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BigRedX

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Everything posted by BigRedX

  1. I found I got a better response and more listens by posting my bands' new releases in the General Discussion part of the Forum.
  2. BigRedX

    Hurtsfall Gigs

    Updated: Wednesday 10th April at The Chapel above The Angel Microbrewery in Nottingham Supporting Empathy Test and Black Nail Cabaret Saturday 13th April, our first London gig at the New Cross Inn Supporting Ghost Dance Saturday 27th April at The Whitby Brewery, Whitby with In Isolation and Chaos Bleak This is part of the April WGW events and is on in the afternoon Hurtsfall are on first at 2.00pm Saturday 8th July BlaqkhOlesun Alternative Music Festival at The Alhambra, Morecambe Line up and running order still to be finalised Saturday 13th July Leodis Requiem at Wharf Chambers, Leeds Line up and running order still to be finalised
  3. It's on our car play list. It only comes on rarely but we sing along when it does. I mean who doesn't like Potatoes and Molasses?
  4. Currently re-watching "Over The Garden Wall" This is an earworm:
  5. Not for me. Just a drop down menu that would allow me to change the language.
  6. When I try and view it in my usual browser (I have a separate browser just for looking at Facebook and nothing else). I get a massive pop-up covering the content asking me to log in and accept cookies.
  7. I put together my first rack unit in the late 80s. I had built up a number of rack devices I was using for my bass and guitar sounds and had also modified some pedals so they fitted into rack cases. I added up all the spaces I needed plus 2U for future expansion and built myself a total impractical 14U case out of 1/2" plywood. Even with wheels on it was too big and heavy to easily get out of our rehearsal space where it spent nearly all its time. About a year later the majority of devices in the rack were replaced by a single 1U Roland GP8. which together with a power amp, tuner and a couple of devices which did things the GP8 couldn't and the whole lot fitted into a 7U rack with a spare space. During the 90s my rack rig consisted of a 2x300W power amp, Peavy Bassfex, Peavy Spectrum Filter, Peavy Rack Light/PSU and a Korg Tuner which completely filled the 7U rack case and was ideally a two person lift. The following decade I was able to reduce this down to 6U - Tech Soundsystems Black Cat Amp, Bass Pod XT Pro, Peterson Tuner and Sony Wireless. As others have said the great thing about having everything in a rack case was the set-up time was minimal. Take off the front and back lids, plug in the speakers, power and bass and I was ready to go. Most of the time the guitarists were still running their cables between their pedal boards and amps. The downside is that the weight of a rack case quickly builds up as you fill it, and is nearly always unevenly distributed towards the front which makes all but the smallest rigs a difficult carry. However this all changed when I decided to ditch the backline and the rack case and contents went with it. I've now got a Helix Floor and an FRFR cab, which at a push could be carried one in each hand, and setup time is even quicker.
  8. You should have tried buying synthesisers back in the late 70s / early 80s. Back then around £300 would get you an entry-level mono synth (one note at a time) with a single VCO and envelope generator and no patch memories. Or you could buy a decent guitar or bass for the same money. A good mono synth would cost twice that and polyphony plus user memories were heading into terraced house in need of modernisation prices.
  9. The vast majority of the time nothing terrible is going to happen and you are unlikely to damage any of the equipment. However depending on how the sockets are wired and how the cables are wired into the plugs at each end you might get unexpected audio side effects. If you have reached the stage where you have patch bays in your set up then you really should be also at the stage where you can solder up your own cables so that you are using the correct ones with the correct plugs attached.
  10. The 4 extra strings do appear to have been a later addition.
  11. I have an Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 Pro. I play in a post-punk/goth influenced band so it's fairly appropriate. However for me the only reason I have it is because it's only Bass VI with a neck wide enough to comfortably suit my playing style. If I could get on with the Squier Bass VI I'd probably still be using that. When I have the cash the Eastwood will most likely be replaced with something custom made with the same neck with but a more interesting looking design.
  12. A former bandmate told me about his previous musical project where he and another musician would drive every Monday from Nottingham to Newcastle where they would stay all week (driving back on Friday night) rehearsing and recording with a singer from a reasonably well-known 90s band who was trying to relaunch his career. This went on for about a year and a handful of gigs before it all fell apart. However, given the nature of the project, I believe they were being paid for their time.
  13. Which is more valuable/useful? A slightly non-original bass that works properly, or an all-original one that is unreliable?
  14. Anyone who plugs a memory stick from an unknown source into their computer deserves everything they get.
  15. It's a sad state of affairs when a band's audience is prepared to pay £10 for a T-shirt which will probably have at least a 100% mark up, but won't pay the same for an album on CD which is barely breaking even on pressing costs only.
