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Jim Yates
Jul-04-2006, 10:57am
I played a band shell gig with a quartet (bass, mandolin/guitar, banjo/dobro/guitar and guitar/mouth harp/clawhammer banjo/mandolin) on Canada Day, July 1. We try to play using mics only, except for the bass. The sound man was not happy about this, and said that if we ever want him to do sound for us again, we'd have to use pick-ups. We seemed to be plagued with feed back and could not be heard when it was turned down enough to eliminate this. We all have pick-ups in our guitars, but don't like the sound. I seem to depend on playing the mic; close up for solos and farther back for rhythm.
We have never had this problem at bluegrass festivals or folk festivals, but it has come up at some other concerts. I don't want to have to depend on my own sound guy/girl everywhere I play, but I really don't want to abandon the mics. I feel like I've wasted my '62 D-21 when I play it through a pick-up. I can get as good a sound from a $500 guitar plugged in.
We have had other sound people tell us we should plug in. Is this a common problem?

jim simpson
Jul-04-2006, 11:59am
Blep,
I have only encountered this with sound people who were more oriented with rock bands. I played a pick up gig with a band where everyone but the banjo player and myself (mando) was using pickups. The sound guy had the guitars and bass louder than the banjo and mando. I guess when you are depending on someone else to do the sound, it's the luck of the draw. I understand why a lot of the pro bands do bring their own sound person. Not real practical for a local/regional band.
Jim

Jim Yates
Jul-04-2006, 12:18pm
Sorry that I concentrated on guitar and hardly mentioned mandolin in my first post. That's because I don't have a pick-up in my Eastman 605. My son has a pick-up in his mid-70s Ibanez mandolin, but didn't use it at this gig.

MartinD_GibsonA
Jul-04-2006, 1:30pm
First, I'd say the sound guy either a) doesn't know what he's doing or b) doesn't have the PA gear to cover all possible scenarios. #Some mics and venues are more prone to feedback than others, but I can tell you at the few festivals our trio has ever played, we didn't plug in and feedback wasn't a problem. #We even took our own condenser mic once and the PA guy was happy to use it.

Second, this *may* -- and I emphasize the word -- be partly your fault. #Did you submit your PA requirements to the sound company or event promoter in advance? #If not, then perhaps that would explain why they weren't prepared to deal with your preferences. #In the future, make sure this is all spelled out ahead of time.

Finally, you might just be out of luck. #If the venue is providing the sound system and the engineer, you probably have little choice but to do it the way they want it done. #Your only other option would be to NOT play the date.

Don Smith

hotclub
Jul-04-2006, 2:14pm
I think the fact that you were playing in a band shell is at the root of your problem. Bandshells are designed to reflect sound; just the opposite of what you want if you're playing into a microphone.

TonyP
Jul-04-2006, 2:47pm
There are several points there Blep that are being lumped together because it's playing live, but are kinda separate in my mind.
#1 playing any kind of enclosed stage area is a nightmare, no matter what you do. You said a bandstand, and I picture a top, back and sides. This was made to do acoustic, no amplification, and this is a throw back to an older time and causes almost uncontrollable feedback with a mic, dynamic, pickup or whatever. There has been much made about how a dynamic is less prone to feedback. But lately with our band, the only 57's are the banjo player's, and in order to get his vocals and banjo loud enough to keep up with our condensers, he's the one feeding back, hard to believe I know. The way I deal with that kind of setup is get as far out on the front of the stage, get outta the hole. And since we use no floor monitors, there's usually that couple three feet of stage out of the enclosure that really helps. Any time you are in a semi enclosed space there is all kinds of resonance going on and that's causes all kinds of havoc when you start wanting to amplify sound.
The next one is to me, not only do pick ups not sound that good(to my ear), but there is the wiring to contend with and the problem of dynamics. Everything is the same volume all the time. With a mic you can regulate your volume by moving in and out of the field of the mic. Gotta do a volume pedal or rely on the soundman with a pickup. And since we don't want to split the take with a soundman, we do the sound ourselves. This means everybody in the band all have to know our part of how to do our own sound, . In the case of like what you did, we have our "frontend", mics, soundboard, processors(and laptop to analyze for feedback), headphone amp, all on stage with us, and just give the "house" a feed. All the soundman can do is regulate the overall volume, nothing else. So far this has made them totally happy as we are totally used to our sys. and can mix ourselves. He does nothing, and we ask him for nothing.
And yes, my buddy whom I've known since 7th grade, been a pro soundman forever, gets nervous about mics. He would like us to plug in, but when he saw we had it under control, we are now a new category for him. Sound aware musicians. And we are the only ones he knows/works with.
You gotta know what your shooting for, get the gear, and ALL learn it. Every piece of equipment I've gotten has upgraded our sound. It's all on two modified handtrucks that fit in the back of a Nissan PU. Can be setup and tweeked in about 45min now and we get raves on our sound everywhere we go. Your sound is just as important as everything else, musicians, instruments, material, and presentation. So, get it. learn it, use it. Of course just my 2c, YMMV

