Boodang

We're currently using the LD Systems Icoa 15 (about £400 each). The horn is coaxial loaded which keeps the size down. Can thoroughly recommend, we did a small outdoor gig with them as foh and they were perfect.

10 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Curious but do you use them all during a gig ?

If so what kind of music are you playing. ?

That's a lot of pedals and this is the small board 

Dave.

 

PS in fairness the larger board is just where I put all my favourite pedals, half of which all do the same thing but have great artwork on them (primarily how I actually choose a pedal to buy!). 

10 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Curious but do you use them all during a gig ?

If so what kind of music are you playing. ?

That's a lot of pedals and this is the small board 

Dave.

 

Short answer, yes! But it's not as daunting as it first seems. The comp is always on, as is the Seamoon as I'm just using it as a lpf, and the bright onion are just switchers. 

I'm in a covers band which ranges from 50/60s up. So the envelope filters get used a lot with disco/groove numbers, as does the grape phaser which is super funky. The octamizer is great for adding beef in heavier numbers and when you switch in the Fwonkbeta and fuzz you get a great heavy synth sound for the electro stuff.

Echo to add body in the sparse songs, and the SLO reverb is the least used for special occasions. 

To be honest I could just use... nothing! But for me, as I'm in a covers band, the devil is in the detail, and it's the icing on the cake. Anybody who thinks the audience doesn't care or notice is doing them a disservice and underestimating their appreciation of our art. Not that you need loads of effects to practice our art, just not a contempt for your audience. 

18 minutes ago, simisker said:

Yup, I know - that was the point I was trying to make. Doesn't that make these Status prices all the more reasonable, then? They're handmade in low volumes by a legendary maker in an expensive manufacturing location. For only a few hundred quid more than a Combustion.

 

Seems reasonable to me, anyway Maybe my idea of good value has being skewed ever since my appointment as a lawyer-dentist

In fairness I'm outraged by anybody using cnc machines and charging custom prices. And just because the prices are comparable to another company doesn't make it reasonable it just means they've jumped on the band wagon.

People can be put off customs as it can be hit and miss, and I guess having a known quantity with a name like Status is reassuring but doesn't justify the price tag. 

I had a custom jazz made recently with graphite stringers in the neck, not only is the hardware top notch and build quality incredible, but more than half the price of what Status are asking.

I have to say as I've got older I've been getting back to basics. Now I only gig with the small board and have somehow managed to get my pedals down from 21 to 12. 

2 hours ago, Russ said:

Going to miss the all-graphite models though. They had their own vibe, and I loved the coloured variations they were offering. 

As you say, it's not so much about the sound as the 'vibe'. Plus they're charging custom prices for a cnc'd wood bass (I know the hardware is top notch but it's not that much!).  

1 hour ago, Pamparius said:

That’s a cool board !

 

3 filters and a tri-parallel mixer, do you have a YouTube channel where you demo this by any chance ?

 

 

Actually I don't have a YouTube channel but it's a good suggestion and I'll knock up a demo next week. 

Apart from selecting pedals and blending the signal, rather than having them daisy chained, the tri mixer also helps control input/output levels to optimise the gain structures. Channel one has the Seamoon which I'm running as just a LPF (great for low end punch), channel two is the supafunk as that doesn't like a hot signal and works better clean, channel three has the octamizer and Fwonkbeta/fuzz (via the aby looper). Input to the tri is via a comp and output goes to the grape phaser/echo/reverb. Once you get your head around it, it's quite logical. PS my fav pedal on the board is the grape phaser which is so funky! 

Two bright onion pedals; the orange one to select an input, the yellow is the aby looper which has the octamizer and Fwonkbeta on it. Apart from being rock solid pedals you get to choose the colour of the pedal and the colour of the leds! Plus,I think, great value for money. 

1 hour ago, woodyratm said:

I agree. Bolt on necks only too 

Yep, Vigier did a similar thing a few years back. They've been making neck thru basses since the start then it's bolt on necks only. Supposedly for sonic reasons which means it took them over 30 years of making basses to realise they'd been doing it wrong all that time!

Status graphite not making graphite basses!

I’m going to be cynical here and say the new basses are cheaper to make and thus more profitable. 

1 minute ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Thats what the X-Control is for!

Good shout, I can go back to mixing with drumsticks then. 

2 hours ago, skidder652003 said:

All good points folks.

