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No FOH instruments...HELP!

G

Greyvagabond

Aug 17, 2007
1,317
452
#1
So, my band is playing the Boston Music Festival tomorrow night at the Wonderbar. It used to be a big live music venue, but recently is been more DJs than anything. The whole festival is extremely poorly organized, and we JUST found out that, "You can only plug in vocal mics to the PA, no instruments. If you have a keyboard or guitar amplified, please bring an amp." Now, of course we were going to bring amps, but I have two; a 100 watt all tube ampeg, and an SWR redface 350. I almost always use the ampeg, because it sounds great, and I go direct anyways. But...I think it will get pretty distorted if I have to fill a whole room with just an SVT 4x10 HLF. This is propable the first show in 5 years I've played without FOH reinforcement, so, do you think I should take the Ampeg and risk sounding totally fuzzed out at high volumes, or use the SWR with a SansAmp to warm it up a bit?
Thanks guys!! :help:
 
#5
There are five other bands on that bill with you. Are you all bringing and setting up bass rigs? You might want to contact the band playing before or after you and see if they are interested in sharing gear. If neither of you have enough rig for the gig you could rent one and split the cost.

I use a 410HLF at Jamspot in Somerville every week with one of those SVT350H heads and I'm not a fan of it. It easily gets smoked by my tiny GK1001/Schroeder 1212 rig. I don't know about your head, but I wouldn't expect that rig to do much at Wonderbar. It will keep up with a drum kit, but that's about it. I think you'll need more if you expect to really fill that place with sound. Sucks that they aren't providing FOH support. I've never had that issue before in Boston.
 
#6
if it's a big room i would probably just tell them no thanks. big room with no drums in the pa just plain sucks. even if you get the bass sounding right, the lack of kickdrum is a huge issue. for any kind of aggressive or beat oriented music without a solid kick it just has no energy. i only say this cause it sounds like a free gig (any time i hear festival and no foh) if it's a decent payday, do it, and just get your usual stage mix. bring up the vocals to match that and play it. if it's not loud enough that's the venue's problem. get paid, lesson learned.

if it's a freebe call them back and tell them they need to provide adequate sound or find someone else. this would be more effective if you know some of the other bands and you all do it together.
 
#9
Yeah, its a really really poorly run event. The other bands playing are more singer-songwritter inspired, so I don't know if they will even have amps; even if they did, I HATE using other people's amps, so I'd rather be quiet than fiddling with knobs :) I think I'll just take the SWR and say, screw it, we are going to sound bad anyways...and, no, it doesn't pay. We originally chose it because of publicity exposure, but they've kinda fallen back on that too. We aren't a loud band, and pride ourselves on being reasonably well mixed and sounding, but its not really a small room. Oh well, I'll get back to you guys either with a complete horror story, or a novel solution! Thanks for all your help.
 
#10
CrackBass said:
if it's a big room i would probably just tell them no thanks. big room with no drums in the pa just plain sucks. even if you get the bass sounding right, the lack of kickdrum is a huge issue. for any kind of aggressive or beat oriented music without a solid kick it just has no energy. i only say this cause it sounds like a free gig (any time i hear festival and no foh) if it's a decent payday, do it, and just get your usual stage mix. bring up the vocals to match that and play it. if it's not loud enough that's the venue's problem. get paid, lesson learned.

if it's a freebe call them back and tell them they need to provide adequate sound or find someone else. this would be more effective if you know some of the other bands and you all do it together.
Click to expand...

+1

If it's a low pay/no pay type of gig, I would pull the plug.

I would rather pass up the "exposure", than play and sound like ass
 
#12
You should be fine with the Ampeg, Wonderbar isn't that big. I haven't been in a while but I remember it being about on par with the Greatest Bar, the Rack, and Copperfields all of which I've played without FOH support. The biggest issue with those type of shows is usually the drummer.

Good luck with the music fest, we decided to steer clear of that one...
 
#16
FWIW, I was just looking over the event's website: Invalid Link Removed. They've got Bakithi Kumalo on the band list, but I don't see him on the schedule anywhere. I wonder if he's doing a free gig with no PA too? I'd go see it.

OP, do you know if this is legit?
 
#19
So do you just have one cab? If you have access to another one, there should be enough ins and outs on the amps for you to use both -- have one just play power amp to the signal, then drive two sets of cabs...if you don't have a second cab, that idea wouldn't help much :-)...but then the workload grows, and you're back to what everyone has asked -- is the show worth doing at that point.

Best of luck!!

ltt
 

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