mcnach

Indeed, if you're not a RHCP tribute or anything, playing the RHCP version fingerstyle sounds pretty good too... but I'd still try slap, if nothing else so that you learn something new. It can open doors to other stuff. Slap does not need to be naff, you know?

I'd go with it. It's a pretty easy song to play. If you've never really slapped before, you'll pick it up in no time. It's a simple pattern, all you have to do is relax your arm, and start slowly, get the notes right and... speed up to the required speed (it's not even that fast). For some reason people seem to respond well to it and it's fun to play. You get to learn something a bit out of your comfort zone too.

It gets worse: I just ordered a new trem arm for the Floyd Rose, as I can't find the original. I know it's stored somewhere but can't find it). Next on the list: a proper hair-metal wig

I know! I mean... Guitars! Digital emulations! and the B word!!! (not that one, i meant BEHRINGER!!!) The triumvirate of evil to many After a few hours playing, I was able to remember how to play Sweet Child of Mine. Once I remove the cobwebs from my memory and I get Stairway to Heaven and Smoke on the Water, I'll be ready to go down to Guitar Guitar and torture them for a while. I won't leave until I get a discount on some DR strings 😛

Indeed, huge variety of sounds in the flatwound world.

Mine would be Prince - When doves cry

The J-Station had some really nice Fender-esque clean sounds. A JT-50 for £30? I'd have bought it too! Nice one!

Are you talking about the Tech21 sims? It was the Marshall one that I really liked on the Trademark combo. If you mean the V-Amp... it's also the Marshall sims that I liked best: - Brit Hi Gain, based on the JCM800, a great 'rawk' sim - Brit Classic, based on the 1959 'Plexi' 100W -Classic 50 W, another 'Plexi' The last two felt really well made for me. They are perhaps not an accurate representation of the real thing, but they are good sounds, and respond beautifully to the the guitar's volume. I like to have my volume (on a strat, with a humbucker at the bridge) backed off a little, and select a nice crunch sound that responds to both dynamics and the volume knob, giving me pretty clean or pretty dirty and fat sounds with small tweaks straight from the guitar.

Oh yeah! How could I forget them??? I just never had one. I remember looking at the PSA-1 in magazines but it was out of my price range at the time. I have played through one of their Trademark 30 or 60 combos, I forget which one it was. It had switches for 3 different types of amplifier, 3 gain models, and 3 cabinets I think... and it sounded really good.

These days, you have your Helices, Kempers and various others that give you a very very good sound, straight from guitar to desk. Recording guitars have never been easier. Kids today don't know how good they have it, even if the better units are definitely pricey. Today I was tidying up and found my old Behringer V-Amp2. I'm pretty sure I bought mine in 2001... it's nearly 20 years old! But it's not half bad. I was surprised to still like some of the amplifier simulations it's got as much as I remembered. There's a newer version out but I'm not sure how much better it'll be. I remember struggling a lot to get a half decent sound from electric guitars into my old multitrack recordings. I was either living in student dorms or in flats, sharing, and cranking up an electric guitar just wasn't something I could often do at home. Especially if you tend to get inspired at 2-3am like I did. My first attempt to address this was with a Zoom 2020. They cost £229 in 1994. I still remember that because it was a LOT of money for me in those days. The headphone out claimed to have speaker emulation. It was dire. Better than nothing, but dire. I then managed to get a Boss GX700. It was over £400, a little rack unit. This one actually didn't sound bad. It had all the effects I could ever want and then some, you could route them in different ways, combine them, do all kinds of stuff. It was a great orange box of wonders, especially in 1997. Still expensive, but there wasn't much that was any better that was affordable to little people like me. Then, over the next few years, something changed. First it was Line6, I think. The mighty POD. It made my GX700 sound pretty prehistorical, emulation-wise, although as an FX unit the GX700 remained much better and I would still be happy to use one as the effects were... well, typical Boss: most may never be the best of the best, but they do the job very adequately. Then came the Johnson J-Station, the Behringer V-Amp, a bit later Vox brought out the ToneLab... Zoom started including much improved emulations in any FX unit... and I lost track. I lost track because I found one unit that I was pretty happy with for my purposes. I tried everything that I could, and at one point I even owned simultaneously the J-Station, Vox ToneLab, V-Amp and a borrowed POD. The J-Station was pretty cool. It had a certain quality that the others didn't. It felt more realistic, but I also felt it was a bit muddy. So, realistic as in "real mic'd amps, just not mic'd very well". Still... it took me a while to sell it because I felt it was special and some of its models were very good. The ToneLab was not very good. Beautiful unit, many physical knobs, which were welcome, but... nah. I preferred the POD and the V-Amp. And after a bit of a-B comparisons, I settled on the V-Amp. The fact that it was the cheapest unit was a happy coincidence. Behringer has been criticised, rightfully, for copying other manufacturers' designs left and right, however, their V-Amp was a pretty cool unit that showed a degree of innovation. Soundwise they were as good or better than anything else you could buy those days. I actually liked them better. They also came up with a user interface that made a lot more sense and was friendlier than anything else anybody else was doing at the time. Lots of physical knobs,easy and intuitive to edit... and LEDS THAT ALLOWED YOU TO SEE WHAT EACH KNOB WAS SET AT. At last! Someone got it!!! That feature alone was enough to make me want to keep the V-Amp over its competitors. It was funny when Line6 brought out their "pocket POD" which also used LEDs in the same way, soon after. So Behringer being copied? I ended up with rack units for both the guitar and bass V-Amp2 which I used in my little home "studio". Pretty versatile, good sounding and cheap units. Then I stopped recording, sold most things, and kept the V-Amp2. It needed a little battery to make it work properly again [*] but here it is... and it sounds great. I'm about to move house and I was planning to set up something to do some recording in the new place, so I'm tidying up, getting rid off things I don't use anymore etc. But this little V-Amp is going to be back in business again [*] There is an internal battery, much like the ones in PCs, which is not described in the manual. When it gets old, it resets the unit, it loses the presets, and frankly it sounds pretty bad. I remember seeing comments about these things malfunctioning and sounding horrible and people just dumping them. Then I found out about the battery and I managed to tell about it at least to another two people who were about to dump theirs, and a battery change is all they needed. Crazy. How could they forget something like that in their manual?

