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Post by jazznoise on May 15, 2021 13:17:53 GMT -6
I imagine damage from capsule bias sucking a diaphragm down long before I imagine tube damage from B+ differences, assuming filaments are the same voltage rating. Filaments are pretty durable too, ever try to kill one on a tube tester? I've pushed weak 12AX7's up above 30V for several minutes before they popped. In fact, filament 'rejuvenation' is pushing a filament higher than normal, to cook off some garbage and bring some more active elements to the surface, within reason. This is my fear. The output seems fine but the tone does seem to have changed and I'm worried the capsules may have been damaged if exposed to a very voltage. I can easily swap the tubes but I would accept if the gain seems normal that they still work. There's no weird noises like from diapraghm humidity, but I do feel the high frequency response has changed. Likewise the polar patterns seem to work fine. My feeling is the capsules of either are not dead, and the tubes are probably fine as the time was so short. My worry is there was some damage, but I've no real way to test it. The pinouts for both supplies are wildly different but the B+ rails are similar.
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Post by jazznoise on May 15, 2021 5:09:43 GMT -6
Howdy, hope Yr all keeping well.
So I'm back to recording here for the first time in a while. Was doing drums with a band and was distracted talking while mixing up the kit. I had a modded Apex 460 mic on one side and the Wa47 on the other and unfortunately I'd mixed up the PSU's. Whoops!
Both mics seem to be working but I feel the Wa47 is darker now. Have I damaged the tubes in these by driving the heaters too hot? Have I just gotten paranoid? Any advice would be appreciated!
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Post by jazznoise on Aug 4, 2019 6:39:52 GMT -6
Much prefer to have a closer mono room and then an AB ribbon or omni pair back for drum rooms. M/S can be cool, but I always find myself having to mess with it afterwards to be happy with it. Monitoring the side mic accurately is just sort of a pain. I can mono both stereo mics and hear them clearly while recording and make decisions a lot faster that way.
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Post by jazznoise on Aug 4, 2019 6:35:13 GMT -6
A ribbon close up on the neck will do a good job, point the null at the singer. Can glance it towards the bridge if you want more pick attack. You can also get an omni mic in super close and then your placement isn't so built around avoiding the soundhole, but that's not great if they're singing at the same time and you want the bleed kept down. An ev635a works well for that.
Tbh the real thing for keeping acoustic guitar dry is just avoiding making it stereo. Nothing too mad to it.
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Post by jazznoise on Apr 18, 2019 9:55:12 GMT -6
The issue for those drum vsts is that the samples are already pre-processed. That's a compressed, EQ'd snare you're EQ'ing and compressing. And it's been overcooked for your taste would be my own interpretation. If we're looking at it from a mixing perspective, then you're trying to manhandle a recording that you don't like - so there's no right answers. A lot of dudes here would probably just add a sample of a snare they do like.
In terms of problem solving: you could use a fast attack compressor or a transient designer, but I'd just drop the velocity values on the snare itself and maybe consider a different snare choice altogether - it's a really short decay. You would probably like it tuned lower or maybe with the snare wires looser.
Parallel compression will not help tame the transient - anything but, actually and a fast attack one will just bring up the body and leave the transient untouched.
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Post by jazznoise on Apr 3, 2019 18:02:25 GMT -6
Trigger samples off the close mics and then largely use the room and overheads for the acoustic sounds.
Even then, a lot of work to get those analogue drum sounds a lá NIN or whomever they're referencing.
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Post by jazznoise on Jan 17, 2019 5:57:25 GMT -6
I am a 4x12 cab guy. Best of the 10 and 15. I appreciate and respect that. My own findings have been that a 4x10 and 1 or 2 15s give everything in the bass tone you'd ever need and I haven't had much success with a 4x12 for bass ( I Have a Marshall Bass 4x12 JCM800 1960a) But what do you use? We use a 4x10 for bass, but the other guitarist and I both run 2x12's. 4x12's can be great on bass, but I think the tonal overlap is a problem for a lot of 4 piece bands. For recording, what they need essentially is something voiced very differently to the guitar cabs. Recently fixed a Vox AC4TV for a friend of mine recently and we stuck bass through it for a giggle and it sounded great! In a band with a lot of clean guitar, I'd be tempted to use one!
