BigRedX

Hurtsfall have their next gig on Friday 8th September at the Angel in Nottingham supporting Cold In Berlin:

Back in the 90s I played a band that had a lot of heavy flight-cased gear that had to loaded in an out of the venues we played and often stacked in creative ways to fit everything in the smaller stage areas. I always wore gloves while shifting the gear about and they only got taken off once everything was in place and we were ready to start cabling. These days the bands I play with have mostly ditched the heavy gear. The most unwieldy and heavy items are the drummer's hardware case in one band and the synth player's keyboard stand in the other. Both are in proper cases with decent handles, so I haven't bothered with the gloves recently. Having said that it might be time to reconsider.

Because most of the audience can only see their head. Can also work for some keyboard players depending on how prog rock their rig is...

Definitely no. I have been in bands where we have worn our band T-shirts while setting up, but we always got changed into our stage wear before playing. Personally I wouldn't wear on stage a T-shirt or any other clothing with an obvious logo or branding on it unless I was being paid a significant amount of money to do so.

And we are still projecting the attributes of acoustic instruments onto solid electric ones. Have none of you actually looked to see how different the methods of construction are? Take a typical acoustic guitar. The body will have been made from 5 pieces of very thin wood (2 back, 2 sides and the top) held together with the minimum amount of glue and bracing needed for the construction to not come part under the tension of the strings. It's a design and method of construction that has developed over hundreds of years. Other than a similar shape a solid electric instrument has nothing in common when it comes to construction. Several chunky pieces of wood slathered in glue to hold them together. Take a look at a typical selection of two and three piece bodies and your see that the joins aren't even consistently placed. It's done simply to get the greatest number of instruments out of the fewest number of planks. As I keep saying, the problem I have with assigning tonal properties to the wood used for solid electric instruments is that firstly every piece of wood is different - even pieces cut from the same plank. It is naive to assign those properties to a single piece of wood within an instrument without also considering all the other factors that also go towards making two instruments sound different. You simply can't isolate a single item in a guitar and say that it and it alone is responsible for making this instrument sound different from another one. And all the user experiences concentrate on why two different instruments sound different. There should be no surprise there. It's easy to produce two instruments that sound different. If wood in solid electric instruments behaved in a predicable way, then every Fender P-bass made with the same body neck and fingerboard woods would sound EXACTLY the same. But they don't. It's an universally acknowledge fact that you will have to try multiple supposedly identical instruments to find "the one". By the way, here's great sounding P-Bass: The only wood used in the construction are two soft wood fillets glued onto the back of the aluminium T-section that forms the bulk of the neck and fingerboard, and were probably used because they were easier to shape than aluminium to form the back of the neck. I could also post the Ritter and Bas Extravaganza basses made out of plywood. While each sheet of wood that made up Mr Ritter's bass was probably individually selected, the Bas Extravaganza bass was made from a couple of standard sheets of ply picked at random from his local DIY superstore.

They might be Warwick Black Labels. However all the strings (B to G) I have currently fitted show the less tightly wound wraps seen in the first photo the set I'm about to fit have the winding tight to the end.

This is a common mistake made by players of solid electric instruments who also play acoustic instruments. While on acoustic instruments the body is crucial for shaping and projecting the sound, on a solid electric instrument it is there mostly to have somewhere to fit the bridge (and strings), pickups and controls and have an attractive and/or ergonomic shape. And while the construction and materials used for the body will have an influence on the amplified sound, it is minimal, unpredictable and inconsistent. This is why a lot of the time two identical looking instruments can sound very different when plugged in. Most of the time the materials used are picked mainly for their constructional strength and occasionally for their appearance; although most fancy looking woods are either veneers or thin laminates, glued onto something more practical but boring looking. And this is why you don't really want the body to be resonant, or at least not in the frequencies that you want to project, because then they are being absorbed by the structure of the instrument rather than being captured by the pickups.

"Good" tone is entirely subjective. And what works with one type of music and/or combination of instruments doesn't necessarily work with others. In a resonant bass string energy is potentially being wasted exciting the the materials used in its construction, and unlike an acoustic instrument this is not always a desirable thing. A solid body doesn't directly affect the output of the pickups and it what little effect it has happens in a non-predicable way - if it was predicable we would be having this discussion in the first place. Remember also that resonance is responsible for dead spots on the neck, something that you definitely don't want.

