The bassists dilemma in live sound..

IEMs are amazing once you get used to them. The downside is that bass players in particular have to spend some dough on buds to get a good bass tone through them. That's been my experience anyway. Also, try getting your rig off the ground and closer to ear level. Or try tilting your rig back. Or try putting some bass in your monitor wedge.

All four of those solutions have worked for me in the past. But putting a bass rig on the ground and blowing your ankles out never seems to work out for me. I have heard all about the "science" of bass frequencies being more omni-directional But that has never been my experience. If my rig is up by my ears, I hear it 10 times better than if the same rig is on the ground. I have actually been known to take the bottom cab of my stack just for the purpose of getting the top off the ground and closer to my head. Even if I have zero need for it volume wise, it helps me to hear myself.

Honestly, if the sound companies you are working with are worth a crap, and have wedges worth a crap, the easiest solution is bass in the wedge. It's pointed at your head and adding to the overall volume your rig is producing. Win win.

P.S. If you are one of those bassists who insists on not singing,get the sound guy to bring you out a wedge anyway. They aren't just for vocals.

 

I have only one suggestion which works for me. I turn my Bass Cabs sideways toward my drummer. Then I stand back by the drum kit. I can still hear everyone else and My drummer can hear me without having to crank it up too much. Too much low frequency eq'd for the guitars will also contribute to the "Mud". In fact I believe most of your problem could be solved with EQ. I believe the wedges are really mostly for vocals so too much of anything else in them is probably causing more Mud.

 

Low frequencies are more omnidirectional than are higher frequencies, but the definition in your sound where you can tell what note you are playing resides in higher frequencies than the fundamental and are hence more directional.

 

This is also something that tends to work well. Turning your rig "cross stage" will allow you (in some cases) to turn it up a little without killing the sound guy.
Also, OP, if your FOH mix is that loud you should be able to do just about whatever you want without messing the sound guy up.

 

Now, that's a very good point!

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt


Administrator, Pedulla Club #45
Administrator, Tobias Club
Fretless Club #943
Big Cabs Club #23
My Rig: Stage and FOH Friendly

 

i was just about to say that 2F...if the FOH is that loud, then turn up to bring the feeling back...as long as its now mic'd you won't screw the FOH guy up...

 

When presented with a big stage and 15" wedges, If I'm not able to use my IEMs, I'll happily stick my bass through the wedges, and leave the cab for others to hear if they want.

 

seems that the issue is with the sound guys performance , but that subject is on the taboo list of things which can't speak of on TB.......

 

I use SE215s, as they are bass-frequency biased by design. Never had an issue, playing ampless on stage. I've played big stages amped (festivals, etc.,) and can say if you're not running guitars and bass and drums through the monitors where it's possible, you're really missing out.

In small rooms, you also have to deal with FOH bouncing back AT you, which is why FOH cab angles are very important. Done wrong, it turns things into mud, because the returning signal is usually out of phase with the originating signal. Same with corner monitoring vs. straight stage monitoring. Played a gig recently where the wedge monitors were turned into the corner stage. It was a giant swirl of mud onstage, reflections coming off three separate surfaces, and the monitor guy's solution was to turn all of it up. I pushed my monitor off to the side after about 2 songs and just monitored via FOH as best I could. The one bar I played where we had in-house support had an acoustically treated and deadened back wall and the onstage sound was brilliant.

This is why I prefer soundmen who are actually musicians and who have been there. They know what's going on from a very personal level, and most want to fix it.

 

I also use the SE215s...sometimes I'll just put my bass in there and NOTHING ELSE. But on some gigs where IEMs are not practical, I just wear earplugs and deal with it.

 

I do the same as NYCbassist. I angle my rig to where the drummer and the guitar players to hear. On bigger venues, I run a separate amp on the other side of the stage. I have dealt with guitar players running too much bottom on their EQ. Fortunately for me, my guitar players can get their SRV sound and we can still talk on stage nearly in normal conversation levels. Only need a presence of bass in the wedges.

