Soundman insist on me going direct

[ggunn]

??? You're serious? It's against the rules to make a generalization based on general experience? That's all this forum IS! lol I'm not attacking anyone or disparaging anyone's opinion-- I'm just trying to help the member. Lighten up.

You wrote, "I'm surprised how much undeserved revernce [sic] goes to sound men. Most of them are clueless. They're failed musicians who want to still be in the scene. They do not understand sound and are especially ignorant about bass waves." That isn't an attack? You could have fooled me and I don't see how it "helps" anyone. It looks like plain and simple bashing of soundmen, which we have been specifically asked to refrain from on this forum.

Perhaps if you had qualified your remarks to include only the sound men you have had the misfortune to encounter it would not have come across as an indictment of a whole class of people. For your information there are a lot of excellent sound men out there working in small venues who know their stuff very well including the physics of "bass waves". Many of them are accomplished musicians as well. I know several of them and I have been one myself. Your sweeping generalization included them (and me) and I take exception to it.

Are there clueless folks at the mixing desk out there? Of course there are; as a performer I have run into my share of them as well. You are in error, however, to paint soundpersons in general as you did with your very broad brush.

 

[Jeff Bonny]

I've had parallel careers on both sides of the lights for thirty years and have observed and participated in enough sound checks to know that the signal coming from your mic or DI should be representative enough of what you want the audience to hear that hitting a relatively flat strip in an unfamiliar PA it should still only take a very few minutes to dial in your sound. NEWSFLASH: Bass amps and PA systems are not the same. Part of "your sound" should account for its translation through a PA. If it doesn't then just step the shag back and let the soundman do his worst.

Yes, there are bad soundmen out there. At best they account for less than 10% of the population of full time pros and your most effective strategy is not to hire them if you have a choice and if you don't then make it as easy for them as possible by having your poopie together in a user friendly rig. Bitching about these guys is a waste of breath.....I wanna hear about them only a little less than I wanna hear about the guy going 10 under in the HOV lane on your commute home from your day job. Be even tempered always, be firm when you have to, play well and move on.

 

[1954bassman]

Back to the original post as to what to do. Come out of your Sansamp straight into his DI. Everybody is happy. Easy fix.

 

[1954bassman]

It's never a good idea to piss off the sound man. At a big event where one sound guy has to mix 6 or 10 bands that day, the sound guy don't care about the basses tone. They just hope to get a usable signal that don't sound like crap. They have no idea the level of professionalism they will be dealing with that night. And a real pro works around these issues and makes the best of a bad situation.

When I run into this situation I am polite to the sound man. I try to make their job go smooth. If you treat them with respect and professionalism, they will most likley let you use your sans amp.

Sound guys deal with too many jerk off musicians that think their great. Musicians can so often be very difficult to deal with. I see this in many of the replys here. The sound guy has to set limits up front.

this

 

[paulears]

For many gigs, I'm the sound man, or production manager, but I'm also the bass player in a tribute band. It's perfectly clear that some sound people are highly skilled and have to deal with a range of talent and education from the musicians they are providing the service to, and there are lots of either inept, or inexperienced sound people. It only becomes a battle when two experienced and talented people disagree. Our old bass player, who I replaced is now our sound man. He knows very little about the technical side, but he knows the set inside out, and understands balance. Most Sound people are happy for him to do the mixing. They do the usual eq and setup, he looks after the mix. A few engineers object, and produce 'rules', but at the soundcheck as soon as all of us sing, they realise it's not going to be a set and forget mix, and usually back down. I'm lucky because quite frankly, I know what comes out of the guitar, and I don't care about effects. I use IEMs, so I let the people out front set my sound. Frankly, if I was to spend lots of time adjusting the amp eq and fiddling, the people out front would change it anyway - so I don't lose sleep. We did a festival with a busy stage and the sound guy asked what I wanted - the wedges were rather nice ones, so I said just DI me, and I'll be happy with the bass coming from the wedges and forget my IEMs. It sounded different of course, but saved a lot of fuss and bother. The engineer was very happy - getting rid of one noise source on stage. I'm too old for all this getting upset stuff. All I want is to enjoy the gig!