bar (out of 3) blinking, nowhere near hitting the red. We're running Yamaha DXR15's and had the mains on 0 (ie not DB cut) and the desk at the same, so my entirely unscientific guess is that we were probably about 70-80% of max clean vol.

It was plenty loud for a wedding to my ears. But the manageress said that she'd had bands in the past who just could not work within those parameters and it'd ruined their gig. While I was somewhat crestfallen to see that our PA couldn't blow the power, it does make me wonder what kind of band needs to play THAT loud at a wedding!!!

Maybe she was winding me up and it was really the smoke alarm!!!

My first nice bass has lots of dings after 22 years. My other three are 8-5 years old and almost immaculate. They get used and gigged plenty but I'm just better at taking care of them.

Each to their own, but I can't see how taking care of your kit can be a bad thing. Now, not using it because it's too nice is a shame, but if people have the means to have a few coffee table pieces that they prefer to keep in the cabinet, that's their prerogative.

I've got a 93 trans red and its a lot darker than the pic, more of a burgundy color. It's alder body and sounds a bit darker than my ash bodied ray, though it still has that zing.

Another one for OBBM.

My main one is still going strong after 5 years of constant use, rehearsals and gigs etc. Never had a cable last more than a year or two prior to that.

Interesting, three. If you found the sadowsky just right and the east too flat, it seems that the east might be perfect for me!

I've got a metro RVHPJ. Fantastic bass, but I find the sadowsky preamp rather unusable. It's got a bass and treble which are boost only, no mid pot. The problem is, they are so powerful, particularly the bass, that anything more a quarter turn summons Thor, God of thunder, and whatever you were trying to do tonally gets hit out of the park with his giant hammer. I find the vintage tone control the only usable knob.

I'm considering putting in an East three band, which is more like the MM preamp on my 4HH ray, that I get along much better with.

Anyone had similar experiences or am I just doing it wrong?

If you are open to PJ configuration then you could pick up a Sadowsky HPJ in mint condition used for that money. Jazz neck and P body. Fantastic build quality.

Just a quick follow up on this.

After much deliberation I went for my original choice and got the Dbr10.

It's got a nice full range sound for such a small speaker and I think it's got plenty enough clout for our monitoring needs (we don't generate much stage volume).

We put the whole band through it at rehearsal last night, albeit at moderate volumes, and it sounded great. We're playing a wedding next weekend so will give it a proper go at gig volume then.

I'm keeper of the main PA and desk so my back is thanking me for taking the small and light option on this occasion.

Don't sweat over it.

I'm big in to road cycling and £3k and upwards bicycles are so so commonplace nowadays that no one batters an eyelid if your rig is far better than your riding ability. If its your passion why not enjoy something if you have the means to buy it.

Even expensive guitars are good value when you consider the lifetime of enjoyment that you can get out of them. A set of top end Road wheels cost over £2k and would only last you a few seasons.

Thanks for the really useful input guys. As ever you've talked me in to going larger and more expensive than I'd originally planned. It sounds like a Yamaha DBR12 or equivalent 12" active PA speaker from RCF etc would give a little bit more bass extension and offer a bit of versatility for other usage in the future.

A couple of posters talked about backlines and stage volume etc. This will shock and disgust the majority of you but my band is possibly the quietest band going in that respect as WE HAVE NO BACKLINE!!! Our guitard does not actually own an amp and just goes straight in to the desk and the drummer uses headphones blended with a monitor mix from the desk.

Up till now, we've been using my PJB bass cub as the monitor for the whole band and pass the FOH mix through this. It's worked surprisingly well due to the lack of competing backline, but looks rather amateurish. The drawbacks are that you can't hear much kick or bass guitar. Keeping time's fine as I can zone in on the snare/hi hat, but I've started to take a separate bass amp for personal monitoring. So I think anything we get is going to be a step up from our current set up.

Nice story Rich...and further proof along with mine and Ratman's that The Bass Centre was THE place for young callow youths to have random encounters with famous bass players back in the 80s/90s.

I hope you kept that Wal...

Haha, oh yes!!!

I was in the London Bass Centre (now long departed) back in about 1991.

Jamiroquai had just gone big with their first album and I proceeded to bash out several of their bass lines very badly and at top volume in true teenage music shop demo stylee.