I also done festivals where the back line bass rig was smoked or a POS and I used my little Eden Preamp/DI and get a fantastic stage mix through the monitors and mains.

 

I'm only going to reinforce what others have already said: if the main house system is so loud that it's overpowering everything you're hearing on stage, then the problem is in the booth, not with you.

Does this happen often everywhere or just constantly at one venue you play?

 

FWIW, it doesn't necessarily mean that there is a problem with the FOH operator. If there are large loud full range FOH speakers onstage with you they will radiate low frequencies in all directions and the mix onstage will suffer.

In a perfect world musicians and audience alike would have balanced mudfree mixes, but in the real world often the musicians have to just make the best of what they get.

 

When the FOH throws a lot of spill back onto the stage, IME cranking my stage rig adds to the problems in a few ways:

• Cranking the backline amps makes it that much harder to get the vocal monitors over the combined FOH spill and stage volume. The feedback limit for vocal wedges sets the ceiling for stage volume.
• If I'm singing, having my amp absolutely roaring makes it harder to hear pitch, to focus on my vocal parts, to hear cues, and to blend.
  
• Adding cranked bass cabs on to the FOH spill (especially from the subs) makes it even likelier that the floor tom mic or kick mic will start feeding back. If you haven't experienced this, it's like having a phantom keyboard player randomly holding down a loud low note a moment after any bass-heavy passage that you or the drummer play.
• Cranking the bass amp will emphasize on-stage acoustic problems with standing waves, reflections, boundary effects, and zones of multiple-source interference.

If IEMs aren't available, better to raise my cabinet up to my ears in those situations than to crank the volume. There's already too much SPL slopping around on stage. Dumping extra-loud bass amp spill all over the stage addresses my instrument-monitoring problem, but at the cost of increasing monitoring problems for the rest of the musicians.

 

Man I hate it when the floor tom or kick mic feeds back like that! Yuck. If the sound engr doesn't have experience or smarts then it's the bass that's going to get pulled out of the mix because " it's feeding back". SMH.

I think this is an FOH engr problem. In a small club, you simpley cannot attain studio-like separation, where you will render the band in a pristine mix. Trying to do so is bogus. The name of the game is sound reinforcement, where you let the band play and fill the room, and you use the FOH system to *reinforce* that sound, account for good and bad frequencies in the room, make sure the vocals and drums stay in the mix. It's kind of a dying art from what I see.

 

One time the sound guy wouldn't give me a DI line after I brought a mic for my SVT. So I cranked it to 6 or so for sweet sweet power tube distortion since nothing was going to be in the subs. Hate that guy... The floor tom was more boomy than the kick!

 

I can't stand IEM's, too many years of hearing the mix through wedges in my face lol

 

haha you could stop using amps!! my band does that we run everything through our rack mount x32 and have our own IEMs too!! no more wars for stage volume... IEMs are expensive tho and totally worth it

 

Yes, IEM's will help but not necessarily solve your problem.. depending on the size of the house system.
The venue I played last Fri/Sat night has THREE dual-18" subs on each side of the stage.. so SIX (6) dual 18" subs pounding out bass!
You can see them on stage-left in the pic below. 2 with the wood-trim surround and the 3rd to the right, just left of the stair rail. Yes, there are stairs behind that last sub.
If you look above the 1st 2 subs on the right, you can see the amp rack that powers the house PA!!!



There was so-o-o much bass in FOH for 3 of our 5 sets that it overwhelmed the bass in my IEM mix.
I made sure that I heard vox, kick/snare and gee-tars, but it was pointless turning up the bass and completely unnecessary!

I use custom 1964 Qi's (quad drivers) for buds, and run them at a relatively low volume so I have PLENTY of bass available in my ears.

But this venue just cranks it out..
In the last 2 sets, FOH backed off as folks started leaving (that was at midnight-30, we play 'til 2) so I could hear the bass in my IEM's and adjusted accordingly. It's amazing how loud the house sound is when I take those IEM's out and realize how much I'm saving my hearing.