Hi everybody. Did a gig at a place in which our electronic drums were very bad sounding compared to at practice, even though it was the same volume.

I think it had to do with some of the acoustical conditions of the gig and user error. I'd like anyone with experience with this to give me some suggestions to get rid of this should it happen in the future.

Here is our L1 set up for the drums:

1 classic L1 4 bass modules.

Td3 module straight into channel three with gain not in the red.

We had our master at noon.

Here is the stage set up:

Drummer was center between two L1's. the guitarist was on his right.

The bass modules were stacked 4 high and just to his left, to the left of that was the L1 pole. The bass modules were about a foot or so from the back wall. Not sure if what the back wall was made of it was covered.

The room was basically a large basement. This place has two stages one upstairs and one downstairs. The room had wood walls and a concrete floor.

What I think caused the boominess was the wooden stage we were on. I think it may have been hollow as well. It was your typical foot and half high ministage that had a very nice lenght and width to it. Our placement in front of the L1's was optimal and pretty much where we are at practice.

I noticed on the wooden stage that I could really feel the vibrations from the e drums and my bass through the stage floor.

When the drummer hit the big low tom whoooo boy was it boomy. And not in a good way. It wasn't a volume issue, because after everyone said the drums could have gone up in the mix a bit. (I think this opinion may have been only because their was a heavy opener that had an acoustic set and played rather loud) The drums actually sounded very loud in the mix to me.

Was it the wooden stage?

In this situation would a gramma pad fix the boominess situation by cancelling out coupling with the wooden stage floor?

At rehersal our practice space is carpeted with drywalled walls, the drums sound really great, like a great acoustic kit miced up perfect. I want to get that sound playing out. Everything else sounded fine, guitarist had no problems and my bass and vocals were pretty much like at practice.

P.S. My stupid bass pod xt live nearly made me have a heart attack. I put on the power and the only patch I use was gone. My patches used to go up to 21. I could only get it to go to 11. I don't know what happened, on the trip to the gig some reset button or something must have been hit, or it got bounced around and broken. I was only able to find a patch I programmed a year ago. Luckily it didn't sound bad just different. Gonna have to plug it in and find out what happened.

Hi Ric,

Sorry you had a boomy night.

Yes, I would suspect the hollow stage as the culprit here. I have alleviated at little of this using a folded shipping blanket that I usually have in the car. Not perfect, but better.

Sometimes just moving the B1s a few feet can also help as the boom you were hearing might have been apparent because certain frequencies were being cancelled and others emphasized by the position of the B1s in the room. Sometimes you can tune this by moving the B1s around a bit - changing their position with respect to walls and corners.

You can find some notes about the B1 business here.
B1 Bass Module Positioning and
B1 Bass Module / Walls and Ken wrote an article that seems to fit
Bass Regeneration.


Sorry about the XT Live - no suggestions for that I'm afraid.

Ric,

I agree with ST. I play a gig weekly now on a raised wooden area which over-amplifies bass frequencies from my guitar & my duo partner's djembe. The whole room hears the extra "bassiness" as well. We just turn down the bass. We could also try moving the B1's, but we haven't yet.

Tom

Would putting my B1's on a gramma pad have gotten rid of the problem if it was caused by being on the hollow wooden stage, as I suspect?

Moving around B1's is fine but when you have limited area, thats not always much of an option,especially if you are worrying about getting loud without feeding back on the mics.

Hi Ric
If I recall all of your instruments are direct so maybe your mics were picking up the bass frequencies from the hollow stage through your mic stand. Did you get a chance to try the drums with the mics off? You might want to try putting the mic stands on gramma pads too. Either way the gramma pads definatly work.
Rick

I'm not sure I understand? If it was the bass frequencies being picked up and amplified through my mic, wouldn't my vocal be really awful and bassy? Or just feedback really bad. My bass and vocal really weren't boomy to me.

As it was my vocal was pretty much clear. The really bad boominess was when the drummer was hitting the really low bass tom.

I've been reading up on the gramma pads. The more I reflect on it and all the vibrations I was feeling in my feet, the more I'm inclined to think it was because of the hollow wood stage. Our guitar player has her own bose with one bass module and a mic going in for backups and she wasn't boomy at all.

P.S. on a side note I've looked over my pod xt live and found that it is not broke or messed up at all, it was simple user error. My guitarists uses 21a as her main patch and I somehow got that number confused with my patch which was 4a. In the commontion of setting up and worrying that everything was set up right, (because my guitarist and drummer are technically challenged and do a lot of the set up) I flipped through my patches to quick and didn't see the title of the patch because I was looking for the wrong number.

