Al Krow

Thanks - I don't trust the "delivery within 8 days" though. Going to wait until they have it in stock. I paid £104 for a new MS-60B when they first came out in 2013, which would be around £160 in today's money, so this doesn't feel all that bad given that it's saving me getting a Helix Stomp 😄 All I can find is "Handy Guitar Lab App for iOS" which isn't going to be great for us who have PC / Android. Hmmm...that could be a real downer / potential deal breaker.

Apparently relatively straightforward midi access, which could make it a breeze to use live?

That's an eye opening perspective. I'd assumed that 'cos we're providing the audience with a well-balanced and tight FoH sound, rather than the sometimes mush/wall of sound that you can get from an unbalanced back-line set up, the punters would generally be enjoying the gig more rather than less? Certainly we've had many good gigs in terms of audience response - so that's not been a particular issue for us so far. Do you think the lack of energy you felt in the audience was due to the PA set up? I.e. if you were stage front you might have been in a "sound well" (dunno if that's even a proper term!) and those further back were getting the full benefit of the FoH sound? I'm guessing the bands themselves were giving out the expected level of performance energy themselves?

I'm not so sure that I can dismiss it when my bandmates comment on "not feeling it" as being simply not liking the songs, or them being out of their comfort zone - particularly when we've had many gigs with exactly the same material played really well and tightly that have not elicited the same reaction. It's been a more common sentiment since we abandoned back line entirely at the start of this year. I think there's maybe a deeper emotional connection to what sound we are hearing and feeling as musicians, which feeds into our stage performance and enjoyment of playing live?

Interesting you mention your guitarist also...seems to be a particular issue for them in being disconnected from their sound. IEMs vs Guitar Player. Anyone else experience this? : r/livesound (reddit.com)

Putting everything through FoH and using IEMs (or some using IEMs and one using a small stage monitor for guitar) = great for a balanced, articulate audience sound. Minimises feedback and doesn't overwhelm the IEM with stage sound. But I'm finding bandmates commenting that they're not "feeling it" at gigs. In particular the guitarist (and the rest of us tbh) missing the richness of sound that comes from hearing a quality guitar amp. Not missing the mushy wall of sound that comes from just relying on the guitar amp at full audience gig volume though! Is there a best of both worlds where we use backline at moderate stage volumes, but DI / mic up the kit to go through FoH and let the PA do the heavy lifting? Have any of you gone back to using a combination of backline and PA support after trying the silent stage approach and found that it improved your gigging experience?

@EBS_freak - excellent sine wave MkII post, thanks Russ!

"The MS-60B+ allows you to split output signals. This allows you to output with Amps/IR’s to a PA, while simultaneously outputting without Amps/IR’s to your amplifier." That's very neat!

Zoom MS-60B+ - ZOOM Europe (zoom-europe.com) I think this may just end up ticking all three boxes of solid core tone, presets and latest (by Zoom standards anyway!) chipset - I'm looking forward to getting this!

Zoom MS-60B+ - ZOOM Europe (zoom-europe.com) - looking good! courtesy @TRBboy 😊

It's a good question, Gav. You're right there's loads of preamps out there and it would be easy for this to become another "my favourite pre-amp is..." thread. As you'll maybe remember I've had a few preamps over the years (e.g. 2Notes le Bass, Tech21 VTDI, BDDI and Q\Strip and Helix Stomp, as well as a couple of other Zoom multis) but all used in conjunction with an amp & cab set up. I've only really been using a pedal board direct to desk these past 18 months. I'm not sure that anything is necessarily missing from my current sound (yes it really is 90% in the fingers, haha!), but I'm also conscious that I've not invested much on that part of my set up and just wondering if it's worth upping my game on that side of things? So I'm keen to find if those of us going direct to FoH have found a particular pre-amp is making a positive difference to their sound and what else they've tried. Good solid core tone, is probably #1, presets (#2) and latest chipset (#3) are always nice to have but, usually but not always, tend be multifx territory. I'm maybe thinking a quality preamp for a solid core tone and a little Zoom MS60B plus when it's released in a couple of months could tick all the boxes, assuming that a dedicated preamp should be able to out do a Zoom pedal for core tone, which it should do. What's your latest pre-amp squeeze that's hit the mark for you?