All very good, but if the OP is like me, it means you never play anything but the one instrument that is out of the case, ever. I have forgotten I owned instruments simply because they were, very protected, in their hard cases. I like guitar racks. I use the Warwick 7-guitar ones. I bought the first one back in... 2000-2002 or so, and it's still in great condition. So are the guitars. Dust is a thing, that's true, but maybe you can use it as a gauge to measure which guitars are obvious candidates to be sold on

Brilliant!!! That guy's intensity... he doesn't need to do anything or say anything

Yup... That semi-grin at 25 seconds or so... I wouldn't like to be at the other end. It's the grin of the psychopath that knows is about to taste blood and he was hungry PS: not implying that JJ is/was a psychopath, just in case!

I had never seen Steve angry... man, he looks scary!

but my favourite so far is this, from JJ Burnell. Classy.

I was reading about how a bass player in another band dealt with an audience member who was not behaving very well... and it led to finding a few videos of different bands reacting to various situations. Some more deserved than others, but all 'entertaining' in some way... I'm not here to propose violence as a way to solve our differences... but sometimes, I have to admit, it becomes tempting. Now, here's a few examples of bands reacting to audience members who, really, should have known better... First, the Keith Richards classic: Then, there's Jesus Lizard... a guitarist who didn't appreciate an idiot launching and falling against his amplifier Of course, there's Axel Rose...

Same here. I don't like those 'jams' when it ends up being a run through a bunch of songs that some people there know very well. They're invariably songs I don't like You want to jam? Then let's jam. Choose a few chords if it makes it easier... and let's just jam.

yes! there's a little cinema in there... pretty cool place actually

Banshee Labyrinth. A bit on the small side, 'though, but I like playing there.

their girth

i used to badly want one of those but my student finances didn't allow it...

I would not worry about your amplifier being 10 years old. My LMIII was made in 2009 and it sounds just as good as it ever did @Phil Starr mentioned using an HPF. It's not a bad suggestion at all. I didn't really know about HPFs when I was struggling with my LMIII+BB2, and eventually got a second BB2. Later, I 'discovered' HPFs. I found that using an adjustable one, even when set pretty low (~40Hz) I felt I had to push the amp a bit less in order to get the same volume, I also felt it sounded a bit clearer, and felt cooler after playing for 2-3 hours. I wonder if that could do the trick for you, while keeping your existing gear. The LMII/III doesn't sound great when your input gain is too high. Maybe using an HPF you'll get that little extra oomph that could allow you to push the amp a little less to get the volume you need, and souding clearer.

I was also keen to keep to a 1-cab solution, just like the OP. With the same amp essentially and a not very different cab (if anything the BB2 is a bit louder). Moving to an 800W version didn't really do the job for me. That's why I mentioned two cabs, not because I can't read . I felt I was where the OP is, and I tried and failed, wasting money in the process. I thought the OP might find my experience something to consider too. A cab may handle X watts, it doesn't mean it keeps getting louder as you feed it more power until that limit. BF do a good job designing their cabs and more recently their speakers, but while more efficient than many, they're still not magic.