SimonK

The guitarists were both using Line6 Helix's (Helices?). Bass player looked to have a tuner and preamp of some type but I couldn't get close enough to see. I was idly thinking that flight cases should be painted to look like amps/stacks...

So I went to see thes guys last night and they were great. I loved all the guitars on the stage (albeit the bass player only had one 5-string J bass which I thought let the side down regardless of how good he sounded!), but the complete lack of amps did take something away for me given the title of the show was "Ultimate Classic Rock". Aesthetically I think some Marshall stacks and probably an Ampeg/TE stack would have just finished the look - even if the cabs were empty. I know there are some famous bands who have always bought additional empty cabs along for the look, but I do think I should start a campaign for all the digital modeller/IEM people out there to consider bringing amps & cabs along to gigs to serve as stage props!

Having a standard pre-agreed half song or chorus to quickly run through after telling everyone in the room what you are going to do seems to be a fairly professional way to do it regardless of who is already there, and saves the back and forth as to what the band wants to play or random jamming (which feels somewhat less professional!). I can possibly see how IEM mixes may not change much between gigs and thus a soundcheck is less necessary, but I don't think I would ever NOT want to do one!

Thanks Richard for the offer but I think you can probably find a better home for it as we are spoiled for amp choices!

It was a soundcraft desk, although I did occasionally use a huge Allen and Heath. The other fun thing you could do with this arrangement is essentially a bass drop - so cut all the low frequencies out for the intro or other parts of a song and then send it all back in as needed. Not entirely useful but there were one or two songs in the set where this could give quite a nice lift - Wild Cherry "Play that Funky Music"- was one.

That's a really kind offer - we have a 17 year old bass player who is in need of an amp so I tried to give him one of my Trace Elliot combos but after trying to pick it up he asked if I could give him a preamp with a headphone out instead - youth of today aren't as rock 'n roll as we were! This looks far more sensible for church use although I'm too far away.

Soundchecks are more important for singers than anyone else. It's been a few years since I was regularly doing sound, but for me sound check was for the band and especially the singers to get their stage levels right as this was not something I could do for them. I would only get the FOH approximate because as soon as the punters came in the FOH mix changed, but I could adapt pretty quickly during the first couple songs. Thus said, I did quite like to set my overall EQ using a squeak test (ideally with grey noise) to get some more headroom, but almost never had time to do it properly (the quick version was getting someone to cup their hand over a mic as I cranked the gain)! There was a Behringer unit that used to try to do it automatically but it never seemed to work so well. But for me ALWAYS a quick soundcheck after the linecheck.

I have a suspicion that one of my latest creations will be looked at with approval by some on this thread who probably think this is the best use for a speaker cab (although I will point out that I did this after using the speakers to fix the cabs shown in my earlier post, so yes one 4x10 died, but two other broken cabs were revived!)

This was done on analogue desks - not too difficult to set up and you can always mute the channel and mix as normal if you want to so long as the desk has a couple options for buses/sub-mixes. I agree, however, on the convenience of savings things on digital desks, however we currently use one that needs to be rebooted every time a new programme is loaded before it will apply changes which is a bit irritating - I think it's a Yamaha something or other but I generally stay away from it!

...and as variables go the overall sound of a band will be far more dependent on the muppet (or not) running the PA rather than the bass players choice of 10s or 15s! Someone above mentioned only ever using 12s as the sweet spot. I can see merit to that argument (merely becasue 12 falls between 10 and 15) but I think to say you ONLY use one size of speaker is a bit limiting. At the end of the day half the fun of playing electric instruments is trying different things be they pickups, pedals, amps or cabs. It's just interesting that certainly on this forum the choice of speaker size raises so many passions (there's possibly a rude joke in here somewhere... 🙂 )!

Thought I'd add a gratuitous rig picture only because I was playing it last night and it does sound awesome. The amp is a GP7 SM300 running into 2x10 and 4x10 cabs, although I would say these (the cabs) make a bigger difference to the sound than the different trace amps I have tried. I would suggest to the OP that going into the same cab many of the Trace amps will sound similar, but if you start changing the cab as well as the amp you will get a much bigger variation.

I've always viewed it that the best sound comes from an acoustically good room with an excellent PA, silent stage (IEMs), and all run by a competent engineer. But as we live in the real world FOH sound is a bit of a lottery, and so long as it isn't terrible punters are often not too picky. So if using an amp I generally only worry about what it sounds like where I am standing as the rest is well beyond my control. At the moment a combination of speaker sizes gives me a good sound, and my suspicion is that phase cancellation between the 10s and 15s/18s won't be the main variable that affects the front of house sound!

So I play a fair amount in churches that, certainly going back to the early 90s, have used projectors for songs/words rather than hymn books. This started off as acetate OHPs albeit some places made up and projected slides (which for whatever reason always had a dark blue background and white text!). But then from about twenty years ago (I make it around 2000ish) projectors have been pretty standard, with large screen TVs beginning to make an appearance over the last couple years. One main challenge is that there is almost always a good amount of daylight coming into the room so positioning of screens is really important no matter how powerful the projector. Also never ever put it behind the band - above the band or to the side of the band is fine, but having to avoid the projection while playing (and getting occasionally blinded) is a real pain. Short-throw projectors can work well, but they do seem to be less powerful. When the room is dark having a dark background for anything projected is a very good idea so as to avoid unwanted light pollution/inteference with any lighting rig. In a bright room during daytime the opposite works best.

Maybe ☝️ is the important thing. Mixing different speakers is a bit random but if it sounds good go for it. BUT trying to get more of a sound you already like by adding additional speakers is actually quite hard if you are not just adding more of the same. Thus said there is a caveman side of me that does think more is more.... 😈 🤘

I've used a bus configuration on a desk before, taking a pre-signal from all the channels with anticipated lower frequencies (bass, kick, keys and male vocals) and routing them all into a new channel where I have rolled off the highs and mids, and essentially used it just to control lower frequencies. I did this in acoustically challenging rooms when I did not want to touch the overall system EQ due to needing to control resonant frequencies etc. Also means that you can have more or less bass frequencies on a per song basis if you want. It's fun to do but I wouldn't say necessarily a game changer.