It's clipped on the side. I moved it around a bit to experiment but in the live setting it didn't sound much different no matter where I placed it.
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Double Bass Heads Up: QSC K-10 $589.00 shipped
- Thread starter Jason Sypher
- Start date
I did the gig last night and it was an all-round happy experience. As I mentioned, the room acoustic was not too good but the rig handled it without a problem. It was good to have the speaker on a pole - it took any risk of feedback down to zero, at the vols I was using anyway, and being less than 3ft from my head I could hear the sound clearly. The only difference I noticed from a pickup/backline rig was that the sound was simply more natural. There ws just the right amount of 'thump'; something you don't always get from the legato feel of the Underwood. I had the pickup gain at 9oclock and the mic gain at 3oclock and I have to say that the pickup enhanced the sound -on last nights impression I wouldn't want to be without it.
Very happy!
I think we're used to hearing the unnatural amount of low end that the pickup provides but, arguably, that may help cut through a dense band mix or a noisy room.
Again, using a mic as opposed to a pickup is very different. It feels different. The handful of times I've done it I kept questioning whether or not I was being heard, but, without I doubt I was. And then some.
At this point I'm convinced the mic alone will be just fine for any situation I play in short of FOH support, but my action is high, my top two strings are gut (wrapped in metal) and I pull pretty hard.
Again, using a mic as opposed to a pickup is very different. It feels different. The handful of times I've done it I kept questioning whether or not I was being heard, but, without I doubt I was. And then some.
At this point I'm convinced the mic alone will be just fine for any situation I play in short of FOH support, but my action is high, my top two strings are gut (wrapped in metal) and I pull pretty hard.
Perhaps we just need the pickup to get us through the transition period and used to the mic. Time will tell
I'm really convinced that will be the case.
There are a lot of variables here too. It's not just mic vs. p/u.
Every player is different.
Every bass is different.
Every band is different.
Every mic is different.
Every preamp is different.
and so on.
but still, I'm convinced that the time of the mic has arrived.
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I saw him at the Vanguard about a month ago and he was using the same set up with a fairly loud band ... Eric Harland on drums ... his sound was fantastic coming through the house with what to my ears sounded like a roll off starting around 50 Hz.
In other news, my K10 arrives today. I'm going to give a whirl in the living room tonight ...
my set up is a Beyer M88 --> Millennia TD1 --> QSC k10
What adbass said. So many variables!
I had two weird experiences last week: In the first, I played in a 5-piece jazz group backing up Debby Boone at this brand new concert hall in Indianapolis. This place (The Palladium) was designed to be the finest hall in the world, and it does sound pretty great. Anyway, they took a line from my Realist through a Radial J48, and I don't know what kind of preamps they had back there or what kind of speakers they had for the FOH but it was the most ridiculously beautiful bass sound I've ever had. I hooked up the DPA 4099, but it was just not as usable for some reason, so they told me to forget about it! So I did the whole show with no amp onstage, just the Realist coming through the house and in the other guy's monitors. It sounded gorgeous...
In the second, I played in a little church in rural Kentucky, and I had one of those bizarre experiences in which the bass sounds less present, quieter, and worse when you turn the amp up. (MB112) So I'd look for some more sound, turn up the volume, it would get gross, I'd turn it right back off and the sound would fill the room.
Lotta variables.
I had two weird experiences last week: In the first, I played in a 5-piece jazz group backing up Debby Boone at this brand new concert hall in Indianapolis. This place (The Palladium) was designed to be the finest hall in the world, and it does sound pretty great. Anyway, they took a line from my Realist through a Radial J48, and I don't know what kind of preamps they had back there or what kind of speakers they had for the FOH but it was the most ridiculously beautiful bass sound I've ever had. I hooked up the DPA 4099, but it was just not as usable for some reason, so they told me to forget about it! So I did the whole show with no amp onstage, just the Realist coming through the house and in the other guy's monitors. It sounded gorgeous...
In the second, I played in a little church in rural Kentucky, and I had one of those bizarre experiences in which the bass sounds less present, quieter, and worse when you turn the amp up. (MB112) So I'd look for some more sound, turn up the volume, it would get gross, I'd turn it right back off and the sound would fill the room.
Lotta variables.
Well, what you're describing Jeremy is variability between rooms.
