TimR

Saw a function band the other day. The drummer wasn't particularly tight and the bass player wasn't locked in at all. In fact in most of the tunes he played the original bass line for the first verse and chorus then wandered off and appeared to be soloing for the rest of the tune. Fair enough this might work in some situations, but it was a 7 piece band. I found it impossible to dance, and gave up for a fair number of tunes. At one stage he was playing a recognisable solo from a completely different tune as the bass line to the verse. Does anyone else in a function/covers band spend their entire gig trying to be clever and what do the rest of the band think? Anyone else seen this happen and agree/disagree that its a bad thing to do? Is it just me because I'm a bass player expecting to hear the proper bass line? You wouldn't expect the vocalist to sing different words or is that different in some way? Do I ask too many questions and should I just worry about my own band?

OK what would the judges say about your band?

I broke an E string many years ago. I'm sure it was a boiled one. No spare, managed to borrow a bass from the support band. Always carry spare strings (keep last set taken off), and spare leads (1 instrument, 1 mains). I broke a tuner on NYE tuning up before going on, My E! I had a spare string, but not a spare bass. Completely restrung the bass during the next song so that the E was where A should be etc... Played the rest of the gig doing mental gymnastics.

[quote name='jezzaboy' post='852159' date='May 30 2010, 09:51 PM']I play in a covers band and am very happy with it. The only problem is we only play twice a month at the most. We can`t do any more due to our singer getting a hard time from his wife and we have knocked back umpteen gigs recently due to this. I would like to gig every weekend if possible...... Cheers, Jez[/quote] What about the other guys in the band? What about finding a second singer? It's covers so should be simple. Current singer always gets first refusal. The main issue is whether you have time to rehearse. I seem to be the only person in the world who would rather run a one rehearsal per gig ratio, rather than a 13 rehearsals per gig ratio. Grrrr! I joined a second band that didn't gig much to complement my first band that didn't gig much. For various reasons I left the first band and the second band don't actually gig as often as they say they did. So now I'm looking for a second band (or is in First band? I get easily confused).

David, why do you want to use an amp? You can plug your bass into the H4 directly. The H4 has amp simulation which is quite good if that's what you want.

Missed the two replies. No point in puuting T13A in the lead as the T6.5A in the chasis will blow first. Mad.

Sorry Ian, I don't fully agree. the fuse in the amp is a time-delay and looking at the current/time curves for a normal 13A normal and a T6.5A there's really not that much in it. The mains fuse would also blow under live-neutral fault. The chances of a live-nutral or earth-live fault developing that would leave a fault current that would blow a 5A fuse but not a 13A fuse and hence lead to an electric shock risk are extremeley low. Fuses should not be seen as protecting human life. Fit RCDs if that's what you want. ALL fuses are there to stop your gear from turning into a fireball. In this case the time delay fuse is fitted in the IEC socket on the chasis amp, so the only thing the mains fuse is protecting is the mains lead. The main point is that the plug top fuse must not be sized bigger than the mains lead is rated at. So 13A should not be put into a 0.75mm2 cable. I think that the earlier discussion on 3A 5A and 13A fuses becoming the norm is that it is increaslingly common for all electrical equipment to be fused at the chasis and the only size cables in common usage are now either 0.75mm2 or 1mm2. 7 and 10 fuses are essentially redundant.

I did some more thinking. In Europe they don't fuse the plugtop. I'm sticking with the 13A and a heavy duty lead. The T6.3A is enough to protect the amp.

I have recieved a reply, not the correct one so I have clarified my original question. Never put a glass fuse in a plug top! The standard cartridge fuse is sand filled. Put one of those screwdrivers with an LED in it that shows contiunuity in your gig bag. You can use that to check the fuse. Porsonally I just take a spare lead. I don't really want to be standing around changing fuses at a gig.

