Yeah, whether it's a small amp mic'd or a DI, if a PA is bad, very little is going to sound good, especially depending on how much of the band's sounds that the PA is carrying. I have a couple of the 609s, they're good mics, and I recently bought a couple of Audix i5 mics with the cabgrabbers, they're good as well.tdbajus wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2019 6:09 amI would fear that if the PA wasn't good enough to mic an amp, it won't do much better with a DI. It's easy enough to bring one of those cheap but excellent Sennheiser 609 mics that work great just hanging off the handle of the amp.
I have been pretty envious of Mick Harvey though, since I read his entire rig is a tele, a sansamp, and two god damned cables. Bastard.
http://www.bad-seed.org/~cave/interview ... gp_mh.html
I know what you mean about the travel rigs though, which is why I do love that Vibro Champ- fits easily in an overhead compartment.
ZT amps are pretty nice sounding, and loud as hell, and even smaller than the Champ. They, imho, sound like butt with distortion, but sounds pretty great with an Xotic compressor for a bit extra sustain.
I like the idea of Mick's setup, I've got 2 sansamp bass pedals that I'm thinking would be what I would use where I don't need to have an amp. Sansamp is very impressive for bass to me, I haven't used any of their guitar stuff.
I had a ZT lunchbox, they're small, loud as hell (especially through an external speaker - 200 watts, I think?) and it will even handle playing a bass through it pretty well. But I just couldn't get along with the overall sound, it was kind of squishy and odd sounding, like overly compressed in a really bad way. It was kind of similar to the also very small & convenient Quilter Labs Micro Block, a 45w amp head in a pedal. I tried many different pedals to try to help the sound of both of them, but it just wasn't satisfying for either, so I sold them and bought a couple of Bugera T5 tube heads that are small and sound great. No regrets.
One day I would like to check out either the HX or the CabZeus. The thought of a good, usable amp and cabinet sims in a pedal is very appealing, especially after having good experiences with using them for bass.