Could you take a look at this diagram I made for a live sound setup?

[AndyK12]

Another thing that I find pretty beneficial is to have the bassist 'sidewash' the band with their rig. If the doodette is cool with it, set the bass cabinet to point at the band from the side of the stage (closest to them obviously) - that way you don't have to pump bass through the monitors (which generally do a crap job of translating bass energy) and the whole band can hear the bass, as well as getting less stage leakage (bass/low frequencies radiate in a circle but generally the back of the cabinet is going to cut a few dBSPL). Because you're pointing the cabinet sideways at the microphone the mic's won't pickup alot of the bass, and because you've shelved the lowend out of the microphones anyway most of the low freq information won't be translated.

I assume by the FOH not being kind to the bassist is that it makes a 'farty' noise, that's the speaker being overloaded. Try and eq out most of the meatiness either out of the kick or bass. Sometimes you're just asking too much out of the system as well.


Good luck dude, live sound with analog boards that your unfamiliar with is controlled chaos at best, anarchy at worst.

Andy

 

[NYMorningstar]

The 58 will work just fine and yes, point the back of the mic at the speaker to find the null point and off to the side a little is a good bet. You're going to do just fine.

 

[stevieb]

You mean sound woman...

Whatever. I was pretty gender-neutral in my posts, and used female pronouns frequently, so I will not make any apologies.

And anyway, although I am pretty liberal in my thinking and politics, I have grown quite weary of feminism political correctness.

But nevermind all that- good luck with the show.

 

[Kerrie]

Whatever. I was pretty gender-neutral in my posts, and used female pronouns frequently, so I will not make any apologies.

And anyway, although I am pretty liberal in my thinking and politics, I have grown quite weary of feminism political correctness.

Well I was just kidding anyhow. I'm not a feminist at all and could really care less if someone called me a soundman.

And... Thanks a million for the tips on the show!

 

[Kerrie]

Just an update... I did a great job and got lots of compliments on the sound. Not bad for a gal that had never done it before and just read up (and asked for some advice )

Thanks for all the advice guys!

Cheers!
Kerrie

 

[stevieb]

Hope the help I offered was worth more than the time spent to read it...

Thanks for the brief update. Can you flesh that out a bit? Tell us what you did and did not do, what advise you took and used and what advise was not needed because that particular situation did not come up, what advise did NOT work (there MUST be some of that here- you got advise from me to leave the EQ alone as much as possible, and from AndyK12 to EQ out bass and/or kick- not exactly contradictory, but certainly different. I can handle it if I was proven wrong, I am sure Andy can, too.)

Did you take any pictures? Post them, please.

And do come back.

 

[Kerrie]

Hi again... ok some more info.

Well, I arrived *very* early... 4 hours. And I took my sweet time - I had a drawn out plan of attack on a piece of paper. I had previously tested all the cables and had them labeled already and had all the mixer eq's and faders set to unity.

Once I had everything hooked up, and the band had arrived, I got them all set up and miced. I told them sternly that if they kept their amps at reasonable levels and had a nice balanced sound on stage, they would sound a ton better out front. They actually took heed to that advice thankfully!

I got the FOH speakers set at a perfect height (had to borrow a few stands). They ended up at the same height as the bands amps.

I did mic the drums. A pair of overheads and one on the kick and one between the snare and hi hat. When I sound checked the drums, I got a nice balanced mix for the kit. I had to do some pretty heavy eq'ing to get the kick to sound good, but I believe I got it. And the interaction between the bass and the kick was really good (IMHO!).

And then I subgrouped the drums so I could just bring in the drums enough to hold the bottom end along with the bass once we did a full band sound check.

I did mic the bass and am glad I did. I also angled the bass cabinet so the band could hear it clearly on stage and didn't run the bassist through the monitors.

I only had a touch of reverb for the vocalist (the room was huge so even dry the vocalist sounded like it had verb).

On the board, I pretty much used subtractive EQ (as needed) on each instrument and made sure I kept on checking that everything was gain staged properly and there wasn't any weak or overdriven signals happening - on each channel and when summed to the mains.

I actually strarted out with a monitor mix and kept the mains off and got everything set to the band members demands. Didn't actually run into any problems there. The band could clearly hear themselves plenty loud enough.

As far as the mains, well I had them sound check for a couple songs and got a nice balanced mix going. I had them play their heaviest piece (so I had no suprises mid-set). Sounded good.

As far as the main EQ's, it had that feedback elimination thing on it and actually nothing was really blinking at all. There was nothing feeding back either... So I left it flat as advised in this thread.

I did, however, use the low cut filter on the EQ and had that set to around 80Hz (I think). It seemed to really clean up the mix and it sounded more focused when I activated it.

Another thing that suprised me is that as I slowly brought up the power amp level on the mains, there was a spot at about 2 o'clock (little past half way turned up) that it just sounded really crisp - not too quiet, but definitely not super loud.

As I made it louder, it just got messy sounding... and I felt it was just too loud. I walked around the venue as they soundchecked and made sure it wasn't too quiet at the level I had set it at. There was plenty of energy and power still, it just wasn't that "too loud" level that I have often heard at clubs. Although I had a few dudes that arrived early that were barking at me that this was wrong and that was wrong... and of course, that I should turn the amps all the way to 10.

I didn't even experience any signal feedback or problems during the entire set... there were a couple songs where I would manually ride the faders a touch to accentuate guitar solos and when I noticed the vocalist was oddly closer to the mic than in other parts.

All in all, I had a quite a few compliments on the sound and the band was really happy. I mean, this was my first time doing this (although I read a ton before hand and prepped everything). Seemed like a success.

So yeah, it was fun (yet stressful). I'm not sure I would do it again, but maybe! Definitely a different experience than my normal job!

Thanks again for the help guys!
Kerrie

 

[stevieb]

Thanks for the detailed update, Kerrie.

...I had a few dudes that arrived early that were barking at me that this was wrong and that was wrong... and of course, that I should turn the amps all the way to 10.

Yeah, always gonna be some jerk who thinks he can do it better than you. Ignore 'em.

Your first soundtech gig went better than my first one did! Sounds like you are a natural!

 

[Wilbur]

The 58 will work just fine and yes, point the back of the mic at the speaker to find the null point and off to the side a little is a good bet. You're going to do just fine.

As a gigging bass player, let me say that the 58 is not a good bass mic. At all. However, glad to hear things went well. Sounds like fun!

 

[NYMorningstar]

As a gigging bass player, let me say that the 58 is not a good bass mic. At all. However, glad to hear things went well. Sounds like fun!

It's certainly not the best because of the bass rolloff but sometimes convenience wins out over quality.