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Small but high quality stage amp?


NicoMcJ
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13 hours ago, NicoMcJ said:

 

-a bit of self indulgence.  If I’m doing this I’d still like a nice small amp at the end of it all for the sake of having a nice amp. My only amps currently are the old Peavey I used the other night and a tiny Harkte practice amp.

That's quite sensible, I'm making the move to in-ears but if I have little or no control of the PA I like to have an amp in reserve. If the monitoring is good I turn it off/down but there is a bit of pride in setting up with a good sound and every now and then, well you need to have a blast. I'm also quite lazy about tone so an amp that is plug in and go is quite a nice proposition. I quite like what my Peavey MiniMax does. Most f us do this for pleasure and nice gear is a pleasure.

 

Don't completely discount the monitor though, Alto's are great value for money but there is so much better out there. Even the humble ART310 from RCF makes a great monitor and I use mine for bass, my vocals and a bit of FOH when I don't have in-ears. If you have in-ears maybe the guitarist ought to be upgrading their monitor :)

 

 

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The term FRFR has to be about the most misused in the world of sound reinforcement. Full range? Between which frequencies? At what distance? At what volume? Flat response? Where/in what room or space? Even massive PA speakers and ludicrously expensive studio monitors will only produce a "flat response" in the conditions under which they were developed and measured (probably using an anechoic chamber). Even then, frequency range and the volume at which the allegedly "flat response" is produced will be tightly defined. Add room acoustics to the equation and everything changes.

 

No plastic box speaker costing a few hundred quid can realistically be claimed to be FRFR.

 

Rant over. I feel better now.

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Hopefully @Dan Dare you've had half a day to recover :)

 

It's a reasonable enough term, not a scientific definition. It's a bit like calling something hi-fi or a car an SUV. How faithful does hi-fi have to be? Which sport and what utility? For decades most bass speakers and most instrument speakers were deliberately designed to colour the sound. By and large most PA speakers were designed to give a reasonably honest impression of what was fed in within the limits of price and the available technology. With the availability of computer modelling of amp and speaker sounds you don't want to start with a deliberately coloured sound from a speaker with a built in smiley faced eq. As we know if you mix colour with colour you usually end up with muddy brown. 

 

No hi-fi system is ever going to convince anyone that they are listening to live sound, at least not in the near future and few PA systems are likely to be as honest as a mid-range domestic hi-fi speaker. FRFR is a design philosophy and an aspiration, there will be good systems and better systems and ones that aren't worth the money but that is true of conventional coloured bass amps too. FRFR is just a shorthand for a flattish system we all understand. Not every vacuum cleaner is a Hoover.

 

PS it isn't the plastic it's what you do with it :)

 

 

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What I find funny is that the guitar/bass world has adopted the term "FRFR" to described something that was already in existence- an (usually active) PA speaker! It didn't need a new name. Calling it "FRFR" suggests that speaker cabinets with an intentionally restricted frequency response is somehow the norm - it isn't outside the guitar world!

 

If you want to use a car analogy, it's a bit like deciding to refer to cars as a "four wheeled motorized transport vehicle" just because you've used a bike all your life, even though everyone else calls it a car.

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1 hour ago, Phil Starr said:

Hopefully @Dan Dare you've had half a day to recover :)

 

It's a reasonable enough term, not a scientific definition. It's a bit like calling something hi-fi or a car an SUV. How faithful does hi-fi have to be? Which sport and what utility? For decades most bass speakers and most instrument speakers were deliberately designed to colour the sound. By and large most PA speakers were designed to give a reasonably honest impression of what was fed in within the limits of price and the available technology. With the availability of computer modelling of amp and speaker sounds you don't want to start with a deliberately coloured sound from a speaker with a built in smiley faced eq. As we know if you mix colour with colour you usually end up with muddy brown. 

 

No hi-fi system is ever going to convince anyone that they are listening to live sound, at least not in the near future and few PA systems are likely to be as honest as a mid-range domestic hi-fi speaker. FRFR is a design philosophy and an aspiration, there will be good systems and better systems and ones that aren't worth the money but that is true of conventional coloured bass amps too. FRFR is just a shorthand for a flattish system we all understand. Not every vacuum cleaner is a Hoover.

 

PS it isn't the plastic it's what you do with it :)

 

 

 

All fair points. 

 

It does irritate me that manufacturers bandy the tern FRFR, with the implication that anything labelled as such is somehow superior to "coloured" bass/guitar amps. Some players talk of not using eq/running their amps "flat", which is not actually "flat" at all - it merely means one is hearing the preferences of the preamp designer.

 

Leaving aside the obvious point that any piece of equipment will colour the sound to a greater or lesser extent, the colouration is often desirable. An electric bass or guitar has no sound or "tone" of its own. It is essentially a piece of timber, coil and magnet that senses the vibration of a length of wire in a magnetic field. It produces a purely electrical signal (unless the pickups are ancient and have become microphonic). It needs the character and colouration added by the amplification/eq to sound good to our ears. It may be preferable for vocals, brass, wind and acoustic stringed instruments - things that have a sound of their own - to be reproduced "flat", but not that length of vibrating wire.

