Happy Jack

Of course, this approach won't work for everyone ...

Set up Zoom Q2 4k HD (or similar) cameras around the band. Place a Zoom H4n Pro (or similar) recorder in front of the band. Switch on & record. Later ... load up everything into Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm/). Have fun. To get you started ...

There's a FB meme doing the rounds (about high-end audio gear, but it still applies) where one chap is saying to the other "The two things which really attracted me were the expense and the inconvenience".

Note the subtle change in tone when a human enters the conversation ... "hello, would you please let me know which Saturdays from April onward is your band available. Really keen to book them in " 😂

And of course the perceived improvement lasts about five minutes. After that, it's your bass and it sounds like you.

My CK61 has become my go-to when I'm restricted on space or set-up time. It's very Jack-of-all-trades and there's not many sounds that it excels at (though the orchestra with flute is superb) but as a one-size-fits-all it will always do a job for you. I particularly like the ease of use. Having pairs of buttons dedicated to modulation by semitones or octaves is SO much better than burying that in a menu somewhere, and the range of easy-to-reach sounds for use at gigs is spectacular and makes it easy to change on the fly mid-song. It took me a while to get my head around the fact that the user-controlled sounds have nowt to do with Midi and are just 3-way mini-mixes of stock sounds (with various FX available, of course). Given that I hate having anything to do with Midi, for me that's an absolute Godsend. When I'm playing a full 2-set or 3-set gig on keys then I'll take a 3-board rig using a Stay stand. The CK61 sits in the middle and is chiefly there for piano and orchestral sounds, though it also does good clavier and useful bits like harmonica and even banjo. Below that is a Hammond SK1 which does organ ten times better than the CK61 can ever do, natch. Above it is a Korg Kross which is another Jack-of-all-trades but I bought it precisely because it does excellent brass.

In today through the Lemonrock enquiry system: "I hope this email finds you well. My name is **** ******, and I am the manager of a pub located in ************. As we are exploring opportunities to diversify our live events offerings, I recently stumbled upon your profile and found it intriguing. I would be grateful if you could provide me with information regarding your pricing structure for live performances. Understanding your rates would greatly assist us in evaluating potential collaborations and aligning them with our budgetary considerations. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. Thank you for your time and consideration. Please contact me on blah blah blah" First thing to note is that this is not a joke post. That's a cut & paste (anonymised, of course) from the email. Second thing to note is that those of you who haven't had office-based careers may imagine that this is what business correspondence looks like. It doesn't. In a 45-year career dealing with business correspondence of all sorts, I can't remember ever receiving anything quite as jargon-laden and turgid as this. Resisting the temptation to reply "We believe in peeling the onion by directionifying our key performance indicators into a transitional enhanced profitability status" @Silvia Bluejay replied seriously and honestly. In a reasonably long email about what we do and what we charge she used the phrase "cash on the night". A reply was received within seconds, mentioning the online payment system used by this pub's owners. Hmmmmm. And again, hmmmmmm. And thrice, hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Dang! Your only date remotely near us is when @Silvia Bluejay is out of the country, and you play her music. ☹️

@cetera - where's the link to your tour dates?

If what you want is the sound of your amp / speaker combination going to FOH, then just mic up the speaker, neh? That way you're guaranteed to get exactly the sound you want, and you don't need no stinkin' DI boxes neither. 😱😂

Closure: The bill came in at a rather more reasonable £510, for which I was very relieved. Perhaps more importantly, the instant I started playing the bass it was as if I'd traded in a cheap Chinese beginner's bass for a high-end instrument. Not just better than it was (with a warped fingerboard, well duh!) but substantially better than on the day I bought it and - if anything - even better than the Zeller 3/4 it replaced. No complaints from me. Thwaites did an excellent job. 🙂

If it were done, 't'were best done quickly ... That £149 price from GAK has already gone; presumably they've sold out, which doesn't even begin to surprise me. Andertons still have some at £159 and bizarrely a new deal from Thomann has just popped up at £146, though I suspect they'll add £15 for P&P.

