I'm a 2nd year bassist at the Adelaide con, i just picked up the double about a year ago. ive only done a few gigs around town and havent really needed to amplify myself, and if i do i usually just plug into the keyboard amp, which removes all 'acousticness' from my sound. But its ok, no one's listening anyway.
Recently i joined a community big band, which i did to improve my reading, there's a shortage of wind instruments at the uni atm... (theres 2 saxes, 0 trumpets, 0 trombones, and 8 basses in my year level!), so getting into one of the 2 big bands is tough. We recently did a gig in a town hall, about 1000 people there, and so i obviously needed amplification. I brought my amp/speaker along, which i use for electric playing which i love (250 watt head, 1 15inch speaker) but unfortunately didn't quite cut it in this setting. It lost all of its acoustic sound, was feeding like crazy (i ended up having to sit about 2 metres away from it, and could barely hear myself) and basically was one of the worst gigs ive ever done.
Now, i was talking to this with my teacher at uni, (Peter Dowdall) and discussing the various forms of amplification. i was lucky enough to see the Brad Mehldau trio earlier in the year, and was very interested to see how Larry Grenadier amp'ed himself, now i didn't quite see (i was sitting far back), but he was running through a PA speaker, which was on a stand behind him, and after tweaking it a bit, by about the 3rd song he had a beautiful, crisp, Larry Grenadier sound. Peter said back in the day, bassists used to get mic's, wrap them up in a towel, or something, and stick them under the tailpiece. So i was just experimenting with that, on my computer, and it blew me away, just the acousticness of the sound. ive never been able to pull such a sweet sound. now this is through garageband and a $20 mic. Which got me thinking, for a setup, maybe use a mic in the tailpiece, into a mixer, into a PA speaker. it seems like a cheap way to get a crisp acoustic sound.
So i've written a lot, but does anyone have a similar set up? What do other bassists do in big band situations? do u have any other suggestions? cheers.
Recently i joined a community big band, which i did to improve my reading, there's a shortage of wind instruments at the uni atm... (theres 2 saxes, 0 trumpets, 0 trombones, and 8 basses in my year level!), so getting into one of the 2 big bands is tough. We recently did a gig in a town hall, about 1000 people there, and so i obviously needed amplification. I brought my amp/speaker along, which i use for electric playing which i love (250 watt head, 1 15inch speaker) but unfortunately didn't quite cut it in this setting. It lost all of its acoustic sound, was feeding like crazy (i ended up having to sit about 2 metres away from it, and could barely hear myself) and basically was one of the worst gigs ive ever done.
Now, i was talking to this with my teacher at uni, (Peter Dowdall) and discussing the various forms of amplification. i was lucky enough to see the Brad Mehldau trio earlier in the year, and was very interested to see how Larry Grenadier amp'ed himself, now i didn't quite see (i was sitting far back), but he was running through a PA speaker, which was on a stand behind him, and after tweaking it a bit, by about the 3rd song he had a beautiful, crisp, Larry Grenadier sound. Peter said back in the day, bassists used to get mic's, wrap them up in a towel, or something, and stick them under the tailpiece. So i was just experimenting with that, on my computer, and it blew me away, just the acousticness of the sound. ive never been able to pull such a sweet sound. now this is through garageband and a $20 mic. Which got me thinking, for a setup, maybe use a mic in the tailpiece, into a mixer, into a PA speaker. it seems like a cheap way to get a crisp acoustic sound.
So i've written a lot, but does anyone have a similar set up? What do other bassists do in big band situations? do u have any other suggestions? cheers.
