mike257

If you're ever coming up to the North West I'd happily oblige. I'm based in Liverpool with a 3.2kW HK rig which (despite what JTUK might tell you) sounds absolutely bloody brilliant. The feedback I get from the function bands I work with suggests that it's a worthwhile cost to them. I just wish I didn't get stuck doing it for my own bloody bands, must be lovely to just leave it to someone else to worry about!

I think it comes down to personal circumstances. Most of the gigs I do these days are the kind where somebody has paid a significant amount of dough to be entertained by professional musicians. If a piece of gear develops an issue, I don't want to be the guy holding up a dancefloor of wedding guests or cocking up a tightly scheduled corporate function while I bust out the toolkit and make a repair.. Makes the whole band look bad, kills any atmosphere you've managed to create and probably knocks you down the list of "people the bandleader is calling next time". This is my livelihood and I'm not about to be that guy that screws the gig, so I pack a spare every time. When I was touring playing noisy rock music and trying to "make it" back in my mis-spent youth I knew that we had to put on the best damn show we could in the 30 mins we were on stage, and I knew it wasn't unheard of for me to bust an E string every now and again, so I packed a spare every time. The only gigs I've really gone without one are little pub dep gigs close to home, where I'm in and out in a few hours for £50/60 and I travel as light as possible. On the whole, I think if you've got the means to transport one there then you should do. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, a second hand Squier Affinity will get you through a gig if your main bass fails you, so long as the show goes on!

Am I going to be the first to suggest taking up Planet Waves on their lifetime guarantee? Last PW cable that broke on me, I dropped an email to the UK distributor, popped it in the post and had a brand new replacement in my hand within a week or so. Whilst OBBM and Kabl both make great, reliable stuff and good cables are worth investing in, don't forget that you can get yours replaced without spending more than the postage to send it back!

I play with and dep with a bunch of bands on bass and guitar as well as sound engineering both at local venues as in house crew and for function bands etc with my own rig. It's my full time income and i've got kids to feed so I have to prioritise the gigs that pay the best whilst trying to minimise impact on family time etc. What this means is I have good lists of quality dep bassists, guitarists and engineers and if it looks like I'll have to step down from a gig I take personal responsibility for arranging the cover before i'll confirm the other gig. If I can't cover it then i'll honour the original booking but all of the bands i work with understand the need to use deps and it's part and parcel of how they operate. In fact, I don't think the soul band I play with has been out with the same line up twice this year!

It's not unusual to see NL4 connectors used in places where only a two pole connection is needed so you may find it will fit. As I recall, the use of NL4 with the GK amps and cabs is because some of the GK heads have a seperate small power amp just to drive the tweeters in the matching cabs. When a 2 pole cable is used, you may find no signal is sent to the tweeter of your GK cab, unless there's a switch on the back to bring in an internal crossover.

New toys! Yeah, they're big beasts, the 02R. Very capable desk though. Looking forward to hearing how you get on with it!

If part of the appeal of digital for you is the recall functionality, be wary of the Presonus. It's almost unique in the current digital market because it DOESN'T have motorised faders. This means you can recall a stored mix and although the internal processing in the desk will reflect what you've stored, the physical fader positions will not! I've just bought a relatively ancient Yamaha 01V for £200, has 12 mic channels, two stereo line channels, four aux sends for monitors, four band fully parametric EQ and dynamics processing on every channel and output, two FX units and total recall. The user interface is a bit dated now and it's old tech but at current used prices the functions per pound ratio is frankly great. People will say the preamps aren't great but if you can't get a decent mix out of it with a good band and a quality rig then you're doing it wrong! The more modern 01V96 goes for as little as £550 if you're lucky and is considerably more flexible and feature laden. The most recent iteration also has multitrack recording over USB. Unless iPad control was a dealbreaker (and there's ways of making that work, with some fiddling) then I'd take one of them over the Presonus. If you've got the budget for an Allen & Heath QU16 or something from the X32 family that'd be my choice, or hold out for the forthcoming X18R from Behringer and buy a tablet!

