Anyone bring a head to service and plug into a cab provided by the church? We have a bunch of Yamaha wedges lying around and am thinking about carrying my own head to have more control of my sound and having the soundman possibly mic it. We generally don't have much time to tweak my bass tone so I feel I'm fighting to get my tone throughout service. If I could use the time when I come early to dial in it would help. The soundman doesn't turn on the system until minutes before we're practicing.

Thanks

Do it. Nothing to lose. I never played in churches even though I am religious.

Do it. Nothing to lose.

I play at my church frequently and I'd say if they're not getting your tone, send them a post EQ, DI signal if possible.

Yes, I know that the house will sound different, but you'll get closer to your sound and let's face it many places seem to do the classic "church mix".... Vocals and hardly anything else...

:eek:

I play at my church frequently and I'd say if they're not getting your tone, send them a post EQ, DI signal if possible.

Yes, I know that the house will sound different, but you'll get closer to your sound and let's face it many places seem to do the classic "church mix".... Vocals and hardly anything else...

:eek:

In a way, I do have post EQ DI even though I don't play through my own amp. This is because I usually use an eq pedal with passive basses or have three-band eq active basses. I *love* having tone control at my fingertips.

Guitar and bass cabs really do play havoc with sound techs since they can't control the volume. Yes, you can put a mic in front of the cab but some cabs produce such volume that a mic is overkill. Plus bass cabs can turn the stage into one large subwoofer.

Before you put you and your sound tech though the "cab wars", try this. Buy, rent or borrow a SansAmp Bass Driver DI or simular DI and adjust your tone. Most of the time, bass player find that such a set up produces the desired tone and they don't have to lug around an amp.

Okay, you really only need to worry about your stage volume and tone. The FOH stuff is the sound guys job, as inept or as skilled as they may be. You should have an amp and/or speaker on stage (I suggest side wash as a opposed to back pointing out, or a wedge pointing up at you from in front of you.) so you can adjust your tone and volume, and then send as dry as signal to the board as possible. If you use effects, send it post effects, but before your amp (IMO)

The Sansamp idea is a good one, I suggest that or Radial DI's BassBone. MXRs M-80 is a good choice also.

You should have another wedge with a monitor mix. Your bass doesn't need to be in that mix if you have an amp for stage monitoring unless there's only shared mixes. This will help you keep your volume down...unless you have a really bad monitor sound, which unfortunately is all to common, which is why I suggest an amp for stage monitoring rather than depending on the monitor mix. I bring my rig even when using in-ears because of this.

I went from having a bass combo amp on stage to running direct and fighting to get enough bass in the monitors that I could hear myself to my current setup:

right now I'm running my bass into a Crate Power Block, taking the XLR out on the PB and sending that to the soundboard and the 1/4" out to one of the wedges. Unfortunately I don't have a second wedge to get actual monitor mixes, but I've found that I get enough of the monitors from the combined bleed of the rest of our team's monitors.

I have been really considering picking up something like an Ampeg BA115T so I can have a tilt-back amp in front of me when I play, though I don't know if/when that will happen considering I'm surviving paycheck to paycheck right now.

I run totally DI and use IEM's for monitor.

I've used a Sansamp and a Digitech modeler, IF I need a tone other than the straight DI'd bass. Most Sundays, it's just the bass.

Until I sold it I would tote the preamp section of my head and use that. No problems. Our church PA is old and tosted so I play through an amp. It works well in a 800 seat Catholic church. Our new church will have a proper PA and I will be going DI off my shuttle 6.0 which I will use for monitoring.

At our church I use my Line6 LowDown 150 amp. The balanced out sends a signal to the board where the tech can do whatever he wants with it. I set the amp up in "kickback" mode facing me (NOT into the house), just like a monitor wedge. Then I also have a monitor wedge from the house PA facing me from the other side and I have the sound guy dial up a decent mix of all the other instruments in that. So then I dial up just enough amp volume to give me that little extra boost of bass in the near field without having to send a lot of bass through all the other stage monitors (which is what really causes havoc with the house mix).