[quote name='discreet' post='845784' date='May 23 2010, 02:45 PM']Er... bit techy for me, but if I understand rightly, VA (Volt-Ampere) is a measure of power in a circuit, so a 640VA transformer is more likely to blow a fuse than a 500VA transformer at power-up, without a current limiter? Or am I just mincing about in a bikini because I'm mentally ill? Thanks![/quote] Yes VA is Watts in this case. I'm guessing that the transformer has to be rated higher than the power amp and from what I've read it is the transformer rating that governs the inrush current, not the power amp rating. Anyway, I posed a Q on the Warwick support forum. Its Sunday in Germany so I guess all their designers are out in the sunshine on the Nurberg Ring in their Porches. Hopefully,knowing their efficiency, they will reply at 8.01 tomorrow morning. [url="http://forum.warwick.de/20-warwick-amp-customer-support/11987-pro-fet-5-1-fuses.html#post185930"]http://forum.warwick.de/20-warwick-amp-cus...html#post185930[/url]

The transformer has 4 taps; 2@59v rated at 5.2A and 2@18v rated at 0.63A. The taps are combined to give 118v and 36v. So it looks like its a 640VA transformer not a 500VA one! 500W is on the limit of what you would put a soft start or startup current limiter on. The 5.1/5.2 don't have one, the 10.1 Extreme does! Warwick are obviously trying to keep costs down here. They do have a delay before the speakers are switched on though, which is nice of them. The screws holding the case together are shocking quality as well but the chrome knobs are a nice touch. Still it's a really nice sounding amp for the price.

Haven't contacted Warwick yet. I'm not convinced that the lead I had came with the amp. Inrush current is the current that flows in the transformer when you initially power it up. It can be up to 10x the transformer rating for 0.1s The power rating of the transformer is 500W so 2A under full load but possibly up to 10A on start up. A 5A will blow straight away if you catch it on the wrong point of the cycle, but this is going to be random hence it being only occasional. A 10A fuse is going to be fine. The important thing is to protect the lead as that's the most likely part to get dammaged and you want the fuse to blow before the lead catches fire. I'm sticking to a 13A cable 1mm2 and a 13amp fuse (only because 10A fuses seem to be difficult to get hold of, I'll swap it for a 10A when I next see one, or I'm at the electrical wholesalers). The amp is protected by the 6.3A slow blow fuse (marked as a 5A on the Warwick drawing!) 10A on the IEC relates to continuous current and is not an issue, the 5A sticker on the plug top relates only to the size of fuse fitted. I am going to open my amp up on Monday to look at the transformer and associated wiring to see what I can see.

[quote name='discreet' post='843727' date='May 21 2010, 12:25 AM']Thanks very much, guys - I picked up a supply of 5A fuses from feeBay, but obviously these are of little use to me - I'll run out! Anyone want? I've also ordered a shedful of 7A fuses, again off peeBay, and a 2m IEC cable rated at 13A, but have not had the opportunity to try them yet. Yeah, EU... that's a whole other topic right there. 10A I didn't know about at all, but hey. Thanks for the offer of a 10A Ian, will gladly accept and add to the equation... PM'd. TimR, thanks, it's a ProFet 5.1 I'm talking about, as you no doubt knew from my sig. Reassuring to know the problem may soon be history, thanks! 5A certainly does seem to be a bad idea... Will let you know how it goes. Thanks again. [/quote] I hadn't noticed your sig. I'm going to contact Warwick tomorrow. Seems a bit of a coincidence. Maybe there's a problem with the transformers. BUT why have a 5amp slow blow internally and then put a 5amp normal fuse in the lead? What is also interesting me is that it appears that IEC connector on the amp may only be rated at 10amps, but I'm not sure that matters too much. There are also IEC leads that are only 0.75mm2 and therefore only rated at 5amps don't put a bigger fuse in them! If we are putting fuses bigger than 5amps in them we should be using 1mm2 leads. More investigation required!

