Happy Jack

In February 2008 I was getting frustrated with never having played an actual gig, despite being in two (so-called) bands for six months. I signed up for Weekend Warriors with ICMP in Kilburn but it turned out I'd missed the deadline. I took the family off for a long weekend in Istanbul in March, and we were strolling between Ayia Sofia and the Blue Mosque when my phone rang ... they were desperately short of bass players and would I join anyway. It was like the line-up from The Usual Suspects. I was put with four (yes, four) guitarists and - since they'd also run out of drummers - we were assigned one of the ICMP's students as our drummer. The four were: 40s Australian computer programmer with a bad back, into Guns 'n'Roses, could play pretty well, sang pretty well. 40s American project manager with a very bad back (following a life-threatening car crash the previous year) and industrial-strength painkillers, into Aerosmith, could play pretty well when he could think straight but could never remember the words. 50s Brit who spent his life as an ex-pat engineer servicing weapons systems in the Middle East and Far East, liked the blues, reasonable guitarist. 60s Brit who spent his life as a deep-sea diver on off-shore oil-rigs, possibly the worst guitarist in history, but incredibly nice and as enthusiastic as a new puppy. The drummer was, of course, in his early 20s and was by far the best musician in the room. They supplied an excellent, really high-class rehearsal space, PA and backline, and we brought our instruments. For the very first session one of their guys helped us set up the PA - the real basics like setting the gain and EQ. Then we were on our own, and the first thing we had to do was work out what "a sound check" was and how to do it. As a crash course in how to be in a band it was bloody wonderful, seriously. No way could I have learned so much, so quickly, by doing endless rehearsals in someone's garage. We all chucked ideas for songs into the middle and argued about them (we probably went to the pub once or twice) and we ended up with a thoroughly motley selection that no covers band with an ounce of sanity would choose but hey - that's what we wanted to do. Three of us could sing a bit so we split the songs between us to share the load, no actual lead singer as such. After four rehearsals it was obvious that the diver was a dead weight on the band, utterly clueless, strumming away timelessly in the wrong key on an acoustic guitar, but he was so transparently in love with the project, and such a lovely guy, that the rest of us all felt that we could afford to carry him. Then the weapons engineer had a heart attack and the Yank upped his meds. I'm not making any of this up, really I'm not. Suddenly the band became the Aussie and me with a student drummer, plus a stoned lead guitarist and a rhythm guitarist who had no rhythm and couldn't play guitar. Oops. We played our showcase on 29th May 2008 at The Luminaire in Kilburn High Road. Before the gig, we had a quiet word with the sound guy and explained the problem, and he obligingly turned down the sound on the diver's guitar as soon as we started our set. The remaining 4-piece band actually acquitted itself pretty damn well, and at least as well as any of the other Weekend Warrior bands on the bill. I had a truly excellent time, learned a helluva lot about music, about bands, about band politics. Even now, nearly 11 years later, that remains my first-ever live gig. I also learned why you should never let the rest of the band spend time together without you. We hooked up for our first big discussion at The Horniman pub in The Galleria on the South Bank. When the time came to choose a name, it was pretty much inevitable that we'd choose The Hornimen. After I left, the band continued drinking. For some time apparently. The next day I took a very embarrassed phone call from the Aussie. The band had decided to choose another name and we were now ... The Squishy Fish. You couldn't make it up. Only they did.

Welcome aboard Max. Have you done House Band duties before? If not, you need to be aware that at most jams the members of the House Band are expected to lend their instruments to players who have turned up without their own, and that at every jam those players will be using your backline - i.e. those two little amps of yours. If your bass is a 1963 Fender worth £8000 you may want to think that through! More seriously, any amp solution that involves "being careful" with the controls may not survive contact with jammers. I've done very few jazz jams, but at blues jams and certainly at rock jams it's more or less obligatory for players to walk on stage and start twiddling knobs to get "their sound". At one jam where I was the House Band bass I spent the entire evening just off stage ready to leap on again and turn things down as necessary. You could do worse than to keep an eye out for a cheap & ratty old Trace Elliot or Peavey combo, something pretty much bullet proof but that you wouldn't be too upset about if it gets wrecked.

Did you place your order three months ago? And was there a queue?

Astonishing that no one has mentioned the enormous boost that Sid Vicious gave to a little-known dirge by someone called Frank Sinatra ...

Defensive is my middle name, Michael. I'm famous for it. That, and my paranoia.

Partly because we're really quite good at what we do, and partly because we get our volume levels right, the George IV have given us five gigs in 2019. Paid gigs at popular venues are the best possible metric. On balance, Michael, I reckon there's nowt wrong with the volume in that clip.

I've just posted a new PA-related thread in (as suggested) Accessories & Misc and I have to say it feels even stranger than last time. Ric/Ped - I do think this idea has some logic to it, y'know.

