Choosing a bass rig

[ef37a]

Yeah! One of DEM posts.

Son has has been asked by the bass player in the band what to buy. I don't even as yet have a budget but they meet this evening so I might know more the morrow.
The band, he says, is not overly loud. Drummer is musical and fairly restrained. Their music seems to be (keep asking for recordings!) 'Queen' influenced but they are not a covers band. Son says bassist is very much a 'background' guy, good player but never flashy.
Venues will be pubs, cafes and perhaps a small hall. My thoughts are 100W minimum and a head and cab configuration? Looking around you can pay AS much for a combo as a head and cab. Lot of overlap.

I suggested getting an amp with a compressor but do pedals do as good a job?

Even advice such as "FFS don't get a ^&^%£!" would be a start!

Sorry for the sneeze at the top! Maybe a Mod can adjust?

Dave.

[BigRedX]

For bass back line the rule of thumb is to add up the wattages of all the other backline amps being used (guitars/keys etc.) and double it.

These days unless it is all valve and your are going for that full-on valve saturation bass sound 100W will most likely not be enough. 300-500W lightweight class D amps are where you should be looking - unless you are on a tight budget in which case something old, big, and heavy, but reliable like TE or Peavey.

However, the other thing to factor in is PA support. If the majority of the FoH bass sound is from the PA then the rig is mostly for personal monitoring, and on bigger gigs will be almost entirely for show.

Neither of my bands play massive gigs (Nottingham Rescue Rooms and Leeds O2 are as big as they get at the moment), but for all of them what the audience hears of my bass comes from the PA. After a number of gigs where I was being asked to turn my rig down (in order not to affect the FoH balance) to such an extent that I could myself better from what was being put into the guitarist's wedge on the other side of the stage, than I could from my cabs directly behind me, I sold my big and very impressive looking rig and bought a Line 6 Helix and an RCF 745 power cab instead. For the last 30 years my bass sound has been mostly created by my choice of pre-amp and multi-effects units so it wasn't a massive change of direction.

The RCF cab gets most of its use at rehearsals, but it also has advantages for those gigs (where I don't know how good the foldback is going to be) as it can be placed in all sorts of locations on stage where there is either not enough room for a conventional bass rig or where it would look wrong. When I do use it at gigs it is often positioned firing across the stage, so the rest of the band also get the benefit, or I can sit it with the PA foldback pointing back at me.

[Murray B]

The Fender Rumbles seem to get good press and I've used one of the smaller combos in a school setting - I think it has a 12" speaker that was okay for what it was and ridiculously lightweight - I can't remember the model sorry.

Without a budget it's hard to give specific advice and I haven't actually used that many amps - I went for a buy well buy once approach when I took up bass playing and I am still very happy with my MarkBass Jeff Berlin Combo, but they are expensive even second hand.

The other way to go is look at a preamp / modeller thing and a powered speaker - works for a lot of folks these days and is my B rig when I'm doing a weekend where I'll be playing Bass and Guitar over the course of the same festival. It's got the advantage of being more disaster proof and once you go to bigger gigs the Bass is going through the PA anyway.

Edit - wrote this as Red X's reply came in - looks like we are of the same mind

[Sam Spoons]

I'd suggest 250-300 watts as a minimum, loud, clean and full range is a good starting point for bass*. I'd be looking for something from a bass guitar amp builder rather than a guitar amp builder** but there are lots out there and they can be surprisingly inexpensive.

https://www.thomann.de/gb/tc_electronic ... _stock.htm

* It's easy to dirty up the sound a bit but impossible to clean up an inherently dirty amp.

** TC used to do a couple of reasonable bass amps/combos for not a lot of money, Ampeg have a mini amp of 150 watts IIRC which might fill the bill.

edit :- Same here...

[BigRedX]

Couple of things to bear in mind regarding specific amp makes.

The TC range of bass amps used to use a form of baked-in compression to achieve their supposed wattage ratings (have a search for TC amps on TalkBass if you want to read the whole hoo-ha). IMO if it sounds good then I don't mind, but not everyone will want or be expecting compression as your turn up the volume - especially not from a class D amp.

The class D Ampeg amps have had a reputation for unreliability especially when being run into speakers which approach the recommended minimum impedance. Also in the UK getting them fixed has proved to be difficult and expensive. Personally I'd only buy an Ampeg rig if I was looking for that over-driven valve SVT into a "fridge" sound, and then I'd buy an SVT and fridge (IME none of the other Ampeg rigs have the same sound).

[Hugh Robjohns]

I've edited out the sneezing...

[shufflebeat]

The band that I tech with became much more complete and integrated sounding when the bass player swapped his amp (Dynacord 2x12" [x2] or Ampeg combo) for a Mooer Radar IR loader using stock IRs. He monitors from a 12" Dynacord along with his own vox and other melody instruments with no issues.

The rest of the band are also happier, as are his back and his car.

[Sam Spoons]

Couple of things to bear in mind regarding specific amp makes.