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 27, 2018 5:52:26 GMT -6
Bonnie Prince Billy/Will Oldham is how I got into Angel Olsen too, got her first LP, still need to pick up the more recent one. My fave BPB LP is 'Wolfroy Goes To Town'. Angel Olson is the bee's knees. Only recently got "Burn Your Fire For No Witness" after the singer in my band raving about it for so long. Something almost pagan feeling about the whole thing. Unfucktheworld into Forgiven/Forgotten is a hell of a way to open an album.
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 25, 2018 19:45:47 GMT -6
Bonnie Prince Billy and his many pseudonyms are probably the most evocative stuff I can think of that relates to this.
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 5, 2018 6:57:57 GMT -6
1. It's just an observation. Most I've worked with ask for some kind of reverb on their headphone return. I've also noticed that most sing more evenly with some compression in addition to the reverb too. They instinctively harmonize with their own voice if they can hear the reverb too. It's a trick for a better vocal at the mic. As well all know, the source is where it's crucial to get the best performance. I don't understand what you mean by "2 reverbs merge" because the reverb on the headphone return isn't the one I might use in the mix, it's only on the headphone feed. I track the vocal itself dry, it's just what they hear that has effect on it. Another trick is to track the warmups and play them back with a little verb during the real tracking so the singer can harmonize with those. It makes them more even sounding and strangely enough it seems to calm them if they are jittery. Maybe it's like singing with a group and they don't feel so singled out? Yes but what is in the mix will also have a reverb on it, surely? In both of those situations, the room reflections will merge unless there's an extremely long pre-delay, that's just a phenomenon of perception. I generally find singers just sing, and that unless it's a specific thing for a type of performance like wanting to do a whispery vocal into distortion or something similar, the effects usually aren't on their mind. They're just worried about performance. Fair enough on the compression, I've never had any luck with it outside of some peak limiting. It seems like for newbie singers they would find it difficult and struggle to articulate the problem, and my worry would be that they'd blame themselves. 2. Because I don't know what the mix will be like half the time, and it's best if the vocal is dry enough to be effected to how the mix turns out. I USED to record in spaces, but more often than not, it's either overdone or underdone or the tone doesn't work as the band changes it's mind and by that time it's impossible to change the tones in the mix (and they certainly don't want to pay to do it all over). It's the same as recording a fender twin and then the guitarist wants the mix to sound more like a mesa rectifier during the mix.. Which is why I always DI guitars and bass now, so I can change anything and everything later. It's all about the result and rarely do the bands/artists care about how we got there, they just want it to be bigger and better than any effort they put it. I've often heard mixes where everthing is super dense and lush and the vocal sounds like it was recorded in a shower and sounds nothing like the rest of the mix. To me it sounds like the effect was a poor choice but was baked into the track and the engineer had no choice. That's not me. I've been there and it sucks and I'm not being stung by that again. I'm leaving options open until the mix. Maybe it's just the clients I have, I never have artists do a total 180 on me out of nowhere and we tend to have a talk about it if what they're asking for makes the work we've done contradictory. If someone wants a clean guitar, and then later wants it to be a distorted guitar, that's not the engineer's fault. There's a healthy amount of pressure to be had in not leaving all options indefinitely open. I usually meet bands prior to talk through what their intentions are and to get them thinking about it. It seems like you had a very bad experience. Maybe I'm just lucky! 