Jack

Mids, overdrive, compression, chorus. All of that can help if the technique and the mix is right. If they're wrong then nothing will help IME.

Whether it's on your board or in your amp or neither, there's a good bet the soundman has you compressed at the desk. My gigging experience only goes back 15 years as I'm just a wee bairn but it's been like that at every gig I've played.

There's also the GK plex.

Well would you look at that, so there are. I mean it makes sense, some sort of backup would be needed in case the in ears failed so I suspected there would have been something somewhere.

I saw Metallica at the O2 in October. There were no amps or anything on stage just Lars' drums, 4 men and about 8 vocal microphones. Not once did any of us miss seeing or indeed hearing amps on stage, we were too busy headbanging and watching the drones. In fact, I think it was the highest capacity crowd at the O2 ever. As they were in the round they could fit more people in the standing area than is usual at that venue. Killing rock n roll.

i) That's frequency response by a given definition of 'response'. For an in depth answer feel free to goggle something like 'bass cab -3dB' or something. But they'll be fine. ii) Meh, some people think so, Dave Rat for one. Most people don't bother though. If your band played a big outdoor festival tomorrow you'd use your current rig with a mic to FOH and the PA speakers would be reproducing all of that stuff anyway. iii) Can't comment. I've used and heard them both but as supplied PA, I've never moved either. Sometimes (I have no idea if it's true in this case) something heavy may be easier to carry than something lighter if it's got better handle placement, lower centre of gravity, better dimensions for doorways, etc etc iv) ALWAYS. These days there's no compromise. Even the cheap Altos that my band use are DSP crossed over, limited, frequency-corrected, blah blah blah. Tiny class D amps and good reliable microchips (driven by mobile phones and smart toasters and stuff I imagine) have meant that you can have what would have taken many racks and many thousands of pounds (weight and money) in a cheap PA cab these days.

Sometimes. The main board has a GK Plec which has an amp sim but no cab sim as of yet. Bob Gallien promises that one is coming though. The other board uses a MS60b to model amps and cabs, usually a B15 in that band so that has a cab sim.

Me too, which is why I eventually sold the Kemper, gave the Helix back to its rightful owner and built another board. It still goes to FOH though and not an amp.

I ended up with FR800s for my FRFR cabs to go with my Kemper. I would have picked the RCF/QSC etc for pure PA duties, but (after trying lots of the high end stuff) decided the Barefaceds had better lows and a nicer form factor for bass use which was my main use. They do make cracking PA cabs, but not what I'd choose if I was buying a PA first and a bass cab second.

It makes loads of difference! You don't have to carry an amp for one, the stage is quieter for two and you get to hear exactly (well, as close as possible) how your bass sounds in FOH. Subjectively, I find that it's a lot more consistent for me now, I spend less time fighting boomy rooms or awkward resonances.

I do that a lot. Not on here but on Ebay and Gumtree. I've just learned that people will haggle regardless so you might as well set your asking price higher. They get to feel like they've 'got a good deal' and you've still got what you were after, often more. Besides if I advertise on here I know it will go to a good buyer and I won't get time wasters. On Gumtree I have to budget for the fact that I'm going to have a different tyre-kicker over every night for the next month trying it out and not buying it.

I quite like it from the nut down. The headstock is odd though. Not that it's overly bad, it's just that the angular head doesn't match the curvy body. Actually, I met someone like that once....

Totally the way to go these days. I'm GK Plex>Barefaced FR800 myself but it's all different flavours of good. I love having my sound from the board and then it doesn't matter whether it's the FRFR cab, our band PA, my own PA or a house PA, it always sounds spot on.

Whilst I can't claim the same electrical knowledge as some of the sparkies in this thread I do know my science. Specifically, my job is to run workshops based on politics, science and skepticism. Id wager that one of two things is happening here. 1. You said normal cables are harsh and yours are smooth. There is a possibility that (since cables are passive and can only take away from a signal) that the normal ones are full range and the silver ones have an in built or designed in imperfection that takes away some high end. 2. It's some combination of observer bias and confirmation bias. There wouldn't be a difference on a scope and you couldn't tell the difference in a double blind test.