I don't understand how you are monitoring yourself. Through the existing monitor mix? I don't go through the mains or monitors at either church where I praise. I have a mini-cab (1-10") for the mini-sactuary and a 2x12" at the larger, powered with a Shuttle 6.0. It seems to me that since you are playing in the same acoustical space every week that you could find a tone setting that works and stick with it. Is there incompetence behind the FOH board complicating things?

Ive done the bring my head (GB Neo Pak) and plugged into a spare yamaha wedge our church has and have had pretty good results. The only problem we have is 1 Not the same sound man on the board. 2 They like to play with knobs and 3 My keyboardest is extremely HEAVY Left handed!. I try to stay out of his range but sometimes you cant. Time permits I bring my own cab. If I am coming from work I brind a MXR Bass DI and hopefully get a chance to dial in.

Ive done the bring my head (GB Neo Pak) and plugged into a spare yamaha wedge our church has and have had pretty good results. The only problem we have is 1 Not the same sound man on the board. 2 They like to play with knobs and 3 My keyboardest is extremely HEAVY Left handed!. I try to stay out of his range but sometimes you cant. Time permits I bring my own cab. If I am coming from work I brind a MXR Bass DI and hopefully get a chance to dial in.

I get what I need from the MXR M80 when playing with the worship band too.

We have in-ear monitoring at our church. I do not use an amp, just a Radial active DI, that's it. My bass sounds good to my ears without EQing, and the EQing for the house (which is a totally different thing) is made by the PA tech.

I used to have my own amp on stage for years, but I found that fumbling around with the amp distracts me from more important things, if you know what I mean. :smug:
Don't get me wrong - I love to have a decent bass sound, too. But as I said, my bass sounds good "as is".

if your church allow you to do it then go for it !, not cabs or amps at the stage in my church.

At our church atm we just have a 300W 15" Fender combo deal directed out at the congregation, we dont have a decent enough PA system (well it's nice, just no subs) so that amp is all the bass gets, but we hardly ever turn it past 3 with the worship leaders curbow, and 5 with my p bass (active vs passive volumes i guess). However we will be uprgading to a full JBL VRX system within the next two years, so may experiment with mic'ing a new rig that we are looking at getting too (I suggest Acoustic, price reasons and I've read rave reviews about them) a head and cab set up. Probably a 4x10...

But mic'ing, I dont really like any DI, I find ya lose too much of the sound as 33% of the sound is the cab... The other 66 being bass and head... IMHO

i just use my amp as a monitor. i let the sound man(me :D ) mix it in the house

The church I play most often has a Carvin RL1000 head + Red-Eye 4x10 cab. Sometimes I use that, sometimes I bring my Schroeder 1210L + Markbass LMII, and sometimes I bring my Line6 Bass POD xt Live. The bass always goes through the board, regardless of what's on stage, since some of the other players use in-ears.

Is your church band a rock band or playing gospel hymms.I have played with my church band for years and you probably dont need to be ear shattering loud,for practice I use a crate combo with 12" spkr and for the service I prefer a Hartke 2 10" cab with my trusty 200 watt G-K and set my volume up or down as needed and have never had a problem,and the portability is superb one small amp on my little airport luggage carrier and gig bag on my back and Im good to go

I used to have problems when somebody else controled my volume and EQ at church.
I resolved that with a big rig (amp), and the stage is made of wood so I don't need the house PA anymore.
I tell ya, being in control is the greatest feeling.
Don't need to haul it after, it stays there, I have 3 others.
And all depends on how big the church is. For me a 2x10" is not enough.

Thanks all. I'm bringing my new Shuttle 6.0 to the next service and I'll report back. I'm debating bringing a cab (avatar sb112) or just using a 15" Yamaha monitor.

Sounds like you've got a good strategy going.

The Sansamp is a great little box but I would really be very cautious about thinking you can just run that to the board relying on getting "your sound" out of the monitors, with no dedicated amp. First of all you are totally at the monitor engineer's mercy and if your system allows only only one or two submixes I can guarantee you will be getting a typical "church mix" (80% vocals and piano/keyboard) out of those wedges. Second, even if the monitor engineer has a clue (and a dedicated submix to send you), unless that wedge has a 15-inch driver you are not going to get the bass tone out of it that you want.

