Jack

I think that you're right when you say that often bad sound is user error (god knows that's been me once or twice in the early days of my sound career!) but wrong when you say that it doesn't just happen as well. Perhaps I should have said "nothing that can be done" rather than "nobody's fault". There are posts in this very thread about hearing aid induction loops or wifi widgets and ok yes they may technically have been somebody's fault, but not anybody in the band and there was nothing that could be done to fix it no matter one's level of soundman ability. I've had a gig where we've been told there's house PA, then I double checked a few days before on facebook to be told there's a "full yamaha and rcf system that bands use all the time" then we get there to find there is indeed a full system, minus the mixer. Which we should have brought. Obviously. Maybe that's the venue's fault for not explaining, maybe it's ours for not bringing a backup anyway, but either way there was nothing that could be done to get great sound at that time. We plugged the main vocal mic directly into one top speaker, turned the stage amps up to match the drum kit, and played. I can also think of a gig where any time anything was plugged into any other socket apart from one there was horrific buzz. My singer had a socket tester and we carried a line transformer/isolator but nothing could be done to fix it. There were serious compromises to get the whole band into one socket, resulting in a less-than-perfect sound. I could go on, as could practically everyone else here who's ever gigged.

I'm not the op, which was about 2 Yamaha basses and sounds not looks. However, I did say that I was asked. I believe op was told.

Well it's been six years so hopefully the op got sorted.

Well I'm not sure how one defines 'serious' but they/we put a lot of effort into the look and I'm the only non-mod in real life in the group. There's a big backdrop with a Vespa and a few union jacks on the stage. I don't have the sideburns or the t shirt with the bullseye on it so I do try and make the effort. For reference the other guitars are a Paisley telecaster and a 335, both into vintage appropriate fender and vox amps. A bongo into a helix DID stand out a bit.

As a trained scientist I would point out that one anomalous result doesn't point to a trend. As a very untrained bassist and frankly laughable sound guy I've learned that often bad sound isn't anybodys fault. As an aside, I've once been asked not to bring a particular bass again. My drummer politely suggested that my electric blue musicman bongo didn't fit the look of our indie rock covers band. He was right.

Ah, people reading the title but not the op, classic internet. 😁 Proper proper touring is done with either road cases or production cases depending on the size of the greeble that needs storing. If I was doing van touring I'd probably use one of the Flyht pelican case 'homages' 😉 with the divider. Would that work? Like everyone else who has answered though I don't use any of those solutions though. I use a Stanley Fatmax.

I own and love a pair of QSC K12.2s and they are amazing as either main pa tops or for bass monitoring on stage. However, whilst I have used them as a full pa before without subs, I wouldn't be keen to do it again for a loud rock band. There's a big difference between a wedge sitting on the floor (so half space and with most of the low lows cut out anyway) for stage monitoring and relying on it to do everything to the audience. There are mains that will do that. At one of our schools we have a pair of Yamaha 315s and the other school has a pair of QSC 153s, both of which will go all the way into sub territory no problem (as I'm told does the big boy RCF 15" model, the 745?) but they are very very big and very expensive. Probably less cost and weight than a tops+subs total rig though.

They call it AeroSilk.

Thanks both. I don't actually have the bass in hand so can't test but nice to know it's doesn't need the really high input impedance of a piezo-specialist preamp. I have plenty of great gear that would work regardless, all the way up to the 10Mohm that my Countryman DI is, but I'd like to use my existing wireless > helix rig.

Not the most amazing one for us last night. The White Line (for you 'tell us your band' folks) played a pub on the beach. To practically nobody. Oh well. The rig was my trusty G&L L2000 into a Shure Wireless>TC MojoMojo>Sansamp Paradriver V2. I was right by the pa in a tiny room so I put a tiny amount of 120Hz up (as that's where our sub crosses over so it kind of felt like a decent guess) in the singer's wedge and left my stage stuff in the car.

Hi all, I'm trying to get my hands on an Ibanez SRH500 that has a piezo pickup in the bridge, then some sort of preamp. Specifically it is what Ibanez call their AeroSilk system. With it being active, do I still need to worry about the input impedance of what it's plugged in to? The input of my wireless is only 900kohm.

And yet, somehow, people get by.

Line most strobe tuners you settle for 'close enough'. The only time I try and get it to stop is when setting up for intonation etc.

I've used plenty and they all seem to tune well enough, so the choice comes down to other features. I currently own both a Korg Pitchblack Advance and a Peterson Strobostomp HD. Both are superb, especially for visibility. Similarly a while back on here I bought 3 of the cheap Harley Benton CPT20 as a job lot for pennies, just to leave in my gig bag as spares and go on my home board etc, and they work great too. I don't gig with any of them though as I just use the 'free' tuners in my Shure wireless units. They're all the same.

Dude. I'm in a hard rock band and an indie band. Every summer both bands play (and I'm choosing my words carefully here) 2-wheeled-transport rallies. The biker rallies with the hard rock band would look terrifying to the casual onlooker, but they are the best people. The scooter crowd are all far too cool for you, like corksniffy bands that you've never heard of, and are always starting drunken fights.

People like Pete Wentz get signature Squires because the kids that like Fall Out Boy can't afford Fender.

Hey they're stealing walk off the earth's act! 😁 https://youtu.be/d9NF2edxy-M

We moved from borrowing a set of 712s to our own set of 732s and the difference the bigger magnet made was remarkable. Caveat is that neither set was new so they may have had easier or harder lives, accounting for some of the difference.

I think that you know this but just for the benefit of anyone reading: the problem with low end on stage, power alley and comb filtering etc isn't to do necessarily with a subwoofer, it's just having low end in the pa. If you have a top that goes all the way down you're still going to have the same problem.

I use the XR18 for my bands (and you should too!) but I also have a Soundcraft Notepad 5 that is superb. My Souncdraft is very small and just gets used for odd jobs, as an interface, for running music at parties, etc, but I would 100% recommend anything from them based on my expereience.

4 string. 🙂

Hell no. Live music is ephemeral and a bad note is gone as soon as you move onto the next one. I mean, don't be bad. But don't sweat genuine mistakes.

An increasingly rare outing for my hard rock band last night. We headlined a biker rally in Sunderland, it's the fourth time we've done it and it's normally one of my favourite gigs. Last night was no different with a great reaction from the crowd and us lot all having fun. When we've done this in the past I've always had trouble hearing myself (even once with my 2x Barefaced FR800s running very loud) but this year had a new sound crew and pa and the on stage sound was brilliant, as was FOH during my brief walk through the crowd. I took both of my QSCs, preparing for the worst, but didn't even plug them in. There wasn't much I could add to 6x 1x15" L'Acoustics tops, 4x 2x18" subs, 6x 2x12" wedges and a massive QSC 153 drum fill, biker rally indeed. I ended up using my Stingray, HX Stomp board and the obligatory wouldn't-be-a-sound-crew-gig-without-it Klark Teknik di. Really bad lighting and a tight turnaround meant that I didn't get any photos of us but here's some of the setup, the devastation at the end of the disco after us, and also a video of the excellent Thee Odd Shoes who were on before us. PXL_20220903_195655786.mp4