Loud and full enough to provide adequate stage volume and carry a room without FOH support. Only amateurs will ask you what brand you play.
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What does it mean to have "Pro gear"?
- Thread starter droo46
- Start date
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
To me it means gig worthy - enough amp power and speaker area to be heard, and an instrument that stays in tune and looks appropriate.
"Pro gear" means nothing to me. I had the good fortune to play in a band with a cat named Sam. Dude showed up with a beater Squier Strat and a little Boss Katana amp. Literally about $300 worth of gear. And he blew the crowd away every place we played. This was an outlaw country outfit but Sam could play all styles expertly. Any gear snob notions I had went out the window.
Sam:
Sam:
+1,000,000
It's like porn, I know it when I see it
I was told at a recording session a week ago "Normally we wouldn't allow a 5 string bass, but that really records well". No it wasn't a Fender
and I never needed to use the B string.
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If they have to stipulate that part in the ad, it usually means one of two things:
1.) They're tired of hacks showing up wasting their time and they equate good gear with serious musicians.
2.) They're a gang of gear thieves out to put the "roll" in rock and roll.
Any time you get a serious gig call, it's assumed that as a pro you have gear that is, too.
1.) They're tired of hacks showing up wasting their time and they equate good gear with serious musicians.
2.) They're a gang of gear thieves out to put the "roll" in rock and roll.
Any time you get a serious gig call, it's assumed that as a pro you have gear that is, too.
I would venture to say one of two things: 1. Appropriate for studio records (very broad, I know) or 2. Built in a manner to take abuse (moving) repeatedly and without fail (broad but thins the herd quite a bit).
FWIW, a $60 Tubescreamer is "pro gear" so go figure.
Any gear that you make money using. Pro level, now there's a term to rally around.
It's the opposite of Noob gear! But seriously, just typical Craigslist. It's like those people who insist on saying "no scams, no low ballers, don't ask me if it's still available." What are the odds a bass player shows up to a working band's audition without a functionable amp and bass that could be used in a live sound setup. Not zero, but darn close to zero. If that ever happened, it would just be a short audition.
Not junk, is how I interpret that, because junk abounds, and some don't know the difference.
Edit: However, I will not debate bass equipment with a non-bass player. I will not justify my brand of anything to anyone. If you want to talk brand names, you had better know something more than what you've heard.
Edit: However, I will not debate bass equipment with a non-bass player. I will not justify my brand of anything to anyone. If you want to talk brand names, you had better know something more than what you've heard.
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I just assume it means "don't ask to borrow our stuff."
The short and to the point version:
To me, that means gear that will let you play everywhere - small, medium and large sized venues as well as outdoor venues and music festivals. It also has to have great sound and needs to record well too. It absolutely must be rugged enough so it can stand up to hard use reliably as you are performing 250 nights per year (5-nights a week, 50-weeks a year) like I did when I was touring with a nightclub group in the early 70's. If your gear fails, the whole band fails, so it has to sound great and be reliable. Back then I had a 1965-Jazz Bass, a Standel piggy-back amp (MCIIb/SAM30b) a Shure 565sd mic that I used and a Shure 585sa mic that I let our drummer use. That was great gear back in the early 70's and every bit Pro-Gear.
TLDR
Then in 1976 all my gear was stolen and I had to slowly build my gear back up to "Pro" level. I now once again have pro-gear after buying, selling, and upgrading amps and cabs over the years. I was officially back to All Pro Gear in 2015 when I got my DNS-410 cab by DNA. It has the clearest, cleanest, and fullest sound I've ever heard along with a really tight and low bottom end (37Hz). It handles 1400-watts rms with a max SPL of 137db. I already had the amp that David Nordschow (founder of Eden) used to design all of his Eden cabs with from 1999 until he left Eden in 2009 - doesn't get more pro than that. So with my Eden WT500/800 and the DNS-410 from David's new company, DNA, I was back at Pro-Level Gear.
Since then I have purchased two more amps and three cabs. I bought two Eden EX-112 cabs which are not their top of the line and not sure they totally qualify as "Pro Gear because they only have a single 1/4" speaker input where my other gear has at least two speakon connectors. But they still have NEO speakers, they are light and compact, and they sound great. And they are definitely durable and reliable because I used them for all my medium sized gigs for about a year before I bought my DNS210.
Yes, the $1,000 D112XST top of the line Eden 112 cabs do sound better than the EX series, but not $600 better. I paid $269 each for those EX-112s; they are light, tough, handle 300-watts rms, and sound great. I would expect a speakon or two on the backplate though and that might keep them out of "Pro" level. But no complaints on their sound at all. I've received lots of compliments on my sound when using them.
I also bought a low-power Eden TN-226 (225-watts rms) amp specifically to use at small venues because it sounds great, I can put that in its shoulder bag, throw my gig bag over the other shoulder, grab my bass with one hand, and my 30-lb. EX-112 cab in the other, and carry it all in (or out) at once. I do need to go back for my mic stand and stage stool but that's about as easy as load-in/load-out gets.
I only use that amp for small venues so it doesn't strictly meet my definition of pro-gear though it does everything and then some that small venues need.. It's bigger brother the 500-watt rms TN-501 does qualify for Pro Level though. Both are great sounding amps with very versatile EQ and tube warmth without the tube like my big Eden amp has with the tube. The only drawback to those Eden Terra Nova amps is that they don't make 800-watt version. But they sure do sound good and only weigh 4.7-lbs for the 225-watt one and 5.3-lbs for the 500-watt version. If they just made an 800-watt version they'd be serious competition in the Class D 800-watt rms market, but currently 500-watts is tops for them.
Then in 2019 I bought another piece of "Pro Gear", a DNS-210 cab. I bought it for small and medium-sized venues and have since found out I can use it for all my indoor venues, even the large ones. This cab, like the DNS-410, is also a monster. It has the same sonic characteristics that my 410 cab does but has an even lower bottom end, going down to 34Hz. It only handles 700-watts rms compared to the 410's 1400-watts but its max SPL is 134db, which is still well above the threshold of pain. Ends up I now use it for all my indoor venues, small, medium, and large. So now it's my main gigging cab and I reserve my DNS-410 for outdoors and music festivals where I still get told to turn down.
Speaking of Class D amps that are Pro-Gear, last year I bought a DNA-800 amp which is an 800-watt rms Class D amp that weighs just 4.8-lbs and includes a built-in compressor with adjustable threshold and ration controls. It puts out 400-watts rms into 8 ohms and 800-watts into either 4 ohms or 2 ohms. It has a simplified EQ with very musical centers and it's super easy to dial in a good sound.
Add to that that at just 4.8-lbs, which is about 32-lbs lighter than my Eden WT500/800 (weighs about 36-lbs. in its rack). Great sounding amp with adjustable compressor, that's definitely Pro-Gear too. Plus, when I ordered the DNA-800, the factory was out of some essential parts and had no ones complete back in April 2021. But David had enough parts on-hand himself to build the amp for me. So he built it and signed it for me, and now I have his autograph on both my Eden amp and my DNA amp, which I think is pretty cool.
So that's what I call Pro-Gear.
For me it usually means I don’t want to have anything to do with replying to their ad. So many easy to get along with musicians who just care about playing music and entertaining people to get involved with a basement band who will probably never play anywhere.
- Dec 21, 2007
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It means your gear transports itself to gigs and gets paid without you. 
