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Conversations with soundmen

JimmyM

JimmyM

Apr 11, 2005
127,257
125,180
Plymouth NC
Disclosures
Endorsing: Yamaha, Ampeg, Line 6, EMG
#1
I'm at my soundcheck, and I see they actually had a CL/810 rig like I asked for :bassist: and the DI they gave me was a Countryman. So I leave my Countryman in my bag and I hook theirs up to the speaker. Then I start to get my sound, and a couple minutes later, the monitor guy comes up to me...

Monitor guy: What's up with this?

Jim: I have the DI wired to the speaker since it's an SVT.

M: OK, well we're going to pull that and run your bass straight in.

J: No, that's how I like it. This way it makes the PA sound like it's being powered by an SVT.

M: Well look, I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job, but all the bassists who play here just plug straight into the DI.

J: Well I'm not like other bassists. I have certain tonal goals I'm going for and that's why I do it when I get an SVT. Even brought my own just in case you didn't have a Countryman. That's how I get my sound.

M: It doesn't make a lick of difference whether it's in the speaker or plugged straight in.

J: What? Of course it does. You get the tubes and the output transformer sending the signal to the DI instead of just a dinky little clean bass sound.

M: Well the FOH guy's not going to like it.

J: That's OK, I like it and that's what I want.

I must admit I felt like a real smarmy a-hole when I said that, but hey, that's how I roll. Kind of felt good in a way. A couple minutes later, the FOH guy comes up to the stage...

FOH: Hey man, we're getting some sort of rattle on you, and the monitor guy says you have some weird setup.

J: Weird setup? I'm just running a speaker DI...I don't think that's so weird.

FOH: Well, play a few notes down low...

Weird setup? This stage is pro all the way, and they have a lot of major acts in there. I can't be the first guy to ever run a speaker DI there. Anyway, we trace the rattle to a sympathetic vibration up in the truss. Phew! Dodged another bullet!

I was so bummed after that. Here I am, the bassist with the headlining band, and these guys are gonna bust balls about a speaker DI on an SVT? They should have been grateful! It's not like I brought in an Acoustic 20w practice amp and asked for a 58. Once they heard it, they quit complaining, and actually seemed to like it so they became a lot nicer to me. I thought for sure they would start complaining about the overdrive I forgot to tell them I had, but I think I wore them out with the first round and they decided to pick their battles.

Once we got beyond all that, these guys turned out to be super professional, extremely helpful to us, and the sound and lighting was perfect. I thought it was one of the better gigs we had lately, and a lot of that had to do with the crew. But I sure do hate it when you have to put up with that kind of BS before a gig. It does nothing for anybody. All it does is bum the musicians out and make them feel like you're against them.

I'm lucky...I'm performing with the headliner and I can pull rank. But sometimes bands don't have that kind of clout. Still, why should you want to bum them out when they want to do something a little different than the norm? It's going to work out fine anyway if you're a good soundman, yet so many soundmen want to bust balls and make the bass players feel like they don't know anything, just because they want to be a little different. What good is that? Just bums us out, makes us play worse and do things to get around them like turn up too loud.

Hey, if there's a problem, tell us. We want to know these things. But before you know if there's a problem, maybe you shouldn't assume there's going to be one just because it's not something you would do. Yeah, I know, this theme gets beaten to death on here, but today's events were particularly heinous. The only reason it worked out was because the crew were geniunely nice and professional guys in the end, but they were kind of young and faced with something unfamiliar to them and one guy panicked. But when you're a young soundman faced with something unfamiliar to you:

1. Don't be so afraid to try new things out...you may learn something.

2. Don't try to dictate to the bands of well-known acts.
 
#2
hell yea, jimmy. show them who the people came to see!

around here, that will get me thrown out, but im glad it worked for you :D

i feel like this every time i ask them to hi-pass the monitors. they just flip out like no one has ever asked before. i dont want 80hz destruction in these cheapo monitors.. how complicated is that? i know the low end is silly out there, but we'd like to keep it nice and clear up here so WE dont go deaf.
 
#4
BigMac5 said:
Jimmy how does the speaker DI compare to micking the cab with the Heil PR30?
Click to expand...
A little thinner in the mids, a tad more controlled, more high end but way less irritating than through a solid state head and a tweeter. I like them both but each seems to have something I like that the other lacks.
 
#5
I occaissionally work with one of the few good backline companies (as an employee or artist) there are, so I usually know the sound guys when I play a larger gig, Most are pretty good at their job. Since I've worked all sides of show I usually know why they do what they do. It's also helped me troubleshoot when there is a problem. I was backlineing and all this wierd crap was hapenning with the guitar through the mains. The FOH told me to grab an amp. I assured him it was not the amp, the guitarist was playing and smiling. It was a buggered SM57. Most problems with gigs are 1. The musicians are on edge, normal, you need the edge to play well. 2. The good sound companies are on edge, trying to get a job done on time. A good soundman has an ego too. 3. The promoter is on everyones butt.

Gigs in general are a pressure cooker for everyone involved. Most sound guys will ask me how I want to run.

I'd say all in all you sound like a relatively easy guy to work with. There are an awful lot of musicians out there who are clueless about live sound and how things really work.
 
#6
Good job Jimmy and ALL of your points are valid.
The main thing is to un-panic them and make them realize your DI coming their way isn't going to fry their gear or turn the audience into zombies.

The "large stage with FOH" setup I use is Line 6->SansAmp RBI->dbx 166xL.
I feed the FOH guy with one XLR out of the dbx and tell them "it's already got a compressor on it so you don't have to worry about that". That usually sets them at ease and when soundchecking, give them the most-used patch and warn them if using any "hot" or "unique" patches that show and where they come up(a heads-up for them on a level/tone change) and what they sound like.