In regards to your first experience: Any decent sound guy with a good PA can make a pickup sound great. They've got a powerful full-range system and tons of compression, EQ, etc capabilities at the board. However, unless you're someone like Esperanza Spaulding you can't really take that kind of support with you into every room.
I imagine the church you were playing in was just a boomy room? Sometimes those can be great, in so much as you can stand in a corner, leave the amp in the car and let the room carry (or "amplify") your sound as it's inherent in the design of the room.
What I'm hoping is that with a mic and a hi-fi portable PA system, you can have a little taste of the FOH PA with you being your own sound guy. Also in that case, the source of your amplified sound (the mic) is something the actual FOH guys (if they're present) can tap into via a DI off of whatever preamp your using.
Everything in my experience (and my gut) is telling me that the portable mini PA thing is going to work in any room. As I go through and play a bunch of gigs the next few weeks I'll have a true answer and if I'm wrong I'll happily admit it, but IME I think it's going to work quite well for me.
The most anticipated shortcoming of this system is going to be the ability to cut through a dense mix. I think the extended bit of low end that a pickup provides can be beneficial in this regard, but if you have a mic'd system that gets loud enough before feedback, which the raised speaker-on-a-pole plus a little EQ seems to facilitate, it should be a winner.
First impressions after dabbling with the K10 for about 30 minutes:
Lots of low end. Perhaps too much which will need to be tamed via EQ.
Tons of volume. I need to take it on a gig before I can see how usable all this gain is.
The box vibrates quite a bit which isn't a great thing. It vibrates the speaker stand a little, so I might need to figure out a way to deaden it by putting some gaffers tape or cloth around the top of the speaker pole. It's a very slight vibration that's inaudible more than a foot from the speaker.
I still think this is going to work well for gigging, but I'm a little less enthusiastic after last nights quick sound check. It's going to take a little tweaking.
I need to take it out on an actual gig before I can be totally sure. That'll be next Thursday.
Lots of low end. Perhaps too much which will need to be tamed via EQ.
Tons of volume. I need to take it on a gig before I can see how usable all this gain is.
The box vibrates quite a bit which isn't a great thing. It vibrates the speaker stand a little, so I might need to figure out a way to deaden it by putting some gaffers tape or cloth around the top of the speaker pole. It's a very slight vibration that's inaudible more than a foot from the speaker.
I still think this is going to work well for gigging, but I'm a little less enthusiastic after last nights quick sound check. It's going to take a little tweaking.
I need to take it out on an actual gig before I can be totally sure. That'll be next Thursday.
Interesting. I'm just using the flat setting.
I think the difference in what we're doing is that I'm using a microphone that goes down to 30Hz and a preamp that goes just as low. The k10 seems to be trying to reproduce those super lows, so when they aren't dialed out the speaker gets a bit overwhelmed.
I think I'm going to go to Guitar Center tonight and A/B with a brand new one.
When you have the speaker pole mounted with the volume cranked, can you try putting a hand on the side of the cab and playing some open strings with the other? When I do that I can really feel the vibration.
Yep. Definitely a slight buzz when I play G, D or Db.
Called the local service center. Prolly needs some new caps and/or resistors in the crossover.
PITA
but otherwise it sounds darn good.
EDIT: moved the rig into another room, and I think the sympathetic vibrations were coming from somewhere in the room. That should've clued me into how loud this box can get. That and the fact that my ears were ringing all night after my little sound test. This is the catch: it doesn't seem that loud but I think it really is. I really gotta take this out on a gig with a healthy drummer before I know for sure how successful this set up is.
Played another gig with the QSC K-10, this time on the pole. It was incredible to have a speaker that close to my head....I think I was about a foot away. I could hear everything I played perfectly and yet the band could also hear me. Both players mentioned how great it sounded. I could see that people were tapping their feet across the room so I knew it was carrying. I think I had it up to about 4 out of 10. It would have been a disaster if I had tried that gig acoustic, which I used to do for the last 10 years. I was really glad to have the K-10. I havent played an amp in ages so I have nothing to compare it with but this works great for me with a mic.
