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Double Bass Feedback Issues

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Jan 21, 2002
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1,855
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Honolulu, Hawaii
#1
Last Saturday my band played at a great venue with a pro stage and pro sound man (supposedly). I play primarily BG, but was planning on playing DB on two songs each set. We got there early, before the sound man, and set up. I was able to play my bass through my amp (Bass Max pickup, GK MB200) without feedback, and at a louder volume than would be necessary with PA support.

After the sound guy took the DI from my amp through the PA I got nothing but tremendous feedback that the sound guy couldn't stop. Turned the stage monitors completely off, my amp completely off, bass only through the FOH, and it still fed back like crazy. Any ideas? Just a bad sound guy? I can't see any reason that it should have fedback under those conditions at a fairly low volume, with just bass playing and no sound on stage. I was unable to use the DB that night.

We're playing there later this month and I can take my EUB and not have to worry, but I would really like to play the acoustic DB. With all the Hawaiian bands that play around here with DB I can't believe an experienced sound man can't eliminate the feedback. There must have been DB on that stage before.
 
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#2
You know, I think a lot of the time it's a complicated mix of factors that put us in that weird "well I wasn't getting feedback before..." place. Subs, and the way the stage is designed, do it to me most often. Sometimes it's exacerbated by ignorance/inexperience/stubbornness on the part of the sound guy... sometimes they just don't have the tools to work with. Or they do, but they're under restrictions from the house (i.e. - not allowed to mess around with the 31 band eq's across the FOH, etc.) Maybe the signal you're sending them is just so gosh darned different than what they're used to hearing from other bass instruments that they *do* know how to deal with, and they freak out, and then realize on the drive home what they *should* have done. :D

Actually, now that I think of it - any chance the Bassmax got bumped in between soundcheck and show time? That used to happen to mine a lot... Also, I'm assuming the GK was dialed in for your electric tone? Maybe you were boosting a lot of low end that the DB didn't need?

Otherwise, you don't seem to go have an issue with your rig as-is, but some extra tools for the fight can be a good idea. Aside from having your bass in good acoustic shape and proper pickup fit, the consensus seems to be that the top tools for feedback fighting are polarity (phase) reversal, a notch filter and/or parametric eq, a HPF, and the proper input impedance to load the pickup to where it sounds the best. I like to come over-prepared. I try to work with the FOH person, and then if they aren't cutting it I do what I have to do. Sometimes it turns into a bit of a discussion when they're just trying to DI me and I'm trying to stick my Radial pre in the chain...if their DI is a Countryman or something similar I usually let them win on that...

So, none of this means you have to spend huge bucks - it's really easy to build a phase-swap foot long XLR patch cable, keep it in your bag/case for when it's needed. At one point I had a Presonus PEQ-3 that I paid 60 bucks for, set up as a notch/EQ, that worked pretty well (even though they were not good sounding eq's, IMO). There was another thread around here about how the older Zoom A3 (the "acoustic" multi-effect) had some usable notch-filters... I haven't used one, but Fdeck's little HPF/Pre thing is cheeeap, and will get you 10Mohm of impedance along with a very adjustable HPF to help get those subs out of the equation, or balance what the electric bass needs, vs. the DB.
 
#3
Thanks for your response. I checked the BassMax and it was inserted correctly. I have the GK set as flat as possible (which necessitates bumping the mids and cutting the lows and highs a little since it has a fairly scooped sound when set "flat"), and use a Zoom MS-60B with a patch for BG and a patch for DB. The MS-60B has a high input impedance that works well with piezos. The DB patch has a preamp with HPF, which I use to control the lows so I don't think that is the issue. I think the sound man (who always seems disinterested) is the main problem. For our next gig there we have requested the more experienced (and engaged) sound man, so hopefully I can work with him on this issue. I just don't understand how, with the bass amp volume on 0 and no bass in the monitors I get feedback from the FOH only. That may be just my ignorance, I don't know.
 
#4
Cool - I've got a B3 that for a time I was bringing out to gigs, really just to see what it could do, and had pretty good results with FWIW.
I guess sometimes you're also dealing with a PA system that's dialed in for Club Hitz (not sure what kind of venue you were playing) or close to it - how the crossovers are set, the amount of power going to the subs....sometimes the FOH system has a multi-band compressor squashing the %&*$ out of the 2-bus. Or the previous guy mixing left something weird going through the reverb unit that the guy mixing you did not notice (that one's bit me before :) ) At the end of the day, there are a million little things that may or may not be the reason, but it's still a bigger/louder system than your amp, so it never surprises me when it does go down like that :/

Hope your next show there goes better!
 
#6
Most of the issues I have had have been at larger venues with big sound systems that often have dance music. I think some engineers think that a good bass sound is very bottom heavy which doesn't work for DB. I usually say something like 'this bass is really boomy so if you have any trouble then turn down the low frequencies and please don't but too much of me in the monitors'. I've also had problems with mic'd up kick drums being very loud on stage and sending the DB into a feedback spiral.

There was a thread about this subject a while ago and the general opinion was that in an ideal world, bring your own engineer. Failing that give the sound person a few basic tips on handling the DB. Sometimes the engineer isn't great though and your just f*%cked.
 

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