gafbass02

Sr300e in ocean fade metallic.

Zoom goes to foh, the sonicake boom ave and eq let me tweak what I hear to sound as close to foh as possible. Then I use the Rolls to blend my signal into my monitor feed. It works brilliantly. A multi core guitar/headphone cable is the finishing touch

My trusty jazz.

Last night was a standard Cheltenham acoustic race gig, endless aggressive peaky blinders wannabes bellowing for Oasis all night, meh. It’s hell but pays and there’s a crash barrier to keep the idiots at bay. Friday was a band gig, standard stuff, 50th birthday private job, ‘‘twas fine apart from the stage acted like a big drum amplifier. The guitarist was deafened. I, on IEMs, was not best thing I’ve ever done move to in ears. IMG_0601.MOV

Brilliant little amp. I always regretted selling mine.

Same thing happened to me, a day schlepping around shops, each saying the box was too big. Eventually I managed to persuade Thomann that they had to collect from my work. Very annoying and has put me off buying guitars from them.

Acoustic duo gig last night in my local, brilliant time was had, the standard drunk morons both made idiots of themselves much to my amusement. I really enjoyed the whole evening and so did the audience. So that was nice.

‘Twas a decent enough night in Hereford, a few headstock> wall incidents and a few shaky starts, but otherwise all good. Always a fun place to play. As usual I used my SR500 all night, thinking of selling my SR1200 tbh, it never gets used. IMG_0583.MOV IMG_0584.MOV

I’ve been a pleasure for about two years and it’s the best move I’ve ever made. Every gig sounds the same, so no fighting a room, no volume war, no lifting - it’s ace. We have our own engineer at every gig, which helps of course. The singer and I are the only ones on IEMs, with the guitarist still using a combo and wedge and the drummer also on a small wedge. I use a rolls pm50 as a ‘more me’ box and have a custom cable that take both guitar and headphone feeds. (I can’t afford a quality wireless IEM system nor do I really need one tbh). I still keep hold of my two Headrush frfr112s for festival gigs without our own engineer, and they do duty as my acoustic pa, my guitar rig, and bass rig on the odd occasion it might be needed.

Weird gig for me last night, a local football club in a room that was little more than a Spartan concrete rectangle with no decor, that, it seemed, had one purpose only. - For testosterone fuelled men to drink themselves into a blind frenzy and chant about their team. - My idea of actual hell. Also, they appeared (unsurprisingly) to only play oasis for in house music. I was playing as part of an acoustic duo, with a very simple set up (7 minutes to strike the whole kit). Which was nice, cause I couldn’t get out of there quick enough. Everyone was very friendly to us and liked what we did a lot, but, as a person who just doesn’t get that whole ‘ragey, team sport aggressive thing’, I’m just not comfortable being around it. They seemed to have alternate lyrics for every single song about their team or how much they hate another team. Some blokes seemed have their pathetic alpha masculinity threatened by us being the centre of attention and not them , so would try to sing other songs as loudly as possible over the top us - as if they were going to win some self involved volume war against a PA system. - Baffling animalistic behaviour!! Anyway. Rant over, got paid and was back in my own local by 10:30. They want us back, but I’m not keen!

That's exactly what I call it

And the Ibanez, but it’s almost cheating on an SR500, they look like this after twenty minutes!

My 1990 mij jazz. All real gig wear, the finish is slowly letting go of the body, lots of splits and cracks have just appeared over the years, it lives in a cellar, which probably hasn’t helped. It’s surprisingly hard to capture the extent of the damage in photographs.. Still plays and sounds fantastic though. I just swapped out the wizard GAFfer prototype neck pickup for a quarter pounder for a bit. The neck/pickup/bridge alignment isn’t as off as it looks in pictures, but the only original parts now are the body and three of the tuners. It’s had many lives and forms since I bought it in 1992.

Last night I was on bass as part of an acoustic duo as the drummer and guitarist couldn't make the date. It was a standard Cheltenham race meet affair. Basically a mix of old blokes in tweed demanding Irish songs, young blokes in unintentionally hilarious ‘Peaky Blinders’ fancy dress, women in jodhpurs with a dead bird on their head and orange girls apparently live streaming themselves posing into their phone screen all night. All of whom are screaming the word ‘Oasis’ in perpetuity. standard.

I did a solo acoustic spot in my local on Friday, usual stuff to the usual crowd. The big difference to me was the first use of my EHX Mel9 pedal and my laser kick drum. The drum was amazing and still hurt, although much less than a traditional stomp box! But the mel9 was a bit of a let down. Its epic at home, giving me subtle string accompaniment on some songs, but in the pub it just didn't cut through, even with the 'wet' level cranked. A rethink may be in order!