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Sending "your" sound into the PA

#61
kikstand454 said:
Shrug.

That's a cop out. What do you do when the guitarist sounds like poo??? Do you make the guitarist play through a DI/pod??
Do you make the drummer use certain symbals that you like? Sticks? Drumheads? Do you make them replace their kit for your personally pre-leveled electric kit??

I'm guessing not.

Then, like I said..... Why in the hell do any of us worry about our tone?? Tone is apparently completely irrelevant outside a small bar gig. What do you run??? Do you have a nice amp? *** for? It's irrelevant. The only good signal is dry DI.
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Hey, If you read my earlier post I say I tend to understand that I do not have a tone but go for the cleaner most modern one and let the tech guy do his thing. And of course the only good signal is a dry DI.

Don't take it with me, I'm the typical bass player that goes only with the bass and a cable at the gig and plug on whatever the sound guy say. I even giged without amp on big stages and relied only on floor monitors and the stage subs, my tone was glorious and with cristal clear definition, and was playing a crappy yamaha rbx375.

And it is possible to sound good in small rooms if the band is willing to trust the tech guy ears and experience if he has. And a good sound man can make a crappy sounding band to sound half decent.

The key here is a good trained audio engineer.
 
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#62
Emanuel Apascaritei said:
Hey, If you read my earlier post I say I tend to understand that I do not have a tone but go for the cleaner most modern one and let the tech guy do his thing. And of course the only good signal is a dry DI.

Don't take it with me, I'm the typical bass player that goes only with the bass and a cable at the gig and plug on whatever the sound guy say. I even giged without amp on big stages and relied only on floor monitors and the stage subs, my tone was glorious and with cristal clear definition, and was playing a crappy yamaha rbx375.

And it is possible to sound good in small rooms if the band is willing to trust the tech guy ears and experience if he has. And a good sound man can make a crappy sounding band to sound half decent.

The key here is a good trained audio engineer.
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The first and only time I had the misfortune to strike a proper desk nazi who made me play through his monitors with the dry output from my Sansamp, I sounded like total doodoo.
 
#63
bucephylus said:
Yup, I agree with most of that, all except the comparison to amplifying the Steinway; which seems to get more into the realm of general issues with amplifying an upright bass.
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Maybe not a perfect comparison but the point I was attempting to make is that what the piano sounds like acoustically on stage can't be reproduced with complete accuracy through a PA just like the sound coming out of a bass amp can't.

lfmn16 said:
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The only thing I stepped in is a steaming pile of soundman reasoning.
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But hey, how is it different from a steaming pile of muso reasoning? A steaming pile is a steaming pile regardless of whose butt it's plopping out of.

Steaming piles aside the biggest problem I see with club soundmen having issues with musicians is that they are pressed for time and just want to do what they can deal with quickly and easily within the limits of their PA, the room and their skill level to get a mix. It might seem like stubborn laziness but very often it's not. These guys have a lot to bring together fast to make that mix happen.

The biggest problem I see with musicians having issues with soundmen is not really understanding how their signal translates through a PA thinking it's easy for any soundman just to "do his job" and reproduce through any PA in any room what they're hearing through their amp on stage....and that it will necessarily sit well in the mix. Having gotten to be a fly on the wall as a lighting guy for many years I've seen that great players like Bobby Vega, Davey Faragher, Graham Maby, Hutch Hutchinson etc. show up using provided backline with the ability to get "their sound" to FOH with a signal that's pretty much plug-n-play into a flat strip. Mostly they do it by going pre EQ with a quality DI like a Type 85, JDI, RNDI, J48, REDDI, U5 etc....in other words it's 99% the player and the bass. People having regular confrontations with sound men might wanna consider how great these guys sound doing this and maybe tear a page out of that book.
 
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#65
Again, ive never had a single issue with a sound guy, but they have all been more than happy to take a line out of my amp, and so they mixed my sound.....Not theirs.
I'm just saying we deserve the same attempt at capturing our sound as the guitarist gets. It's ridiculous to suggest anything else. If "warm fuzzy svt" is my tone, it's insulting to say that "sterile, hi fi qsc" is what I'm gonna have out front, regardless.

Tell that to the guitarist, hand him a pod, and force him to go direct.....I dare you.
 
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#66
This is the beauty of something like the VT Bass DI. I can play through all sorts of OD pedals +/- boost and drive my tube pre-amps all day long but it can be a crapshoot as to whether or not I'll get what I want out of my tone that night. The VT Bass DI is simple plug-in and send-out. Not necessarily "perfect" but solid and reliable and I know what I'm getting "out there".
 
#67
Jeff Bonny said:
Maybe not a perfect comparison but the point I was attempting to make is that what the piano sounds like acoustically on stage can't be reproduced with complete accuracy through a PA just like the sound coming out of a bass amp can't.
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+1 pretty much precisely the issue with the upright bass. Yet, players still do the best they can to get close. It's a tough job.
 
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#68
Emanuel Apascaritei said:
OK, let's just say the sound guy takes the line out of your pedalboard with your sound and sounds like crap upfront and he doesn't do nothing because he would screw up your sound if he does. Who's foult is?!? Everybody will say it's the sound guy fault.