3. I never said tuning issues. Giving them a solid vocal with some effect allows them to hear themselves no matter how dynamic the other instruments are. Lots of vocalists complain that they can't hear themselves during loud passages, so the compression helps without them turning their headphones up. Headphones up ruins their ears during the sessions and they lose their tonal perception and it makes things much worse, as well as makes more headphone bleed. A nice even compression allows a lower headphone level for the same clarity, and thus less ear fatigue and longer sessions before tiring. Mind you, these are tricks I've worked out over the years to get better performances. These aren't just ravings, these are developed techniques that seem to work much more often than they don't, and such, I don't really care what others have done, nor do I care what others think about it. It works, if you have an open mind. Ah well, I go the other way and limit the track going to their headphone feed! Scoop out a bit of midrange too sometimes if I feel the snare and the guitars are walking on their singing style a bit. Well if it's not pitching, I'm not sure what you're referring to in terms of poor performances. I agree on headphones, if someone's going to be at it for a while I think they're just too tiring and uncomfortable even in the best case scenario. Scratch-pad versions of vocals even just done with a 58 and then tracking them "properly" after could be a solution there. Again, I only use headphones when we don't have any alternatives to doing so. 4. Well, with a thread full of folks telling us that "this is how vocals should sound" (my paraphrase), I can at least inject my opinion that I don't like that old style vocal sound, and a thread full of folks dismissing my thoughts as wrong for offering a differing opinion is the smug you truly seek. I mean, you did write a lengthy reply to essentially tell me I'm wrong for doing things my way.. But hey, critique away because I have good reasons for why I do things this way and I'm completely open to discussing them. Well I don't think there's any consensus on "should" here, I just think that by dating them you're casting a pejorative view that doesn't need to be had. I didn't write a lengthy reply to tell you that you "do it wrong". I was asking some questions and highlighting what I'd consider contradictions. The make-it-inhumanly-dry-and-then-add-space-after thing in particular does not make sense to me, because it's not a binary situation. I'm also not a big fan of most artificial reverbs, though. All in all, I don't really care what others do, I only care that they feel the need to attack my way of doing work, which comes from decades of developing a workflow that is faster and easier for all involved at my studio and I'm not ashamed in the least. I've spent my years feeling inadequate and questioning everything based on internet opinions and I'm done with all that now. I feel that folks who've taken their time to reply to this thread have an overwhelming nostalgia for older sounds/tones, which I don't share. Look, you're clearly on the defensive. I'm not attacking your workflow, I'm asking questions to it and you seem to think that discredits your decision making somehow. We all need to be questioning ourselves to some extent is the unfortunate reality. I've also been doing this for a long time (as have many here) and my methods aren't perfect, but from my education and my own years of experience I've tried the standard methods and found many of them lacking and I'm presenting my own problems with those bits that overlap with your workflow. If you didn't want to hear the opinions of others on these things, then I don't think an internet forum was the best place to go for this discussion. I also think it's a shame you're not addressing the deeper questions of what "Old" means. Post-modernising an audio debate might seem pretentious, but there's fruit to be had from it. "Punchy modern mixes" also had a definition in the 90's, and the 00's and they're all very different. Remember, mixing isn't about just putting together the sum of the tracks and calling it a day. We're selling the illusion of being bigger than life. We need to be agile with the mix and avoid rigidly sticking to plans because that's how we end up with mundane results. We need to twist knobs and add effects and produce greatness from average input, and after all that's what the bands pay us to do. The bands and artists can get mundane results from their own garage and some mics and a 2i2 if they wanted. I'd rather try and make them rise above "Average Input" and have a workflow that feels seamless and their art just begins to "exist" in front of them. The guys at home already play cock-and-ball torture with the 2i2, and a pair of headphones in a dead vocal booth experience. Offering the premium version where it's a really big 2i2 and really big headphones doesn't seem like an upgrade at all to me if I'm to be honest. To be even more honest,the phrase "Average Input" gals me. Who are we to say? Where's our big amazing bands? Why is molesting their performance always an improvement? They pay us to facilitate the making of their music, whatever that is, and my key point within all that is that they should feel empowered during that process. Sometimes you're required to be creative, but the artist is the artist.
