LawrenceH

Freak Pooer (sorry)

Oh that's a shame, was that with matched sensitivity on the horn to compensate? Might work better with the smaller cabs, assuming they use the same HF driver, might have more leeway. Stacking speakers in mirror when vertical seems less than ideal on a cramped stage because it takes the tweeters lower. Plus they still don't add entirely coherently. Splitting hairs on bass guitar I guess. But then that's what really good speakers are about!

It's that bottom-end reinforcement. I've wondered before with a good FR cab like the ones LFSys is building, whether rather than stacking two complete cabs and accepting lobing there's sense in having the pad on the compression driver variable, so you could switch that out to pair with a second, (cheaper) woofer-only model that just had the low-pass filter rom the crossover. Of course that depends on the tweeter using a pad and having the headroom, but they usually do. Even without a second cab model, you could potentially make the comp drivers switchable to achieve the same outcome.

On the other hand I've never seen a 'name' band toting a Dingwall, for example, and the only Warwick player on my radar ever is/was Zender. Before the inevitable deluge, yes I'm sure there are multiple examples to prove my ignorance but that's the point But Hofner is a brand I'd associate more with guitars, more with jazz, and more with players on the continent - not so much the Anglosphere.

Great info on this thread! From my own thread the other day on jazz bass component weight (which I'd encourage others to participate in): Jap 75RI jazz: 773g Jap Aerodyne Jazz: 703g Also from an eBay seller I enquired of, Jap 75RI jazz: 740g Reported on talkbass, 2 Fender replacement roasted maple jazz necks came in around 680g. I'd definitely aim for under 800 as the 773g one ain't particularly light to me. For tuners there's also the 35g Gotoh Carbon-o-lite but they are pretty spendy. I bought some of the Gotoh GRL510C (the slightly heavier 12mm version) via eBay and sucked it up on customs duty.

Don't take this as a dampener, but rather a way of avoiding disappointment due to unrealistic expectations - the ABRSM grades are not designed as a linear progression as far as hours put in per grade. The estimated Total Qualification Time for preparing for grade 5 is 3x that for grade 1, with 2x the Guided Learning Time (ie lessons). See page 6 of the piano syllabus if you want more details, or not, because the estimated are optimistic IMO and especially so for an adult learner once you hit the higher grades!

This came up in the Sky Arts thread (where I also mentioned Robbie Shakespeare to general blanks). For some reason they've got to be punk/new wave/prog to get the basschat radar pinging!

Being nice to sound techs is common sense I think. But I don't think that precludes me noting that, as it becomes more about driving complex software interfaces, a surprising number of them aren't actually very good at mixing music with their ears. One thing I have noticed, and which was corroborated chatting to a touring engineer for the band of an old friend at a gig this weekend, is that a lot of house systems appear to be EQ'ed for an empty room. He said once the audience turns up, he often ends up having to push a ton of mids through the mains to compensate system EQs. The perils of preset system design.

I believe there are some nuances that tend to get ignored or downplayed when it comes to people's subjective preferences, despite the subject being done to death in other ways. Especially when standing right next to a cab, dispersion matters, and related to that, comb filtering (from multiple drivers) matters. Multiple stacked 10s only sum to a coherent point source well below 1kHz. Above that you're going to start to get lobing. Everyone's heard this when adding a second cab. It doesn't just get universally louder, it gets bassier. Cab shape, especially height, matters. A generic single 15 mounted low down is going to sound smoother than a generic 410 (limited HF dispersal, no comb filtering). The filtering aspect isn't necessarily obvious in a single listening test - but put that cab into different acoustic spaces and you're going to get greater apparent inconsistencies between spaces. I suspect one of several reasons an 810 is favoured is that the comb filtering gets smeared out at a given listening position due to the complexity of the summing pattern. Add to that the use of similar/same drivers across multiple manufacturers and you could easily develop a 'sound' you associate with a particular speaker size. Especially drivers like Eminence with characteristic breakup peaks for particular models. TLDR I believe there are some practical differences in how different size drivers might be perceived standing up close.

As I said, the 15 minute turnaround ones are generally fine. The ones I'm complaining about I'm talking from the perspective of a punter as much as a player.

Nah 15 minutes is often how long it takes as an audience member to get served/go to the loo/go out for a quick cig in between bands! Tbh though those are rarely the gigs where I have had or heard the most egregious issues. Rough and ready is fine, it's when they have no interest in improving the sound as they go within the realms of the possible. The process seems to be (rant time): 1. Get the drums huge as f**k, especially subby reverberant kick with a beater click that sounds like clipping. Add Phil Collins snare. But it's a funk band? Doesn't matter. 2 Sit a thin, heavily compressed vocal firmly on top. 3. Get something else (who knows what?) rumbling indistinctly through the subs (and subs only) to destroy any semblance of rhythmic tightness. 4. Sit back and chat to the lighting guy, scroll on phone, or visibly do nothing for the remaining 45 mins even though the actual music is sounding awful and you can't hear the guitar, keys and bass that between them are providing all harmonic context and melodic counterpoint. 5. (Optional) log on to the livesound subreddit and establish dominance. 6a (Very optional) belatedly notice that two of the instruments you can't hear are trading solos on what turns out to be the second-last song. Turn up the mids your preset had previously carved out until they're actually audible, in time for the solos to end. 6b. Leave it like that for the last song just to tantalise the audience with what might have been. Once in a while though you get someone really good and it's an absolute joy to behold. Suddenly these compact line arrays sound fantastic, the instruments are all beautifully placed in the mix and the vocal is so perfectly balanced it makes you want to cry.

@agedhorse I think you haven't met a lot of the 'engineers' working the rough end of the circuit, at least in the UK. People skills not always in abundance. I've noticed both as a player and a punter that mixing skills aren't either. Even at medium venues I noticed heavy reliance on presets and RTAs, little use of ears or musical understanding of genres. Quite a lot of them come from AV/theatre backgrounds and do live bands as a top-up. Touring engineers that go with bands are generally a different proposition. Though IMO they still rely too much on presets.

Depends how rough you are on your gear but I think the Fender-type grill cloth served well enough for a lot of users. Lightweight, easy to apply, looks classic

It did for these guys

Just to update that I did another reset of the desk and reinstalled the latest version of MixPad, and this time all worked without a hitch. I've set the wireless to 5Ghz in case that was the issue, but really have no clue what was stopping it working previously. Just hoping it never recurs! Anyway, a test and play around with an SM58 and some good headphones leaves me very impressed, things sound good. I will definitely (over)use that double tracker effect. Channel compressors sound very good and versatile, lack of sidechain filtering notwithstanding. I think the app layout could be more versatile but the quick channel presets are good enough starting points that it's worth persevering with, just to build up some useful presets. Those who use Mixing Station, is there a way of straightforwardly transferring Mixpad-derived settings? I notice there are no hardware pads on the mic inputs, has anyone found this a problem in practice with e.g. kick drum mics?