I use a non-standard tuning on my Bass VIs (EADGCE) because we do a lot of songs in Am and C and being able to have a drone C string is far more useful than a B. I have one guitar permanently tuned to drop D with an appropriately heavier string for the D, but I count it as standard tuning but making some chords and riffs easier to play. In the past when I have played with guitarists who used drop D, I stuck with standard tuning on the bass. When I was playing Dad Rock covers then band did quite a lot of songs that would have been recorded with the guitars tuned a semi-tone down but we always played them a semi-tone higher to avoid having to retune or to take multiple guitars to gigs. Out of interest I found several of the Thin Lizzy songs easier to play at their original pitch but in conventional tuning, then I did a semi-tone higher.

Here's mine. This setup is also our drummer and second synth player.

Does anyone other than people in the band notice? While playing perfectly is an admirable goal, you (and the rest of the band) need to acknowledge that most of us will mistakes. It's how they get dealt with that sorts the good bands out from the average ones. Most of the time unless the mistake is so awful that it brings the whole song to a grinding halt less than 60 seconds after it has started no one in the audience will even know it has happened. So what you need to do is to be able to pickup cleanly as soon as possible after making the mistake and do nothing to make anyone think that anything has gone wrong. Same with the rest of the band. They need to carry on playing as normal. Not look round at the person who has made the mistake. If you all play through it like it didn't happen then there is even less chance that anyone in the audience will have noticed. If you and the band can behave like that it will take the pressure off which is probably a contributing factor to making the mistakes. And if to eradicate them complete you just need to practice. The old adage goes that you don't practice until you can play something right. You practice until you can't play it wrong. IME this only comes with time. So relax. Play though your (and anyone else in the bands) mistakes and eventually you'll stop making them.

I don't have a "feed" I simply view the forum in it's default form. I don't see how any other method would be any more useful to me. The biggest problem for me is threads that I have posted in by mistake or those that have descended into fish jokes will have a star next to them making me think that since I have posted in this thread previously it will have new content that I will be interested in, when this is most definitely not the case. I suppose for me a semi-workable alternative to being able to hide threads, I am not/no longer interested in would be to have my contribution(s) removed so it no longer looks like I posted in it. To that end @Woodinblack would it be possible to delete my single contribution to the "Daily Annoyances" thread? Thanks!

Luminlay. I have used stick on dots in the past, but IME they always wear off at the most inconvenient moment.

Yes, but it's always visible and it's nearly always at the top of the page and has to scrolled past to get the threads that I am interested in. Because I am mildly dyslexic there a few members on here whose posts make my brain hurt trying to read them, and because of this I can hide their contributions. Why shouldn't a whole thread be any different. Once I've hidden it, it will be gone for me forever, and I won't be complaining about it ever again. And equally I ask why is it so important that I don't have the ability to be able to hide it?

And @Frank Blank Regarding DOI (and other off-topic threads) counting towards reputation, it hadn't really occurred to me until very recently that this was the case, and personally it doesn't really matter one way or another. I only really use the reactions to see if people are actually interested in what I post and TBH I would find it more useful to be able to get a notification when one of my posts gets quoted (as I do on another forum) than just a reaction. @ped However it would be good if there was some consistency to post counts reputation points etc. I don't have a problem with them all being site-wide, but if some are restricted from certain threads or sub-fora shouldn't everything be like that? OoI do the various "hidden" threads and fora that are only visible to contributing members count towards post numbers and reputation? BTW I have posted this here and not in the DOI simply so I don't have a contributing star next to the thread which will make me even more likely to look at it again.

I suppose it was a little bit over the top, bit I simply don't "get" the DOI thread. Every so often I dip in to seem what is happening, but to me as an outsider it just comes across as a clique with it's own set of in-jokes, and seemingly no connection between the various posts. I wouldn't even begin to know how to make a contribution. I suppose what I really want is the ability to hide the thread from me permanently. I would have said the ability to hide all of "Off Topic" is what is needed but very occasionally there are threads in there that I am able and want to, make a contribution to.

