Monckyman

Leigh Gorman. Turned me on to the plectrum.

Nice plectrum work on the lead part,groovy chorus sound too.

My advice? Forget ebay, at least for the bass, buy your bass here. There are loads of excellent bargains to be had and loads of people here have starter basses they hardly use any more. You may pay a little more for it, but you`ll know what you are getting and it will have been cared for. Also, folk here care about their rep so you have some comeback if by some bad luck you buy a lemon. Stick a wanted ad up here and see what you get offered. MM

[url="http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical-instruments/drums/accessories/lowfreq/skrm-100sfv/?mode=model"]Yamaha subkick Mic[/url]

Just to ask, Steve, is the fest you`re at part of the Islington Mill line up on Sat?

Steve, yes you can use your input device, but I think it`s a mono device no? Might be nicer to have a stereo mix. Audacity is fine, I use that myself along with Wavelab for stereo recording and editing. The size of the venue will usually dictate what endes up in the mix, larger or open air venues suit this best. I`m not suggesting it will be a useless mix, just pointing out that a loud guitar onstage means relatively less in the mix. Ditto bass. Vocals, acoustic instruments and often keyboards,having no onstage amplification generally end up quite loud along with fx, which are hard to hear in the venue, but much clearer on the recording. I`ve had some great mixes from simple desk chuck ups so it`s well worth doing, if only for a recording of the actual performance. As to the use of ambient mics for audience reaction,that starts getting a little more complicated in that the FOH engineer won`t want a couple of condenser mics in the FOH mix, while pointed to the FOH... So he would need to do a complete submix of inputs NOT going to FOH but only to the recorder.And be careful they aren`t so loud that you lose your mix and just get the audience shouting slurping and farting.(as they do). Takes more time, makes soundguy vexed and unco-operative, unless you take him sweets and chocolate. I often use a Digidesign Mbox mini, which gives me two inputs on 1/4 jack with input controls and a headphone for monitoring, straight into Wavelab for excellent results. I hope I haven`t made it seem less worth doing, because I`m only pointing out the possible negatives so you can get round them and get a good recording. MM

Yes your laptop will have a line in/mic socket, but, you`ll need some recording software!

Hi Steve, yes there are loads of simple solutions. It does depend on the desk being used though, and you need to ask the engineer nicely because they don`t usually like the extra hassle. First, if the desk has unused aux outs, then a stereo pair can be sent to your laptop/minidisk whatever recorder, or if the desk has a Matrix out section, it will be very easy to take a stereo line from that too. Take lots of cables and adapters to suit your recorder. A decent desk will usually have 1/4" jack outs for matrix and xlr for auxes.The engineer will apreiciate you not making him look for cables! If at all possible, try to contact him before the show, and discuss it, he`ll know what to expect then, but if thats not possible, get to him as soon as you can when you arrive, so he has time to prepare. Be aware that a desk recording will not provide a balanced mix, but will favour things that are quiet onstage, and wont perhaps have so much guitars that are loud etc. reverbs and other FX are usually louder than preferred also. MM

Mike257 had the right idea in making a template. This is basically just setting up the routing how you want it for rehearsal recording, and saving the whole shebang so you can recall it later. Then you can make another template for more focussed recording, and save that whole thing. So, whatever job you need to do, simply load the required template and all your ins and outs will be the same as the last time you used it. MM

Just picked up Trevs CBA 118 cab. Thanks a lot Trev, and very nice chatting to you! MM

Update. On the 26th of this month, Stevie posted the pickguard.= and I received it yesterday. He apologised for the delay and included an extra white pearl pickguard by way of compensation. MM

I`m with Simon, you need a compressor. Everything you hear on radio, cd,vinyl,tv or yes, live, will have been compressed at some point. You can`t always hear it as such, because it`s been done properly, but you would definitely notice the difference if it wasn`t there.

I really like this stuff, think I`ll get hold of whatever he`s done. Very nice tone, but also very nice ideas in a post qotsa swamp-blues kind of way. Thanks to OP for posting. MM

Poor sod, his beautiful bass falls to bits and everybody laughs and cheers...

Well virtually tell them to f*** off and take your amp.

As above. A new half decent speaker(I`m assuming it`s a 15") will cost app £50. If you sell your combo for £50+ and add what you would have spent on another speaker, you`ll be in a position to buy something much better like an Ashdown mag series combo for instance. MM

Sounds like a lazy way to police decibel limits to me. Manchester allows amplifiers, but limits the Db. Pretty sure Leeds allows amps too,and they have serious busker plague.

How about a 6" nail through the strap and into the shoulder?

I don`t really understand this "sound guy won`t allow the use of a mic" stuff. If there is a decent mic +channel available and the time to set it up properly with a bit of compression, I can`t see why a good engineer wouldn`t want to use it. WITH a D.I as well. We all understand the lack of soundchecks on a busy bill so that`s probably90% reason there won`t be a mic. Remember that the Engineer isn`t responsible for booking 6 bands with a soundcheck of 2 hours in total, and in many cases less and has to use the time available wisely. My feeling as a sound engineer is, you`ll never really get that exact cab sound in the FOH rig. It`s simply too different. If you have your own Engineer,you`ll be able to get a very close approximation, but even that will change from venue to venue. My only advice is to relax about it, and enjoy your onstage sound. If you really are precious about it, talk to the engineer or make a crib sheet highlighting what you want it to sound like. my view is, a D.I is plenty enough to get a great sound, especially if you have a half decent bass with nice pickups, or sansamp setup etc. FX sound better through a mic, but not so much that it`s worth making an issue out of it. The only level where getting properly concerned about your cab sound makes sense is pub/club where the audience are getting your sound as part of the whole. MM