My Ashdown Ant fly rig in the works

[Jaguar_07_MIJ]

An Ashdown Ant, MXR M87, MXR Vintage Bass Octave and Shure GLXD wireless arrived from Sweetwater today. A Pedaltrain Classic Jr should be here tomorrow. I'll be putting this all together over the next week or two and I'll post pics of the completed board. I'm excited to try the Ant in a live setting, which should be October 9th - barring any further Covid restrictions here in CA.

I have custom Ultimate Ears 11 Pros on route, so with the use of in-ears, the 200 watt Ant should be fine to moderately drive a cab and move some air on stage ( Avatar SB112 for now ). . . and the whole band uses ears. I'll be driving the front-end with my Ampeg SCR-DI. I laid this out for fly dates domestically and month-long European dates, but it may just end up being my daily driver. Stay tuned.

 

[two fingers]

Noyce! Keep us posted.

 

[Jacobfred]

That’s a great set! I ran the Ant with an HX Stomp for a few months before deciding that it didn’t work for the upcoming events I had and so it’s on the chopping block, but it really is such an impressive piece of gear. With a good set of in-ears it really makes sense as an economic fly rig.

 

[Jaguar_07_MIJ]

That’s a great set! I ran the Ant with an HX Stomp for a few months before deciding that it didn’t work for the upcoming events I had and so it’s on the chopping block, but it really is such an impressive piece of gear. With a good set of in-ears it really makes sense as an economic fly rig.

Did the Ant just not have enough juice for your needs? What was the shortcomings of the setup? Thanks!

 

[Jaguar_07_MIJ]

Here's the finished setup - well, nearly! I have a couple of the flat EBS cables coming - so the loose patch cable on the underside is temporary. I had a rehearsal with it today, and it worked really well. I need to tweak the MXR compressor a bit. It was clamping too hard on the slapping. I can't wait to get it out on a stage soon!

 

[javi_bassist]

Really cool! I was just considering a similar setup with the Ant. You are getting your sound out of the Ampeg and the Ant is just for the amp, right? Having IEM, isn't the Ant kinda irrelevant? Or do you mic your cab? Just curious

 

[Mingo Sanders]

You had me at "month-long European dates." Nice.

 

[Jacobfred]

Did the Ant just not have enough juice for your needs? What was the shortcomings of the setup? Thanks!

Yep, but only in one very specific instance: outdoor shows with no p.a to reinforce the bass. Which unfortunately I had a few gigs like that last month and no other amplifier I could rely on. Since I can’t really justify owning multiple amps right now I sold the HX, have been trying to sell the Ant, and bought a D800 instead. But I really did love the Ant for literally every other use.

 

[Jaguar_07_MIJ]

You had me at "month-long European dates." Nice.

Sadly we had three weeks in Europe for November and December canceled per Covid, Mingo . . . and also 6 weeks back in the Spring. I'll be glad when this all settles and we can get back to enjoying playing live. We just got word on a late December cruise canceled as well

 

[Jaguar_07_MIJ]

Really cool! I was just considering a similar setup with the Ant. You are getting your sound out of the Ampeg and the Ant is just for the amp, right? Having IEM, isn't the Ant kinda irrelevant? Or do you mic your cab? Just curious

I like having a cab to move a little air and it does add some lows that might be missing in the ears. . . and also for gigs where there's no ears ( I play in a few bands that don't use them ). The Ant powers an Avatar SB112 - and it really does a nice job with it!