I will say that the tactile control of hardware (ie sliders and knobs) on the Livetrack has been super useful for us as we don't have a soundman and our drummer puts the console by the side of his kit.

This is useful for quick adjustments to the sound once we get going if necessary, ie more vocal in the monitor, less guitar out front (the usual).

We do a sound check out front with the ipad (singer does this) but theres always usually a reason to adjust once we start and the zoom does this nice and quick.

We found faffing on a tablet midway through a gig was a bit of a pain/stressful.

Luckily we are all apple fans so no issues with the ipad but it is daft that they haven't incorporated Android.

I do this when I’m playing drums and have the laptop controlling the xr18 at my side. Trouble is, when it was an analogue desk I could adjust the sliders using a drum stick but that’s not possible now, unless I had sticks with capacitive tips!

10 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

No one else is asking, so I will.

 

What about the alternatives to the Behringer XR18?

 

As near as I can make out, the Midas MR18 is identical and one os a clone of the other. The Mackie DL16S seems curiously limited for such an expensive piece of kit (paying for the badge?).

 

The one that catches my eye is the Soundcraft Ui24R. It ain't cheap, but it seems to tick all our boxes.

 

Does anyone have any experience with any of these? Or any that I've missed?

 

Well, I think with the xr18 it's a bang for buck thing. Not a lot out there, if anything, doing the same thing for the money.

Not sure this is the solution you're looking for as it would require a rethink on your setup but.... the band and I have got so fed with the random quality of stage sounds that we've decided to take matters into our own hands as far as monitoring goes and have bought a digital stage box (xr18, nice and small) which we all plug into and which then feeds our iem's. Guaranteed sound and monitoring levels everytime as it'snot at the mercy of an engineer. Each band member basically has 2 feeds, one for our own stage box and one for foh. No amps involved and as we use an Ekit that's easily sorted and in the mix too. 

So, are we talking Billy Cobham / Herbie Hancock or more Stevie Wonder / EW&F?

I was in a trio where we did the Cobham style material which I consider more jazz/groove tv theme tune music rather than funk, but although the audience mostly didn't know it would get them on their feet. So is EW&F more the thing your thinking of?

17 minutes ago, martin8708 said:

We have keyboard Tourette’s currently , but have been party to guitar / drummer Tourette’s as well.

The new (ish) keyboard player always breaks into Bruce Hornsby’s  “ The way it is “ , but just the intro between songs .

We asked if he could play the rest of the song , umm , have not learnt it yet .

We collectively decide to learn the song for the next rehearsal, come next week , he has not got round to learning it , despite the rest of us learning the track .

Bruce Hornsby on the shelf , suddenly it’s the intro to “ Don’t let the Sun go down on me “ 

Do you know the song we all ask ? , 

No , just the intro is the reply .

God knows what it will be in a fortnight.

When it comes to musicians tourette's I don't know whether to laugh or cry(actually it's mostly cry). However, in another thread I've been talking about our bands recent use of a digital desk which in the absence of a sound engineer I'm in control of, so, as a friendly word hasn't had the desired effect in cutting this out, I'm now just going to hit the mute button on the guitars between songs... should be fun. I won't say anything, I'll just look for his expression of 'my guitars not working' after he tries to noodle. PS on the desk you can type in a description for each channel, for the guitarists I've entered 'feckwit1' and 'feckwit2'.... we love each other really!

20 minutes ago, Smanth said:

I bought an XR-18 here on BC a while back, used it in anger for the first time at an open mic about 3 weeks ago.

Performed to perfection!  The mixer was at the side of the stage so no super long XLR cables were needed.

All controlled over WiFi (via an external WiFi hub connected, the built in WiFi is near useless) from an iPad and my iPhone.

 

Control was really not bad, tho I've sprung the huge £5 or so to get the mixing station app https://mixingstation.app/

I've yet to fully set it up, but it is much more customisable than the x-air app.

 

S'manth x 

Ooh, might have a look at the mixing station as having issues with the x-air app.

1 minute ago, Franticsmurf said:

Our sound guy has just set up a router so he can use his iPad. At the last couple of outdoor gigs he was out front wandering about and sorting the sound from the audience perspective.

Yeah, the wifi remote tablet thing is great. No more snakes! When we get a new sound guy sorted that'll be the way forward.