  16. The main problem is that the design in the OP is is not really suitable for printing onto cost-effective T-shirts, hence the prices that are being quoted which is for direct to garment, which is too expensive and not as hard wearing. IME a design like that in the OP is only worth producing directly when the band is at the stage where they can be looking at T-shirt sales of 1000+. At the level the OP's band appears to be they need T-shirts that can be printed for around £6 each or less (for 100 shirts) to be sold at £10-£15 a shirt. This means reducing the design to a single solid colour - generally white to be printed onto a black T-shirt. Depending on how the original design has been produced it may be possible to go back to the original artist and get them to do a new version that meets the requirements for single-colour screen printing. They will also need to simplify some of the fine line detail as that won't reproduce well. The other potential issue is that the design is specific to a particular EP which means that it will date. One of the bands I play with have generic band logo T-shirts and those based on the cover of our last album. The album design T-shirts sold well while the album was new, but now the album is a couple of years old they have dropped off in favour of the generic ones. If this was for one of my bands I would forget about the illustration and simply go for a big band logo. This will look impressive, be easy and cost-effective to print which means that there is a very good chance that the band will actually make money out of selling them. It also turns every single person wearing one into an easily readable walking advertisement for the band. Also IME for the print to be cost effective you need to produce at least 100 T-shirts and be able to sell them for at least twice what they cost. If you don't think you can sell 50 T-shirts in a year then it's probably not for your band. Don't worry too much about sizes - from experience no matter how much of your audience is made up of skinny hipsters the people who buy band T-shirts tend to be size L and bigger. So get mostly L and XL and a few S, M and 2XL. As has been said get a SumUp or similar card reader. Personally I wouldn't bother with cash any more, it will save you from having to have change, as you can guarantee that the first 5 people to buy one for cash will all want to pay with £20 notes. HTH.
  17. This is a Yamaha Super-Strat that I used to own and let him use for a few gigs. Despite the fact that the guitar was thoroughly wiped down after each playing session this was the result after a month or so of him playing it with all the rusting and pitting of the black finish to the metal parts caused by the reaction of the metalwork to his sweat.
  18. IME it completely depends on what's in your sweat and how much of it you leave on your strings (and the rest of the instrument). I'm seem to be lucky in that my sweat is fairly innocuous and TBH the Fast Fret applicator added more crap to the bass guitar strings than it appeared to remove. OtOH I used to play with a guitarist whose sweat was so corrosive that he would have to give the whole guitar a thorough clean immediately after the gig otherwise not only did the strings rot away but so did all the other metal parts of the instrument.
  19. My synth-pop band covered this back in the 80s. Trying to get the drum machine programmed with the correct bar structure was a challenge. It's a clever song that sounds simple until you need to dissect it at which point you discover that it is most definitely rather complex.
  20. Not all Hondo Aliens have aluminium necks, although it looks as though the one in the Facebook link does.
  21. So what counts as a "pub" gig? Here in Nottingham originals bands play at The Jam Café, The Chameleon, The Angel Microbrewery, The Golden Fleece, Rough Trade. IMO they all count as "pubs". There's also The Old Cold Store which is a venue behind a pub. The Chameleon and The Angel Microbrewery have separate upstairs rooms where the bands play, but you still have to go down to the main part of the pub to get your drinks. All of these venues have in-house PA systems. TBH no-one would play at the Chameleon if they had to bring their own PA system as it's almost impossible to park nearby even for loading, and then down a narrow alleyway and up two flights of steep stairs. The venue makes up for it by having the most ridiculously large 80s style rig that goes all the way up to the ceiling and the venue capacity could probably be increased by 25% if it was replaced with something more modern. I'm sure that if I looked hard enough I could find pubs here that were prepared to put on an originals band and would require the band to bring their own PA system. But why bother when there's plenty of places to play that don't require that extra effort?
  22. You must be deliberately playing some strange places. For the past 30 years I have played 100s of venues all over the UK and the only times (less than 5) there was no in-house PA and lights was when we deliberately chose to play somewhere that didn't normally put on live music, and in these cases we knew in advance and hired in PA and lights along with a crew to load, set them up and work them and that was factored in to the economics of doing the gig.
  23. Absolutely this. Being able to own almost 50 guitars and basses at the same time allowed me directly compare them all and decide which ones I would keep and use and which I was just owning because I could. The six that I have kept are: Gus G3 5-String (red). This is my main bass for one band Gus G3 5-String (black). This is the back-up bass. Eastwood Hooky 6-String Bass. This is my main bass for the other band Burns Barracuda. This is the back-up bass for the Eastwood. When I have the cash it will be replaced by another Eastwood. Gus G1 Guitar. For writing and recording Fretking Esprit V Custom. For writing and recording. And that's all I need.
  24. According to page 43 of the quick start manual it is for MIDI over USB.
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