Did you consider any alternatives when deciding Ashdown and, if so, what tipped you in favour of this one?

Are you hearing any difference to your FoH sound or IEM clarity from the Sansamp, or is it just different, Phil?

It's a good question. But I'm thinking the quality of FoH and IEM sound from using a higher end preamp should be better? So I'm keen to find out if that's folks real world experience from having tried various preamps themselves.

Oh dear...I seem to have started something...gonna be in so much trouble if you guys are not hearing the upgrade benefit of the ZARs over the ZS 10s I'm finding - albeit from purely a home A/B and pre-gig! 😂

As it says on the tin 🙂 Appreciate there have been a load of pre-amp threads, but was looking to have something specifically targeted for us silent stagers using IEMs. I've been using a cheap as chips Zoom multi-fx (B1-4) to provide a half-decent pre-amp, as a step up from going directly into the desk, but I've recently been thinking it maybe a slightly daft corner to be cutting! What quality, ideally compact from my perspective, preamp are you guys & gals using and what benefits to your sound in the mix are you getting from them vs any others you've used?

@EBS_freak love it if you got a pair and gave them a comparison to some of the high end IEM ear pieces you've got? Fact is you know your way around this stuff better than most! If they get 80%+ of the way there for 10% of the price, that's a ratio many of us starting on the IEM journey would likely accept as a very decent trade off.

Scroll back a page or so to the links provided on Ali Express by our esteemed colleagues - almost half the price they are on Amazon. And seriously for £50, they were worth a punt. Just turns out to be one of the better punts I've taken this year, haha!

Haha nice one! Look forward to finding out whether your view of them vs the ZS 10s ties in with what I'm hearing 😊

Actually @Woodinblack - amusingly I've just managed to locate my mislaid ZS 10s (glad I did mislay them, as it turns out, haha). Here's a pic of them side by side - the ZAR's (on the right of the pic) have a similar footprint but are deeper to allow for their better armatures. I've not got anything sensitive enough to measure their weights - but reasonable to assume they will be a little heavier. I've spent a little bit of time A/B'ing with a Spotify track (the start of Maria by Blondie as it happens!). There's a level of additional detail coming through on the ZARs that isn't there on the ZS 10s - on the guitar, most certainly on the drums (which sound flatter on the ZS 10s) and a richer tone to Debbie H's vox. The ZS 10s are decent enough, but the ZARs are unquestionably a step up and will be my goto pair going forward.

Like you, I had a problem with just one of my KZ ZS10s falling out which is a bit weird, but I don't think we're the only ones to have mentioned this! I think the ZARs must be a little heavier as they are bigger overall in size (I mislaid my ZS10s a short while back so I don't have them on hand to directly compare). Ear shape will definitely play a part, but the better seal for me on these I suspect also means a better overall fit and therefore less likely to come out than my ZS 10s. I'll find out on Sat night when I can put them through their paces with a live band.

KZ ZAR IEM ear pieces arrived today. Maybe they just suit my ear shape, but they are a better fit and, although bulkier, they provide a much better seal which was immediately obvious. The very much reduced "leakage" from external sounds is also going to have the added benefit of providing better ear protection, which is more than worth the entry price of these for me. I've just A/B'd with my Sennheiser IE300 which I found comparable to, if a little quieter than, my KZ ZS10s, and I can hear bass & backing tracks so much more clearly with this KZ ZAR pair. Very happy with them - already feeling like they could be a contender for the best bit of gear I'm going to get in 2024!