EVIDENCE The George IV (Chiswick) last May, crowded & noisy. https://youtu.be/CWkTXZeP8Ig ****************** The Victoria Club (Aylesbury) last July, boomy stage, very large room, thin crowd. https://youtu.be/bwHuXxN-hiQ Note how 'open' the stage seems without big PA tops and with no floor monitors. ****************** The Old Hall Tavern (Chingford) in January, very large L-shaped room, thin crowd. https://youtu.be/-leIccu_1ew From the conversation you can hear in the background, it's obvious that we're not blasting out a deafening volume. ****************** Solving the problem of keeping the AC4 tops fully-assembled, but still protected:

PRACTICAL ISSUES For foldback, each of the three singers has a small personal monitor unit on his stand. The drummer has two guitar combos to his right and my bass cab to his left so he can hear the band fine, but sometimes complains that he struggles to hear the lead vocals. I have the drummer between me and the guitar combos, but they are also coming out of the AC4 top to my left which means that I rarely have a problem. It's hardly worth working up a foldback solution through the PA when the sole problem is that one out of four occasionally has a slight problem. Having no full-on foldback system is a massive win at setup and virtually eradicates feedback. Speaking of feedback, because all the high frequencies are coming through very directional 5" linear array units, it takes a spectacular level of incompetence to get the main FoH sound to feed back. I can quite happily have my vocal mic alongside the linear array and less than three feet from it, and know that there won't be a problem. On the other hand, those powered subs make absolutely great drinks stands, especially for drunken dancers. If one sub is alongside a wall, then the gap between the PA pole and the wall is also a truly wonderful coat storage system. Don't ask me how I know these things. REGRETS? I've had a few. But then again, too few to mention. I'm happy that we bought these units, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy them again. If the things I've complained about (above) have not yet been remedied then I'd certainly drive a harder bargain on price, because there's no doubt that Mark Audio have issues with these units that could easily have been fixed and should by now be sorted.

WHEN TO USE THEM We experimented with putting the whole band through the PA and having that as the only amplification. The guitarists used sim pedals (I imagine there is a proper name for these - @MacDaddy ), the drummer used an electric kit, and the band used unclipped linear array elements as on-stage foldback. We tried that twice I think. We agreed that it worked under the right conditions but it was a very steep learning curve for us all, and ultimately was more faffing about than it was worth. Anyway, we could only do that at small venues where the drummer was content to use the electric kit, which is absolutely (and understandably) not his first choice. As soon as a live kit comes into the equation, IMHO you can't play a pub gig without proper backline. This system works best IME used as a sound reinforcement system. We set the band up as if for a vox-only PA gig, then hang vocal mics in front of the guitar combos, a drum mic in front of the kick, and take a DI from the bass amp. The entire process adds literally five minutes to our set-up time and, once done, means that the whole band is going through the PA with no grief at all. There is no real impact on the desk. Instead of three vocal channels we need seven. Under extreme conditions we might need to hang a pair of overheads for the kit, taking us to nine channels (two with phantom power). There are few gig-worthy desks that can't cope with that requirement. HOW TO USE THEM Like any other reasonably complex operation, it helps to have a pattern to follow, and it certainly helps if you can simplify the process. At the venue the first things laid down are a pair of small Auralex Gramma pads which - conveniently - have the same footprint as an AC4. Apart from isolating the powered sub from wooden dance floors, the Gramma pad also raises the bottom of the cab clear of beer spillage. Obviously the subs go onto the pads next, followed by the arrival of the Body Bag. This is a padded gig bag for gear measuring roughly 5' x 2' x 1' and it's a 2-person lift. As this is manoeuvred through a crowded pub, the law requires that some punter will say, 'Ere, you got a body in there? before collapsing in self-satisfied giggles. Live with it. Inside the Body Bag are the two poles, and the two ready-assembled linear array units which can be hung directly on the poles. No wingnut twiddling, no plastic bending, virtually no pluggage. We have devised our own solution to the protection problem - see EVIDENCE (below). Silvie puts the AC4s together while I set up the mixer and cabling, and she checks all the connections and settings. Then I double-check all the connections and settings before switching on. Then we both check all the connections and settings. It seems to work.

