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You're not going to believe this but...

#42
fokof said:
:eek::eek::eek:
Coming from you is a bit of a surprise.

I salute your "open-ness" , if I could say so.
(You see the limit of my vocabulary in English ! )
Click to expand...
actually, openness is an english word so you did good.

anyway, i'm giving it a fair shot, but after hearing how bright i was in the pa last tuesday night, i'm about ready to pull the mic out again. i think i have it fixed, but who the hell knows?
 
#43
well on tonight's gig, i had the treble knob on the vt deluxe cranked way down on my presets, and it just didn't sound right through my amp (b-15 stack tonight). so i ended up gradually working the treble control until it did sound right, which was right where i had it before, at 10:00. i go offstage a couple times and there's almost no treble on it all in the house and he had 150 hz boosted 3 db, which made it sound about like it does when i run the mic. i could have used a bit more treble, but honestly it sounded pretty good.

so lesson learned here...the soundman is going to make it sound like what he thinks sounds good no matter what i do ;)
 
#44
JimmyM said:
...the soundman is going to make it sound like what he thinks sounds good no matter what i do ;)
Click to expand...
That's what we do.
Which is why we make all the money and get all the girls :smug:

But seriously, a great DI is worth every penny.
I can honestly state that in over 20 years of running sound, I've been asked to mic a bass cabinet less than 10 times.
Never had a problem with doing it--just never seems to come up. I wonder why that is?
Surely all Texans aren't that lazy?

DI + Mic is absolutely the best way to go, especially when the DI handles the very bottom and top with the mic'ed cab giving meaty tone in the middle.

One tip for all bassists when dealing with a new soundman is to ask him to roll ALL of the lows off the channel EQ, then set levels so the mids and highs are battling it out with the guitars before bringing the lows back up.
I've found that with most bass rigs I deal with, I'm actually still cutting the lows by a surprising amount.
The younger guys seem to think that bass comes from a knob on their amp rather than the actual frequencies of the note they are playing.
 
#48
JimmyM said:
well on tonight's gig, i had the treble knob on the vt deluxe cranked way down on my presets, and it just didn't sound right through my amp (b-15 stack tonight). so i ended up gradually working the treble control until it did sound right, which was right where i had it before, at 10:00. i go offstage a couple times and there's almost no treble on it all in the house and he had 150 hz boosted 3 db, which made it sound about like it does when i run the mic. i could have used a bit more treble, but honestly it sounded pretty good.

so lesson learned here...the soundman is going to make it sound like what he thinks sounds good no matter what i do ;)
Click to expand...

So, are you eq'ing your VT DI to sound right through your amp and expecting that same curve to work through the pa?
 
#50
scotch said:
So, are you eq'ing your VT DI to sound right through your amp and expecting that same curve to work through the pa?
Click to expand...
scotch, i have no clue what i'm doing ;)

actually i was eqing the vt deluxe to sound what i thought was good through most pa's with minimal fuss on their end. i thought i had it pretty well matched up to its bypassed sound minus the speaker sim rolloffs. but it screwed my tone in the amp, so now i'm just going to do what -I- think is best for me and let the soundman deal with it. which means putting it right back to where i had it originally ;)
 
#51
JimmyM said:
scotch, i have no clue what i'm doing ;)

actually i was eqing the vt deluxe to sound what i thought was good through most pa's with minimal fuss on their end. i thought i had it pretty well matched up to its bypassed sound minus the speaker sim rolloffs. but it screwed my tone in the amp, so now i'm just going to do what -I- think is best for me and let the soundman deal with it. which means putting it right back to where i had it originally ;)
Click to expand...

That's ultimately all we can really do as the bassist. Send the FOH the best sound we can & pray they don't screw it up! :p

I like having an independently eq-able di to send to the foh (uneffected output to my amp). That way, I can let my amp sound like itself & still have some control as to what the FOH engineer "sees". Ultimately you have to trust each other, though...
 
#55
KeithAlanK said:
That's what we do.
Which is why we make all the money and get all the girls :smug:

But seriously, a great DI is worth every penny.
I can honestly state that in over 20 years of running sound, I've been asked to mic a bass cabinet less than 10 times.
Never had a problem with doing it--just never seems to come up. I wonder why that is?
Surely all Texans aren't that lazy?

DI + Mic is absolutely the best way to go, especially when the DI handles the very bottom and top with the mic'ed cab giving meaty tone in the middle.

One tip for all bassists when dealing with a new soundman is to ask him to roll ALL of the lows off the channel EQ, then set levels so the mids and highs are battling it out with the guitars before bringing the lows back up.
I've found that with most bass rigs I deal with, I'm actually still cutting the lows by a surprising amount.
The younger guys seem to think that bass comes from a knob on their amp rather than the actual frequencies of the note they are playing.
Click to expand...
Sorry for the OT but you should participate in this thread ;)
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=681815
 
#57
welp, i brought this thread back from the dead for an update.

i've really tried to get along with di'ing. i really did. haven't used the pr40 on a gig for a month. but di'ing just isn't for me. the vt deluxe does sound good, but it just comes across in a mix as too brittle for my tastes, as all di's do. so i brought my mic to today's gig and was a million times happier with my sound. there's just something very satisfying about the way a mic'ed cab sounds in a pa to me, and so i'm going back to micing.

of course, i won't always be able to use a mic since i use rented amps on the road, but i'm a mic guy and i guess i always will be. i'm not even going to try to fight it anymore. it may be a di world but i'm doing what i think is best for me and my bands from now on. most soundmen react very positively to the mic as well, and the ones that don't are just going to have to live with it.
 

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