4 minutes ago, Franticsmurf said:

In the Hulla band we use an X32. We have a sound guy who has put the time in at rehearsals and on his own to learn the desk. The band has 13 members and everything goes through FOH so with vocals that's 18 channels, and when the drums are mic'd an extra 4 or 5 channels. I'm not familiar with the XR18 but the X32 has snapshots of the settings (I think they're called scenes) and we have several set up for various regular venues. Without a dedicated sound engineer I think it would be overkill, or at least too complicated to run properly but for our set up it's brilliant. I have my own IEM monitor mix which means I have done away with back line for this band. The desk also records audio directly to a USB stick so we have a rough demo for practising to. 

 

 

 

 

The xr18 is just a small stage box with no controls. I connect a laptop and have that next to me. The fx and input gain settings are all done in advance of a gig, I then just have to worry about the overall mix and master level and with scene recall that's easy than using an analogue desk.

14 minutes ago, Dankology said:

We use the XR18 too - for rehearsals, recording and occasionally for gigs if we have to bring our own mixer.

 

We probably aren't using even a fraction of its functionality but it's a great piece of gear and it broke my longstanding fear of digital mixers.

We're going to use the xr18 even if there's a sound guy at a gig just so we're in control of our own in ear monitor mixes and not at the mercy of the engineer. 

We've been using a Behringer XR18 for the last few gigs and it's been quite the revelation. Impressions so far; metering is great, so setting gain levels is easy, as is keeping an eye on send/returns and bus outputs, plus an RTA which helps with overall eq'ing. Fully parametric 5 band eq, comp & gate on each channel is brill. The effects modeling is amazing, shame there's only 4 stereo fx slots but that's only a minor gripe. Still a lot of stuff to get a grip on like the dca groups and ultra net monitoring, so still on the learning curve with it. Oh, and it's got a small stage footprint and doubles as an interface for the home studio. 

Our foh and monitoring sound have definitely benefited from using this desk, I can't see me or the band going back to an analogue desk again. Anybody else using / getting into the digital desk thing and your impressions on using them?

42 minutes ago, odysseus said:

Another thing that gets me is when bands don't seem to have endings sorted out for songs and they resort to some bizarre ping-pong effort that sounds like everyone in the band is trying to have the last word.

I play drums in another band where the guitarist finishes a lot of the songs with a solo. In fairness they're pretty good and fit the moment but unlike songs with a definitive ending the solo can be indeterminate in length, so I've developed a method of ending songs by doing one bar of kick drum / crash as a signal. The beauty of this is that if I feel like I can make him solo forever!

4 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

 

In the spirit of 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em' (because you can't ever beat 'em...), get the other band members on board, and when it next happens (next gig, in all likelihood...), 'cover' the song that they're messing about with, and play it as a babd right through till the end. Then carry on with the rest of the set as if nothing had happened. You'll soon find out if the audience are up for it, and, if they really are, add some 'metal' to your set list. 

Well, I think one of the issues with playing metal songs is that it would be a bit at odds with the rest of the set and what we're known for, which is a mix of lounge stuff like 'fever' 'feeling good' and Stevie Wonder and EW&F numbers. And we have a violinist so it also goes into wagon wheel territory. 

I think there's some people in the audience who would love some metal songs but A. I wouldn't and B. They're at the wrong gig. We could always try and do Enter Sandman in the style of wagon wheel, that might be novel. Might also stop the guitarist noodling if he realises we'll take his favourite metal numbers and turn them into country songs!

3 hours ago, gjones said:

I think it shows contempt for the band he's in and the music you play. I've never been in a band where the guitarist, or any other band member 'fiddled about' between numbers, other than when I was in a school band.

 

I assume the guitarist is an adult and this isn't a school band?

Very much an adult band. 8 piece and nobody under 40. In fact the guitarist and I started this band last year and between us we provide everything (pa, mics, stands, keys, drum kit, even the bl**dy tambourines) and he has a rehearsal facility we all use with everything setup. The guitarist is very talented and dedicated, puts in the work so he knows the songs, which makes this tourette's all the more awkward as in every other respect he's spot on.

23 minutes ago, KK Jale said:

I feel your pain. I once played in a band where, in the breaks between songs, the guitarist would play a short excerpt from the next tune in the set, at full volume. He seemed to be utterly oblivious that he was doing it. As it happened the band didn't last long and I never got him to even admit to having this habit, let alone change it...

It's like an 'adulation' syndrome some musicians have (I'm looking at guitarists here) where the audience appreciation has to be just for them.