mike257

Agree that it's an additional carry (although your speakers get lighter, so it's a weight/space trade-off) but doesn't have to be more faff. It's not at all hard to put a tidy amp rack together with all the connections on a patch panel. Our usual setups that go on small gigs have the crossover and amps all racked up, permanently wired together, and it's just two XLRs and one power in, and speaker cables out. No faff. Likewise with monitor amps - four channels of amp in a rack, four XLRs loomed together for the input. It's much, much quicker and tidier than running loads of XLR and IEC mains cables everywhere. Thomann's own brand t.amp units are great value for money and they've got lightweight four channel amps (all 2u high) at various power levels. You could have a crossover and four channel amp for mains, plus a four channel amp for monitors, all connections neatly on a patch panel, and fit it in one manageable 6u rack.

I'm probably in a minority opinion here, but in my small sound company I've shifted almost all of our stock over to passive boxes and separate amps. You add a bit of pack space and weight, but you gain a little flexibility and, importantly for me, it's better for redundancy and maintenance. Whenever I've had an amp fail in a powered speaker, it's an expensive bespoke part from the manufacturer, often costing as much or more than the S/H value of the speaker itself. If I have an amp in a rack go down, I can swap an amp out for another generic item. If it happens mid-show, I can run more than one speaker off a single amp channel to get through the gig. There's less cabling mess on stage too, as all your signal and power stays localised in one spot and you only run speaker cables out to each box. With regards to monitoring - this very much depends on what your band are used to/happy with. Personally, when I've played pub gigs I've always just made do without, but doing function/corporate work I've always made sure there's proper monitoring on stage. With only two aux sends available for monitors, you'll struggle to satisfy a six piece band. You've mentioned that two of you use IEMs already. That leaves no monitor mixes available for the rest of the band. If that's an issue, you'll have to look at upgrading your mixer at some point - a popular low budget choice is the Behringer XR18, which gives you 16 mic inputs, a stereo line input, six aux outputs for mons, and a lot of processing options. I've got one in our stock and have it racked up with a WiFi router hardwired in and a tablet that lives in the case, and it's a very tidy solution for small gigs. Got to be honest, not a fan of coloured cables. Looks terrible on stage IMO. Colour coding the ends is one thing (or tape with a name/logo under clear heatshrink wrap) but I'd keep it black purely for aesthetics.

This. If you're actually recording ideas and adding your own parts then sending back and forth, working to a click track will make it much easier to sync up.

Less expensive than the Denon you mentioned, but I'm more than happy with my Sony MDR 7506 cans. Use them for reference when mixing love shows, monitoring when recording, and have been using them for a bit of lockdown bass playing through one of those nifty Yamaha things we've all been buying the last couple of weeks. Popular amongst the professional sound engineering community.

If you're playing in venues that have an in house system and an FOH, the FOH engineer may choose to chuck a DI box in there, but may be equally happy to use your amp's XLR out. I'll normally use one when I'm mixing a band I don't know, or a multi-band bill. Gives me consistency and takes an unknown/variable out of the equation. If I'm with a band that I'm touring with, I'll use any combination of pre and post effect DIs, amp DI and cab mics depending on what I feel is necessary to capture things effectively. If you do buy one, don't waste your money on a cheap Behringer etc. The absolute best budget boxes are from Orchid Electronics - a small UK builder, they'll do you a hand assembled great quality box for the price of an entry level unit from a big manufacturer. I've got half a dozen of their Micro DI and Classic DI in my touring kit, they're rock solid.

That's a lovely big fat sounding snare when the drummer finally starts laying in to it towards the end. Great performance.

Got one coming tomorrow too - I'd not played a gig in over a year having packed it in to focus on mixing them instead, hoping to use this lockdown to polish up my bass skills a bit!

There's about a £1000 price difference between the two. Yamaha basses are always well built and decent instruments but a proper USA Stingray is a fantastic instrument on a different level altogether to that Yamaha.

Interesting - I'll check this out. I do a lot of gigs as a monitor engineer and toured a 3D mixing system for IEMs with an artist I worked with last year, which I was over the moon with. Be interested to hear how this stuff is processed and whether it's a similar result. If you're that way inclined, check out Klang (https://www.klang.com/en/home) - you feed it individual channels or stems from your console and you can place them anywhere in the horizontal or vertical plane to create a fully 3D image in your IEMs. I was sceptical before trying it but it's incredible. The actual hardware to use it live is a fair few quid, but you can download the software for free and run the demo mode, which comes with a load of multitracks that you can mess about with. It's the next big leap in monitoring, IMO. Although the hardware isn't out for this bit yet, the software has implemented motion tracking too, so you can position elements in your ears as they appear around you on stage, and they'll move with you as you turn your head!

Some outrageous totals on here! I'm down to four: 2004 Musicman Stingray - my first "proper" bass and the one that'll never leave me! 2004ish Sandberg Cali JM4 - traded on here for my backup 'ray about 11 years ago. 1997 Squier Affinity P-Special - my first ever bass, so it's around for sentimental reasons. "Extreme" Jazz Bass copy - a nice functional cheapie that I won in a charity raffle on this very forum a long time ago. Currently strung with flats. Depending on how the financial situation plays out this year the Sandberg might end up going, but the Stingray is staying for life, and the other two aren't really worth parting with, so they get played around the house. Just sold a guitar this week too, so my skinny-string total is down to three - my USA Tele, an Ibanez acoustic, and the Epiphone Les Paul Special that is the first instrument I ever owned. Think that's about as minimal as I can get it!