The TC range of bass amps used to use a form of baked-in compression to achieve their supposed wattage ratings (have a search for TC amps on TalkBass if you want to read the whole hoo-ha). IMO if it sounds good then I don't mind, but not everyone will want or be expecting compression as your turn up the volume - especially not from a class D amp.

That's interesting, I have heard a couple of TC Bass combos, one sounded great the other pretty poor, in that second case I don't think the player had much idea.

The class D Ampeg amps have had a reputation for unreliability especially when being run into speakers which approach the recommended minimum impedance. Also in the UK getting them fixed has proved to be difficult and expensive. Personally I'd only buy an Ampeg rig if I was looking for that over-driven valve SVT into a "fridge" sound, and then I'd buy an SVT and fridge (IME none of the other Ampeg rigs have the same sound).

Likewise interesting, and getting any of these Class D amps fixed is going to be a problem (or expensive) I suspect.

As Murray B says Mark Bass are fantastic, Thomann do a couple in the sub £500 price bracket and they also do an EBS which I haven't heard but have read good things about. I have a little old 60 watt 1x10 Warwick bass combo which sounds good and has been reliable* (apart from when I lent it to a keyboard player who managed to blow it up) but it's not loud enough for a loud stage. Thomann have a 15W 1x15 version that might be big enough and is only £250

* Apart from once when I lent it to a keyboard player who managed to blow it up, it's mosfet's in the power amp so was an easy and cheap fix.

[dpete]

It's the head /cab (or combo) details that matter. A lot of the power info is for a four ohm speaker setup. I use a class D amp rated at 500 watts, into a 200 watt 8 ohm cabinet for the kinds of jobs you described (mine are R&B/R&R, and the band knows how to balance levels). I've also used 200 watt heads for years and was comfortable, but the details are in the speakers. Bottom line is for bass you have to move air. In the US, at the mid-price range I'd look at fender rumble or Ampeg rocket series. I have not played the new Peavy stuff, but there old amps were always serviceable. Traynor out of Canada also makes good stuff, that I liked. Up the price range, and it becomes more about your feature set. Pedal board compressors are fine. I want good clean power.

[ef37a]

Thank you all so far. I have emailed son to press the guy for a budget.

I think some of the suggestions assume a grander, bigger band than I suspect them to be at the moment.

Sam Spoons, if you still have that MOSFET power amp, check the type numbers on the output devices and get a pair in. MOSFET power amps were a bit of a design 'blip' and the transistors could get very rare in a few years time?

I have a Maplin 150W (not) module I built 20+ years ago, still works. Must follow my own advice!

Dave.

[resistorman]

My favorite great sounding workhorse rig for years was a dual 10" neodymium (beautiful sound and lightweight) Carvin cab with a TC electronic 400 watt mini amp with toneprint. Both are discontinued (Carvin is out of business) but I see the TCs have other amps like the BQ500 and BH250 which are very reasonably priced. I like the dual 10" design for enough lows and good definition for higher notes quite a bit, but TC also has a dual 8" cab I'd be interested to hear.

[Sam Spoons]

The bass player I gig with these days has an Ashdown Superfly amp (he has two actually) and the matching 4 x 8" cab. It has two 250 watt (presumably) Class D power amps and sounds great very loud and punchy. But both seem to be playing up at the moment, we got through Saturday's gig on one 250 watt power stage as one amp appears to be dead and the other only working on one output Will get them here next week and see if it's something obvious before sending them in for repair (and not holding out much hope that they'll be repairable anyway).

[BigRedX]

Thank you all so far. I have emailed son to press the guy for a budget.

I think some of the suggestions assume a grander, bigger band than I suspect them to be at the moment.

IME there is no correlation between the "grandness" of a band and the quality of the equipment they are using. In the 80s when CBS Records were seriously considering signing the band I was playing bass with, for much of the time I had no bass amp at all and relied on whatever the other band(s) we were sharing the bill with had brought. For rehearsal purposes I used my 10W guitar combo (we practiced at very low volume). When I did finally get my own bass rig it was a generic 100W instrument amp which I got as a straight swap for a Shaftesbury resonator guitar and 2x12 and 1x18 cabs that a acquired for free, from ex-students who were moving away from Nottingham and didn't want the hassle of taking a big heavy speaker cab with them.

On the other hand, I bought the big expensive bass rig mentioned in my first post when I was playing in a band that did no more than 1 gig a month playing local pubs for fun.

[BigRedX]

BTW to the OP where is this band based? If they are in the UK there are all sorts of servicing problems with several well-known makes of bass equipment not made in the UK, with service agents changing, being expensive, taking far too long to fix stuff, and sometimes not successfully fixing them problem.

In this respect Ashdown usually have a very good reputation, but even they can get it wrong on occasion, and my personal horror story with one of their amps (Superfly) means I will never buy any of their equipment again, even though nearly everyone else praises their after-sales service.

[SecretSam]

If you can find a secondhand amp from the SWR Workingman series, they are good and stupidly cheap these days. Trace Eliot stuff can also be a bargain, but some models are a lot better than others.

YMMV, etc, but I have always found limiters better than compressors for bass. The limiter lets you play hard for saturated sound, and tames big transients, but leaves the dynamics under your control. Whenever I have played with a compressor, I end up with shredded fingers as I unconsciously try to restore the dynamics that used to be there.

