Tonight I had a jazz gig, playing during the dinner section of an event at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham. It was the same quartet I gigged with last month but we didn’t have quite the same level of PA support and so I took my amp as well as my Helix LT floorboard.

The latter was a real boon tonight. My double bass patch is pretty simple. For straight ahead jazz, I don’t want any fancy FX but just some of the more subtle things, like EQ, compression and reverb to make the amplified signal sound similar to the unamplified tone. I also added a noise gate tonight which seemed to work well in avoiding feedback – I think it stops quiet sounds generated by the body vibrating with noise in the room from blossoming into a booming wail.

The real win though was the routing options. I ended up using the second path to pick up a signal from the keyboard so that could also come out of my single input amp giving some local foldback. Then, when there was a chance to also hook the bass into the room PA, I was able to drop in a send block and deliver the bass track to the provided DI box.

The final trick was possible because I also had a volume pedal block on my bass path. Normally, I mute the bass when it isn’t being used but, when we had the keyboard also going to my amp, that was less ideal. Instead, I could just use the integrated foot pedal to roll of all the volume from the double bass. I love that the unit is flexible enough to let it adapt to multiple roles and requirements. It wasn’t cheap but I think it continues to earn its keep.