Well, in light of our current global predicament, my entire industry has collapsed and I'm having to mothball my company's assets until all this blows over and find some other work. If anyone's interested in hiring someone who's nailed down their project management skills making arena shows work seamlessly and on schedule with half the budget and resources you're meant to have, polished up their communication skills taking a band from Liverpool to headline a 30k cap festival in Belarus for the British Embassy in Minsk, or who's learned to work under extreme pressure being in the monitor chair for a Grammy-winning queen of hip-hop, I'm here and I'm available! Did seven years at BT before I pivoted my career back to music too, in various fields including project management, process improvement and change delivery. Sorry if it's a bit of a thread hijack, but there's such a diverse set of experiences and professions here, and mine's just vanished out from under me, so if anyone's got any opportunities for short term or longer term work in project management, business improvement, logistics, comms, anything where I can put my skills to good use, I'd love to chat to you!

All my upcoming international touring work is off, majority of my UK stuff is off or at least up in the air. All the corporate event production falling off too. I run my business with minimal overheads and have no direct employees, just a pool of freelancers, but I'm already having to look at finding work in other industries outside of live touring/event production. Plummeting consumer confidence is hitting attendances and advance ticket sales right across the year and sensible estimates are that this industry won't recover until towards at least after summer. I'll basically be putting my business on pause for 6-9 months minimum and starting over in something different. Very concerned for all my friends and colleagues in the industry, almost everyone I know, individuals and small businesses, has had their diaries wiped and are looking at huge financial loss already.

There's a world of difference between running a gofundme to help with the costs of creating a piece of art which the funders then enjoy afterwards, and just asking for strangers to buy you a nice thing, because the nice thing you've already got isn't nice enough for you.

I can't agree mate. There's more homeless people on the streets than ever. There's people using food banks. There's people fleeing war torn parts of the world who've lost everything. You're a grown adult who's taken up a hobby. You have, presumably, a perfectly functional bass guitar already. You're asking total strangers to put their hand in their pockets so you can replace the perfectly adequate equipment you already have to carry out your hobby with an incredibly pricey luxury item that most people who actually play the bass as their profession and their living couldn't even justify owning. I'm sorry if this seems harsh, but I think it's absolutely ridiculous. You want nice, non-essential, luxury items, do what the rest of us do and work for it and earn it. I work in live music, and there's still times when I've sold instruments that I was actually going out and earning money playing to fill gaps in my cash flow. I've never put up a gofundme and asked people to chip in to replace the instruments, or to help pay the bills I was selling them for. I just dealt with it, because it's just "stuff", and when I can afford to I might treat myself to a nice bass/guitar one day. You're not (as far as I can see from what you've said) dependant on it for an income. Nobody is saying you shouldn't play bass, or enjoy playing bass, or aspire to own beautifully crafted instruments. Do those things, by all means. Just don't ask people to part with their hard-earned to fund your hobbies and interests. If you really think that's sensible behaviour you need to go give your head a wobble.

Amazing thing to do. My little boy is autistic, I know how challenging it can be at times, so to deal with that multiple times over must take some doing. Hats off to you!

You're a bass player, what are you doing trying to play lead? 🤣

I'm a sound engineer/backline tech/tour manager and general live production dogsbody. Occasionally get lucky enough to work with some great artists that would probably pass for household names (and for Basschat bonus points, I once spent three days on the road teching for Victor Wooten), but I'm more often found looking after smaller club tours, corporate events, basically anything where someone needs something making louder. Did make at least part of my living playing bass for a good while but haven't played a show in just over a year and don't expect to any time soon. I did enough of it for long enough to prove that an utterly mediocre level of playing ability is no barrier to a professional career though 😂

That's a huge responsibility that must have entailed some difficult decision making. Respect to you for doing what must have been an incredibly challenging job.

He is now, haha! Glad you enjoyed it mate. Ian is great, and I've got a couple of friends on the Elvis touring crew too. I hear it's a great show.

Prowsey is a mate. I'll tell him that, he'll be tickled 🤣🤣

He's 50. Starting a gofundme and expecting strangers to buy him a £2.5k bass is bonkers!

A cool £2.5k

Honestly, when you look at all the charitable fundraising causes on those sites, I think it's a bit of a stretch to expect people to throw in for a grown adult to replace the nice non-essential luxury hobby item he already owns with an even nicer non-essential luxury hobby item. Owning a better bass won't further your playing, won't get you more gig opportunities or more bands. I bought my nice expensive instruments when I was in my late teens, working three jobs and playing in bands. The reality is I couldn't afford to do it now at 35 with kids to feed and a mortgage. Very few bassists will ever own an instrument as pricey as the Mayones you're looking at. I tour as a sound engineer and guitar tech and can tell you with certainty that very few of the professional working players I've come across, even those doing massive shows with household name artists, own and gig anything like that. Honestly, if that's what you really want - save for it, cut out non-essential spending, sell off other things that you don't need/use, put any money you earn from gigging in a pot. Expecting other people to chip in on a fundraiser for you to own an incredible luxury item that most people could never dream of buying is a bit of a stretch though.

Pretty sure that's how Dave first met him, they were on the same festival bill somewhere.

I'm always a little wary of presets. If it's a full channel preset, with EQ, compression, gating etc dialled in, it's often hard for someone inexperienced to spot where the issue is if something doesn't sit right, and whilst there's starting points I'll work from for many sources, there's definitely no one size fits all and every voice or instrument will be a little different. By all means have a play with them, but I definitely think keeping it simple is a smart approach, at least while you're getting a feel for the desk and the depth of capabilities available compared to the simple analogue set ups most people are used to.