As usual I'm my own worst enemy, lol.

P.P.S. We got some video clips and although it was boomy on stage from the cameras perspective it still sounded really good. My guitarist is going to be posting those on myspace.com/fradymusic and or www.fraydmusic.com

quote:

If it was the bass frequencies being picked up and amplified through my mic, wouldn't my vocal be really awful and bassy? Or just feedback really bad. My bass and vocal really weren't boomy to me.

I'm not a technical person Ric.I could be way off base here, so this is just passing on past experiences. The mics are picking up the bass and re-transmitting them via the mic stand through your system. When this happened to us on a hollow stage it didn't seem to affect the vocals or anything else except certain bass frequencies.I'm betting those frequencies are in the floor tom sample.
Rick

So, would putting the bass modules on a gramma pad prevent this from happening, if this is the case? Or do you need a gramma pad for both the mic and the bass modules?

quote:

So, would putting the bass modules on a gramma pad prevent this from happening, if this is the case? Or do you need a gramma pad for both the mic and the bass modules?

I would start with trying the kit with the mics off. If that doesn't make a difference then try ST's suggestion before spending money on gramma pads.

quote:

Yes, I would suspect the hollow stage as the culprit here. I have alleviated at little of this using a folded shipping blanket that I usually have in the car. Not perfect, but better.

Hi Ric
I reread my response to your question and realized I hadn't actually answered you. I think if you isolated the B1's you would probably be eliminating both problems. So after trying everything out I would put the gramma pads under the B1s.
Rick

quote:

Was it the wooden stage?

Could be, I had this trouble in church a few years back...hollow stage got boomy.
I put *bubble* packing under the vocal mic stands, that helped a lot.
As Rick mentioned, there might be bleed from the vocal mics, adding to to drum boom.

I wasn't using Vdrums at that time, but these days, there are certain venues that require me to deaden down my kick and floor toms. They can be adjusted internally in the Roland module, just turn on the mufflers. Some venues, just getting away from a corner helps.

Hope you get it worked out.

I've had some experience on wooden stages and I find that if I use a shag throw rug underneath the vocal mic stands, it seems to help keep them isolated from the wooden floor and "micing" any extra vibrations (foot taps, etc.). Also, I agree with others that using the gamma pads for the B1s is a wise move on any raised stage area made of wood flooring, plywood or composite materials. Since you said your recording sounded fine, but it was boomy on stage, you might have also tried re-positioning the B1s as ST mentioned. I always try getting the B1s right against a wall. Being a foot or so away from the wall may have been some of the problem also. It's hard to say really. I hope you can find a happy medium next time at this venue!

When I hear 'boominess' in a stage area, two considerations come to my mind:

1) Is it also 'boomy' in the listening area? Often, particularly if the stage wall/ceiling dimensions are smaller than the main room, the stage area may be rather 'boomy', but the listening area is fine. If that's the case, just "re-calibrate" your listening for that stage and recognize it will sound 'bass-heavy' on certain notes or drums.

2) If it *is* also boomy in the room, then things to try are:
-- reposition the B1's. (if close to the wall, move out ~4'; if not already within inches of the wall, turn them sideways flush to the wall; or move more away from a corner)
-- isolate from the stage (does a 'foot stomp' boom? If so, isolation will help).
-- turn down the bass EQ.

Just an update. I went and bought the small gramma pad for $50 that fits right under the bass modules.

Even at our carpeted practice room it seemed to make the e-drums tighter. Seemed to help the bass a bit too.

Is there a link somewhere to said gramma pad?

I hope this helps Tres.
Auralex Acoustics

Gramma pads are awesome. Haven't had to use them with my Bose system but I use them with my tube amps all of the time. For $50, you get an instant upgrade to your amp's sound - such a simple fix...

Last night we had a practice in my very small living room and when tweaking my bass drum sound I thought I had a preety good one until the other guys got there and we started playing. There was boomines in my Bose. Further research indicated that the bass drum sound was bouncing of the wall and into the mics so when we turned the mics off the boominess went away. We have used the para eq to try and correct this and have had some success with it. Thumper

We have 5 PAS and have experimented extensively. Try getting the B1's up off the floor, Sometimes we put them on road cases or other sturdy fixtures. Because of small stages, the 5 of us have to get creative to get all our gear on stage and stacking stuff to gain room has a side-effect of a tighter bass sound.

I have two of these gramma and they work great on any floor we have used them on, it will tighten the low end alot. We have one for the 4 b1`s on the TD-12 and one on the bass with two b1`s. Greg