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 4, 2018 6:59:34 GMT -6
Well say that if you want, but it's the phasey comb filtering of the early reflections that I always hear in stuff done with monitors in a room. Singers always want loud, and they always want extra reverb so they can harmonize with themselves because they always practice in the shower or other live places because it makes them sound better. That's why they have a hard time with headphones, because they've spent all their time practicing in places that flatter their voice.. And then in the studio they hear what they actually sound like, and it's a tough lesson. I typically send them a hard compressed reverb'd version of their voice to emulate their shower practice environment and it works pretty well. Bleed from room monitoring is always out of phase and out of polarity to some degree, so when you start adding compression you get comb filtering and nasal sounding reflections. I think older generations were OK with the muddy room sounding stuff, as I've seen many invoke fond memories of old crooners in this thread (and honestly the recordings sound bland and, well, old), but it just doesn't work for modern works that demand clarity and perfection. Svart, I get that we live in pretty much opposite land of recording philosophy but there's a few key points I disagree with in what you're saying. 1) I don't believe singers always want "extra" reverb, especially in the heavier music we work on. Getting the driest vocal possible to then add a lot of additional reverb to seems me seems counter-intuitive. It doesn't matter nearly as much as if the vocal was left dry, since the 2 reverbs will merge. 2) You point out that artists practice in places that flatter their voices, but according to you they don't record in them and it's a hard lesson that they have to take on. Why not? Why would the space you choose for their vocal take not be an acoustically flattering environment? Taking into consideration that you also commented on poor sounding reflections that mean the artist has to use headphones - it sounds like the space in question is the problem. Now there's always tweaking to be had, and I typically insert a limiter on the "Band" track as the singer sings and I'll probably change the loudness of some elements for the singers comfort but I should be able to get it sounding good. I'd really consider this - if they sound better in their bathroom, why not use that? I've a big bathroom on the 2nd floor of my house, it's an old Victorian place, and I often end up dragging my interface and my preamps up the stairs to have a go in there. If they want to sing through monitors, it's downstairs and if we go upstairs it has to be headphones unfortunately. I'm no expert on studios where you are, but the big issue in my local area is everyone has these shitty dead booths and rooms for vocals where they go in and sing through headphones and the performances often sound really poor, the sonics aside. Live many of these vocalists are much more in control, and sound better - I consider that a failure of the studio engineer, and not the performer. Some of my workflow is undoubtedly a reaction to that, but I don't see what the alternative is. You need good spaces to work. 3) Monitoring: Sending someone a compressed, reverb'd version of their singing as the headphone mix and complaining they've tuning issues seems problematic to me. There's a number of prominent engineers who state that compressing the vocal on the headphone feed will cause tuning issues, especially for inexperienced vocalists, because they start trying to push against the threshold of the compressor. Sincerely, I think you're giving them a hard time with this approach. Why don't you give them a facsimile of what they're used to? Giving them a room mic which will provide the early reflections they're used to is a much more effective approach, and again will take an artificial reverb much more easily. Else just take the headphones off if all they're doing is eating a close mic. Again the phase cancellation trick to cancel the bleed will also make light work of this. Singing is hard, and I think making it a comfortable experience so you can explore ideas productively and not lose those first takes on setup is super important. I'm not meaning to come down on you, this is a philosophy I see a lot, but I think it makes the singer work harder in recording and the engineer work harder in post when ideally you're both working hard on Day 1 and everything after that is easy. 4) Lastly, I don't think it's crooner nostalgia and I think separating recordings by time like that is dismissive, ahistorical and a bit smug seeming. Musical trends moving linearly are an illusion, a totally ahistorical narrative. The biggest vocal effects in use now are the same ones we had in the 50's. It's rare you get something breaking the mold, but here's an interesting example: Bowie's Heroes is a series of room mics that get turned on as he gets louder. Totally unique sounding, has nothing to do with his contemporaries or anything outside of the classical tradition. Was he being modern, or not? If he wasn't being modern, then how can it sound 70's to us now? Compare that to the current craze of gated verbs in pop, and the tedious hardon for distorted slapback in "Indie Rawk" and it's deeply nostalgic in nature. Are they being modern, or not? Should that answer be reflected in my production decisions? In my view it's just done because artists are insecure and pressure themselves into doing what they think others will like. Culture is mercurial, trying to treat it objectively makes life harder than it needs to be. Why don't we do: whatever we want? We can dictate what's modern. As for the superiority of modern fidelity: Look at how modern Trap artists record, like Future: some meh LDC on a tour bus with a 2i2 and a single version of the beat. Plenty of compression there, is definitely the most popular style of music of the last 5 yeas. You mightn't like the music, but it's as contemporary a production style as you can get.
