I worked a gig last weekend as soundman for my friends' 4-piece classic rock band. Typical bar gig, with an actual stage for a change. Large room, small crowd. I have a good rig...Soundcraft digital mixer and RCF mains & sub. This wasn't my first rodeo.
The band brought up a guest bass player in the second set who proceeded to change the EQ on the bass amp and cranked the master volume. Bad etiquette, IMO. The bass rig was overpowering the sub and my mix. Then the lead guitarist increased his master volume to compensate for the louder bass volume. Then the singers started motioning to me that they needed more vocals in their wedges...which was pushing them into feedback territory. One of the singers wears a headset mic and has a bad habit of clasping her hand around the mic to reposition it or to talk to bandmates between songs. I got a few feedback spikes, which were caught by the mixer's feedback destroyer. No worries, I had it under control.
The kicker was when this old dude came up to me and introduced himself to as the soundman for the guest bass player's other band. He says "just so you know, I always have a lot more bass in the subs." I made an obvious gesture to my iPad and raised the fader for the bass from -30dB to 0dB, which made no audible change to the mix. He nodded and walked away, and I returned the fader to where I had it. Dude walks over and sticks his ear to my sub and gives me a thumbs up. After the set, he came back and informed me that "usually when you get feedback like that, it's because you have your AUX's set to post-fader." I replied, "yeah, and sometime it's just because the stage volume is too loud" – and showed him that my AUX's were indeed set to pre-fader.
I told the old dude that he should talk to the band, as I was just helping them out for this one gig and he could probably get some regular work from them. He laughed off my comment with "oh heck no, I'm way too old for this stuff." I'm not too proud to take constructive criticism from experienced engineers, but I've also learned to keep my opinions out of other people's business.
The band brought up a guest bass player in the second set who proceeded to change the EQ on the bass amp and cranked the master volume. Bad etiquette, IMO. The bass rig was overpowering the sub and my mix. Then the lead guitarist increased his master volume to compensate for the louder bass volume. Then the singers started motioning to me that they needed more vocals in their wedges...which was pushing them into feedback territory. One of the singers wears a headset mic and has a bad habit of clasping her hand around the mic to reposition it or to talk to bandmates between songs. I got a few feedback spikes, which were caught by the mixer's feedback destroyer. No worries, I had it under control.
The kicker was when this old dude came up to me and introduced himself to as the soundman for the guest bass player's other band. He says "just so you know, I always have a lot more bass in the subs." I made an obvious gesture to my iPad and raised the fader for the bass from -30dB to 0dB, which made no audible change to the mix. He nodded and walked away, and I returned the fader to where I had it. Dude walks over and sticks his ear to my sub and gives me a thumbs up. After the set, he came back and informed me that "usually when you get feedback like that, it's because you have your AUX's set to post-fader." I replied, "yeah, and sometime it's just because the stage volume is too loud" – and showed him that my AUX's were indeed set to pre-fader.
I told the old dude that he should talk to the band, as I was just helping them out for this one gig and he could probably get some regular work from them. He laughed off my comment with "oh heck no, I'm way too old for this stuff." I'm not too proud to take constructive criticism from experienced engineers, but I've also learned to keep my opinions out of other people's business.
