I have spent the last five hours rearranging my budget projection and exploring different scenarios. Basically, getting a car next year (which I cannot reasonably delay) puts a tighter cap on my rig building fund than I had anticipated. Furthermore, all gear purchasing must be concluded before I get the car. I could give myself more leeway by putting off Skype lessons with Greg, but that would trade becoming a Stickist for becoming an even bigger gear geek: the latter is not progress. Making matters worse is that small and light gear is not cheap.

There are two scenarios which interest me as potential escape routes:

1. Railboard Mono->Bass Head->Full Range Cabinet: This would be a tiny bit less expensive than my current plan if my credit allows for a Mesa Boogie Prodigy; it would be much less expensive if I went with a Carvin BX1500. This would give me a 29 pound bass head and a ≈34 pound speaker cabinet to carry.
2. Railboard Stereo->Rane AP-13 summing->Bass Head->Full Range Cabinet: This would be $115 more expensive than the first option because a 2U rack would be needed to house my Mesa Formula preamp (for the melody side) and my Rane AP-13. The bass head's effects send would deliver the bass side into the AP-13 for summing with the output from the Formula, sending the result to the bass head's effects return. This would give me a 29 pound bass head, a ≈24 pound rack, and a ≈34 pound speaker cabinet to carry. I might even be able to run independent effects loops with some clever signal routing.

It seems quite likely that my only gigging will be via StageIt, or something similar. All I had to do was think about pulling a hand truck up stairs to realize that my disability precludes playing out.

Now, to the questions:

1. Does running mono hurt the Stick as much as my gear loving heart imagines?
2. Does the new R Block in the Railboard make running mono significantly better?
3. Will you all hunt me down for doing something so simple after I spent so many words documenting my epic adventure through gear speculation?

Feel free to add any other thoughts you may have. I am going to sleep, finally.

Mono does not hurt. All you need to play the Stick is said instrument, a little combo amp, and the main ingredients: time, dedication and will, which won't cost you a penny.

Good luck

Not necessarily. The Gallien Krueger MB200 is small, light, and cheap. Its a 200 Watt modern sounding bass head that weighs 2 lbs. They're 299$ new, and you often see them used for less than 200$.





1 - Nope. Not at all. I run my stick mono most of the time.

2 - Yes, because you can use both treble and bass sides' volumes to choose where in the stereo map you want the signal to appear, rather than just left or right. You can actually have it, say, 3/4 left.

3-Just buy a combo and call it a day


I have a pretty decently sized "rig", i guess you could say. I never use more than half of it with my stick with any kind of regularity, and in fact, when I played shows in the past with it, I only used my bass amp with the stick in mono, cause carrying a second amp for the treble was a pain in the ass.

I play guitar in a band now, so I've upgraded my guitar amp to something more unwieldly.

My setup, if I want to play full stereo on two amps is this:

Bass side:
TC Electronic RH 450 -> Carvin 2x12 (BR210 i think?)

Treble side:
Mesa/Boogie Stiletto Ace 2x12 Combo (It weighs 88 lbs).

1. I don't think mono hurts the stick sound as long as you don't use different effects for bass and melody sides of the stick. I mostly practice in mono and so far use stereo only for recording.
2. Why do you need such powerful and heavy gear? I'd rather go for something smaller and more portable, a PJB Briefcase or similar-sized amp would be sufficient for a small venue and far more than enough for playing at home.

Rob, I really think you should strongly consider Olivier's kindly advice. Order a Railboard, buy a small used amp on CL for $50, buy a $20 PC mic and a $25 webcam, and you're set to learn to play the instrument, take Skype lessons, and yes, even play for small audiences and record your progress for all of us to watch/listen to and enjoy.

You don't need gigging-capable components that will blow the audience's socks off with "full range" awesomeness until you can play the instrument and have gotten the gig. Keep the cart behind the horse.

+1000

So much, this. I often take my stick to work to play during my lunch break -- and I play unplugged there. I just close the door on my office and in complete silence, the resonance is more than enough. And at home? You can get away with a cheap 60$ Behringer mixer with a pair of headphones. Those feature phantom power and an internal preamp you can use for practicing, plus you can line in music to play along with.

I forgot to consider that the people replying to this thread would be unfamiliar with my "Gig Rig" thread and, thus, the overall context of my rig building. Here are the highlights:

• I live on a low, fixed income which will not and cannot improve for at least one year (more likely three to five years).
• I cannot purchase anything more expensive than ≈$1200 unless I can pay in installments, which will be increasingly likely as I establish my credit.
• Therefore, I can only buy equipment once. Whatever I manage to afford must support my Stick playing until I can manage to change my life quite drastically.

Since I cannot afford to get new equipment if and when a gig looms, my initial equipment must be as capable of handling future gigs as possible. As I have stated in various threads for the last year or so, my goal is to have a rig which will reproduce all of the Stick's fundamental frequencies well. This is an approach not often taken, it seems, but I hope to prove its utility in time.

I will now work a scenario in which I pair the aforementioned speaker cabinet with running mono into a bass amp. The BX1500 will be my fallback, but I hope to find something which will afford more headroom to the Stick's powerful fundamental attack.

More details about the options I am weighing will be posted later tonight or tomorrow. I have a lot of things to balance if I am to achieve the above before the car puts a stop to these efforts.

Buy a Stick, get a small amp… put time into playing it….. then worry about gigs….

ditto. I almost bought a huge dual amp system as I was getting my Stick. Really happy with the choice of the Fishman Loudbox instead. It is more than enough to practice with and should be fine for small room gigs as well.