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 3, 2018 4:01:45 GMT -6
I just recommend avoiding headphones when possible. Sometimes you can't, such as vocalists for loud bands who sing quietly so then my advice is to have a room mic for the singers headphone feed. Room mis can also be great for using for vocal FX inserts. Putting a modulated echo on the room and leaving the close one dry gives a lot of. Depth.
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Post by jazznoise on Nov 23, 2018 20:28:34 GMT -6
48/24. Happy without it sounds and couldn't really afford. To be losing adat inputs to 88/96 rates. Re:the phase distortion of upper frequencies. Try putting some all pass filters above 10Khz. The mechanics of how the inner ear relates information to the brain implies that you shouldn't hear a difference,but I cant say I've tried it. So..., LOW PASS FILTERS SET TO 10K? That might end up sounding dull, lifeless or muddy. Even if most folks over 30 can't hear above 12K, you're still cutting out a whole lot of information. I routinely slope things down from 16K but only because that's all people really get with an MP3 or back in the day a cassette tape. And that's the sound most folks prefer anyhow. Bonus: Limiting bandwidth from 35.5hz to 16.1Khz gives you more headroom and the possibility for loudness. A heck of a lot of real estate gets chewed up from 20-35.5hz and from 16-20Khz ALL PASS. Not LOW PASS. All Pass causes group delay, changing the phase relationship across the frequency spectrum without causing any change in amplitude. Not what I was saying at all, just a simple way to independently verify if you're hearing tonal changes when the high frequencies have their phase shifted in relation to the low frequencies.
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Post by jazznoise on Nov 23, 2018 5:31:17 GMT -6
48/24. Happy without it sounds and couldn't really afford. To be losing adat inputs to 88/96 rates.
Re:the phase distortion of upper frequencies. Try putting some all pass filters above 10Khz. The mechanics of how the inner ear relates information to the brain implies that you shouldn't hear a difference,but I cant say I've tried it.
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Post by jazznoise on Nov 1, 2018 11:18:14 GMT -6
Subsequent taming thereof.
I've not seen any tutorials or heard anyone speak of this before if I recall, but I routinely use Waves Q10 or other high Q capable EQ to zoom in on these "ringing frequencies" to make electric guitar sounds more palatable. I hear them very very readily when I track and mix. They sort of drive me batty despite having fairly worn ears(at least the left one).
It seems very common. Though I am sure the higher the quality guitar/pickup/amp, the less you run into this. The "Soothe" plugin really seems like it would be perfect.
Basically most guitars almost sound like someone is whistling it is so loud and it really masks the tone of the guitar. Its usually around 1.8 to 2.2khz in there.
You can obviously go way overboard chasing every one of these down and subtracting too much. The harmonics are good, just not the "Ted Bundy's" or "Dahmers"
Anyhow. Just curious what you guys think.
So many folks jumping on the loads of plugins bandwagon.. Move the mic back a little bit. You can find a distance that will null some of those peaks if you move the mic around some. Put your amp's EQ flat and then adjust the mic, then add the amp's EQ back to dial it in. Also, lots of folks just cut around 4K and 2.2K on most guitars and call it good. You also didn't say what amp or speaker either. Some amps are much, much worse about this than others. VOX is the WORST for this especially if it has certain speakers. +1000 placement issues are a big one. Another is Pre-eq to drive stages and then pickups. My jazzmaster is bad for it. Pickup height can also effect it. Vox amps are bad for the 3k stuff too. Real bad.
