Paddy Morris

I don't know if this topic is still live, but I'm hoping to pick up some advice. We're playing a mini festival locally, and because it's for charity and small scale I have agreed to run the sound system for the gig using our gear. I regret it now, but it's too late to withdraw really. Amongst the other headaches involved, we will be sourcing mains feed from some distance away, so I'll have to manage the loading and volts drop quite carefully. On a previous gig a few years back we were in a similar situation in the pouring rain. I managed to keep all the gear dry under gazebos and tarps, but the actual ground was very wet. I noticed that you would get a small tingle off the mic pop shields when touched. Nothing like a mains voltage bolt, but enough to seriously put you off your game if your lips touched the mic. I assumed that this might have been due to signal earth and safety earth and actual ground potential being at a few volts apart. There was no time to test it, we just had to play on through and be careful. We had an RCD connected, which never tripped. Has anyone else come across this, and did they identify a fix. For instance I was wondering if tying either safety earth or tech earth to a local earthing spike near the stage might made a difference? Ideally it will stay dry for the gig, but I wanted to plan for the eventuality that it's wet, because there a 5 other bands involved.

WTAF is going on with Prastro Olivs? I had an idle look on Bass Bags, who are usually pretty reasonable value for strings, I've always found. A full set of Olivs are now £900!! I mean, are they made of unicorn gut or something? It does make you wonder who exactly they are marketed at, who is their target player? If you compare that with say Evah Slaps which are still less than £250 for a set on the G4M site. Olivs are maybe a bit nicer under the fingers. sound richer (to me, based on only having an Oliv A string!) and take a bow much better, but are completely not worth nearly 4 times the price. I have a friend who is a pro orchestral player as is his wife, and I know for a fact that neither of them will be paying the equivalent of a mortgage payment for any strings at any point ever. So I wonder who Pirastro are expecting will buy a set at that price?

I've had a couple of J-tones. They are extremely good for the money, but there are also many better pickups out there. I did tend to have more feedback issues with the J-tones, but there were other factors involved too. The input impedance of the Trace might be wrong for the pickup. You could try a buffer/HPF like the Raffery or Fdeck, I bet that would make a big difference. As long as you can hear what you're playing on stage using the combo, then why not run through the PA?

If it were me I would use the Beta 58, and be prepared to roll an absolute ton of LF off on the mixer channel.

Amazing job you're doing.

Really excited by this. Can't wait to see what a production version might look like.

I just recently bought a Monaco cab from LFsys. I've done a few gigs with it now, and as there doesn't seem to be much info out there on their use for double bass, I thought I would leave a small review. Practicals first: It's really nice and light. Very easy to carry with the recessed handle. It fits in my car standing upright, so plenty of space for other gear. The finish and appearance look very smart, in fact I don't really think the website pictures do it justice. Construction quality feels really nice and premium. For these purposes I'm going to compare to my Barefaced BB3, as they are similar scale FRFR speakers - different price points, but broadly comparable. I've finally realised that I can only really use flat speakers for upright bass at any reasonable volume, because any specifically 'voiced' cab, with humps and bumps in the response, tends to make the feedback issues with the instrument much worse - unusable in fact. Efficiency: The Monaco is plenty loud enough. I would say the BB3 is a few dB louder for a given amp setting, but both are freakishly loud compared with a lot of traditional cabs. It's subjectively the same volume as my BB Supermini T. Response: It's flat - extremely flat. I think I would actually be pretty happy to use a pair of them as studio monitors. Out of box, the BB3 feels as though it has a deeper bass extension (in my case I have to roll all that rumble off with an HPF anyway) but I did check with a bit of tone shaping on the amp, and the Monaco is still very capable of generating those very low notes if you dial them in. I wonder if it's the difference between the big-ass slot port on the BB3 and the reflex port on the Monaco? I guess if you were after a particular 'sound' then you would use a cab-sim, or a head that provided it. But the Monaco is very much a blank canvas. Load: This is an interesting one. If I push my amp really hard at LF, much harder than I would hope to need to on a gig, the Barefaced cabs will eventually cause the class D stage pop into protection/mute for a few seconds. This isn't a criticism of the Barefaced, because I'm taking about abusively high loudness levels at this point. But this doesn't happen with the Monaco. And if I run the Monaco in parallel with the BB3 then the combined load doesn't cause the class D to trip either. I'm not sure what's happening here, but certainly it points to the Monaco being a good, consistent load impedance and easy to drive. Actual use on gigs: It's a very clear sound, very easy to hear what you're playing and get your intonation right. The notes bloom into the room (or field if it's an outdoor gig!). So the dancers get a tasty set of low notes to set their pulses racing, but the player gets something that's nice and focused so you can hear what you're up to. The low end is present, but really tight and punchy. And here's the big deal for me, very little feedback. Loads of BassChatters will know if you're playing upright with a loud guitarist and drums then managing feedback is a full time preoccupation during a gig. I don't have a 2nd sound posts fitted. I don't use a mag pickup because I'm playing guts. We don't generally use IEMs. So all I have to damp things down is a pair of F-its sound hole blockers and the fact that I'm playing a laminate instrument with a lacquered finish. And using this Monaco cab, I can get to a perfectly acceptable volume without causing horrendous feedback issues. I have got a quieter dinner jazz gig coming up in a few weeks, for which I'll use a carved bass. So maybe after that I'll report back here. You always take a bit of a punt when you buy a cab online, without trying it out via a dealer beforehand. But generally speaking I'm really pleased with it so far, and thanks to everyone on here who recommended LFsys to me. If anyone is near York and fancies trying it out for themselves then message me on here and we can sort something out.