Funny, we use 2 of these QSC-10's as part of our PA. I used one on a pole for a piano/bass duo gig. Had an AMT mic going in one input and my Full Circle going in the other and blended the two favoring the mic. The sound was pretty cool. I could hear everything and it truly sounded acoustic. I had a great time. The next day I tried the same thing and had to ditch the mic due to proximity to the drum kit. Boy was our drummer's bass drum loud going through my mic and the acoustic body of my bass. ha ha. Anyway, the Full Circle alone also sounded very very good; clean, clear, articulate and woody. Man, with a Flightcase 300 and the ability to use one of these QSC's as alternative amplification, I have some quality problems deciding which kind of rig I'll use. I've got to say that the QSC-10 is pretty appealing.
Jason, do you usually get lots of crowd noise with the AMT or are you usually far enough away from other sound sources? It seems that when I use the AMT on a stage and I'm some distance away from the drums it works well but when I'm in close proximity to other sound sources it picks up lots of other unwanted sounds. Is there some way to prevent this or at least diminish all the extra noise & chatter?
I never play parties where I am background music and I've never had a speaker right up next to my head so it's hard to say if this has happened before. We were in a tight little corner and I was flanked by the other guys amps, one keyboard, one guitar and I wasn't hearing too much of that in my speaker. I was surprised that the mic was picking all that up because the crowd was about 15 feet away.
Done with my first slew of gigs with the M88--> Millennia TD1 --> QSC K10
First thing was to address some sympathetic vibrations coming from the cab. I took a screw driver to the pole mount, handles and side rails of the QSC tightening everything up.
Problem solved.
I found the rig to be capable of very loud volumes before feedback. I think having the speaker up on the pole was key here, minimizing mic/speaker interaction. When it did start to feed back I just raised the speaker up a few inches and the feedback was gone.
Overall I was thrilled with how everything went, but it was clear that this particular combination doesn't shine in situations with very little set up space or in "boomy" rooms. This goes back to what Jeremy was saying earlier in the thread and he was right. Although it certainly worked in the boomy room (and the regulars at the gig said it was the best they've ever heard me sound in that venue) it wasn't as pleasing as it was outdoors and in rooms with better acoustics. Over the course of the weekend it was clear that a more cutting or punchy sound (like from the pickup) would've helped in the definition department.
Another solution would've been a different microphone. Having owned a DPA4099, I think that it would've sounded better than the M88 in the boomy room. When I owned both mics, the DPA came across as "tighter" and more clinical than the M88.
Hey, sometimes you can only get so far in dealing with ****** room acoustics.
As Treyzer noted above, I could've easily blended my pickup with the mic by running it directly into the second channel of the powered speaker, but I didn't try that so I can't comment on how that might've sounded.
Still, I was very happy with the sound I was getting. I'm what most people would call a purist, so the mic solution was appealing to me from the get go. For all the gigs I did outside from the room with bad acoustics, it was all that I expected it to be, which was nothing short of amazing. All the nuances and dynamics were there. It was a breath of fresh air.
First thing was to address some sympathetic vibrations coming from the cab. I took a screw driver to the pole mount, handles and side rails of the QSC tightening everything up.
Problem solved.
I found the rig to be capable of very loud volumes before feedback. I think having the speaker up on the pole was key here, minimizing mic/speaker interaction. When it did start to feed back I just raised the speaker up a few inches and the feedback was gone.
Overall I was thrilled with how everything went, but it was clear that this particular combination doesn't shine in situations with very little set up space or in "boomy" rooms. This goes back to what Jeremy was saying earlier in the thread and he was right. Although it certainly worked in the boomy room (and the regulars at the gig said it was the best they've ever heard me sound in that venue) it wasn't as pleasing as it was outdoors and in rooms with better acoustics. Over the course of the weekend it was clear that a more cutting or punchy sound (like from the pickup) would've helped in the definition department.
Another solution would've been a different microphone. Having owned a DPA4099, I think that it would've sounded better than the M88 in the boomy room. When I owned both mics, the DPA came across as "tighter" and more clinical than the M88.
Hey, sometimes you can only get so far in dealing with ****** room acoustics.
As Treyzer noted above, I could've easily blended my pickup with the mic by running it directly into the second channel of the powered speaker, but I didn't try that so I can't comment on how that might've sounded.
Still, I was very happy with the sound I was getting. I'm what most people would call a purist, so the mic solution was appealing to me from the get go. For all the gigs I did outside from the room with bad acoustics, it was all that I expected it to be, which was nothing short of amazing. All the nuances and dynamics were there. It was a breath of fresh air.