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Post by jazznoise on Oct 24, 2018 17:33:47 GMT -6
I think the E906 is the one to get and not the 609, it's a fizzy ol' yoke. 609's are fine for live work, saves having extra stands on stage. This. I use e906s all the time. Live and recording. I would not use a 609 unless someone is on a budget and need one for a live show. It's definitely the better of the 2. E609's remind me of fizzy metal guitar tones. Like a Jackson into a Line6 with a Metalzone or something. If you want to try a different dynamic from the usual stock but not outrageously pricey I'd suggest a Beyer M201 or M88, or some older mics like an EV635a or an AKG D130.
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Post by jazznoise on Oct 24, 2018 4:14:15 GMT -6
I think the E906 is the one to get and not the 609, it's a fizzy ol' yoke. 609's are fine for live work, saves having extra stands on stage.
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Post by jazznoise on Oct 23, 2018 3:25:11 GMT -6
There's a good book on this specific issue called How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony And Why You Should Care. From my understanding, fretless stringed players tend to edge towards Just intervals on chords, specifically the 3rds. However 1st Violin when taking the melody might go for something deliberately sharper like a Pythagorean type tuning to stand out more.
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Post by jazznoise on Oct 23, 2018 3:13:27 GMT -6
It's still bizarre now to watch anything about Dave Mustaine and see how raw and hurt he still fundamentally is over how things went down in Metallica. He's very literally like a man who never got over a messy divorce. The longer I play in and deal with musical groups the more I see how intimate it is, and that particular movie is the epitome of a toxic family dynamic. Even down to Kirk's "Mommy and Daddy stop fighting!" attitude.
The funniest thing in the whole movie is that therapist though. Ironically the most detached from reality of any of them.
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Post by jazznoise on Oct 17, 2018 19:21:13 GMT -6
To be honest if I just wanted low end I'd use the DI, it's all there. The idea with the drivers is get the texture and interest. Same for gigging tbh, let the subs do the low end - the amp should just sound cool.
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Post by jazznoise on Sept 26, 2018 5:15:20 GMT -6
Yeah tbh, maybe I'm just way more small-fry than the other gigging musicians here, but in most venues in the system config is going to be set and it probably sucks and getting into it will just make the evening more difficult. You'd need to be a band with a crew who told them in advance and could work extremely fast and had prepared the setup as best as possible, like christopher described. Showing up, as the headline band, with your own mics and a few decent speakers and saying "hey we like to use our own monitors and mics if that's cool? We like to stick with the same onstage setup for comfort. The rest of bands on the night can use them too of course" would be the most realistic situation to me and accomplish 75% of what you want. Just bypass the kick-mic for the 10 minutes thing and insist, politely, on going over onstage sound first before doing front of house. As for communicating with the venue - how many venues even read riders anyway? it usually gets sent to someone who's meant to pass it on to whoever is working that night who either receives it an hour before the show or simply doesn't get it.
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Post by jazznoise on Sept 25, 2018 16:00:36 GMT -6
I'd really be surprised by that. I recorded a thrasy hardcore band before and the bass player had one of those old Peavy cabs with like 2 15" drivers a 10" and a little horn and I found I had to use a pretty bright mic to get anything good out of the 15 inch. Are there 18" cones out there with good mid-high response?
I like our 4x10,its a little peaky but the low end is even and its quite versatile.
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Post by jazznoise on Sept 24, 2018 11:10:41 GMT -6
Your best bet is just to buy some decent powered wedges. Half the problems are usually down to onstage wedges being blown or not having the power to get the volume up to what you need cleanly.
That said certain acoustic instruments on stage - fiddles, flute - tend to be a nightmare with drummers or electric guitar players nearby.
Monitors is a hard job. Sound check usually leans far too much the other way when it's easier fix FOH midshow than it is the onstage sound
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Post by jazznoise on Sept 13, 2018 5:11:09 GMT -6
The update was posted on his Facebook page shortly afterwards "well here's the upshot. The bias pot was missing some solder. Once fixed and aligned correctly I got the typical +27dBu and +23 dBm max levels." Hah. So there you have it. Should have read the manual before he posted!
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Post by jazznoise on Sept 9, 2018 14:30:50 GMT -6
Noooo someone can see what I'm about to post publicly anyway.
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