Ken Sager
Jul-04-2006, 3:40pm
It's very hard to get a good, even sound when some are plugged in and others play to a microphone.

When guitarists are used to playing through amps where they set their own stage levels they hate playing in front of a mic when their volume is dependent on distance from the mic, not a knob. It is as much what the band is willing to do as what a sound man is willing to do.

You mentioned it earlier in this thread, but it bears repeating: It blows me away that somebody will spend $4k on a terrific guitar and put a $300 pickup inside that makes it sound JUST like a $300 guitar.

I've vowed never to put a pickup in my mandolins. If it limits the places I play, it limits the places I play. I've never heard a mandolin pickup that sounded as good as a decent microphone.

It's all a juggle. Just smile and play like you're having fun. If the sound guy screws up, it's on him. Some environments are simply difficult. That's where the sound man earns his money. If the sound guy says "You all have to plug in" let him know you won't be using his services in the future.

Joy to all,
Ken

Jim Yates
Jul-04-2006, 6:21pm
Those who made assumtions about the bandshell are right. It was one of those parabollic things that are great acoustically, but make amplification difficult. Tony, I will take your advice about using the front part of the stage, since we have 2 more band shells this summer. Where do you put the main speakers? These seemed to be our problem, since we turned off the monitors completely and still had some feedback. I suggested moving them onto the grass, but was vetoed.
Don, I did give the sound guy a list of the instruments and let him know we used mics when I saw him earlier that week, but he said,"Aw, we'll figure it out when you get there. We even brought our own mics - Shure Betas.

TonyP
Jul-04-2006, 9:51pm
Blep, the further in front/further away,with the mains, the better. We use in ears/heaphone amps, and I'm tellin' ya, you get used to them and you'll never go with wedges again. I've never understood what the deal is with them and have never been able to hear them. I guess if I had an ear on my forehead it would work. And why does anybody want more SPL on stage? Don't make no sense. Good luck with dealing with soundmen, they are what has made me hate PA's since I took up acoustic music. But after seeing Hot Rise and seeing somebody doing something different than the "rock and roll" idea of PA, it sent me on the search, that lead me to where I am today.

MartinD_GibsonA
Jul-04-2006, 10:07pm
after seeing Hot Rise
They had their own sound man who was an equal voting partner in the band. #There's a good story about him here (http://drbanjo.com/instructional/01instr-bu-art2-04.html).