 

Given that modelling of amp and speaker sounds aims to copy the sound produced by "coloured" amps, speakers, etc, why not just use them in the first place and forget about trying to create a facsimile with a computer?

 

As far as no hi-fi system ever convincing anyone that they are listening to live sound goes, the best can get pretty close. Few people have heard what is possible - not surprising, given the cost. I'm not talking about the systems most of us own that probably cost a few thousand, but stuff that would cause people to say "How much? You can buy a new car for that". The results can be jaw dropping. I own a pair of typical mid-range domestic hi-fi speakers. My Fohhn PA blows them out of the water. Mind you, it should, when you take price into account. Real pro audio is a different (and much more expensive) world.

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Given that I’ve pretty assertively ruled out any kind of FRFR system for my stage sound - as I already have a 2,500 watt  Yamaha “FRFR” PA system - can we get back to small amps to make my life more exciting please?

 

FWIW I used a Harkte head into an Ashdown 4x10 last night and it sounded bloody awful. The old Peavey sounded better.

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Apologies for harping on. The only advice that really makes sense is to go shopping and try things. Ones man's meat is another's poison and all that. If you like the sound of your little Peavey, try a bigger one as a first step. Choosing cabs can be a minefield. Only your ears can decide. I find a modest cab driven by a high quality head works better than the opposite combination, but that's just me.

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On 23/01/2022 at 22:28, NicoMcJ said:

(although I haven’t tried it with my DBR12)

 

If you have a reasonably decent speaker like a Yamaha DBR12, give it a go, it may surprise you, and it ain't going to cost you anything. As mentioned upthread, the DXRs are great - we use 12's as our FOH and 10's for monitoring and they sound great. 

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4 minutes ago, Skybone said:

 

Did you use the Effects Return, or plug in to the preamp?

 

The 1/4” output on the Helix is tapped before the amp and cab model, so I went into the front end.  It was essentially the same as plugging a pedalboard into the Harkte.

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20 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

An electric bass or guitar has no sound or "tone" of its own. It is essentially a piece of timber, coil and magnet that senses the vibration of a length of wire in a magnetic field. It produces a purely electrical signal (unless the pickups are ancient and have become microphonic). It needs the character and colouration added by the amplification/eq to sound good to our ears.

Can't take anything seriously if that's what you're selling.

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Nico, do you cut all the bass out of your onstage monitor amp? I only ask because at small-to-medium gigs I use a Rumble 100 (with a better Eminence in it, not that that's particularly relevant here, it just gives it a bit more headroom from the 100w), and cut all the bass out, which allows it to be louder without struggling as much. Given that the PA's doing all the bass-end heavy lifting, I find it works a treat...might be worth a try...

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1 hour ago, Downunderwonder said:

The reason it took a turn to FRFR is a small coloured amp that isn't mic'd into your Gazillion W PA will be providing misleading info to you on stage.

It won’t, because I’m using IEM and listening to the Helix. As I think I mentioned in a different comment, this is for the benefit of the guitarists in my 2 bands who are allergic to IEM for some reason. The silly sausages.

Edited by NicoMcJ
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1 hour ago, Muzz said:

Nico, do you cut all the bass out of your onstage monitor amp? I only ask because at small-to-medium gigs I use a Rumble 100 (with a better Eminence in it, not that that's particularly relevant here, it just gives it a bit more headroom from the 100w), and cut all the bass out, which allows it to be louder without struggling as much. Given that the PA's doing all the bass-end heavy lifting, I find it works a treat...might be worth a try...

That’s actually not a bad idea - will try that!

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To be honest, if you're getting your sound from the Helix (I do that, too), it's just about something to give you some of that sound for onstage monitoring, so whatever provides your Helix sound with as little colouring as possible at the volume you need sounds like the best bet; as I say, I use a Rumble, set as flat as I can get it (other than all the bass cut for volume purposes); I wouldn't necessarily use a Rumble without the Helix (or the PA), but it's small, light and was cheap...

 

And point it at the guitards... 🙂

Edited by Muzz
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2 hours ago, Muzz said:

To be honest, if you're getting your sound from the Helix (I do that, too), it's just about something to give you some of that sound for onstage monitoring, so whatever provides your Helix sound with as little colouring as possible at the volume you need sounds like the best bet; as I say, I use a Rumble, set as flat as I can get it (other than all the bass cut for volume purposes); I wouldn't necessarily use a Rumble without the Helix (or the PA), but it's small, light and was cheap...

 

And point it at the guitards... 🙂

Bass direct have a used Rumble 200 head for basically free, should be fine with a decent 4ohm cab shouldn’t it?

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