cheddatom

Yes, if you go to rifffactory.co.uk/gigs they're all on there. Headsticks are playing in April which will be my first chance to play on my own stage! 😂

hah, I had not noticed that! No idea what it was but I can assure you there are/were no weapons, real or "play"

Thanks everyone! The opening week was wild. We're limited to 70 capacity but the first night was probably slightly over that. We had Static Dress play as their drummer is our best mate. There was only one unforeseen problem. The condensation and spilled beer made a mockery of our consumer grade garage floor paint. People were slip-sliding all over the place. The first job the next day was to mix balsam in with a new tin of paint, and get that down in time for the gig the following night. It did the trick! We had 5 gigs on the opening week, staffed by mates, played by mates, and attended by all and sundry. Loads of people travelled in to Stoke for these gigs and it really felt like the centre of a scene for a moment. And we made money! Then we realised we'd not booked any more gigs, and we have overheads to pay, and big bills to pay, and loads of debt... So now we start the long slog of learning how to make money out of a venue. At 70 capacity it's difficult to appeal to bigger touring bands. The other side of that is an other-worldly PA system that out-classes any venue of this size (that I've seen). Proper lighting, green room, potential for live recording etc. so we hope to tempt some names in for "secret" or "super intimate" shows. Otherwise we're perfectly suited to local multi-band line-ups, and the "toilet circuit" in general. Any advice on promoting gigs would be gratefully received, and if any of you are promoters that would like to put on a gig at Riff Factory, please get in touch

Hah, just realised this is my venue Riff Factory! I love your set mate, great band!

I've been very quiet on here recently, for various reasons, but the main one is that I've been building, and learning to run a music venue! I run a recording studio, and my mate runs rehearsal rooms, all from one building in Stoke. We've built up a decent reputation over the years. There was one bit of the building we didn't have, and that was a garage, but last year the mechanic upped and left, and the landlord offered it to us. We spent countless hours turning a dirty old garage into a spanking new venue and I'm super proud of it. Please check it out if you're looking for live music in Stoke or The Midlands, and obviously get in touch if you'd like to play! www.rifffactory.co.uk https://www.instagram.com/rifffactoryuk/ The bar: Opening week: The garage:

I've been slacking again due to the venue we've just opened. I'll do a thread on that when I get time. On Saturday night we played the Lexington in Islington. Coming from Stoke we had to pickup a guitar that was left behind a few weeks before in Chessington. A total of 6 hours crammed into Vantanamo (named because I don't fit into the van, and so have to spend hours in twisted positions) had me pretty grumpy. Load in up a huge fire escape almost finished me off. The headliner was old friends Abdoujaparov, and I managed to relax while they sound-checked. The venue is very cool, classic old London venue. The set went very well, we won over some new fans, and I left the stage soaked in sweat. Ace gig! Then I had the pleasure of sampling the bourbon bar downstairs. Four Roses and Buffalo Trace were delicious. Here's a photo The next morning we were up bright and early to travel up to Katie Fitzgerald's in Stourbridge where we played a matinee show. Load-in time was 1pm. We arrived at 1:10pm. The owner who actually lives there let us in at 1:30pm 🤷‍♂️ The place was full of our fans singing at the top of their lungs and we loved every second of it.

I've not been very active on here recently. We're opening a venue at Riff Factory in Stoke (adjoining my studio) so I've been putting all of my time and effort into that. Anyway, @lurksalot appeared at our gig last night and prompted me to check back in Yesterday was an early afternoon gig. Doors at 2, support from 2:30-3:15, us on at 3:30-5. All very civilised. Not particularly well attended (we've filled the same place before), but we still sold loads of merch and had a great time. Last weekend was funnier. We went to Bristol to play to about 15 people in a pub that stank of damp and mould. The stage was sagging with holes patched up. I didn't really fit on the drum riser. I had to ditch two cymbals and pull everything uncomfortably close to me. We stayed at a Premier Inn, one without a restaurant attached. Our bassist was extremely grumpy about the lack of breakfast. We walked to the pub over the road in the morning, but they didn't do veggie sausages. There was a starbucks back near the hotel but the guitarist objected to starbucks as apparently they give free coffee to the IDF. We found a Sainsbury's with a cafe. On the drive there we passed another Premier Inn, this one with a restaurant attached. On arrival at Sainsbury's, it turned out their cafe was starbucks too 😂 So about face, pretty much back to where we started, where someone found a greasy spoon. The bassist was so hangry I thought he was going to cry and I was dying of laughter Up to Guilford then for a weird punk festival in an old club in the middle of a housing estate. Great atmosphere! I was told I couldn't use my own drums as is often the case on these lineups. Seems a bit much when there were no acts after us, and the house kit was held together with gaffer tape, but I just suck it up and get on with it. Our frontman/boss had been promising a curry in Guilford, but the punk festival had a BBQ and vouchers for the bands, and he insisted it'd be rude not to. My turn to be hangry this time 😂 We made up for it last night with a banging curry in Northwich

Ace photos, thanks!!!

Yeh, amazing gig, although I thought it could have been louder, which is a first for me! Sam Wilkes is amazing but the keys player really stood out to me. Incredible solos I've seen Louis Cole in various guises a few times. I am very into drums and drummers. He has the machine-like chops of JoJo Mayer but with the groove and feel of Benny Greb. It seems to me he's renowned in jazz circles but you don't see him mentioned in drummer circles very much at all. Absolutely incredible musician.

I have a real life situation here. A drummer based in Stoke started posting some pretty extreme things on social media. He would describe it as simply expressing his own opinions, but in a lot of people's minds he's crossed several lines. He's lost all of his gigs, been barred from a bunch of venues, and lost his job as a drum teacher. I have absolutely no problem with people who are opposed to immigration to whatever extent, as long as they can express their point of view without any hatred. I suspected this guy was crossing lines by accident. Because I like the guy, I imagined that he has some reasonable views about problematic immigration, but that he expresses them by sharing some unfortunate memes etc. So, specifically, he shared a meme about a convicted sex offender called Zainal Osman. The meme grabs a headline describing him as a yorkshireman, and then laughs at the idea that he could be from yorkshire. I thought I'd give the drummer a private message, just to point out that he could very well be born and bred in yorkshire. There's absolutely no evidence that I can find online to the contrary. This drummer just laughed at me and argued that he couldn't possibly be British. I explained the facts of the matter IE he could very well have a British passport which would make him just as British as the rest of us, and he stopped replying for a couple of weeks. Then he sent me another meme: I replied "I've no idea whether they're German. You can't tell by the colour of their skin, if that's what you mean?" and again he stopped replying So, publicly he's trying to walk the "I'm not racist, I just..." line, but privately, he's being openly racist. This guy has basically lost his livelihood because he couldn't turn off youtube, and I think that's a pretty sad state of affairs. What's worse is it seems more and more common. People around here are openly talking about how "islam is not compatible" etc. and it's all driven by social media. It's worse than crack!

if you're using it as a limiter (smoothing out peaks) and you place it between your bass and your distortion, then the distortion will not react to your playing dynamics as much. It won't get dirtier when you dig in harder, because the limiter will tame that. For that reason, I would like a limiting compressor to be after distortion in the chain.

I love your band so much

There's loads of information on this in the Effects sub forum, but yes it makes a difference where in the chain you put it. You might be using the compressor to add punch, or you might be using it to even out dynamics, which are very different applications. The best position in your effects chain depends on what you're using the compressor for.

Well I feel a little silly now. "use the search" indeed! 😂

I have both a squier musicmaster and a bronco and could do with a replacement bridge to give me adjustment on individual saddles. I've had a look around. It looks like either £15 on Aliexpress (never ordered from them before) or quite a lot of money. Surely there's something fairly cheap I can buy in the UK and drop in?