AxelF

We're looking for a lead guitarist to dep for a gig in Cheltenham on 1st April. It's indie/rock covers - Killers, Arctic Monkeys, Foos, RHCP, Muse, etc. We're based across South London and are also looking for someone who's also happy to dep semi regularly as the guitarist is away with work a lot if anyone's interested. Can send over audio files of all the parts.

On 10/02/2023 at 20:48, Ander87 said:

oh. Uh oh. Gawd. Oh. It does have a good heavy grit eh…? Dang! The second tone sounds amazing for the type of distortion I like. 
 

Damn… I think I’m in trouble. It could even do fuzzy bit I can see from there….

 

how wide is it? Like an Alpha Omega/B7k kind of thing?

 

this could potentially replace the woolly mammoth, Blackstone Mosfet and lil fella and almost pay itself that way………

 

 

Could do mini tuner, el capo and c4 synth (c4 would do chorus, octaver, filter and synthy lead stuff of course). 
 

HMMMMMM….!!!

Haha I've succumbed and ordered one - I was desperately trying to hold out but lasted about two weeks.. 😂

That's pretty much what my board will be - I think it will replace my current pre and my Aftershock so I'll likely be running mini Polytune, Capo, C4 and Atlas. Can't wait!

Fantastic thanks - will check it out.

I'm after suggestions for suitable places to film a live promo video for a covers band in London (ideally south east) if anyone has any ideas please? Either a rehearsal studio with a live stage we can setup with a backdrop etc, or a decent good looking smallish pub/venue with a stage we could hire. Grateful for any suggestions!

Stick up a load of photos here and I'm sure there'll be someone who can tell you immediately what model it is.

Really pleased you're enjoying it - it served me brilliantly and like you said it's got a ton of controlled bottom end and doesn't know when to quit!

I had a pair of 935s arrive yesterday - only used them individually at low volume with the bass direct into them last night to try and stay on the neighbour's good side! They sounded fantastic though, I plugged in direct initially to see how they were, expecting them to be a bit harsh on the top end maybe but they sounded great. I then put my normal pedal board in between which has a NUX NBP-5 preamp/cab SIM and it sounded fantastic - very punchy with a ton of low end available. I had them on the linear mode, will try the stage and boost settings when I can run them at a decent volume.

Will use them in anger at a gig on Friday night - we stick everything through the PA and have a silent stage so it'll be a good test for them, I can't wait to hear them.

Have a look at the John East J Retro, I have the Uni Pre in one of my basses which includes a push/pull passive/active pot, but the passive tone knob works even when in active mode. Thoroughly confused me when I first got it but Is actually really useful.

Having a quick look at the J Retro I don't think the same will apply, but it sounds likeone of the knobs acts as a passive tone control in passive mode. They're pricey though so there may be a cheaper option that does what you need.

Yeah there's not really many videos around that demonstrate what the filters and the eq can do, I've recorded a quick video to try and show some of the range of tones available - please ignore the shoddy playing! You can get a huge range of tones from just the 'Enchance' and 'Timbre' controls alone, or together, or you can just ignore them and use the semi-parametric eq to tune exactly the frequencies you want. The video is recorded with a Warwick Streamer straight into the amp and then out of the 'post eq' DI into my PC. No editing or tone shaping on the DAW.

https://youtu.be/FgaWmeUh0NQ

No, they're class A/B.

Aguilar OBP-3 for sale - at the moment it's wired up to 4 pots - stacked bass/treble, mid, blend and volume with a mini-switch for mid freq selection, but can be easily connected to whatever number of pots/holes you have by switching in/out stacked pots. I used to leave the mini switch within the control cavity as I found it very useful as a 'set and forget' option rather than something I wanted to switch mid gig.

Currently wired up with all the pots and the switch plus two battery clips for 18V operation so is ready to go, it can be run at either 9 or 18V. Happy to sell as is, or can snip everything off and ship it 'as new'.

Now £80 shipped within the UK

Accugroove Tri112 for sale, amazing hifi sound from a single cab that contains a 12" and a 6" driver plus two tweeters, uniquely constructed and ported - just an amazing 'one box' solution.

Handmade in the USA. Its 400RMS at 8 ohms so can be used alone or daisychained, has two Speakon/jack connectors and recessed handles.

One of the best things about this cab is it's ridiculously lightweight - I haven't got any scales but I think it comes in at about 31 or 32 pounds.  Dimensions are 21" x 16.5" x 17" deep.

This has served me amazingly well for many years - I used to have a pair which sounded incredible but to be honest it was ridiculous overkill! It's carried some decent sized venues and outdoor gigs without PA support. It's in great used condition, only selling as all my gigs these days are silent stage - DI to the board with in ears. 

They retailed for about £1200 - am looking for £450. Happy to ship this or meet up within a reasonable distance of Dartford, give me a shout if you're interested and I'll get some shipping quotes.
 

Thunderfunk TFB550 for sale - Dave Funk's classic head.