There was this skinny american dude sat on the stool next to me and he started chattin, he even asked me to show him how to play a RHCP bassline that I'd been bashing out. Anyways, really nice guy. I was after a new bass, and he was telling me how he played Warwicks and babied them when they were new, but had dropped them down flights of stairs etc at various venues.

It was only a few days later that I put two and two together and realised that I had been chatting to STUART ZENDER!!! Props to him for not calling me out on my awful aping of his bass lines! He must have been laughing inside, but also filled with warmth and satisfaction that his lycrical basslines had touched the lives of so many yoots...many of whom should never ever be allowed anywhere near a bass guitar.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1462220274' post='3041275']
I think 10's will 'do' drums but I generally think 10's need subs.

In this situation.... I'd put the drums thru a decent combo and keep him out of vox 10's...
If the drummer has an electronic kit I assume somewhere along the line he'd have thought
about his monitoring needs?
[/quote]

Yeah, the drummer doesn't need a monitor as he has his own mix from the desk going in to his headphones with the rest of the band in but no drums. He then mixes to taste with his drum and click when this gets to his drum unit.

I'm now leaning more towards getting a 12inch wedge monitor such as the Thomann The Box Pro Mon A12.

We played a bar party in Kings Cross on Sat night.

Good night, nice crowd, though it was a bit of struggle to get em up and dancing for some of the night (we don't feel like we've done our job otherwise).

Here's a bit of phonecam footage from the singer.

[url="https://youtu.be/ioxOUf94dNg"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioxOUf94dNg[/url]

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1462207987' post='3041123']
Depends what you need to hear.
With basic sound set-ups I think FOH and mons are best left to do as little as possible so that means vox.
Depends what comes back from your desk.

For me, a DXR10 or QSC K10's, main use would be Vox..maybe some keys ... but it depends on what the band want/need to hear.
For small stages, and quick set-ups, you don't need to over complicate things...IMO.
[/quote]

Because our drummer uses an electronic kit, we'll definitely need to hear that. We don't need to feel the kick, but need to hear enough to lock in.

We upgraded our PA last year to a pair of Yamaha DXR15 and Allen & Heath ZED60FX-14 desk and now we're having a look at our monitoring.

We are a four piece band (e-drums, bass, guit, vox) and play mainly pubs and parties, plus 3 or 4 weddings a year, but nothing particularly big as you can probably guess from the rest of our kit.

I like the idea of using a pair of active 10inch PA speakers such as Yamaha DBR10s for our monitoring as they're light and don't look they'd take much floorspace. Also they're useful for other applications such as backing up the main PA or for some guitar/vocal type stuff.

I know that it's a bit of a compromise compared to a big full range wedge, so wanted to get your feedback on how well this works and what the main drawbacks are. The guitarist and singer will have one of them and just need to be able to hear themselves and a bit of drum. I'll take the other. In an ideal world, I'd put lots of bass and drums through and just enough guitar and vocals to know what they're up to, but realistically, I can see myself using the monitor for drums/vocals/guitar + separate bass amp.

Lots of good advice already.

I'm a big fan of the active full range tops + passive desk approach. Easily fits in a modest sized hatchback and we're finding that a lot of recent wedding venues have quite Conservative decibel restrictions so for us, its just not worth the considerable extra bulk and expense of having subs + tops.

We're running Yamaha DXR15s, Allen and heath zed60 14fx desk and thomann the box A12 monitors. Vocals, e drums, bass and guitar all go through this. If we had a bigger budget we woukd get tops with 15 inch drivers + 3 or 4 inch voice coil like those rcf 745s.that said the Yamaha DXR15s have been great and only cost us £850 for the pair as a minty 2nd hand purchase. The monitors have pole mounts so could be used as a backup in the event that one of the tops went pop.

First off, congrats on the incoming bongo it's a truly fantastic bass. Personally, I'd wait till you get the bass and then audition a number of different cabs and heads to find out what goes well with it. There's a lot of good amps and cabs out there so while you got on with the hartke kit, you might find there are others out there which will float your boat. I've got 1x15,2x12,2x10 Genz Benz cabs and for me the 2x12 was the best match with the bongo as it has the lows, mids and highs to keep pace with the Bongo's monster full range tone.

The next upgrade is always the one that will get you 'there'.

Telling that you suffer from a non gender specific variant of RBF (resting bitch face)