Don Smith

TonyP
Jul-04-2006, 11:44pm
Funny you should bring up Frank. A band I knew got the gig to open for Alison, whom Frank was working for in '94. They had no steady mando player and asked me to do the job. I was REALLY nervous of course. And we got there to the old Hanford Fox theater early to do our sound check and found AKUS doing their check so decided to come back later. We ate dinner and came back about 45min before the door opened only to find them still futzing. With about 20min AKUS finally left and we took the stage. I was the only one who had my own mic. The rest of the stuff was all 57's and 58's. When I showed Frank and monitor guy my mic, they both said "condenser....phantom power" and Frank assured me, a 57 would be ok. My heart sank. The guys looked at me like, whatsup? We did a short chorus and my break and I was standing on it, barely hear the mando. Frank said, ok, and we stopped. The guys all looked at me and I only shrugged, whatchagonna do? Frank came running back up and said "I figured out the phantom power, it was ganged. Lets try it." Swapped mics, repeated what we played and the mando was great. That's all we got, maybe 5 minutes total. Went back stage and when the show started, Frank mixed us and it was tremendous. They had these monitors that were as loud as any mains I'd ever heard, and for that one time, we could hear ourselves perfect. We sounded better than we did in practice and did great. So yeah, a good soundman it worth his weight in gold and it's horrible sad Frank is no longer with us.

We also had a great experience last year at our local festival. I just wish I knew who that was to plug him to everybody.

steve V. johnson
Jul-05-2006, 12:27am
I haven't read any but the original post, so if I duplicate stuff already here, or seem to step on any toes, I apologize in advance.

Clearly the guy doing your concert sound wasn't competent. I've done audio for 30+ years and if a guy who worked for me told a client that, he'd be back working at Wendy's.

Having said that, if you have pickups in your instruments that you don't like and trust, you should probably be working on that... I read all kinds of stuff here and elsewhere from folks who like and trust their pickups (tho I read a lot of stuff, too, from folks who -aren't- happy with 'em...), so I know it can be done. I have PUTW #27 pickups in a Santa Cruz guitar and a custom bouzouki, which I use with a Raven Labs PMB-II or Presonus Acousti-Q preamp and they sound just like my instruments. This is a rig I trust.

Granted, I don't use the pickups unless I have to and I prefer using mics (I'd just rather be without the wires), but I always have them, and I'm ready for any idiot mixer I run into. In fact, I carry my own mics, too... Call me paranoid... <GG> If I find that the sound person doesn't want to talk with me and doesn't seem steady with the gig, I just go with whatever they have onstage.

There's no perfect defense against inexperienced, ignorant or attitudinal sound folks, but I just figure that it's my job to deliver the best reproduction I can, if for no other reason, as self-defense.

It's tough, one can't really try out all the pickup systems out there to see what suits best, so we read all we can (like here) and talk to other players, all the research we can, and then pick something. If it doesn't sound right we have to eBay the stuff and try again, I guess. I've got a pal who's been thru four guitar pickups and we're still trying, but he plays in places where the part-timers who drive the PA's are not at all reliable, so he feels the need to get it right on his end.

You have my sympathies, and I hope your dummy mixer is an anomalous, one-time pain. Still, if you're not happy with what your pickups do, that's something that you probably ought to work on.

Best wishes,

stv

Bill Van Liere
Jul-05-2006, 2:47pm
Trying to tame a PA at a band shell can be a real monster at times. There is a neat little art fair around here that I stopped playing because of the shell. The best we could do is get the sound OK, but it still had annoying delays in sound between players on stage.
You will just have to write this one off as an learning experience Blep. Attempting to get decent sound in a situation like this can be a great learning experience. Since I was not there (I was near Sault Ste. Marie this Canada Day),I might not exactly understand the configuration, however, I would have: 1)tried to get very close together on stage to hear each other, 2) point the mic directly into the instrument (90 degrees to the top) to try to eliminate the sound created by the shell getting into the mic. If that does not work try something else.
Would I buy a pick up just to work with this sound guy again? NO

Jim Yates
Jul-07-2006, 11:23am
I walked out of the Port Hope Library last night and heard a bluegrass band playing in the bandshell across the road. They had a large 4x8 sheet of styrofoam standing behind them, fastened to a chair. I didn't hear any feedback problems. Anyone tried this?

TonyP
Jul-07-2006, 12:37pm
No, but I've thought about one of those like folding room dividers with the name of our band that would stand behind us. It would be easy to carry and my thought was it would kill all the resonance behind the big central mic, 4033, we use. If you just made it with "batting" material it would soak up all kinds of sound. I think that will be next on the list! thanks Blep!