tauzero

Two gigs, one on Saturday, one on Tuesday, but it's been a bit hectic (you'll see why): [b]Open mic night, Highbury, Birmingham[/b] A friend of mine used to run an open mic night at the Roadhouse in Birmingham - in fact, that's where I met him, and where Mrs Zero started singing. He packed it in a couple of years ago but the bug stayed with him, and he's been running another unplugged singers' evening. He did a plugged open mic on Saturday, and Mrs Zero and I attended. I got cast in my old role of house bassist and finished up playing with various people, all of whom were familiar from the Roadhouse days. I shall be reprising the role at one of the performer's party this coming Saturday (looking at the weather forecast, that could be in his massive conservatory). [b]Wedding, Solihull[/b] The first gig for me with The Lightning - and it wasn't any old wedding, it was Sub Zero, my stepdaughter's wedding. The audience were mainly Sub Zero's age group, early twenties, plus a smattering of fortytofiftysomethings and a small number of eightysomethings (my parents, who were seeing me perform for the first time ever, and Mrs Zero's mum). So it was quite interesting for a band who only know (badly) one number from the current millennium to play to large quantities of goths. It was rather hot inside the room and the audience was largely composed of smokers, so the audience in the room was pretty small for the first set, but after the break Mrs Zero and new son-in-law Zero Offset rounded them up and herded them in. I was glad we'd chucked Mustang Sally into the set at the last minute, Mrs Zero got them dancing to that. We'll be gigging at one of their favourite pubs in September so I expect the place to be rammed from the compliments we got afterwards. Plus it looks like we'll have a fair selection of good photos for the band web page, as the photographer is a friend of Sub Zero's (and also a musician, as it happens) and took lots of photos of us.

[quote name='Geek99' post='912480' date='Aug 2 2010, 08:23 AM']Newbie question alert ... Does using Di out defeat the speakers ?[/quote] No, but unplugging them would. There's a mixer that you could use to run off the DI in the For Sale section [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=97506"]here.[/url]

What about getting a cheap mixer with headphone output (eg a Behringer UB802 or Xenyx 502/802) and feeding that from the line out or DI out?

[quote name='Alien' post='897002' date='Jul 16 2010, 11:57 PM']It might come to that if I can't find anything I like. Trouble is, a lot of the power modules I like the look of won't fit in a 1u enclosure.[/quote] [url="http://www.cad-audio.com/cadpwmmodules.htm"]http://www.cad-audio.com/cadpwmmodules.htm[/url] ? Have a look towards the bottom, integrated amp + PSU. Will 40mm height just about fit into 1U?

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='908708' date='Jul 28 2010, 10:22 PM'][url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/OLD-JAP-BASS-GUITAR-/260642400618?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item3caf7f696a"]Everything wrongness of this pleases me.[/url][/quote] Looks very much like an Audition/Top Twenty Woollies special from the 70s. I had solid-body and semi 6-strings, and a thoroughly decrepit solid-body 6-string is in my garage waiting for me to decide to throw it away.

[quote name='jezzaboy' post='906198' date='Jul 26 2010, 07:00 PM']Akkerman left in 76 on the eve of a British tour as he couldn`t get along with Van Leer. He was replaced by a guy called Phillip Catrine (pretty sure that was his name) who was quite a decent player. The people who bought tickets for the tour were offered their money back when Akkerman left.[/quote] AIUI, Akkerman had a smack habit and that was part of what led to the split and being replaced by Philip Catherine. Hamburger Concerto was the last good Van Leer/Akkerman album, Mother Focus rather lost its way.

Waterfront - everyone should know how to play one note. Relax - ditto. I realise it's stretching a bit, because it's three notes, but all bassists should know Rocky Mountain Way. Any more complicated than that and the only reason you should know it is because you want to. I may have missed the point though.

Played at the Kasbah in Coventry with Different Glory, the originals band, last night. 25 minute set, first band on a three-band set with Idle Playthings and The Arcadian Kicks. Borrowed Idle Plaything's bassist's Orange mini-rig (Orange Terror?) - saved me bringing my kit in too and it was only for on-stage monitoring. Good sound engineer, good sound both on stage and FOH. All went well, the people who've seen us before reckoned it was the best we've played. I enjoyed the other two bands too, quite a varied selection of music.

