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Bass Amp Placement

BigDaddyO

BigDaddyO

Rockin' Ruben
Sep 23, 2007
223
3
#1
The set-up:
Three man band but guitarist uses two vetta's in stereo, one on each side of the drummer on stands. Guitarist also does the vocal and uses Bose right behind him.
(vetta) (PA) (vetta)
(Guitar) (Drummer) (Bass)

The Delima:
Where to place the bass amp? This leaves me standing right in front of his rig no matter if the bass amp is on the right or left of his two twelve combo, at ear level no less.

Any suggestions?
 
#3
it seems counter intuitive for your bass rig to not be in one of the drummer's ears.
tell your guitarist to suck it up... he will get the same stereo effect from having his amps in different ears, he is being a prima-donna if he does it any other way.

i have worked (backline) with, and seen many top flight guitarists who play stereo rigs (bill frisell, adrian belew, warren haynes, mike stern, etc) who use stereo rigs, and not a single one is that greedy with their stage rig.
 
#4
Is this your band? YouTube - jordanbcolletta's Channel

Which Bose PA are you using?

IME, most stereo effects from the stage are lost by the time they get out to the audience. The stereo chorus sounds good on stage but FOH, stereo is pretty much lost.

Also, depending on how wide a stage you play on, when you're out in the audience, you sometimes get one side of the stereo effects and it doesn't sound very good. Even if you put the guitar through the PA, the same thing happens.

I suggest the guitar combo/extension speakers be put side by side on one side of the stage and maybe angled 5-10 degrees from each other so the stereo effect mostly fills out the guitar players tone and the bass has it's own side of the stage.

Whether or not the singer/guitar player buys into this, that's another story.
 
#5
The PA is Bose L1. For the appearances on TV, we only used one guitar amp and no PA. We only use the PA for vocals in the live appearances. Our gigs are in men's shelters and rehab facilities in metro Atlanta.
 
#6
Put your bass amp right in front of his on your side of the stage. Seriously though, maybe he need some in-ear monitors or something. That way he can have his stereo signal and you can have 1/2 the stage. I have to deal with loud guitar amps on both sides of the stage, but that was with two guitar players. Maybe a different PA is in order so he can run his signal through tha PA and have a lower stage volume.
 
#8
This is seriously ridiculous. He doesn't get Boardwalk AND Park Place!:eyebrow:

If he argues, show him this thread.

If there's a situation where the stage is large enough to accommodate both your need and his 'need' go for it. It could sound really great. But if it compromises your ability to comfortably hear yourself on stage...get outta here!
 
#11
Hi.

Before watching the Youtube clip, I was going to suggest the approach I had when I was young, but somehow I guess that it "wouldn't fit the bill" so to speak :).

Both the guitarist and me had full Marshall stacks, and he had bass bottom and guitar top on his side, and I obviously had guitar bottom and bass top on mine. Probably lots of sound cancellations, but it did sound good to the young ears.


I'll be yet another one to recommend ditching the stereo idea, most likely than not it'll just muddy up the sound and cause weird phase cancellations in the audience.

As a matter of a fact, unless someone demands (or demanded back in the day) stereo on PA, I always run mono. Stereo sounds superb in one sweet-spot, but strange in any other location. IME anyway.

Regards
Sam
 
#13
i get the need.. if your venue is big enough. my guitar amp is stereo. i can do stereo delays and chorus WITHIN one cab. i cant use those live unless i ask them to mic both sides of the cab, and that will just piss them off. i have one setting with a quarter note delay on one side and a triplet on the other. i tell them to mic the quarter note side.

i saw a band do this once. guitarist was kinda destroying everyone in volume that night, but the next 2 or 3 times i saw them, no problem.

fairly certain the bass was on the inside of the other cab

(guit) (drums) (bass) (guit)

[keys] [vocals] [bassist] [guitarist]
 
#15
Had a similar situation, my guitarist WAS running 2 fender deville's. One on each side of the stage. I managed to convince him that since we couldn't reproduce the type of stereo effect he was going for when playing live, then it just didn't make sense to haul all that stuff around (both devilles were 4x10's). So now he plays on 1 Mesa Boogie amp and added a Leslie cabinet, but we can at least stack the mesa on top of that for a smaller stage footprint.

Luckily, he's a reasonable guy, picked up on my line of thought and now he get's most of the effect he's looking for (less some of the crazy ping pong type delay) and we can ALL fit on the stage. When we track in the studio, he still runs full stereo (plus the Leslie), but we can utilize stereo there, whereas with live situations it is much more difficult for various reasons.
 

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