[BigRedX]

The bass player I gig with these days has an Ashdown Superfly amp (he has two actually) and the matching 4 x 8" cab. It has two 250 watt (presumably) Class D power amps and sounds great very loud and punchy. But both seem to be playing up at the moment, we got through Saturday's gig on one 250 watt power stage as one amp appears to be dead and the other only working on one output Will get them here next week and see if it's something obvious before sending them in for repair (and not holding out much hope that they'll be repairable anyway).

You may have some joy with Ashdown depending on how they are feeling regarding the Superfly at the moment. When mine (owned from new) went wrong, first with the characteristic high pitched whine on the outputs and then problems with getting it switch on (about 1 in 10 attempts would result in it powering up), Ashdown were very less than interested, saying that it probably wasn't fixable and then wanting to charge me a lot of money to just to look at it, despite the fact that both problems were common faults with the amp. In the end after the easy remedy (removing the amp from its casing that was casing it to overheat) didn't work on mine I sold it for a few pounds for spares on eBay. However I know someone else (from the Basschat forums) who got their second hand Superfly with the same problems fixed by Ashdown for free...

[ef37a]

BigRedx*
Maybe "grand" was the wrong word I was groping for? They are a group of good musicians son says who have got together to play some songs written by the singer.

Now, he DOES have grand plans! His ambition is to play the Magic Mirrors venue in Le Havre (if anyone has done that, details please) which is a huge place. But, son tells them that they are nowhere near ready yet so the bass player need a rig to 'tide him over' for lesser venues as they gain experience.
Son tells me they don't even have a vocal PA as yet! Although he says the singer assures him "Eet is all in zee hands")

Reliability and servicing: This is a monster problem in UK. The thread I started about the Blackstar lightweight amplifiers has attracted a lot of comment in another forum saying "where TF do we get a SMPSU serviced out of warranty?"
I can only hope Blackstar are aware of this concern and have made their own plans. Generally however, getting SMT technology repaired in UK is a bloody nightmare, mainly because people want cheap kit and don't want to pay to have it repaired.

*my dad used to put that in his Morris Oxford!

Dave.

[James Perrett]

Son tells me they don't even have a vocal PA as yet! Although he says the singer assures him "Eet is all in zee hands")

Chances are they won't need one. If they rehearse at a rehearsal studio and play established music venues a PA will usually be provided. They can hire one for the odd occasions when they are playing a venue without a PA.

Reliability and servicing: This is a monster problem in UK. The thread I started about the Blackstar lightweight amplifiers has attracted a lot of comment in another forum saying "where TF do we get a SMPSU serviced out of warranty?"
I can only hope Blackstar are aware of this concern and have made their own plans.

Hopefully the SMPSU is well designed and reliable. Also it is hopefully a separate module which can be supplied as a spare part. I've just fixed a couple of SMPSUs with simple faults and I'm beginning to realise that they aren't as complicated as they may first appear (or at least the ones that I fixed weren't).

[BigRedX]

BigRedx*
Maybe "grand" was the wrong word I was groping for? They are a group of good musicians son says who have got together to play some songs written by the singer.

Now, he DOES have grand plans! His ambition is to play the Magic Mirrors venue in Le Havre (if anyone has done that, details please) which is a huge place. But, son tells them that they are nowhere near ready yet so the bass player need a rig to 'tide him over' for lesser venues as they gain experience.
Son tells me they don't even have a vocal PA as yet! Although he says the singer assures him "Eet is all in zee hands")

Reliability and servicing: This is a monster problem in UK. The thread I started about the Blackstar lightweight amplifiers has attracted a lot of comment in another forum saying "where TF do we get a SMPSU serviced out of warranty?"
I can only hope Blackstar are aware of this concern and have made their own plans. Generally however, getting SMT technology repaired in UK is a bloody nightmare, mainly because people want cheap kit and don't want to pay to have it repaired.

*my dad used to put that in his Morris Oxford!

Dave.

I don't know what the originals scene is like in France, but here in the UK if you are playing rock/pop music that you have written yourself there is absolutely no reason to own any kind of PA unless you need one for your personal rehearsal space, or you regularly gig in locations that don't make a habit of putting on live music. Certainly in the last 25 years of gigging (750+ gigs) I can think of about 6 occasions where there has not been either an in-house PA at the venue, or one has been hired by the promotor of the gig.

Getting back to the original question, if the band are using a conventional rehearsal room, there is normally backline supplied in the hire price (or the option to hire something to use at a small additional cost) so maybe this would be an opportunity for him to be able to try out some bass rigs for himself, instead of a bunch of people in completely different countries trying to second-guess what he needs.

[ef37a]

That's the problem Red, I don't think he knows what he needs!
They are actually rehearsing in a music school and have the pick of several amplifiers. My son, lead guitar, is running through a 100W Orange stack "Best amp I have ever used dad!" he tells me.

Yes, I know, it's all a bit 'third hand and tricky' but when 'they' ask, what can yer do?!!

Dave.