After reading this and the old forum for a few years and never posting, I have a question that I would like some help with. This may get a bit long but I will try to be as to the point as possible.
Last week i did a show with a well known swedish guitar player, accompanied by an equally well known double bass player. My client was a company that I've been working for a bit lately and the show was in a sort of upscale restaurant/bar that is a long time client of theirs. The gear was the house rig that my client has installed and maintains, JBL speakers and an LS9 positioned so that it can be operated by the pianists that usually play there.
As they open for lunch at 11 and don't close until 3 am there wouldn't be a soundcheck. No problem i thought, as there would only be two DIs and a vocal mic. Oh, how wrong I was. I got there as early as I could in the morning and put up a riser, plugged the two DI's into the house LS9, tested that I had signal by putting a finger on the tip of the jack cables, tested the monitors for feedback with the vocal mic, etc, and left.
When it's show time around 10 PM the artist get escorted on to the tiny stage by security, plug in and... no signal on either of the DI's. Time for troubleshooting in front of a packed venue that just found out who tonights secret guest were. I get signal from the double bass by going straight from the bass pick up into the DI, bypassing the Line 6 pedal board that he was using and it sounds fine. I then notice that I am getting signal from the acoustic, it's just very very weak. I turn the gain up and get a tinny sounding, no low end guitar sound. I check the EQ in the ls9 and it's flat, only a hi-pass at 80 Hz or so. Since there was no time for troubleshooting to begin with, they start playing.
As they play, the problem with the guitar gets worse, it starts to distort and drop in level. My first thought is that the battery in the guitar is dead and ask the player, who responds that it sounded fine through his fender twin while rehearsing before leaving home and that he changed the battery that same day. My next thought is that the impedance of the passive DI (an LA audio DIX) was too low for the pick up in the guitar so I switch to a spare channel on the four channel behringer active DI that sits in the rack with the LS9 and it sounds even worse, like before but with noise added. This was through a different channel on the desk. I switch back and they finish the show (they were only supposed to play four or so songs anyway).
My client is not too happy with what happened, and so now I have to try to sort of diagnose the problem and give them a definite answer as to what went wrong.
The guitar player claims that the guitar still sounds fine through his fender twin, no change of battery. I will test the passive DI through a different LS9 and with a different guitar to see if the same thing happens but do any of you have any other ideas? Is it likely that it was an impedance related problem? I think I understand the theoretical possibility, but have never had that happen before. Then again, I did test the guitar with the active behringer DI through a different channel and the sound was the same.
Last week i did a show with a well known swedish guitar player, accompanied by an equally well known double bass player. My client was a company that I've been working for a bit lately and the show was in a sort of upscale restaurant/bar that is a long time client of theirs. The gear was the house rig that my client has installed and maintains, JBL speakers and an LS9 positioned so that it can be operated by the pianists that usually play there.
As they open for lunch at 11 and don't close until 3 am there wouldn't be a soundcheck. No problem i thought, as there would only be two DIs and a vocal mic. Oh, how wrong I was. I got there as early as I could in the morning and put up a riser, plugged the two DI's into the house LS9, tested that I had signal by putting a finger on the tip of the jack cables, tested the monitors for feedback with the vocal mic, etc, and left.
When it's show time around 10 PM the artist get escorted on to the tiny stage by security, plug in and... no signal on either of the DI's. Time for troubleshooting in front of a packed venue that just found out who tonights secret guest were. I get signal from the double bass by going straight from the bass pick up into the DI, bypassing the Line 6 pedal board that he was using and it sounds fine. I then notice that I am getting signal from the acoustic, it's just very very weak. I turn the gain up and get a tinny sounding, no low end guitar sound. I check the EQ in the ls9 and it's flat, only a hi-pass at 80 Hz or so. Since there was no time for troubleshooting to begin with, they start playing.
As they play, the problem with the guitar gets worse, it starts to distort and drop in level. My first thought is that the battery in the guitar is dead and ask the player, who responds that it sounded fine through his fender twin while rehearsing before leaving home and that he changed the battery that same day. My next thought is that the impedance of the passive DI (an LA audio DIX) was too low for the pick up in the guitar so I switch to a spare channel on the four channel behringer active DI that sits in the rack with the LS9 and it sounds even worse, like before but with noise added. This was through a different channel on the desk. I switch back and they finish the show (they were only supposed to play four or so songs anyway).
My client is not too happy with what happened, and so now I have to try to sort of diagnose the problem and give them a definite answer as to what went wrong.
The guitar player claims that the guitar still sounds fine through his fender twin, no change of battery. I will test the passive DI through a different LS9 and with a different guitar to see if the same thing happens but do any of you have any other ideas? Is it likely that it was an impedance related problem? I think I understand the theoretical possibility, but have never had that happen before. Then again, I did test the guitar with the active behringer DI through a different channel and the sound was the same.
