peteb

I dunno, it’s all part of the experience, paying dues and all that. It’s just that none of us are getting any younger. At least these days, we’re generally not trying to sneak extra band members past the desk to save on hotel rooms!

I've got two rigs; a 'big' rig (that isn't that big these days) and a more compact one, along with another spare amp. I do different types of gigs, often with very different bands, sometimes on bigger stages and sometimes in the corner of a tiny pub. Sometimes you might struggle to fit the bigger cab onstage and sometimes you don't want to be lugging a rack cased amp to the far corridors of a Travelodge in a strange city at 2 o'clock in the morning. At least, not at my age...! I also have a third rig; an old Hartke amp and a cheapish 810 cab. it lives permanently in a mate's rehearsal studio (I've only used it once in the past ten years).

Personally, I would be very wary of selling the mpulse to get the TT800. I had a Subway for a while and it was a great sounding amp, but I still got rid of it after a while. It was great when playing deps for a R&B band, but when I got it on a bigger stage with a heavier band and loads of keyboards - it just got lost and couldn't keep up. Last time I was down at Bass Direct, I told Mark how much I had liked the Subway, but still sold it on. He said "It's not just the sound of the amp, but the way it delivers it", which I think is very true. I replaced the Subway with a Handbox hybrid amp, which once you get used to the EQ section, is superb. I'm another one who's main rig is a Mesa amp (mpulse) and Berg cab (HS410), which is as good as anything that I have ever heard.

The short answer is scale and costs. The UK is a medium size market, worth selling to but not big enough to sustain a large scale manufacturing business. The fact that we have now put up barriers to our biggest export market doesn’t help, but of course at least there are no tariffs in place. The bigger issue (arguably) is costs. There is no way that the UK can compete with China and the far-east in larger scale production, even taking tariffs and shipping into account. To do so, it would have to massively reduce its costs, and seeing as the major element of that is labour, then that would mean paying significantly lower wages as well as reducing other associated costs (pension / NI contributions, etc). As you say, the UK is good at small scale, high-end production (note that the same is also true for other northern european countries), but there is a reason why its manufacturing base has declined. I could answer in a lot more detail, but that leads to a risk of derailing the thread and of opening up a debate that the mods won’t like.

No, not at all. I've had a few cheaper basses over the years (usually as a spare), but I always moved them on for something better after a few months. Like Chris, I bought my first Fender Precision as soon as I got my first job (working backstage at a theatre as an 18 year old). It was a really nice mocha brown P bass with a maple neck. This travelled up and down the country with me for 6 or 7 years (acquiring a pretty crappy 77 Precision as a spare along the way), before I sold it when I first discovered the joys of active basses back in the mid 80s. Bizarrely, my old brown P bass came up for sale a few months ago and I ended up buying it back for five times what I sold it for 24 years ago! It has seen a bit of life since we have been apart, belonging to a couple of session musicians, doing loads of soul gigs, living in a recording studio and apparently even being used to settle a drug debt several years ago! But now it's back with me, been cleaned up and wearing an old badass bridge that I've had in my spares box for years as wellas a bart pickup and still sounding as great as ever. Sounds and feels like a proper Fender (to me at least). So my oldest bass is one I bought a couple of months ago, which was the first really good bass that I owned...!

If Chris is involved I'm sure that it will be kosher! I bought a couple of tickets last night.

That is arguably true, but I used to deal with those actually in government. They never used to be this amateurish (e.g. not reading a very important report related to their portfolio because they were organising a nativity play! That is inexcusable and would never have happened 20 years ago). I am not talking about whether you liked the politicians or agreed with their policies, but how they implemented them.

Not at all, I used to have to deal with politicians and can tell you that there has been a very definite decline.

To be fair, that isn't the reason. There were always career politicians, but the ones in power were more capable and got to where they were because they good rather than their connections or views on a single issue. I know a lot of people are very reluctant to accept this, but there are still plenty of capable politicians on both sides of the house, but unfortunately they are not in the cabinet now.

