Al Krow

With pleasure - should have a bit of time next week.

Ah...interesting pedal running order: I've always had my Octave and Filter reversed in running order to yours - to give the Octaver the cleanest bass signal to bite on at the start of the signal chain and the Filter towards the end to give it the most complex wave pattern to filter. And I'd have the HPF at the start to clean up the signal for the rest of the pedals. The other thing about Octavers "doubling up" the lowest notes with the second harmonic is that there is a very slight latency which I guess then sounds like a second string and which I presume is how we hear a thickening up of the sound? But I digress, again, haha. As you were, back to HPFs...

Apologies for the thread digress, but was interested in your comment - I used to be a massive fan of using octave pedals, but find that a 5 string largely eliminates the need in a band mix as you can often play an octave down anyway compared to a 4 string particularly for songs in keys of B, C, D and Eb. If you're playing in the low E string to A string range then the octave down is giving you a fundamental at 20hz to 30hz, which you're barely going to hear. The second harmonic from the octaver pedal is then just doubling your existing fundamental (which you've already got). I find even with HPF engaged it's not a great sound in the mix - pleasant enough when solo'd at home for sure - but you're obviously finding it works well with your set up and band? I've literally just taken my OC-5 off my board this past week! 😊

Cheers buddy - that's gracious of you. It's so easy to slip into casual sexism [or whatever...ism] without realising we're doing it! Back to HPF. I've actually got a decent ability to HPF on both our desk (100hz cut off) and via patches on my Zoom multifx which has a variable HPF sim, so no real need for something additional, although I had a Thumpinator on my home board for years. There's also the very simple option of cutting the bass EQ on your bass preamp or amp a touch? If I was getting another HPF pedal the Sine HPF mentioned earlier looks very capable and decent value. I guess the trick is to balance eliminating low end crud and getting a tight non-boomy sound without the bass sounding anaemic in the mix.

Or not some wee lad in the office, either, eh Dave?😉

Loved that post! I've bought and sold a lot of bass kit over the past decade - it's been an interesting, fun journey and I've got a much better idea of what I'm after these days - the last bass I bought was 2 years ago which is quite a feat for me, haha! It's more now a case of applying some TLC and judicious upgrades to basses that I otherwise love, rather than replacing them outright e.g. getting the onboard electronics properly shielded, fret dressing and upgrades to the preamps. Finding someone as skilled and easy to work with as @Garymac to apply his bass-tec skills has been a boon. I've also moved from trying to get the best rig within my budget to being content to go through the FoH to focus on getting the best balanced sound for my band. Second hand purchases tend to hold their value if you look after them, so it's not put me too much out of pocket along the way. Regrets? Spending far too much time on kit and getting into passionate debates over the minutiae of tone with fellow BC'ers and not enough on the fretboard and actually making music would be my only real one. But I can maybe do something to put that right now 😊

My little gigging pedal board with Zoom B1-4 very much at its heart! Couple of additional pedals for filter and synth which, together with pitch shift, tend to be weaker areas for many multifx: Tip: I've recently found that layering a little drive pedal before e.g. the Xotic BB patch I've made** on the B1-4 is giving me a drive tone that seems juicer (apologies for the lack of a technical term!) than pretty much all of the bespoke dirt pedals I've had over the years (and I've had a few, haha!). ** My Xotic BB patch combines the following B1-4 sims: Demeter Comp --> Xotic BB --> SWR SM 400 amp, and has boosted bass to compensate for the low-end loss on dirt sims.

Great post, thanks Mike! What's your view on IEM and silent stages vs using stage monitors in delivering a really good FoH sound? Is the benefit of a silent stage / IEM route more pronounced for smaller venues when the stage bleed into the FoH mix is likely to be relatively much more pronounced?

A&H do more budget desks too eg their Zed / ZedFx range. Not many aux out, but well built and very decent quality. Several pub bands I know, including my former band, use them. I don't think we should assume all pub bands use only budget desks though, any more than we can assume that the bass player won't be taking a high end bass rig and £1k+ bass to their pub gigs.

Yup. We can get 4 individual outputs from our Soundcraft MTK12 desk, which is all we need as a. 4 piece band. Fully tailored output on two, more restricted on the other two eg headphone out gives the FoH mix. Around £450. Our next desk (whenever we decide to upgrade) is probably going to be digital, but with faders / ability to tweak on the fly mid song without needing a tablet. There's a whole separate dedicated thread on compact mixers for you to dive into 😅

But any particular need to do that when it comes laden with actual mains out?

MixWizard WZ4 14:4:2 | Allen & Heath (allen-heath.com) - 6 aux outs

Well my £40 'Sennheiser' IE300s arrived and they work, so that was a good start. And the box came "fully laden" with all the gubbins you might expect of the real thing including a choice of silicone and memory foam tips Actually a better over ear fit than the KS ZS10 Pros Don't seem to have quite the same volume of the ZS10 Pros which is minus, but a slightly less boomy bottom end which is a plus I'll probably continue with the ZS10 Pros for live use for now. But these are a decent back up to have Just wonder if Sennheiser would be able to confirm whether the units being sold from the Sennheiser Digital Store are genuine - I'm very tempted to ask them, be good to know either way. The price appears to have gone back up to around £95 (inc P&P) since I ordered mine.