I've been totally ampless in one band and partially ampless (I have an FRFR for rehearsals and occasionally on-stage monitoring) in the other for 5 years now. I made money when I sold my traditional amplification and replaced it with a Helix and RCF745. Given how I'm now using the FRFR I could have bought a lesser (and cheaper) model and come away with even more profit. I don't miss my traditional rig. It looked good, but it was big and heavy and took up lots of room on stage and in the band van. On small stages I would have to turn down so much so as not to upset the FoH sound that it was all but inaudible and on big stages it really only worked as a personal monitor when I was stood directly in front of it. The rest of the time I was reliant on the PA monitors to be able to hear myself, so for me it made total sense to ditch the conventional rig as most of the time it was of no audible benefit to either me, the band or the audience. The sorts of gigs my bands play there is nearly always a good in-house PA in the venue. Since ditching the conventional rig I have done two gigs where I need to use the FRFR to provide bass for the whole venue, and IMO it coped far better - the improved dispersion of the FRFR meant that I only needed to be slightly louder on stage then I would normally choose, instead of being so loud that I could barely hear the rest of the band as had happened before. Also loosing the conventional bass rig means that the bands' transport needs have been reduced. Instead of a fully loaded van one band now gets everyone and all our gear including the drum kit and the merch into two average-sized cars, while the other band (which has no drummer) gets the whole band plus our roadie/merch seller into a single estate car. I can see bassists that play in bands with their own (mostly vocal only) PA not wanting to go this route. Personally from my experience playing in a band that owned its own PA, it was IMO an expensive hassle and I won't ever go back to doing those sorts of gigs.

You'll get greater variations in sound with two different cabs then you will with a single cab or multiple identical cabs.

Whoever is assembling the PJB units obviously has a suitable tool. I would contact PJB ask them where you can get one from.

This has come up a couple of times with regards to control knobs and there is a good chance that the problem is similar to the one the beset Hercules stands, in that there was a problem with the material used. If this is the case, cleaning with something like acetone will only be a temporary fix, and once the sticky layer has been removed/dissolved the newly exposed material will start to break down in the same way. If its a rubbery coating causing the problem eventually it will all be dissolved away and hopefully whatever is beneath won't exhibit similar problems. However in doing so you'll have lost the advantage of having a grippy coating on the knobs. My opinion is that this is defect that needs to be addressed by the manufacturer by replacing the knobs FoC with ones that don't go sticky.

The problem with mixing cabs is that the decisions and how good they sound are made standing a couple of feet away, with no regard for what the combination sounds like elsewhere in the venue. Fine if your rig is simply a personal monitor, but potentially not so good for your audience.

I have an RCF745. These days it's used mainly for rehearsals and the occasional gig where the foldback is strictly for vocals only - everywhere else the supplied foldback is more than adequate for mine and the rest of the bands needs. On the two occasions I have needed it to supply bass guitar for the whole venue it coped much better than my previous very big, heavy and expensive conventional rig. Also because of the much better dispersion characteristics I only had to be slightly louder than I would use for on-stage monitoring, instead of so loud I could barely hear the rest of the band.

Jens Ritter

I'm partially left handed in that I do some things left handed and some things right handed. Learnt to write right handed and while that might be due to when I learnt at school (in the early 60s) I can distinctly remember that I had classmates who wrote left handed although the contortions that they put themselves through in order not to smudge what they had written did make me think that made learning to write right handed might overall be an easier option. Out of Interest for languages that are written right to left is there a larger proportion of left-handed people in their populations? When I first picked up a guitar my natural inclination was to pick it up "left handed". However it was obvious that this was the wrong way round. When I did start to learn to play, it was finger-style "folk guitar" which meant that I needed to be equally proficient with both hands, and since the guitar I learnt on was designed and strung for right-handed playing, I learned that way. In retrospect I'm glad I did, because it has opened up a far larger range of guitars and basses to me than if I could only play left handed. There is at least one luthier who won't make left-handed instruments because his right-handedness makes it impossible to feel for the fine tuning needed to complete a left-handed custom instrument to the standard he wants for something with his name on.

I wonder how long it would take before someone mentioned him.