If she had bothered to read it she would have found that they had capitulated on fishing, even after all of the fuss that they made about it! The level of incompetence of government in this country over the past decade has been staggering. It never used to be like that (both parties were pretty capable at governing the country, whether you liked them or not).

Other tributes online from Mike Portnoy, Carmine Appice, etc. Apparently he died of cancer.

His Wikipedia page has said that he has died, but no there is mention of cause of death or whatever.

Just seen that @Crawford13 has started a similar thread - mods, please can you lock this thread or merge with the existing one

Just seen on Facebook that Chris from Alpher Instruments is offering a chance to win an Alpher Mini Mako 30 inch scale bass for just £10 and help musicians struggling as a result of the pandemic. This raffle is available worldwide with shipping included. It costs £10 per ticket, with all proceeds going to helpmusicians.org.uk Here’s the link to the tickets: https://alphershop.com/.../products/raffle-ticket-mini-mako Nice one Chris - a great gesture...

British bands definitely have an allure for European audiences as many of the world's biggest bands came from these islands (from the Beatles to Black Sabbath to the Clash). However, support for live music is stronger in most European countries than in England these days (maybe not so much in Scotland & Ireland) and there are plenty of good bands over on the mainland. UK bands not getting gigs in the EU may well mean more gigs for them. I don't think that the EU wants to exclude British acts, hence the offer in the first place, but it will have to be reciprocal. I wish that UK Govt cared as much...!

BBC website (yesterday): Pressure mounts on UK government to resolve EU touring visas for musicians https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55616860?fbclid=IwAR0IbSqB7guSxvx2WxSQd9DESLX5JG8MUS96JytEjZXESKlrWNhic9RGA3Q

I think that you are being as hopelessly optimistic as ever going for May, but the vaccine roll out will eventually pay dividends and hopefully we will be gigging at some point before next winter. Some friends of mine who were supposed to get married last year but put their wedding back to this May, have already been told by the venue that it is unlikely that they can have the full wedding reception / party. I do hope that you are right about May as the only gig I have in the diary that hasn't already been definitely cancelled is in May.

That could be the understatement of the thread…! This was never going to stop established ‘bigger’ bands from touring. For bands selling out theatre level venues, it is just another touring expense. Of course, they need to keep this additional expense down, so they are much more likely to use EU based crews rather than British guys. There are already UK based production companies who will only employ British techs if they have dual passports. The real problem is for musos who rely on smaller scale live work in the EU to make a living; be it on cruise ships, sessions, holiday seasons, a band tour or promo work, or often freelancers playing multiple tours / odd dates with a number of acts throughout the year. Multiple work permits, carnets, different visa requirements, VAT issues for merch, etc all add cost to make it almost impossible for to work in the EU.

My understanding is that although the City has lost some jobs to EU financial centres, it is not as many as expected and as you say, they may have created new jobs unrelated to Brexit. A lot of money has left the country to find a new home in the EU, but I am sure that the City will continue to prosper, just perhaps not quite as much as it would have done. Your point about AI is potentially massive for the finance industry, as well as for many others.

To be fair, this is an issue that is going to affect many people here, especially pros who depend on playing in the EU to make a living, but also semi-pros like me. Also, it is something that has come about as a direct consequence of Brexit, which obviously makes it difficult to discuss without talking about Brexit.

No idea if there is a similar petition process to ask the EU parliament to consider holding a debate, although you could always have gone to your MEP to ask them to put your case forward for such a debate.

Good God, that thread would last for twenty years!

Ironically, when I shared the petition on Facebook about half the people who signed or commented on it had openly voted Leave. This included the most vociferous supporters of the petition / critics of the Government’s handling of the issue. Of course, they all knew what they were voting for…

I've got a Samson unit in my live rack that looks very similar to that (except that it has kettle lead inputs rather than 3 prong plug ones). It does it's job well enough - gives a bit of protection and keeps things tidy.

That is correct. The visa offered to British musicians and turned down by the government would have got around these issues.