[quote name='bluesparky' post='903844' date='Jul 24 2010, 10:54 AM']It's only happened a handful of times so i've not gone too deep and gynecological about it yet, when it does stop and then kick in again there is a chunky tha-doomp, which would imply something along the lines of power issues.[/quote] If it's got a barrel jack socket, it could be that too - I currently have slightly dodgy sockets on one Warwick, the Mazeti, and the Jack, all of which need replacing sometime fairly soon.

[quote name='Bassassin' post='893357' date='Jul 13 2010, 01:30 AM']I saw that earlier, almost had a knee jerk reaction to just buy it & ask questions later. Almost. [/quote] Gone now, did you succumb?

That's the typical price that they go for here, when they come up.

[quote name='Bassassin' post='885404' date='Jul 4 2010, 12:37 PM']Yep - start at around 9 - 9.30pm on a Thursday, 10-day listing so there's 2 weekends to pick up watchers/lowball bids, & ends on Sunday night. Seems to be a good formula for me.[/quote] That's the one, perhaps with a quick check of the telly schedules to make sure it's not competing with something of significance.

[quote name='OldGit' post='891282' date='Jul 10 2010, 01:44 PM']Only the most enthusiatic, stalker level, fan will want to see you play every single gig and, personally, I'd not want one of those as a partner ...[/quote] Mrs Zero is obviously an enthusiastic, stalker level fan then. She likes to get along to as many gigs I play as she can, but she doesn't come to every one. I've never finished up with a lady (or even a non-lady) from playing a gig. Mind you, I do seem to get some glances, and you never know what might have happened on a few occasions if I weren't happily married...

Guitar, but often the lyrics come first (or at least start first).

[quote name='Wooks' post='892038' date='Jul 11 2010, 04:10 PM']Hi yer mate Glad to hear the ol Maz is getting some good usage, how is she going??[/quote] Very well, I've put Elite roundwounds on and it now does primary duty for Different Glory and alternates with the Thumb fretless for the New Corona Band.

A barn dance in a barn for us. We played the same gig last year and the barn had just dried out from having four inches of water in it, and the farmer's wife opened a hatch in the wall a few yards from the stage and took out a couple of eggs from the chicken run. This year they've moved the stage so it's central on the long side of the barn instead of stuck in a corner, and the chickens have been evicted. Weather was lovely and I was glad I'd taken a fan along. It's a charity do, and this year the beneficiaries were Help the Heroes. There were a few TA soldiers along - three of them got auctioned off during the evening. It was a very enthusiastic audience, possibly partially fuelled by carrot wine, and most of them danced. Mrs Zero did her usual enthusiastic calling, I got the WAV-4 sorted out so it sounded a lot better than last time I used it (used a Behringer ADI21 to buffer it) and had fun swapping between that, the Mazeti fretless and the Ashbory. They liked us so much they want us back again next year. It raised about £2500 for HtH, which isn't too bad at all.

I use Firefox with Adblock and block any images in signatures. That helps. Self-restraint helps too though - I'm one of the gear-listers but I compress the information, having been brought up in Usenet when sigs over four lines long were frowned on*. There are those who don't seem to have assimilated the concept of lists that exist in two dimensions rather than one. * One newsgroup I used to participate in had this as a rule, not a guideline. I documented this period in [url="http://www.tauzero.co.uk/other/guardian.html"]the Guardian of the Sig series.[/url]

It was said that guitars were shaped as they were to emulate the curves of a lady. This Fodera reminds me of one lady in particular:

I use Elites on mine, same as most of my fretted basses. Except the Ashbory, of course, that's got silicone strings, but they wouldn't be very successful on a normal bass...

[quote name='BigRedX' post='876669' date='Jun 24 2010, 05:50 PM']Of course no-one plays Warwick signature basses, because they are monumentally ugly even by Warwick's design-challenged standards! (except for the Jack Bruce Cream Reunion sig which by some quirk of fate is fantastic)[/quote] If you happen to like Thumbs (as I do), then the original Jack Bruce signature Thumb is fine (except that it's got the two-piece bridge and doesn't have the carved headstock rear).

I've just put a set of Elites (40-125) onto the Mazeti fretless (35") as I get on with them.

Sub Zero just got me this for Father's Day: I think there'll be some bass-relevant stuff on that.

There are only so many times one can ask for forgiveness instead of asking for permission.