They DO go looking for a straight DI which the Line 6 has and sounds like(as you put it) "a dinky little clean bass sound"....which is what they are used to.
 
#7
Johnny Crab said:
Good job Jimmy and ALL of your points are valid.
The main thing is to un-panic them and make them realize your DI coming their way isn't going to fry their gear or turn the audience into zombies.
Click to expand...
;) Yeah, un-panic them...that's a good way to put it. Too many of them panic over nothing. "Hey, don't do that...I might have to move a fader during your set!"
 
#9
Cool,

I've never heard of a DI coming off a speaker output, I gotta get one of these.

According to the countryman website "The TYPE 85 is so well protected it can handle the full output of any amp without damage. In “SPEAKER” mode the TYPE 85 will distort at the equivalent of 1,700 watts into 8 ohms."

Seems that all you need to do is switch it to speaker and then put it in between the amp and cab

Power tube saturation going to the FOH...I love it
 
#10
Ya, you need a DI that does speaker level, switch it to "speaker," and plug it inline between the amp and cab with speaker cables.

And though I do like saturated power tubes, I always run clean. I couldn't turn up an SVT loud enough to make it saturate. I can't even turn up a B-15 loud enough to make it saturate on most of my gigs ;)
 
#11
JimmyM said:
M: It doesn't make a lick of difference whether it's in the speaker or plugged straight in.

J: What? Of course it does. You get the tubes and the output transformer sending the signal to the DI instead of just a dinky little clean bass sound.
Click to expand...

Exactly, and that's why I run out of my amp's balanced out (pre EQ) to the board whenever possible vs. the direct box. My head has onboard compression and a tube pre-amp... why would I would want to give up all that by plugging into a passive direct box? Makes no sense.
 
#12
jaywa said:
Exactly, and that's why I run out of my amp's balanced out (pre EQ) to the board whenever possible vs. the direct box. My head has onboard compression and a tube pre-amp... why would I would want to give up all that by plugging into a passive direct box? Makes no sense.
Click to expand...
I'll give it up if the DI sounds better than the onboard DI. But a soundman would either have to have a really good DI or prove it to me first. I'd take a REDDI or a U5 any day over a head's DI, tube pre or not. Radial or Countryman...that's more of a toss-up. If he comes at me with a Whirlwind Imp 2, though, he better not even try to convince me that it's better ;)
 
#13
Sounds to me like you had a good outcome, and had an educational moment for the sound crew. I having had DI's on speaker out's would not have had the concerns these guys had, but if you have never encouneterd it before, I can understand their concern. Sounds like it was a win win senerio. You got what you needed, without getting too upset, and the sound guys complied with your request, and perhaps learned a new way.
:-)
Whenever I see something I have never seen before, I always want to "question" it, or learn about it. It's my job. All in all, after everything was said and done, I'm smarter for the experience. You also tend to remember people who bring these learning opportuniites to your life, so I bet next time you see those guys, it will be a nice experience. "Ah, your the guy with the speaker DI", "How you been, lets get you hooked up" etc..
 
#14
Greg, you sould like a soundman who gets it. If you never saw it before, you ask questions, and if the player's not a jerk, he'll usually be happy to tell you all about it. The one thing you don't do is go to a musician who's headlining a bill with a well-known act and tell him that you're going to do something else because you never saw it done before. That's a huge breach of professional courtesy.
 
#16
Dude, I play some pretty big gigs on some pretty big stages, and you would be surprised at how many of them give me an Imp 2. $500,000 worth of PA and a $45 DI. Nice. The shows went fine and the bass sounded fine, but still...put a little effort into shopping for DI's!
 
#17
Monitor guy: What's up with this?

Jim: I have the DI wired to the speaker since it's an SVT.

M: OK, well we're going to pull that and run your bass straight in.

J: No, that's how I like it. This way it makes the PA sound like it's being powered by an SVT.

M: Well look, I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job, but all the bassists who play here just plug straight into the DI.

J: Well I'm not like other bassists. I have certain tonal goals I'm going for and that's why I do it when I get an SVT. Even brought my own just in case you didn't have a Countryman. That's how I get my sound.

M: It doesn't make a lick of difference whether it's in the speaker or plugged straight in.

J: What? Of course it does. You get the tubes and the output transformer sending the signal to the DI instead of just a dinky little clean bass sound.

M: Well the FOH guy's not going to like it


And my guitarist wonders why I think SM's have their head up their butt.
 
#19
Jimmy, I'm a bit surprised that given your gig, you guys aren't carrying your own FOH and monitor guys.

It's a sad statement that even at the pro level there are sound people who are not open to anything a bit outside their particular box. Have faith, there are some of us who do care about bass tone and are open to trying different things to make the gig work.

That being said, I've seen just as much of the same attitude from musicians who want it done their way or the highway whether it works or not. I also see a lot of musicians thinking solely about themselves and not the band as a whole. Good sound people (and good musicians for that matter) are concerned about the sound of the whole band and that sometimes makes them not as focused on individual needs as some musicians think they should be. Not that I'm advocating not paying attention to individual needs in the least, but some musicians really seem to think that everything revolves around them and to hell with everyone else.
 
#20
JimmyM said:
Greg, you sould like a soundman who gets it. If you never saw it before, you ask questions, and if the player's not a jerk, he'll usually be happy to tell you all about it. The one thing you don't do is go to a musician who's headlining a bill with a well-known act and tell him that you're going to do something else because you never saw it done before. That's a huge breach of professional courtesy.
Click to expand...

Thanks Jimmy, (I think :lol:) yeah, I actully have an affinity towards bassist, as I am one myself. I always appreciate a new learning experience when it comes to either craft, sound, or bass. Keeps me from running away, and yelling at everybody all the time, (like some in this industry do).
:bassist:
 

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