My preferred use for the H4n Pro is to have it on a small but stable tripod on the floor just to the side of the drummer's throne, the two mic capsules of course pointing directly at the kit. Meanwhile, I take a stereo splitter cable from the Headphones Out on the desk (used to be an XR18, now a Ui24, works equally well with both) to a pair of 1/4" mono jacks which go into the combi sockets on the H4n Pro. The recorder needs to be in 4CH mode for this to work and I leave mine set like that at all times regardless. That gives me a 2-channel stereo FOH mix from the board plus a 2-channel stereo mic close-up of the kit, which is the element that tends to feature least in the FOH mix. In fairness, that's not actually "right next to the snare", but it's pretty darned close and anyway @Silvia Bluejay and I have taken more and more to mic'ing the kit using the Glyn Johns approach, so theres more snare & hi-hat in the FOH mix these days.

Have you tried running the lead vocalist through a Mic Mechanic?

ROCKNEY Gertcha The Sideboard Song There Ain't No Pleasin' You

Friend of Jimmy Page, maybe?

PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock 'n' roll route? DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13- year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say? PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock 'n' roll singer? DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis. From the Bob Dylan 1966 Playboy interview

Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/377691255697549/?hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen&multi_permalinks=3078242042309110&__cft__[0]=AZWZqBK_jABeU95GSlaPRCNEZiLmXfsm8gcEunAPlRSrjZQ2EG5laysTjB71xDPw8QZavct0SBH7TxXJ_nVDwednssuam4i75Uxbrs-l_rbqKWWzzWDV4SwFwJIhozY4B41YgvHrEqTXVcmAzgbIht1FjKG8JFbtYyVWeiCDTaq-STGQmpl21smsKuCuNFRIWvCiAOA4BfdXZfwG8WyT7sGp&__tn__=-UC%2CP-R has one for sale at £700 this evening, in Pulborough. No idea if that's a good price.

So the estimate has come in. £600. So that's a Panama Moment, when I sit back in my chair and stare at the screen, and then I say "Far Canal".

Can't help but wonder what that 2-string sounds like with all four pole-pieces aligned with one string. Could you put one (or more) of the poles slightly out of phase with the others and have an on-board fuzz/distortion sound?

Rehearsal? Unless you're rehearsing at The Who style volume levels then it will be way more than capable of delivering what you need. At any real gig big/loud enough that you might run out of headroom you'll have PA support anyway. @Obrienp is spot on with his comment about hearing damage.

I've kept digging on this subject due to an issue with my old H4n Pro - the Mic capsule has for some months now been producing seriously lop-sided recording levels, as if panned Left by about 50%. The Input signal is perfectly balanced and no adjustment I can make to the Mic capsule (switch between 90/120, hard-pan the signal to the Right by 50%, etc.) seems to cure the problem. Unfortunately, the capsule itself is not removeable, so cannot be replaced. All this is First World problems, and I can 'fix' the sound by hard-panning Right in post (at the cost of losing rather more than half the level which must then, in turn, also be fixed), but it is clear that my trusty H4n Pro is no longer completely reliable. Given that it's done well over 300 gigs with me and my bands, that's a shame - I don't see this device as 'optional'. So I've taken a long hard look at the H4 Essential and decided that actually the only thing I really like is the Float 32 thingy. Pretty much everything else appears to be at best on a par with the H4n Pro and in many cases (pun intended) it's clearly a step towards "built down to a price". This would make sense if it was cheap, but they sell the damned things for £186 at Bax and that's the cheapest price I could find. 🙄 Meanwhile, the H4n Pro is clearly now seen as obsolescent, so GAK are selling them at a heavy discount, down from £205 to £149. This just became a complete no-brainer for me. A fully-featured, solidly-built H4n Pro for £149 or a reduced-feature piece of flimsy plastic for £186? And very probably an H4 Essential Pro in the works right now which will retail for £220-£260? I've just ordered another H4n Pro; I'll keep the old one as a spare and for use when all I need is a feed from the desk.

Tonight's venue (The Fiery Bird, Woking) with a full-on Pro sound system & engineer. He's using the Glyn Johns method PLUS a couple of close-mics on the toms. I'll see how it sounds when I check the recordings tomorrow.