Has a ridiculous amount of tone-shaping options - a 6 band semi-parametric eq section featuring bass and treble knobs plus then 4 sweepable eq points offering virtually unlimited tweaking between 30Hz and 4kHz. In addition to that there are two controls labelled 'Enhance' and 'Timbre' - these have been a revelation to me in live use.

From the manual:

"Enhance: As you advance the knob, the sound tightens up, boosting the very low, upper middle and, high frequencies, while adding a dip in the lower middle frequencies. This brings out the fundamental notes by reducing frequencies that mask them, and it enhances the high-end transients, similar to techniques often used for recording bass in the studio."

"Timbre: Like the Enhance control, it is a complex adjustment of both treble and bass on one knob. Use it to range from a full to a punchy bass tone. Turned down you get a deep, full-bass tone, and turned up you get a tight, punchy-bass tone."

The 6-band eq is amazing but I generally got every sound I needed out of this amp by using those two controls alone. Any additional eqing I did was then generally for the specific room. 

Also has the solid state/tube emulation switch.

Has 2 DIs - pre and post eq, each with a ground lift and an output level for the post eq. 

500 watts into 4 ohms - not sure what it would give into 8, but the same as usual I guess!

In fantastic condition - it's lived in a rack for all of my gigs, I think I have the rack ears too for it which I'll include.

£550, would prefer collection from Dartford ideally, but open to meeting within a reasonable distance or can discuss shipping at the buyers risk/expense.

Boss TU-3. Very light use, one small mark I can see below the footswitch.

£50 delivered within the UK.

SFX Micro Thumpinator for sale - fantastic HPF that's small enough to fit under your pedal board.

Great video of it in action here

As new condition, 3M Dual Lock on the bottom. £85 delivered within the UK.

Limited edition Source Audio Ultrawave for sale - this is 20/100 of the pre release special order batch with bespoke graphics and a powder coat finish, probably only one or two of these in the country. Able to load both the bass and guitar presets as all are (the only difference between the standard 'bass' and 'guitar' versions is the colour of the font!)

These things are insane - it's a multiband processor that allows you to split your signal into 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, or 10 frequency bands, and then apply any of the band splitting options to a load of overdrive types, including Tube, Diode, Foldback  Octave Up, Negative Flip Diode, and more. It's basically a dirt/fuzz/synth pedal on steroids and with the Neuro app and all of the community presets you can do as much or as little knob tweaking and pc editing as you like. If the idea of programming your own patches fills you with dread there'll undoubtedly be a community preset to simply download that will do just what you want, but if you love having minute control over every aspect of your sound, boy are you in for a treat.

Oh and it also has a studio quality dual-channel compressor/expander built in with virtually unlimited options for tweaking via the Neuro app.

There are tons of videos on it, but there's a great Nate Navarro one here

Never gigged so in immaculate condition with the box and all the goodies. £190 delivered within the UK.

MXR M87 Compressor for sale - fantastic compressor for either those new to compressors or veterans looking for a pedal compressor with all the options. Controls for attack and release time, ratio, and then input gain and output volume, plus an LED meter to really easily see the level of compression being applied.

Boxed and like new bar a strip of 3M Dual Lock on the bottom. £130 delivered within the UK.

The 3Leaf Enabler - these have been sadly discontinued for a while now but are just an incredible eq/preamp/DI pedal/headphone amp, some of Spencer's finest work!

The preamp section has a three band eq plus a 'deep' switch for a very musical low end bump, and also has switchable mid frequencies. The preamp is powerful enough to run a powered cab/power amp and sounds top. There's a post/pre eq option plus ground lift for the DI. The DI on this thing is great, I've used it extensively both life and for recording and never needed to try anything else.

There's also an incredible headphone amp built in - if you go direct to the desk and run in ears, or like practicing at home with headphones this thing is amazing. It's proper quarter inch jacks for the aux in and headphones out too, plus the aux in has it's own volume control which is great.

Condition is like new, I can't see a mark on it. There's 3M Dual Lock on the underneath. £220 delivered within the UK.

But it will do for all new devices from 2024. That's the point.

I've had to play this a couple of times and use a patch on my C4 with expression pedal controlling the mix - it works really well as you can fade it in and out.

I saw Parcels at Brixton Academy on Friday night - my favourite band and having seen them twice before COVID I was desperate to see them again.

It was awful, so bad that we gave up and left after about 40 mins. The sound was absolutely dreadful - sounded like it was simultaneously under water and muffled with about 50 pillows. We tried every location in the venue that we could get to - behind the engineer's desk, sides, middle, back corners. It was so frustrating that we decided to cut our losses rather than steadily get more and more angry about it! 

I'm absolutely devastated, can't remember ever walking out on a band before, especially not one I love that much. Was their only show in England too, with one previous date in Glasgow and now back in Europe and off to Australia next.

I've since read that it's a common problem with the Brixton Academy, has anyone had particularly good or bad experiences there?

