mrtcat

+1 If weight isn't the issue then you're going to be spending a lot of money to find something smaller that outperforms what you already have.

This actually makes me feel a lot better. I can easily replace the ironmongery for minimal expense and as I said before it plays perfectly and sounds beautiful.

Get the hair clippers out and give it a number one all over ("number one" refers to length of cut - I don't mean pee on it).

If you help the guy load it in then you can chat and gauge whats acceptable. Just be generally respectful (it sounds like you naturally are anyway) and if you adjust anything change it back when you're done. Don't put a drink on top or lean anything against it. Say thanks and, regardless of how it sounds, compliment him on a nice rig. If possible hang around and watch their set.

Neck is off and on its way to mensinger workshop in Poland to have the luminlays fitted. I'll admit to being a bit underwhelmed overall. Yes the luminlays was disappointing but I'm not particularly impressed with some other parts. The most important positive is that the woodwork side is very good. The neck and fit is solid. That said, Many of the components are pretty average. In removing the neck (bear in mind I'm no luthier but I am an experienced professional cabinet maker with a good working knowledge of tools etc) two of the five neck screws rounded out. They're very cheap plated ones. The pick guard screws are also cheap and one or two arent perfectly straight. The bell plate doesn't look like a quality piece either so will be replaced. Finally I can still see hints of the grain through the paint on the body. Now these aren't deal breakers and guaranteed I probably wouldn't have noticed if there wasn't an issue that required removing the neck. I will be able to replace the parts I'm not happy with, with decent replacements at low cost but I definitely feel that the quality isn't as high as it was on my last Elwood L.

Neck is going back tomorrow to have Luminlays fitted. Adrian has been very apologetic and in the grand scheme of things it won't matter but is a bit sad having to take the neck off your brand new bass.

Arrived today. Worryingly it was left on my front doorstep by FedEx for approx 5 hours in plain sight. Bloody lucky it was still there when I got home. Plays lovely, sounds great (the aguilar pups are everything I'd hoped for) BUT!!!!! There's no luminlays. They're on my spec sheet and I paid 40 euros extra for them but they're not there. Gutted. Have emailed Adrian so will see what the response is. It may sound petty but I definitely want them fitted.

Been there and done it. In fairness tho I'd usually reluctantly agree and let the guy give me his amp di but it's rare that you can get away without doing a fair bit of work to get that sound to sit as well as a clean unaffected sound.

And the engineer says "you wanna play or not?"

You'll probably turn up and find that the engineer gives you a DI box and says something like "just plug your guitar in there and adjust the amp on stage to suit yourself".

Me and the drummer in my van. The others can sort themselves out. BTW any working musicians who want ridiculously good deals on van leasing, insurance and free tax advice, debt collection etc etc should seriously consider joining The Federation Of Small Businesses. Vanarama quoted me £260 a month for the van on a basic lease and FSB got me the exact same van on a fully maintained lease (servicing tyres etc) for £170 a month. Membership is £160 a year and the benefits are great. (I'm not affiliated in any way - just a happy customer).

Largely agree but it really does depend on having a good bunch of players around you who are focused and capable. I've been in some projects where writing was really easy as everyone worked well together, had great musical understanding and knuckled down to it. We were able to write several songs a month to a good standard and get them tracked and giggable. I've also been involved with bands that have taken weeks just to sort out a bridge because not everyone was focused and some people refused to listen to others ideas etc etc.

Unless your fan base is huge then it's really difficult to rely on your own promotional work no matter how hard you try. The problem is many of your followers will genuinely love the band, many will follow on social media because they are friends / family of the band and want to support their mates but many of these people may love lots of bands, may not actually be really into going to gigs, may not live locally, may have plans already and there's probably a fair few of your followers in their own bands so are out gigging already. You can't expect people to turn out week in week out just because they like your band, no matter how good you are. Maybe once a year or every 6 months. Being prepared to travel to venues that really work hard at being a successful venue and therefore draw a decent crowd of live music lovers can lead to far more satisfying gigs. HOWEVER these venues can pick the best bands out there usually and will do so in order to give their customers a great night week in week out and therefore protect their hard earned reputation. So use these bad nights as a chance to work on stage craft. Interact with the 10 people in the crowd, hone your banter and performance so that when you get into the better venues you go down a storm and they want you back.

I totally understand the need to be really easy to set up but I still think a modern digital desk coupled with a camera capable of good image quality is by far the easier option and it gives far far better results than any room mic only process. If you mic everything anyway then recording to a laptop is no more complicated than plugging the laptop into the mixer with a usb cable. If you don't mic everything, then it really isn't that time consuming to put a mic on a guitar cab and a couple of mics on the drums. Ok if you have 3 horns etc it becomes more laborious but even then a pair of condensers will do a great job.

That does play a huge part of it for sure.

In my experience it's not like elixirs to go dead overnight. How did they respond to being soaked in meths? Wouldn't that knacker the coating?

Yeah, we definitely look like we're part of the same group/gang. Especially when we play O'Neills in a city centre on a Saturday night.

The soundtrack to The Lost Boys was pretty much the soundtrack to my early teens. Still love it now. Also love Busy Malone and was lucky enough to do be in the house band for a production of it in theatre a couple of years ago.

It's ok to hate a guitar style / colour or a car or a type of music. It's what makes us all different. Doesn't make it wrong. As long as we all appreciate that it's not wrong for people to like stuff we don't and that we are respectful of others likes and dislikes then all is good.

Just email Adrian like we used to before the configurator existed. He's really easy to work with and I'm sure he'll be able to make it for you. Really like your idea. That would look great and be really unique.

About 18 weeks. It's a reasonable wait but in the world of custom builds that's still very quick.

I don't use mackie but we did a wedding fayre in Jan where there were three bands on. All in different parts of the venue. One band (4 piece - drum, bass gtr and keys with all four members singing) had the dlm 12 inch subs and tops (about £3200 worth) of kit. They were a very talented outfit but I found their sound very harsh. That has been something I've always found with mackie stuff. We were just using two RCF745s with no subs (bass, drums, gtr and vox) and general consensus was we sounded bigger and fuller. That said there's a lot of other variables that could have been at play. Personally I've never really been a mackie fan tho so there may be some bias.

Beautiful. Absolutely classic yet lighter and specced perfectly.

Yeah of course some people are only impressed by the visual and so bands like vt make them go nuts but that's because people are all different. The thing is, for me, the music was very good too. If the music was poor then I'd feel like their performance might be plastering over cracks. Like I mentioned in a previous post - bands that can balance a great musical performance with a good engaging show will always win for me. I absolutely cannot bear seeing a band where members (regardless of what instrument they play) seem disengaged or motionless. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean they all need to be bouncing about. They just all need to have a bit of charisma. It's hard to explain, I mean look at Pino Palladino - he doesn't move much but he looks so comfortable in his own skin and relaxed but he's pretty much always looking up and watching the rest of the band or the audience. He's engaged in the show. You can tell he's enjoying it. He's got stage presence without having to move too much. If you're using "bonkers" then you're probably spending too much time on British forums lol.

£1400 ish. Swamp ash body, carbon neck rods, luminlays and Aguilar 60s J pups.