Sorry, I'd be with the sound guy on this.
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In my band, I play the saxophone lines from Bob Seger's Turn the Page (heavy distortion with a fretless simulator to smooth the line), the horn lines in Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline (chorus and compression), I play 3 solos using my 6er as a telecaster (compression, eq and slap back delay). I play an EUB, both bowed and pizz (using a Zoom A3 with separate presets for both utilizing upright modelling, reverb and eq). I play fretless on ballads and a couple mid-tempo songs (chorus and compression). All the switching involved is contained on my pedal board.

How it the hell am I supposed to bypass the board?

Everything I use is level matched and once my amp is set during soundcheck, I ignore it. I don't tweak anything. All my tweaking on my board has been done long ago.

The easiest solution is to mic the cabinet, which I've done hundreds of times. I have my own mics and stands, and I know where the best placement is. Show me where to plug into the snake, and we are good to go. My amp has a good DI output, but mic'ing the cab is so incredibly simple that not doing it seems counterintuitive.

In my case, reinventing the wheel is a waste of time.
 
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#69
tfer said:
In my band, I play the saxophone lines from Bob Seger's Turn the Page (heavy distortion with a fretless simulator to smooth the line), the horn lines in Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline (chorus and compression), I play 3 solos using my 6er as a telecaster (compression, eq and slap back delay). I play an EUB, both bowed and pizz (using a Zoom A3 with separate presets for both utilizing upright modelling, reverb and eq). I play fretless on ballads and a couple mid-tempo songs (chorus and compression). All the switching involved is contained on my pedal board.

How it the hell am I supposed to bypass the board?

Everything I use is level matched and once my amp is set during soundcheck, I ignore it. I don't tweak anything. All my tweaking on my board has been done long ago.

The easiest solution is to mic the cabinet, which I've done hundreds of times. I have my own mics and stands, and I know where the best placement is. Show me where to plug into the snake, and we are good to go. My amp has a good DI output, but mic'ing the cab is so incredibly simple that not doing it seems counterintuitive.

In my case, reinventing the wheel is a waste of time.
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Well it seems that you know your stuff. As a sound guy I'd take the DI out of your amp, but if you insist to mic your cab fine with that also.
 
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#71
Played last night and tonight with a new sound guy. Sat down with him and had a beer where he asked me what I wanted for sound, so I told him what I like.

He asked me to trust him, and since he obviously knows what he's doing, I left myself (a little uncomfortably at first) in his hands.

He mic'ed my cab using a simple SM57, and took a post pedalboard DI using a passive Radial DI. Mixed it at the board at about 60/40 with the extra going to the DI.

I'm sold. It is the best live sound I ever had. The top end is still there, and you can definitely hear the influence of my cabinet, but it is a tight, deep bass with the bloom that I love.
 
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#73
I've been away from this thread for a while bit been spending some time with my band's Behringer X-18 desk and my rig. I get a really good result by DIing post EQ from my head, then using the inbuilt high and lowpass filters within the X18 software. Running this way I get all the tone shaping and effects from my pedal board, amp tone/EQ but none of the crappy boom or harsh highs that exist in the full range signal.
So now to round out my board I'm going to add some sort of LP/HP filter with DI out for venues where we don't use our own PA. That should get me pretty close!
 
#74
I use the venerable Sure SM57!
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#78
two fingers said:
Just for clarification, I never said I didn't want the pre from your amp. What I said was to err on the side of bright so I can do something with it. Don't assume that because the tone is pleasing to your ears on stage it will fit the mix or sound great in the room.

Imagine I am a sculptor.

A scooped or way too beefy tone is a block of steel. All I can do with it is turn it up or down.
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On a digital mixing console I'd set (on the fly) low mid EQ center around 800-1000Hz and pick a rather lowish Q factor around 1.4 and then try to smooth the scoop.
Steep HPF set to around 60Hz should eliminate any boomy transient noise which may be generated by sloppy playing style technique or/and excessive players damping technique.
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two fingers said:
A mid heavy or brighter tone is like a block of soft clay. I can do what I want with it. Lows can jump out if I crank them. Highs can be dialed back if they are a bit much.
Whether that block of clay or steel comes from the bass or the amp (or even mic) matters not to me.
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Of course it's way more easy job to "EQ" the FOH bass guitar sound with only the bass knob
The parametric EQ section combined with variable Q takes some experience to place the FOH EQ "right in the mix" for any instrument and vocals
It's worth the afford!;)

two fingers said:
I think most sound guys are terrible at communication. So they just see it as easier to take a signal straight from the bass because it is GENERALLY cleaner, especially on a passive bass. The more buttons switches and knobs involved the more likely a bassist is to send me more boom than I can deal with.
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IMO it's way more tricky to "resque" failed 6-string guitar sounds and FOH as well can't varnish sloppy guitar playing technique but, in this case I hold the opinion (and probably agree with you) that FOH is not a purification plant.

edit btw,
scooped bass sounds work well in combination with well sophisticated 6-string and key sounds but they definitely fail if at least one of the other instruments sounds like overloaded junk.
In situation like this any FOH guy is thankful to have at least one instrument that sits in the mix and sets the bass fundament without lots of tricky mids correcting EQ'ing.
 
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