None of it makes sense to me, I think I have missed something. How many are in this band - the ad doesn't even say! Have you/they ever played in other bands? If they are a start up band then they should have all gone away for a few weeks and learned lots of tunes on their own, then 4 weeks of 2 practices a week should have them up and ready to gig - do a few small pub gigs to gage audience reaction and clear first night nerves - job done. Were you just rehearsing music or adding choreography too? They say they are making money - you say you are not gigging. They say you have no gear - you say you aren't willing to leave your gear at the rehearsal space. I joined a 5 piece and was gigging with them within 4 weeks one practice a week. We practice once a week and there have been issues that mean we've only gigged twice this year. I'm looking for another band to do in parallel, one that plays more than it rehearses. Be careful - some people just want to be in a band to tell their mates that they are in a band. They say they want to gig, but really only ever want to practice and do the occasional gig in front of those "mates". Move on. Work out exactly what you want to do and are prepared to do first. Make that clear to the next band before you join.

I've got a Boss SYB-3 bought off a fellow forumite. It didn't fully work, tracked terribly, wouldn't switch on and off very well and the mixed output only outputs the synth. I think it's had a hard life. I cleaned the board up with some cleaner and brush and it now works fine except for the mixed output. It would make a nice project, even if just a mixer to bridge between the two outputs. I paid £45, make me an offer?

Alex's was Mechanical. Speaker and cabinet design is all mechanical. Crossovers and thermal limits are fairly simple electronic concepts to grasp if you are bright. Mine's Electronics with an Acoustics module but that was in '94. Things have changed a lot since then. The way that engineers resort to numbers, formulas and long words to explain things hasn't and I still get the salesmen giving conflicting advice in shops.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='843520' date='May 20 2010, 08:32 PM']Don't make generalisations for the benefit of people who don't understand, they are the reason why they don't understand. Because they are wrong.[/quote] Indeed but most of us would rather buy some gear that works as sold than do a degree in electronics and wade through the tons of opinion and misdirection on the web. After reading that attachment written by an engineer in an attempt to clarify things. We get to the crunch.... [quote]clipping is acceptable provided that the average power over time is lower than the speaker’s limits[/quote] The big question is "How do we know what the average power over time is and what the speakers limits are?" If anyone knows a quick easy way to calculate that from the smoke and mirrors leaflet that comes attached to your nice shiny things let me know. Go careful when running your amp to distortion.

My Warwick ProFet 5.1 did this. When I checked, I found it had a 5amp fuse which I put down to having loads of IEC leads in my box and had picked up an old PC or lighting one. Fuses will run for hours at up to 1.6x their rated current, but will blow instantly at 2x. The nice people at Warwick have put a schematic on their website. The problem withy my amp is that it just has a switch between the mains and the transformer. There is no soft start and transformers take huge amounts of current at start up. 13amp has solved it. It's got a 5A time delay internal fuse anyway which leads me to belive that a normal 5A fuse on the mains plug is a bad idea!

OK I've taken points 2 and 3 out and condensed them into one point as they were basically saying the same thing, but re-reading them I can see how they could be confusing.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='843459' date='May 20 2010, 07:43 PM']Still trying to disagree with the rest of the thread then? 1 is fine. 2 is wrong. Huge speakers are awesome for sensitivity, so you get plenty of volume from not much power 3 is also wrong. A huge amp can drive any speakers. Also, a distorting amp will only melt speaker coils if it is outputting enough power to do so, even fully distorted, it might not be. And noisy and unintelligible is awesome. Distorting power amps are awesome. This is why we have power brakes and low powered valve amps. Or really really loud high powered valves amps of Doom.[/quote] You've basically just agreed with everything I wrote, while saying you disagree? Weird, I'm lost. To recap: Power ratings mean nothing. When you go into a shop and the salesman says you must have speakers bigger than amp, or amp bigger than speakers you will know he is talking rubbish. I said that distortion is bad if you don't know what you are doing. Using low powered valve amps, power brakes etc sounds like you probably do. It was intended as straightforward advice for the newbies who are always asking the question. "I've got a 100W power amp what speakers do I need?" and "Why did I fry my 400w speakers with my 150W amp?"