It's a very interesting head for sure. Tons of EQ. I couldn't find anywhere on the Mesa site that stated what the input impedance was. So you might need a preamp to get the best out of your realist. That output damping switch is very interesting. If you do get one the please report back as to how it works out. Mesa stuff always looks gorgeous.

Blimey! Just, blimey!

I just bought an LFSys Monaco cab. Really light and easy to manage. Nice, extended low end, but not flabby at all. Good flat response, so that what you dial in from your amp is more or less exactly what you hear. And plenty of volume. Pretty reasonable money too, for a custom-built cab.

Thanks. Just to say once again that the slap is not overloading my preamp. Everything is nice and clean until the output stage. But I take the point about my technique, which I'm always trying to improve on. I've been playing for 42 years, but it's still a journey. I guess in that time I should maybe have tried a valve output stage amp, eh?

Thanks Bill. I think I said somewhere earlier, a fast attack peak limiter does fix the problem. But it does also really hobble the sound I get. I've been through a fair few dynamics control devices and the soft knee / fast attack setting on a Keeley compressor pro is the best compromise I have found so far. But I still prefer the sound with it switched out entirely. So I was wondering if a valve output stage would handle those transients more gracefully. I guess the best way is to try it and see. I'm sure I know someone who will lend me an Ampeg or HiWatt head for a few hours.

Thanks. In fact I have had issues with clipping and overloading further upstream in the past, but I've managed to iron them all out. This is definitely a problem in the final power stage. If I take a feed of the DI output from the amps then the problem isn't present. Also if I put a fast attack limiter across the amp input the problem goes away, but then also so does all the attack on my transients. And I miss them.

Hiya. Yes, I'm HPF'd to within an inch of my life. Apart from any other reason I can't really hear my intonation on a loud gig unless I have rolled off all that LF junk. I suspect I need to just take my rig (and my poor credit card) to some dealer who keeps a good stock of all-valve amp heads.

Well, it may be going over old ground, and if it feels a bit tedious then I apologise. But I have found it really useful and am very grateful to everyone who has contributed. Really interesting to hear the technical and quasi-technical reasons behind it all. I'm an upright player. When I put my Fender P through any of my class D amps I'm really happy with the result. The trouble comes when I'm playing slap upright against a drummer who has had a bad day and is taking it out on his drums. The transients from the slapping play absolute havoc with the amp headroom. I have to put a fast attack limiter across the input to stop the amps cracking on the transients in the most horribly digital way you could imagine. With smaller powered amps the Class D module goes into protection mode for 2 seconds at a time, and the 800w ones just break up. The limiter fixes the problem but completely castrates the sound of the instrument. At lower volume, without the limiter, the sound is pretty much what I want (when I'm playing the right notes!) I don't want a valve crunch sound or even any more warmth, as I already spend a lot of time dialing out the excessive warmth of the intrument. All I need is something that will deal with those transients at a reasonable volume without making a horrific noise. The guitarist is a valve junkie, and he's gradually wearing me down.