Apparently decent capos for bass exist 😊

@EBS_freak recently posted a very helpful note for setting up the EQ and, in particular, applying HPF for kick drum, as an incidental comment on his IEM thread in response to me commenting that "our desk hpf kicks in at 100Hz and up till now the view has been to leave the 50Hz+ region for the kick and just hpf everything else including my bass". I thought it would be very useful to repost it on here as an OP so that it remains easily accessible to anyone interested. I'm sure there is plenty of expertise on this the wider topic of EQ when setting up the PA and I suspect plenty of us have EQ related questions, which we can maybe explore further on this thread. Analogue desk settings suggestions when applying HPF to the kick drum (by @EBS_freak) There is an easy response to this. For each venue, try and listen for what works best. If you are running an analogue desk without outboard, your options are more limited in terms of processing (compression, gates etc) but it worth remembering a HPF, at say 100Hz, is not literally cutting everything (e.g. hard cutting) below 100Hz. There will be a slope associated with that drop off and that drop off may not be behaving as you think. Let me try and explain how even with an analogue desk, and without the flash toys, you can make your kick drum thud at that fundamental. For the benefit of this example I'll tell you that kick drum fundamentals (depending upon kick drum) are typically somewhere in the 50, 60, 70 Hz zone. (Depends upon type and size of drum, tightness of skins etc) So... I've googled generic analogue desk and the Allen and Heath ZED something or other came up. Quite a common mixer the ZED... so I downloaded the manual to find out what the channel strip looks like - So we've got (at the top) a HPF which is 100 Hz. I've looked at the specs of the roll off and it's 12dB/Octave. I'm not sure of the Q on the HPF as it's not stated in the manual - but I'll show that for the roll off, it's not that important anyway, especially when we're using the eq in the manner in which I'm going to show you. So... here's our EQ with no gains applied on any of the EQ filters and no HPF applied. As you can see, totally flat. If you feed in anything in the lows, it will get pushed to your output bus. First things first, let's push in the HPF button and see what that does to our frequency curve. As you can see, with a 12db/Oct cut, it actually starts cutting above 100Hz and tapers down as the frequency lowers in accordance with that 12db/Octave gradient. Now let me show you what is actually happening at that 100Hz point on the HPF... Before we move on too much, lets come back to the Q. In the above example, the Q (shape) is at 0.71... is we lessen it to 0.1, we can see how it impacts the roll off - And if we boost the Q we can influence the eq quite dramatically... But... it's worth noting, the last thing you want on a PA, is a huge bump like this when putting on a HPF (I'm just showing you for your understanding). In reality I would wager Q is probably around 0.75 or 0.71 so there is cut only (e.g. nothing going above the horizontal line in our graphs). So just to get us back on path, as stated before, with the HPF button depressed, your EQ is going to look something like this. OK. Now lets look at the LF filter on the channel strip... As you can see, this is at 80Hz and is a low shelving filter (as shown by the logo under LF) So lets whack that up to +15dB and see what we get... You can see that shelf curve in action (curves upwards and then flattens out (the orange section). Our resulting EQ curve shows we are still getting a boost of low end from around 50Hz and above. So thats our target kick drum zone right there... however... it's also probably including a lot of unwanted mush because of the breadth of frequencies being boosted. So what can we do...? Lets set the LF back to 0 to get back to just our HPF being applied. ... and now lets draw our attention to those lower mids on the channel strip. So bearing in mind I told you a kick drum fundamental could be typically found around 60Hz, lets apply a boost of 15dB with a Q of say, 2. (Obviously you'd be using your ears to determine how much you want to boost that frequency so it sounds right - and remember, the volume of kick controlled via this channel (for the overall mix) would be controlled via the fader) Well, would you look at that! A kick drum fundamental which is poking out like mad but with some significant cut between 70 and 100 where all your mush resides. And on the other side of the equation, you have mega cut from just above 50 which is getting rid of all the sub mush and unwanted energy sapping, speaker punishing frequencies. So there you go, you have EQed your fundamental on your kick drum channel... and you still have the upper mid to address any 200-400 boxiness. You've also freed up a bit of space in your mix for your bass guitar to reside! (although you may want to be EQing your bass channel with a different approach based on what you've just learned - e.g. still using the HPF albeit with maybe some LF and LM with different frequency centre points and Q. Granted, it all depends upon how feature rich your filters are on your analogue desk... but hopefully this has demystified HPF somewhat!

I'd probably bite my hand off for that vintage white 1025 now, too 😅 @Happypants - what do ya reckon? 😉