That being said, it is still important to be sensitive to your sound tech's requests as far as amp volume, rolling off some low end, whatever. At my church I run my own small combo amp while the other two bassists go direct (straight direct, no SansAmp or similar), and the sound guy actually prefers my set-up cause the other two guys have low-end basses that sound like cr*p. He and I have had to do some work on the EQ and I have had to accept a little less low-end on stage than is ideal, but it's working great out in the house from what I'm told.

Eager to hear your report.

I recently started playing in a big church with in-ear and no amps on stage (and I hate in ear but that is a different conversation). All I need to do is plug into an Avalon DI and go. However, I was not crazy about what I was hearing. So I now I bring in my EBS head and run it in front of the DI. This gave me active EQ, compression, and overdrive. I send a post EQ signal to a very high quality board. I have received several complements on the tone after doing this.

So I now I bring in my EBS head and run it in front of the DI. This gave me active EQ, compression, and overdrive.

I used to do that with my Hartke head and then someone told me it was hard on an amp head to run it without having it plugged into a speaker.

? ? ?

I used to do that with my Hartke head and then someone told me it was hard on an amp head to run it without having it plugged into a speaker.

? ? ?


It may depend on the amp. I did ask the EBS guys. They said no problema.

If you are going to play into the maind PA, make sure the can take the lows. I had this discussion with the choir director last night. We hope they did not scrap the subs in our new church because of budget concerns. I really want to get to the mains so I can sit better in the mix.

IMO it's important to add some "tube" sound into your bass signal going direct to the PA, otherwise the tone you get is sterile and thin with too much midrange. Most of the DI's mentioned above will help with that.

I use an Avalon U5 as a DI, and also run the line out into a Bergantino IP112 as a side fill. I keep the Bergie turned down low enough that it does not project into the crowd much, but it gives me just enough "foot-massage" low end on stage. We also use Avalon monitors with in-ears, and I've gotten very good results with that combination.

Used to use the Sansamp, but I prefer the Avalon, although it's pricier. Aguilar has a new pedal coming out called the Tonehammer that also has DI capability as well as overdrive and EQ, and early word from other TB'ers is that it is an excellent piece of gear, although I've got no time on it myself.

When I'm playing at church, I typically will set my cab/head at the front of the stage, and aim it back at me. The sound guys get my DI out of the head, and the congregation gets to hear me through the mains & sub, and I get to hear myself. Since I've started doing that - the sound guys have been setting the other bassist up the same way - and he loves it.

It seems like the control of sound is left up to the sound guys, I get a good tone from my gear, and everyone's happy. :)

IMO it's important to add some "tube" sound into your bass signal going direct to the PA, otherwise the tone you get is sterile and thin with too much midrange.

+1, and I would add that the lower quality the bass, the more important adding the "tube" sound becomes. A low-quality, passive bass running uneffected through a low-end DI box can put out some of the most miserable sound you can imagine.

When I'm playing at church, I typically will set my cab/head at the front of the stage, and aim it back at me.

You must have a pretty progressive church to let you have your amp frontstage. There are other churches out there that have a real hang-up about having amps on stage and especially out front. Even if you can keep the sound level under control there's still the "clutter"/image thing which can be an issue with some congregations and especially those coming out of a more "traditional" worship background.

You must have a pretty progressive church to let you have your amp frontstage. There are other churches out there that have a real hang-up about having amps on stage and especially out front. Even if you can keep the sound level under control there's still the "clutter"/image thing which can be an issue with some congregations and especially those coming out of a more "traditional" worship background.

Yes - I'd guess we are. We have guitar solos - at least a couple every sunday. ;)

actually - i'm playing a Shroe Mini12+ - and its so small - it's smaller than the monitors on the front of stage. . . so it's a small footprint. Nothing like the guitar players 2x12 with his 6space rack, head & power amp! ;)

OK so I play at church and I'm at a 4 somedays on sound and a 9 other days it gets annoying that they cant memorize the sound settings thats what I would reccomend and I would see if you could set up a time to meet with the sound guy and work stuff out