I had the great pleasure of assisting bassist Christian McBride work an L1 Model II into the ensemble Five Peace Band, the superstar ensemble led by Chick Corea and John Mclaughlin.

They are currently in the middle of a three night run at the palace of jazz called the Rose Theater, a 1,500 seater (approximately) that forms the performance center ground for Jazz at Lincoln Center (music director is Wynton Marsailes.)

The other members of the band are the astounding Brian Blades (drums) and Kenny Garrett (like Corea and Mclaughlin, an alumnus of Miles Davis's bands, although of a later era).

Heres a link to the New York Times review of the concert, which includes a nice picture.

The band will be in the Northeast for the next week, and if you can possibly attend a concert, I highly recommend it.

Here are a few photos from the show.

(I'll share some technical details later.)

Overall look of the band...

All five totally digging in...

Notice the four players paying total respect to McBride soloing, this towards the end of the nearly 3 hour show.

Cool. So, L1 Model II with 2 B1's? (as I see in the pictures). The techy info?

Tech info:

- L1 Model II double bass system.

- David Gage Realist(R) pickup into splitter then into Channel 1 of the T1.

- AMT mic into splitter and then into Channel 2.

- Gage Realist ToneMatch preset on channel 1, flat on channel 2.

- Moderate zEQ on both channels 1 and 2.

- Mic/Pickup mix was about 70/30.

- No effects (although he does use delay and reverb for out playing in the Metheny Trio).

- Splitters had iso outs for the house system.

- No bass in the monitors. All stage sound for bass was from the L1 rig.

- The sound engineer was concerned at intermission that he was getting too much 150-300 off the stage and couldn't get the clarity he wanted from the bass. We adjusted that level down on the L1 during intermission and things were somewhat better. In all liklihood, his mix position was in a strong bass lobe.

Ken