Thanks again Phil (and everyone else!) for your help - it sounds like that's the way to go for us, 99% of my gigs are small to medium size pubs in central/east London with 'interesting' layouts and all with their unique challenges in terms of loading in and where to set up. We're also exclusively in ears so no need for back line. I'm just slightly nervous about parting with my traditional rig setup for the odd occasion where I'm depping for a band that needs me to bring amp/cab but as you say, if it proves to be too bassy in that situation I can hopefully HPF/eq my way round that.

Really appreciate everyone's expertise and help with this!

On 27/09/2022 at 23:40, Phil Starr said:

This could be read any number of ways, was this just you without the band playing bass through the PA? If so that would only tell you a little about your PA. It may have been down to room acoustics. An empty hall with no audience can be incredibly reverberant so this may or may not have been a fair test. I sympathise with your frustration though.

 

I know the Mackies and although they are more than matched by modern rivals they aren't bad sounding speakers. You ought to be able to get a pretty good sound out of them. Carlsbro though have a pretty poor reputation and they look like they are in far too small a box to be effective subs. They could be an issue. HPF on a bass at 70Hz is way too high. 

 

Another thought is that you haven't said how you set the relative levels on the subs and tops. The temptation is to set them to give a good thump rather than match the output. The idea is not that the bass is louder than the tops without subs but that it is at the same level but with the lower frequencies extended downwards in frequency and power handling of the whole system increased. At the crossover point the tops and subs should be at the same volume. Unless you have measuring equipment try playing a recording you know well through the PA and adjust the levels to make the bass sound as natural as possible at low/medium volumes. If you can't reproduce recorded music well then you are only going to find it difficult to impossible to create a good sound from the band.

 

Moving on to a possible speaker upgrade. Until recently we used QSC K12-2's for our PA. In typical pubs I could run bass through them at high enough levels to work well. These were providing all of the FOH sound but I had a little Hartke as an on-stage monitor. Since then our singer left and took her QSC's with her so I've recently bought a couple of RCF 745's They'll do most of our gigs including kick and bass at high volumes without needing subs or backline. I have subs but I've only taken them out once in three years. You just don't need them for the average British pub gig.

 

I'm not sure that answers your basic question, whether you need to buy new PA speakers. I think that is probably up to you but you ought to be able to get at least a reasonable sound out of what you have. If you decide to upgrade then I'd probably spend on some really capable tops and only add the subs if experience says you are struggling at more than one of your venues.

 

 

Thanks Phil that's really useful. I think a lot of the problem is that we very rarely get time for a proper sound check and then of course have limited feedback from non-playing friends and family of how the FoH bass sound is during the gig.

The testing I did at the weekend was just me without the guitars/drums so I was conscious of not aiming for a specific tone, I was more just looking for punch and impact (and other nebulous concepts..!) - it's far from a fair trial and I really need to get the whole band down with our kit somewhere, though it's like herding cats trying to round people up for a gig!

In terms of levels I was actually wondering if I'm running the tops too loud and over powering the subs, especially as I've been running only one - I'll stack them and use poles for the tops at the next gig and see if that improves things, plus play around with the volume settings on both.

I'm still toying with the idea of getting some better tops that could carry the whole lot at the sort of venues we play, the QSC K12.2s and the RCF 745 are the ones that I keep seeing come up with you and Acidbass having success with just the 745s. It sounds like you'd recommend the 745s over the K12s having used both? Have you ever used the 745s as a traditional bass backline at gigs where you're not in the PA? Realistically I'd have to shift my backline gear to buy the 745s, but as 99% of my gigs these days are with this band I'd much rather get that sounding great, especially if I could cover the other handful of gigs I dep for with one of the 745s as my bass rig.

Thanks Bill that's really useful - so the general rule is always tops plus sub(s) if you're relying solely on the PA for the bass sound out front?

The sort of places we're playing we're realistically never going to be able to centre cluster two subs - right now I have the two Carlsbro subs under the tops so they're split but only have the volume up on one - in our situation is it viable to have a system comprised of two tops and one well placed sub?

Do you have any experience with either Carlsbro subs or the Mackie tops we're using Bill, or are you able to give a steer regarding their suitability from the specs please? I'd be really interested in where you think the biggest win would be - replacing the Mackies with better tops or replacing the subs with either one or two better alternatives? Are there any particular makes/models of either you recommend please?

From a budget perspective if people have had success using one or two quality tops in place of a traditional head and bass cab setup as a backline, I could look at moving on my heads/cabs to fund the PA upgrade on the basis that any other gigs I pick up where I'm not running through the PA could be covered by the new 'FRFR backline', but if the purchase of one or two new better quality subs to run with the existing Mackies is the better option that's a different story. 

3 minutes ago, police squad said:

I can chuck this into the mix.

I run 2 x QSC K12 and 2 x QSC Ksub with an Allen & Heath ZedFX desk. When I play bass with this setup, I DI my Ashdown RM500 EVO 2 into it. I set the desk flat and I get a fabulous bass sound out front. The QSC gear is amazing. I haven't heard the K12.2 and new sub so I can't comment. People always comment on my sound quality

That sounds great thanks - do you ever run them without the subs at gigs where you're relying on the PA to carry the bass in the room? Would they cope do you think or are the subs needed?