Looks like it's straightforward enough - the limitation is that there's only a master dimmer and strobe control for the whole unit, but you can individually control the colour of each light. Of course, you could dim individual lights by dropping the red, green and blue values to zero, but in all likelihood you won't need that level of individual control over each fixture.

I'm pretty happy with my Genz Shuttle 6.0 so I'd just be changing my cab for something, probably Barefaced, which I hope to do at some stage next year!

Good info Simon. I've had good results with kick tunnels back in my studio days. Built a mini-isolation enclosure for a 57 on the snare out of a little lampshade stuffed with foam (and dusters, if memory serves me correctly) that did a surprisingly good job of minimising hi-hat spill after a bit of tweaking. I'll look into those Prodipes, have you tried them on other sources (amps etc)? Could use some good all-round utility mics for live use and the price is certainly appealing!

Those Spiders are horrible things, I reckon the likes of LePou will be a big improvement for recording. It's great even without considering that it's free. If you're spending, NI Guitar Rig is worth looking at - good enough for Trent Reznor, that's recommendation enough for me! As far as live goes, if I'm working a gig and a band rolls in with Line 6 Spiders I find that I may as well just throw the faders up and go the bar as try and sculpt a decent sound out of them. All fizz and no balls.

Surprised at this. An old band mate had an AD30 and matching 4x12 cab bought brand new in around '05 - built like a tank and weighed a bloody ton. Shame if things have gone downhill.

Making me miss my T40 here lads. Love to grab another one day, beast of a bass!

Love my 6.0. The only issue I have with it is the valve doesn't seem to be mounted very securely. Tone has been reduced to a quiet distorted fart on a few occasions and I thought it was blowing valves as a swap cured it. After a couple of times it occurred to me to just reseat the valve that was in there and lo and behold, all sorted. Probably junked a few good valves before I realised that! Love the amp though, sounds great and power to spare.

I think I grew up thinking they were rubbish because they always popped up as the (battered, abused to within an inch of their life) supplied backline at rehearsal rooms. They're not a 'sexy' brand and don't have the same history or attachments as the likes of Ampeg but it's workhorse gear that gives a good sound with little fuss. I'd happily play through one - Vic Wooten sounded just fine through his at the shows I saw this year, and I think he'd have little trouble securing an endorsement from whoever the hell he wanted to.

I've never felt the need for one until recently - been depping with a soul band and having to deal with a fair few key changes for singers. Superstition/I Wish dropped down a tone from the original just isn't the same when I can't hit that low note! The regular guy plays a fiver and I've quickly realised why!

Be interested to hear how you get on. I need some for live use but am operating on a near zero budget - these are about the cheapest set I've come across so if they're useable then they're a steal!

I used to have one of the Warrior series many years ago, I can't recall the model number but it was the one with F holes. Looked lovely and played ok but electrics were terrible, a really weak output and not much tone to speak of. I only paid fifty quid for it and eventually gave it away to a friend's brother who was just starting out. Decent starter instrument but didn't really stack up against the cheap Squier P Special and Ibanez GSR I owned at the time in the sound department.

Yep, use NL4 (Four pole Speakon) all the time in PA applications. Often used to feed a stack of subs/tops with a single cable, then short link leads between the individual cabs break out the right signal to the right place. There's even a larger NL8 version that can carry four seperate signals (eight poles) although that's a physically larger connector so not cross-compatible with the two pole and four pole versions.

[quote name='Tm99' timestamp='1410592743' post='2551026'] Cheers for the replies. I'm not set on micro heads tbh, I'm looking at new cabs too as mine are just too heavy & too big in size. The Tmax head is 500w @ 2ohm, 350 @ 4. Next concern it's which cab, also what ohm to go for, If I shell out for two 4ohm 410s and the problem is the head I'm restricted to finding a 2ohm amp, what I've seen most are 4ohm. Any recommendations on good quality cabs... [/quote] If you've not been rig shopping in years you've missed out on massive advances in cab/driver design that mean buying a pair of big-ass 4x10 cabs just isn't neccesary to get a big, room filling sound. Save your back!