Home, rehearsal room and live sound differences.

[jazzyvee]

When I do reggae gigs, I pretty much move the filters by small amounts on the gig to get the tone I want for different songs and/or just by altering my playing position between the neck and bridge. However when I'm doing other genre gigs where I do slapping, regular playing is less concerning at the moment, i'm not as successful in getting the tone I want to hear on stage as I do at home.  
 
Firstly the bass sounds completelydifferent live than at home or at rehearsal so whilst I get the sounds I want at home, when I get to a gig those settings materialise as being far too extreme for me on-stage so I have to close the filter off so much more on stage and use little or no Q or it sounds far to bright on stage.  
 
I was on a gig last night and during my slapping moments my basses, my on stage sound seemed to be lacking in the mid range, it had a huge punching bottom end crispy on top. When I came off stage two friends of mine a producer and bass player mentioned that the top end was not sounding as snappy as they normally hear on my gigs. Interestingly at that moment a stanley clarke track came out of the house music system and they both said, that's the sound you normally have on the top end
 
I mentioned it to the sound guy and he did something at the mixer and during the set and I adjusted my bass and my friends gave me the thumbs up when it sounded right. But at that point I had far too much top end coming out of my cab on stage.  
 
How do you guys balance the sound you work on at home or the rehearsal room and translate that to the stage so you get the sound you need. Is there any rule of thumb or is it just a simple matter of getting loads of stage time.

[dtothec]

Jazzy I think a lot has to do with the sound guy, the mix, venue walls, floor ceiling etc. vs at home where it's just your rig in a smaller enviorment. If you are going through the house system, you are at the mercy of the sound guy who probably has no idea what an Alembic can and should sound like, who is adjusting the sound the way he wants to hear it, which is like every other other bass. I use a wireless system, and one thing I do at sound checks is to walk around the venue while we're playing, and work with the sound guy to get his settings right to my ears, otherwise your sound can very easily get lost in the mix. The beauty of playing an Alembic is that the sound cuts through and is clear and clean vs the sometime muddy sound of other basses coming through the house system. I believe that this gives sound guys trouble, because they don't often get to hear bass in this manner.

[bigredbass]

I usually played clubs with only so-so reinforcement options.  Bass is incredibly sneaky, perverse, and maddening inasmuch as even the same room changes a lot night to night on a week-long gig.  A big reason I gave up playing out, I could never hear myself properly, yet I was roasting the band and the room.
 
It beat me.
 
Joey

[keith_h]

When I used to gig and my rig was providing the room sound I adjusted it to sound good in the audience. For a small place that meant I could usually get the sound I liked on stage. For larger rooms it usually meant what I heard onstage was less than ideal. When running through the PA I was able to dial in what I wanted on stage since my rig functioned mainly as a monitor. In any event it varied greatly on how much I had to change my settings from home due to all the different variables you run across in clubs.  
 
Keith

[gtrguy]

It's a pain. First get the right volume in he overall mix. Then I like a good stage sound between me and my amp. That helps me play better. Then I try to dial in a good out front sound.
 
Having a sound person around who plays bass is the ideal situation, but that is rare. Also, if you ask folks you know who are there, that can be dicey. You need people you trust. And - singers will often want you to be quieter than needed.
 
Than I try to get a good blend between the bass and the kick volume.  
 
Being out front with a long cord or a wireless is best to check during setup. Of course, the overall sound will change as people show up and then the band gets louder as the evening goes by.
 
At some point you just have to live with what you get and play as well as you can. Maybe during a break you can do more. However, vocals are the most important and you always need to support that.
 
I often gig with a Musicman Stingray, which usually gets a good low and mid tone, and then I flavor with the high EQ to come through more or less in the mix. With the Stingray (a great gigging bass) it is very easy to overdo it on the highs, so you have to be real careful how much you dial in.
 
Someone should invent a 'butt meter' that measures moving butts to see if the crowd is grooving!

[5a_quilt_top]

Too many variables to account for, but the room acoustics (including whether the stage is raised and hollow or you are playing directly on the floor) and the PA are both critical - especially if you have a sound person. To compound matters, an empty room will sound different than a half-full or full room. And it goes without saying that if you are outside - well, all bets are off.
 
Other than that, I believe that overall rig volume accentuates certain frequencies relative to the environment. For example, I can dial in a great slap tone that cuts through at low volume in my practice room, only to have it sound boomy and thin live when the volume is up a bit. When this happens, I find I need to dial out some lows and highs and boost the high mids (blasphamy!) a bit. The real trick with that is to do it without stomping on the guitar frequencies, because doing that will most certainly start a volume war.
 
And, it goes without saying that adding overdrive / distortion into the mix on both bass and guitar complicates things considerably.

[JuancarlinBass]

For a long time now, I have desisted on relying on my stage sound to have any idea of the outside sound. Instead, I try to design any kind of rig (even if it is only a simple DI box, or a complex rack setup), so I can have an idea of the out sound FIRST (be it through the use of a long cable, a wireless transmitter, or -the least of the cases- a trustworthy sound engineer), and then have a parallel stage setup I could tweak knowing it will have NO effect on the outside sound whatsoever. Not the best scenario, I suppose, but the bigger the stage, the less comfortable it gets dealing with it (specially if there is rented backline amplification where you'll never know what' really going to show up). For smaller venues, the long cable method during soundcheck always works, and since the smallest venues (cafe, club, bars and the like) tend to repeat dates around here, once you get it working on the first date, it usually doesn't need much tweaking on subsequent dates (Still, on those small venues, whenever possible, I try to get my sound from the PA and use whichever amp I may bring as a reinforcement or stage fill). Therefore, most of my gigging rigs do have some sort of XLR out...

[edwin]

I'd say run that Stanley tune through your rig. If it sounds too crisp that way, you know the cabinet needs to be dialed back. It's one of the reason I use a fEARful on many gigs. It emulates what a PA cabinet does, so there are no surprises.
 
Bass cabinets can be notoriously inaccurate, meaning we dial in a great sound to come out of them, take a DI off the bass or the head and no one in the audience hears anything like what's happening on stage.
 
Another way to judge is to try reasonably flat IEMs.

[gtrguy]

You can also buy a Looper pedal (Boss makes good ones) that you could put your bass into and then walk out front and listen to it.