• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Bass challenges in church

tedw

tedw

Supporting Member
Jun 13, 2006
641
625
Northwest U.S.
#1
I am on a worship team at a wonderful church where a lot of thought was put into re-designing the sanctuary for sound. The walls, carpet, ceiling, silent-stage monitoring, great sound system and sound engineering capabilities are all consistent with our churches desire to do all we can to create great environment for worship. But there's a problem that I'd like to address. Some of our sound engineers, who have strongly held technical views have a great deal of trouble mixing the sound that comes from my Rob Allen Mouse. It creates such a powerful tone that it can really rattle the pianist because the grand piano sits on a part of the stage that houses 3 Bag-End 15" speakers. I'm not sure why the designers had to put the speakers there, but they did, and there is no other practical place to put the piano. I've urged the sound techs to roll off the low lows and low mids to addresss this problem, but they resist because (1) it seems so unusual to them and (2) they have said it takes too much bottom-end out of the mix. But I feel they can get a good feeling bass tone by doing what I suggest. I don't want to make it sound like there is finger pointing going on, because that is not the case.... We're just trying to figure this out. Other than redesigning the room, can anybody give any EQ suggestions? Thanks, Ted
 
#3
yep. take care of eq'ing issues at your end. unless they are seasoned soundpeople that do it for a living, no amount of hints/good advice will do it. just get a good little preamp and take care of it from there before it gets to them.
 
#4
I have had good luck by running my mouse through a Fishman Platinum Pro DI. It has a variable high pass (low cut) filter on it, labeled "depth", that allows you to roll off just the very low frequencies. If you are just using the channel strip on the board, most of the time, the low freq adjustment happens at 70-100 Hz. This is higher than you need just to cut the rumble. The piezo in the mouse puts out some seriously low frequencies. This is also a great DI for general use and keeps the warm organic thing that the Mouse does so well.
 
#5
Thanks guys for your excellent input. I've held back from doing the equiing myself, but I think I'll take your advice and start doing it. Joe, based on your experience with the Mouse, I'll definitely get the DI you recommend and give that a try. I'll let you know how it works out. Ted
 
#7
Joe, thanks again for the advice. Today at church, we had a much more experienced sound engineer and he fully agreed with the use of a low-cut filter. Turns out that our church's system has a full range of eq capabilities including all the filters they need. Only problem is that some of the guys clearly don't know how to use them, so I'm committed to use my own low-cut filter as needed.

I play through and Acoustic Image Clarus which allows me to use either a notch or low-cut filter. The Fishman seems to have some added features like a broader range of eq choices and compression.

I love the warmth of the AI Clarus. If I used the Fishman, would I bypass the Clarus pre-amp or feed directly into it?

Thanks again for your help.

Ted
 
#8
Ted,

I used to use the Focus. The Low Cut on the Clarus can work similarly. Did you try that with the Post EQ DI switch engaged? It might get you closer without buying anything. You can probably set the frequency for the filter very low (maybe as low as it goes). The thing about a low cut on a mixer is that they are usually set to 75 Hz which is still a little high for this unless you get a significant amount of sound in the worship space from your amp.

If you do get the Fishman, I would suggest using the DI into the regular input. That way you can give the sound guy what he wants, and still have local tone control for your amp. The Fishman DI is a bit warmer yet than the Clarus to my ears, so I suspect you will like it if you do need to go that route.

BTW I was using the Mouse today and I love this bass for the stuff we do this time of year.
 
#9
Joe Smithberger said:
Ted,

I used to use the Focus. The Low Cut on the Clarus can work similarly. Did you try that with the Post EQ DI switch engaged? It might get you closer without buying anything. You can probably set the frequency for the filter very low (maybe as low as it goes). The thing about a low cut on a mixer is that they are usually set to 75 Hz which is still a little high for this unless you get a significant amount of sound in the worship space from your amp.

If you do get the Fishman, I would suggest using the DI into the regular input. That way you can give the sound guy what he wants, and still have local tone control for your amp. The Fishman DI is a bit warmer yet than the Clarus to my ears, so I suspect you will like it if you do need to go that route.

BTW I was using the Mouse today and I love this bass for the stuff we do this time of year.
Click to expand...

Thanks again, Joe

I use the Mouse for just about everything I like it so much. This weekend I supported a small acapella (almost) jazz vocal group. I was the sole instrumentalist, and it sound really really good.

The filter on the Clarus seems to work , but I may get the Fishman as an experiment. I don't really need to take my whole rig since it is a silent stage (unless the sound guys are slow to set me up for rehearsal in which case my clarus + speaker provide a back-up plan). The Fishman might be really good since I'm getting tired of luggin all my gear.

Thanks again for the advice,

Ted
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back