Layman's guide to the Speaker power v Amplifier power myth exploded with no maths or numbers (or techie terms?) Generally people mistake loudness for noise and the untrained ear will ignore distortion. Distortion is your enemy. Even comparatively small amounts of distortion, using effects or over-driving pre-amps can be bad if you don't know what you are doing. Once an amplifier starts distorting the speakers are not going to get any louder no matter how far you turn up the volume knob. Everything will just get noisier and less intelligible, defeating the object! Published amplifier power is fairly meaningless as it is given as a power with a small amount of distortion. A lot of amps can give out huge amounts of power at huge levels of distortion! Large amp -> small speakers. The danger is that the user will turn the amp up beyond what the speakers can handle. This will cause distortion in the speakers. The speaker will either overheat or mechanically destroy itself. Small amp -> large speakers. Again the amp can get turned up beyond the point at which it produces nice clean sound. At this point the amp is distorting and producing much more than the rated power of the amp. Most of the power will be dissapated as heat in the coil and can literally melt the speaker. So neither is the correct solution: 1. Use your ears not the spec sheets or labels. If you hear distortion - stop and turn down! 2. When buying an amp and cab try before you buy and don't believe the hype.

With respect, no one knows everything, music and performing are life long learning processes. Stop learning and you will stagnate. There's always someone who has seen something different or learned something you don't know. Asking for advice is not a weakness. Learning by making your own mistakes is a long road. You can spend a long time repeating mistakes thinking you doing OK before someone points them out. I'm sure we've all been in bands; when your audience say it's good but never come to your shows; or you play cracking tunes that everyone in the band loves playing, but no one gets up and dances to; or one mate tells you something when they're drunk which leads you to fire someone because you had got used to how much their playing sucked. The OP suggested criticism from someone invited to criticise. For a long time I used to go and see bands and think "The drummer was bad because..." or "The singer was bad because...". Now when I go to see a band I watch the audience reaction and try to work out what it is that the band are doing right/wrong to get that reaction. Criticism and advice is always good because it's free and you don't have to take it. Sometimes your band-mates will only listen to a third party and not the bass player/band leader who is always going on about the same old things. As a musician I am constantly amazed at the way bands with poor quality musicianship can still get amazing reactions from the audience and that's disappointing when we spend so much time practicing and putting in the finest details to the music. That's entertainment!

Feedback is always welcome. Whenever someone tells you something that they think you should do, or something that you did that you shouldn't, its from the audience's perspective. The audience are the people you perform to and the people who pay you - remember? The bonus is that the person telling you has hopefully stood in your shoes and knows the problems you are facing. Unless you video your performance you will NEVER see things from that point of view. Just because someone says what they think doesn't mean you have to do it but I expect 9 times out of ten you'll give it some thought before dismissing it. If you don't you'll never improve. I've had long chats with other bands about how I've/they've done things, what has worked, what hasn't. Essentially its a bit like being on a forum but you actually can see, hear and touch (if you want to) the person you are communicating with. Its rather novel and called 'real life'.

[quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='818143' date='Apr 25 2010, 04:04 PM']One of the most interesting ones is "America" from West Side Story. It's marked at the beginning of the piece 6/8:3/4, meaning that the whole piece consists of one bar of 6/8 followed by one bar of 3/4 over and over again.[/quote] I had to play this in a show and no one, not even the MD or drummer could get it. I had to stand up in the end at a pre show rehearsal and teach a stage full of kids, a pianist and a drummer. La-La-La-La-La Me-ri-ca. Took a few minutes but sounded really good. I don't think I'll ever forget that experience.

[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='816809' date='Apr 23 2010, 11:07 PM']Haha if I'm honest I've never played any Queen ([b]I f***ing hate Queen[/b]) and I've only just been asked to do it. I was wondering what songs I'd need to learn and more importantly how to achieve the tone of [b]who ever Queen's bass player is/was.[/b][/quote] Sacrilege. I believe that it is a condition of the forum membership that all members must like Queen and know who John Deacon is! Hopefully by the end of the show you will be enlightened and allowed to post on the forum again!