windbag

Try a lute hole cover - here's the UK distributor, don't know where in the US they come from but you should be able to find them. www.madisonandfifth.co.uk/lute.index.htm

I'm another 50 year-old non-singing bass player but I'm mainly a woodwind man (hence the moniker). I have a db Fifty Line pa (3Kw active in three boxes a side) and a couple of db 405 actives for smaller gigs or for use as floor monitors (I'll be getting another pair soon). For rock bands, we rehearse with the 405's, and occasionally put them through the bass boxes of the Fifty Line to simulate what it'll be like on stage a bit better. We mix through my ancient spirit folio 10:2 or Alesis studio 32 - neither perfect but they work. Both reasonably quiet with the knobs set right. Vocal and instrument mics are a mixture of SM57s, SM58s (not often) and Beyer M201s, with a couple of others for special needs. Keyboards are DI'd into the mix and the players use their own amps for monitors. We don't usually bother miking guitar amps but I'll get onto that sometime. Ditto drums - though I might give the drummer a monitor to keep him happy and help keep the balance. I DI the bass as well (why carry a PA and a bass amp?). Being an all-active system, mains distro has been a problem now and again and I've made up a Powercon-based system that seems to be working fine and avoiding the noise problems I got with people plugging extension strips in all over the place. I have two 12 in 4 out snakes to cut cable clutter and try to work with a front line and backline snake or a left and right snake, depending on the venue. Either way, the middle of the stage should be fairly cable free. What's it like in performance? The band likes it, the db 405s make lovely floor monitors though they sound better with bits of carpet underneath on a hard floor. The Fifty Line mains have been plenty loud enough (and very clean) for everything we've done with them and even with three guitars and two keyboards going we can get good, clear vocals (the M201s help, too). Being all active, set-up is straightforward and we can run safely on two sides of a UK twin 13-amp socket. We could probably get a tighter sound with a touch of compression on the vocals, but we've kept everythng fairly simple as we don't have a separate sound man and being infrequent performers a complex setup is not good for us. I should say I bought the Fifty Line PA for reinforcing bands and orchestras, so it's more than I would have otherwise have spent for a rock setup (UK

The Mills Brothers used to imitate instruments without any electronic trickery (there wasn't any then), and a guy I can't remember did a whole band arrangement of 'blaze away' with just his voice (multitracked, of course) so the vocal approach is capable of working. But it's not hard to find a trumpeter (or cornet player, if you look round some brass bands).