Cheers for that. #2 I'm actually thinking of working with a line up with electronic drums and guitarist losing his amp and going straight into the desk via a decent pedal board / multifx set up (Russ is going to be amused to hear me say that!) Probably means getting a new drummer and guitarist in the process, but they do say change is as good as a rest 😅

Was interested to understand what led you to giving up on the IEM route / why they didn't work for you? This is the path I'm looking to encourage our band to go down - and if there are issues or problems that you found couldn't be solved be good to hear in case it's the same for a couple of them too.

Couldn't possibly comment. Given that I'm not in one, surely that would be trolling...trolling, trolling down the river...? Although I'm sure @Dad3353 would approve of us all leaving a good job in the City to spend our time doing that?

Nah, I think the consensus on this thread is that we're not. Phew!! Although there's nothing like marking our own homework, is there? 😄 More seriously - there's been some corking discussion/comments along the way and I've learned a thing or two about the freedom to be playing covers without having any obligation to pay to do so, whilst flagrantly nicking other people's original material, as a performer. Guess I'd best get onto learning some of the new covers material my band's agreed to try out at our rehearsal on Thurs...

As you say the world doesn't work that way and while it might seem at first blush to be fairer, it wouldn't really incentivise creating stuff that other people want as opposed to what we would like to spend our time doing. So someone designing a crap <whatever> but sold once would get paid the same as someone who came up with something that others find amazing and everyone wants. Having said that, when you imply that our time on this blessed rock is the most precious thing we have...well no argument from me about that whatsoever, I am also of that view; just wish I had come to that realisation much, much sooner!

Good shout. In 10 years of doing paid covers gigs, I've never been asked once for a set list from the venue. Sounds to me that none of them are paying PRS fees. Also clearly not worthwhile for the PRS to actually enforce this either?

Sorry, I was back home at 2am this morning from a function/covers gig in the Midlands last night which was a huge amount of fun and very decently paid, so I wasn't able to jump in to comment earlier. Some great posts on here already! Loved the phrase from @DCS222 that "You are the sound track to their well earned time off" Wow - this thread has been worthwhile for that comment alone. @Norris - yes absolutely right, it's an incendiary title. But no apologies, mate - obviously pop/rock music was never meant to ruffle any feathers or cause anyone to think about what we're actually doing, haha?! But why raise the question at all given that I'm the BL / founder of my own pretty active covers band? Well tbh I was a little annoyed about the pomposity that we covers/function band players can sometimes have when looking down at struggling original musicians, and this post in particular: Did it make you laugh? It made me think that the first three categories only have any work because they are effectively stealing the material of writers of original material. Yes Elvis did covers, but I bet he paid royalties. Dolly Parton is super happy that Whitney covered her song. But I bet none of us on BC are paying a paying a penny to make use of other people's material? Also true of most DJs I would have thought)? Aren't we therefore being parasites of sorts? @Pirellithecat Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed and they are, in any case, maybe a year or two out of copyright by now. Similarly Bach/Beethoven/Mahler etc and classical music orchestras. But did the Killers write Mr Brightside for others to incessantly play? Maybe they're actually cool because they are getting free air time and there is something incredibly heart warming about writing something that then gets played all around the world? I wouldn't know. And maybe we should change our band name to LA Nik-Tracks or The Tapeworms.

What say you the collective BC hive-mind? Would you say the same about a well known artist covering a track and making it their own?

Bill some very useful points there, thank you. Just picking up on one point if I may - given the consensus is that the main benefit from using a sub is to enhance the kick drum which is typically going to be in the 50Hz to 80Hz range, why should it matter if there is a cancellation notch centred at 42Hz? Ok I appreciate that is very close to the fundamental of the low E string on bass but a lot of us will be HPF'ing our basses below 80Hz, in any case, to deliberately avoid a boomy low end, and certainly wouldn't want the 40Hz region to be being boosted by the sub.

But is it fair to say if you're dispensing with floor monitors altogether because you're using IEMs, and also using just one sub rather than two eg because that's all the size of the venue warrants or your budget/boot space allows (delete as applicable), then the phased source cancellation is another thing you don't need to worry about? At which point does it not become a choice of: do want the additional bass reinforcement by placing your sub adjacent to a wall, or do you prefer a neater floor footprint and more stable top placement by mounting your top above the sub? And if the latter is a significant step up over not having a sub at all, have you pretty much not hit bull's-eye by doing so? Just asking for a fellow darts player I know.

That makes sense with unfamiliar kit. On the other hand if you're using the same desk and PA, you'll have a pretty good idea of what settings work for your band and can use that as the starting point, so you're not having to reinvent the wheel each time, and can then tweak it for the venue.