I sometimes feel like a stuck record but, as ever, GSS have a great answer in their Sumo power amps. 600 or 1000w, both under budget new and both about the size of a big DI box.

I too have been looking at something like this for a micro rig, in fact I was really tempted by the Eden amp that's in the classifieds currently too. What I'd be keen to know (and why I'm subscribing) is what people think the Crazy 88 would bring over something like the BF Midget. I have had two Gen 2 midgets and they were a great cab, one of the winners for size/weight/output. My gut feeling is that the 88 simply sounds better, less barky, but I'm curious to hear from anyone who's tried one.

Don't discount the Alto TX range. I have two of the TX10s as stage monitors and they're just fine for bass as long as you have reasonable low-end expectations.

Nah, split a PA 4 ways between a 4-piece band Tops Subs Mixer Monitors Easy! [size=1]God help you if you're a 12-piece.... [size=1] [/size][/size]

This can work. I bought a Behringer XR18 and I let the band use it for every gig. I didn't mind as I knew that I'd use it to record at home, as a live mixer in other projects and with my (already owned) active cabs I now have a whole PA system myself. I would not for instance buy subs for the band to use entirely by myself as I would have no use for them outside of the current band and they'd take up far too much room at home. But the mixer was a no-brainer for me.

[quote name='Rocker' timestamp='1510242475' post='3404950']Digital signals too are often incorrectly depicted as '0' and '1'. But they are square waves with a minuscule but significant rise and fall time. A 'well built' digital cable will minimize the distortion of the digital signal and result in a truer representation of the signal at the other end.[/quote] Wrong. A digital cable may pick some distortions up during its run, but the receiving device will be able to convert back to pure binary. This is why digital is superior to analogue for accuracy. [quote name='Rocker' timestamp='1510242475' post='3404950']Our ears are exceptionally well adapted for the job of listening to music. We need to trust them.[/quote] Also very wrong. Well, maybe not. Anyway it doesn't matter as regardless of how good our ears are, they are often overruled by the brain. Placebo, confirmation bias, apophenia and many more psychological effects can distort our view of the world. [quote name='Rocker' timestamp='1510242475' post='3404950']One tip for better sound, and I have done this myself, is to get an electrician to install a dedicated SPUR from your mains MCB panel to an unswitched socket for your hi-fi system. And to use 6 sq. m.m. twin & earth cable and to run a seperate 6 sq m.m. earth wire from the socket to the earth block in the MCB board. Unless the electricity supply in your area is very poor quality, this relatively small investment will give a return way in excess of the outlay. 6 sq. m.m. is about the largest cable that can be used with a 13 amp socket. Also to ask your electrician to ensure that the earth connection is actually connected to the earth via an earth spike.[/quote] What tangible benefit does this gain?

So here's the rub. I know all of this high-end cable stuff is nonsense. Of course it is, it's copper. However, many people say they hear a difference. I hypothesize that them hearing a difference is psychosomatic because they want to or expect to. How can we test this? I suppose a good double blind would do it, but it's been done before and is of limited worth on a text-and-images-only forum. Would there be a suitable scope test? How can I actually measure the frequency response of a cable and post a graph on BC?

[quote name='nilebodgers' timestamp='1510052507' post='3403491'] Plus several to that. The only trick is to remember that most of the dedicated instrument cables have a semi-conducting sleeve (usually black) around the inner conductor insulation (this cuts down on cable handling noise when it is flexed). That black sleeve needs to be cut back at the ends or the cable will attenuate the signal as it will have a signal-to-ground resistance of a few kohms if it touches the inner conductor. I have seen someone make that mistake! [/quote] News to me, but then I freely admit to being uninformed on such things. Can you elaborate please, or post a link to youtube or something?

You don't need a separate mixer, you can just go into the main mixer and not route it through the mains.

Where abouts in the North East? There's a few of us with Barefaced stuff around these parts.