Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Using a miked bass cab when the guitarists are using processors or a load box:
- Thread starter O.j. Malm
- Start date
Depends on the environment I suppose and life is all about options. If you requested that of me as sound guy I'd be OK - as long as there is time and we have channels - no sweat. If your sound is a cherry, B15... I'd say skip the DI and put a really good mic on it... As a bass player, for my sound I don't see an advantage...
I'm not sure that I see what the guitar player is using would have any bearing whatsoever on how you send your bass signal to the PA.
Nonetheless, like Mal, I'd try my best to use both a DI and a mic on your cabinet.
The only method I've balked at is taking the XLR line out of the amp head for the sake of "getting my sound". Please...It's usually noisy and on some heads, you can't take the line out before the bass EQ. And 90% of the time, that EQ is derived from the cabinet being aimed at the back of the player's knees, which doesn't translate well at FOH. But a few years ago, I just got tired of arguing with players about it, so I took whatever they gave me and ran with it.
As a player these days, I have them just use their DI and offer them the use of my Radial JDI (hopefully to be a REDDI before long). And if I use my IEMs, I don't use an amp at all.
Nonetheless, like Mal, I'd try my best to use both a DI and a mic on your cabinet.
The only method I've balked at is taking the XLR line out of the amp head for the sake of "getting my sound". Please...It's usually noisy and on some heads, you can't take the line out before the bass EQ. And 90% of the time, that EQ is derived from the cabinet being aimed at the back of the player's knees, which doesn't translate well at FOH. But a few years ago, I just got tired of arguing with players about it, so I took whatever they gave me and ran with it.
As a player these days, I have them just use their DI and offer them the use of my Radial JDI (hopefully to be a REDDI before long). And if I use my IEMs, I don't use an amp at all.
I actually took a post EQ line Saturday night, with the understanding that if I couldn't work with it, we'd use a type 85. It was fine guy had a 15 as the top cab of a 15 and 4x10 setup. AC/DC tribute band... Had my plugs in early. Took one out to check now and again but kept that ear facing back mostly. The guys were good but dang...
are the other guys creating stage volume too or just going direct with in-ears or whatever?
if it's a "quiet stage" then it strikes me that you'd be sabotaging the effort by dragging out a cab. otherwise, if it's guitars in cranked wedges and acoustic drums, then sure, bring the rig that generates a good sound and get it to the PA however you like to get it there.
good, because had i ever been lucky or successful enough to somehow end up with you mixing me, we would have wasted valuable soundcheck time squabbling about it!
i can only speak as a small-potatoes bar/rock club guy here, but as a "my rig is part of my tone" kind of player, i feel like it's the soundguy's job to translate what the band actually sounds like to the crowd, quirks included; of course it's my job to send him a sound that's actually usable and good, but isn't all that within the "artist's" perview?
mixing these bar/club bands, i'll default towards walking up to the bass guy with an XLR cable and saying, "where do you want this?"; if the guy has a clear preference then i'm trusting him to be "right", because i think it's up to the band to decide what they sound like, good or bad (original bands especially).
even if the guy is a newbie with no clue or preference, for rock stuff i usually still try to go with a "post" send, even if it means a 1/4" line from an amp's FX send into a DI box; it just seems to have more "character" to me. (i will look at said amp, though, if the knobs are set all crazy i might indeed reach up and switch the amp DI to "pre" without saying anything.)
No, Walter, I'm pretty sure we'd get along just fine...
I'm not referring to the character of the bass, as in reproducing that wonderful Precision growl through the amp and sending that to the PA. What usually happens is the case of an amp right behind the player's knees is that the highs get cranked up to the point of being quite noisy and clacky, which won't be noticed by the player with their ears a few feet above his amplifier (anyone want to get into guitarists with their amps pointed at their knees? Hell's Bells, I didn't think so....)
This situation is precisely why I bought a 6-channel mixer to use in small situations where I'm in the same boat with my amp at the back of my knees (and not using my X32 mixer). With the small mixer, I can take a line of something from the house "PA", as it were (Usually vocals with some keys and guitar bleed), my bass, and usually I stick my own kick and overhead mic on the kit. This way, I can use my IEMs and mix the rest of something to make it through the night. I may be weird or off-kilter, but I like the sound of my basses into a DI and to the mixer and in my IEMs. The amp is there for the band's benefit and they dictator how loud it needs to be.
Walter, I'm pretty certain that if you had heard my experiences that led me to shy away from the amp's XLR out, you'd feel the same way. The "all crazy" settings is what drove me to shun line outs. Plus when I was 20 years old and in Ardent studios in Memphis, TN, an old audio electronics engineer that built recording consoles in "the day" showed me how he liked to design mic preamps in the consoles with as few components as possible and the components used were of the highest quality, pretty typical among those guys...
. He literally preached to me that day that especially basses (and his favorite basses were, what a shock, Fender Precision and Jazz basses) benefitted from as few electronics in the signal path has possible. Not just for the bass's electronics sake, but more so for the bass tone, frequency and character, too. And I rode that mantra pretty hard for a long time, and maybe to my detriment in the end. As I said, I finally succumbed and just let what went in just come back out. But there's nothing to keep me from that mantra as a bassist.Hey, I was a bass player before I was a sound guy, so I get the player's preference totally. However, I wanted their sound to be their sound and without the bad artifacts that can come from the "all crazy" EQ settings, and perhaps to my discredit in a lot of folks' eyes. Well, that's fine, because I grew out of it and now, it's not my problem.
Last edited:
What bassist in their right mind would crank the treble? Madness.
Hey, like thanx for reading the entire post..
Last edited:
