Phil Starr

What @mike257 describes sounds like heaven, probably in more ways thatn one. For most of us the 'Festival' is a beer festival, a charity event or an overgrown village fete which has grown from one local band using their own PA to a multi band event with a hired in PA. Often the PA has been set up by a hire firm but the organisers have saved money by not hiring a sound engineer. Typically you come across a couple of blokes who have no idea of how the PA was set up and are scared to touch anything. They'll spend 20 mins plugging things in at random and line checking then huddle down by the desk with no sound check staring at all the scary knobs whose function eludes them. @warwickhunts 'can you start your set know' sounds very familiar.

Ain't that the truth! It's not unusual for the people who won't give you the information to be the ones asking "why there aren't more gigs?" or "why haven't you organised a reherarsal?" I've now used Rallly successfully once but still have one errant band member who hasn't filled in dates for three months on the second poll I sent out. I think I'm going to plug away with it for a while and see if it can become a habit

Funny you should say that, 😂

About 6 months ago I was playing in the Vintage, Wellington which is a decent music pub with densely packed and usually inebriated audiences. Anyone who has played there will know there is little delineation between the stage and the audience. One young woman, tall, willowy attractive but very drunk came up behind me an wrapped her arms round mine whilst I was playing and started a conversation about which songs she wanted. It's remakably difficult to go on playing and singing with 6 feet of drunken young woman draped over you with your arms pinned to your side. In the end her boyfriend who clearly though it was hilarious came up and politely asked if I would like him to take her away. What is the etiquette in this situation?

An ambient mic would certainly work and be cheaper but you'd probably have to compromise with how the drums sounded in the monitors. Given my experiences i'd rather have single mic drums than some of the IEM feeds I've experienced. The EAD10 is two ambient mics and the kick drum via a trigger and all the eq etc is sorted for you. Even at an ordinary gig it will probably give you as good as/better than you''d get with a 3 mic set up done in a rush. Talking to drummers they are marmite, some won't touch them and some swear by them.

Probably a good provision if you are doing enough of this type of event to justify the expense. I've had several episodes of the monitors being perfect at sound check only to be given someone elses feed during the gig, there's only so much 'can I have a bit more of this and a bit less of that' you can do, especially when you know at least one other band member is wondering why my bass and vocals are dominating their mix. It's reall tough to concentrate and play well when your mix has failed. Probably worse for the poor sod who gets my vocals I'm surprised nobody yet has offered the chance to mix your own monitors via a phone app at the smaller multi band events. IEM's are no longer really cutting edge technology and the apps can usually be locked so you don't have access to FOH. I've mixed these events myself in the past and with 10 min changeovers it can be hell to get everything done and not every band is co-operative or even knows what it is doing. Passing on the extra job of setting up monitors sounds great to me. I could always just feed them FOH if they eff up. On the subject of drums how about the Yamaha EAD10 here It's a load of expense but I've seen drummers use it to mic up their kits and It works OK compared to many people's version of mic'ing a kit.

Nice Job 😮😂 The grille looks to be in good nick and you'vegot corners and the sockets on the back. I can't tell what's underneath but I'd be looking to 'restore' rather than build a new cab. The BassChat 110 which @Stevie designed to fit the 30l cab I'd designed and built for another project would probably work fairly welll but was designed for particular Celestion speakers. they are probably similar to your speakers but won't be identical. Pull the sheet (!) off and see whats underneath, then clean that off then all you would need to do is paint it up with Tuff Cab and you have a restored Ashdown 2x10 which will be worth something. You might love it and if you don't someone else will and give you the cost of the components to make the BC110T properly,then youd have had two fun projects. I think you can make this look as good as new for pocket money

That's interesting, how long ago was that? I got the strong impression from the information I gleaned that it is still pretty much a beta version/under development. I wouldn't want to use something that crashes too often because the band won't use something they don't have faith in.

I do hate google with a vengeance, I hate that it invades everything you do after any engagement with it at all and i don't consent to it using and sharing my data. I've used Timetree and it is such a poor piece of software. Really clunky and counter intuitive to use. I mean it works but finding out how to do anything complicated on it is a nightmare. Ive also used Doodle to gather in availabllity data and liked the simplicity, it's got a lot more sophisticated recently and moved to a paid model but I've recently discovered Rallly which does look and behave just like the older versions of Doodle. You send out a survey with a list of dates/times and people fill in their availability. It's great for booking rehearsals and identifying dates the band are available for gigs. The bit it doesn't do is generate an actual calendar the band can see.

We are having problems agreeing on a calendar app for our band and one band member is suggesting this one. Anyone had experience with it, or tried anything similar?

I love a happy ending 💖

I think that pic is conclusive (though sometimes you can have more than one fault) You should be able to operate the swich manually (be gentle) with a pencil tip and get it to operate. The spring is to turn the stamp of a 16 stone bassist into a gentle push. You could try putting something soft on the bottom of the shortened spring to shim out the gap as a temporary fix while you wait for the replacement spring. A little rubber foot might work, or a piece of felt. Hang off with the Servisol until you've tested the switch. It doesn't so much clean the switch as move the dirt around so there are a limited number of times it will work in a semi-sealed microswitch

Hi John, thanks for offering to help out, they are non latching momentary switches allowing some basic programming. A double tap saves the settings

I opened mine up and gave the inside of the switches a good squirt of Servisol (switch cleaner) no further problems to date. I run mine on batteries, I find that if the batteries are getting close to dead the switches don't work as they should. Remember these aren't actual swiches, which are in the electronics, they just send a signal that you want to change something and if the batteries need changing then you don't have enough power for the programmable to work Paging @Chienmortbb

I did wonder if there weren't local names for playing styles. I really enjoyed the nostalgia of watching Rhiannon playing something I attempted so long ago.