BUILD QUALITY Riddled with minor irritants! Remember - everything still works fine. But the 2x10 subs are already badly scratched and chipped near their bases, despite only ever being moved around by their careful owners, and carried to/from gigs in a luxury MPV rather than an old Transit. Compared to this my old, much-maligned Barefaced cabs with their famously dodgy and inadequate finish (which I rather liked, BTW) held up brilliantly. The damage could obviously be mitigated by using padded covers, and I believe that I have already mentioned the astonishing luxury gigbags for the linear array units. But the subs come with NO covers, and if you buy the approved Mark Audio covers as an extra they are overpriced pieces of thin, unpadded nylon. What's the Italian for "scoring an own goal", Silvie? I mentioned that the second linear module hangs from the first. What I didn't make clear is that - before the wingnuts come into play - the top of the second unit has to be 'clipped' to the bottom of the first unit. This involves bending the plastic wings outwards momentarily as they pass over the bottom of the unit. These have NOT broken, but they do feel vulnerable. The wingnuts I keep talking about have large, comfortable finger grips, but they also have stupidly long threaded shafts - about 4cm. Since they can't do their job properly unless they're screwed in properly, that's one helluva lot of wingnut spinning. Within the first month I'd taken a hacksaw to the critical ones and halved their length. The overall impression in this section is that Mark Audio did very little actual road-testing under live band conditions before launching this range. These issues were all very easy fixes. USEABILITY Some aspects of the AC4s practicality have already surfaced in this review, and have probably given a negative feel to the thing. In practice, these are great real-world units. The 2x10 powered subs are as heavy as any other 2x10 powered sub, certainly heavier than a 2x10 Markbass cab (I have one), but the weight and centre of gravity are low down and nothing needs to be hoisted up and placed on a tripod made of scaffolding poles. Any cheap LIDL-type folding trolley is perfectly adequate to take each sub across the car park and through the venue with no risk to my notoriously weak back. The linear arrays not only look very cool but also completely fail to blot out the room's view of the band or the band's view of the room. Until you've played with one of these systems, you don't really appreciate just how much you are currently peering out between two bloody big PA tops. Each sub has a dedicated 1/4" instrument socket for you to plug your bass into. If your entire bass rig should crumble and die in the middle of a song, you can be back and playing in the same bar. Was that not a great use of ambiguity? Eh? And you can unclip as many or as few of the linear array elements as you like and point them in different directions, creating instant foldback on the cheap if you need it. You'll need longer patch cables for this, mind. The next post will be the outcome of this Review of the Mark Audio AC4 units after a year of practical use, the things we've learned and what we've done about the problems.

SOUND These units continue to sound excellent, and to manage to sound good in pretty much any pub or club environment . I should mention that I have yet to use them outdoors. The debate about the 'hole in the middle' will not go away. At low to very low volumes it is certainly possible to convince yourself that the midrange is lacking. As soon as you start to turn up the volume, that stops being an issue (assuming that there is really an issue in the first place). The sound quality and presence is good enough to withstand schoolboy errors in the setup, like failing to switch on one side. Yes, even with a legend like me it happens. We played an entire set without realising that only one side of the PA was actually operating - that's four experienced musicians on stage plus Silvie out front - which to me implies that the sound is pretty bloody good. POWER We have repeatedly played the George IV in Chiswick, a very large pub which gets absolutely rammed, with the whole band (drums = kick only) going through the AC4s for sound support. Playing to >200 people the Output controls on the AC4s have never yet got above 11 o'clock. We all know that these things aren't linear, but it's obvious that there is a massive amount of headroom available on tap in that situation. RELIABILITY Nothing has yet broken, nothing has yet failed. Each problem we have so far encountered has been traced back to user error, usually me but not always so! If we use them exactly as Marco de Virgiliis intended then there's a fair amount of assembly and pluggage required. Each side comprises a 2x10 sub (which can be placed either upright or flat - it has two pole sockets), a telescopic pole mount, a steel bracket to sit atop the pole, a 4-piece linear module to hang from the bracket, and a second 4-piece linear module to hang from the first one! It's all bolted together using (basically) enormous wingnuts, and then plugged together using multiple patch cables. In fairness, the majority of these cables never need to be unplugged. All of this kit comes in a set of what can best be described (in gigbag terms) as matched designer luggage. The bags are some of the nicest, prettiest, over-engineered, and thoroughly over-the-top things I've seen in a month of Sundays. Plus they take up a silly amount of storage space at a gig. Frankly, the whole process is a bit of a PITA, and only really practical at a gig for my 4-piece covers band because we also have Silvie (at every gig) acting as our PA roadie. She sets up the two AC4s while I do the desk and the cabling, the drummer does his kit, and the guitarists scratch their derrières. The next post will be the extended Review of the Mark Audio AC4 units after a year of practical use, the questions that people tend to ask second!

Almost exactly a year ago, I started a thread about the Mark Audio AC4 PA system. Silvie and I were sufficiently impressed with it that we sold off almost all our other PA kit plus several Barefaced cabs to fund purchasing a pair of them. Sad to relate, that thread lasted less than a week before having to be put down to avoid further pointless pain and suffering, but some good stuff did emerge. https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/321292-markaudio-linear-array-systems/ So ... how did Year #1 go? The first thing to note is that I've played about 50 gigs in that year, but the AC4s were 'only' used at 27 of them. About a dozen gigs were played with bands who strongly preferred to use their own PA rather than experiment (as they saw it) with my radical new one, and I've increasingly opted to use a simpler, lighter vox-only approach for smaller gigs for my covers band and for pretty much all gigs for my rockabilly band. That said, 27 gigs with three different bands at over 20 different venues is enough of a sample size to allow us to draw some conclusions. All gigs were at pubs & clubs with an immense variation in room size and crowd size. The next post will be the basic Review of the Mark Audio AC4 units after a year of practical use, the questions that people tend to ask first.

So is "You slag!" a gender-neutral term?

So the 'official' proof of provenance states: I cannot explain why there is a different serial number on the receipt and guitar, it's just too long ago to recall that, but you wont get any information from Gibson because although this guitar was started during my tenure at the Custom Shop, I took it with me when I left, and so it ended up getting completed after I left Gibson, and so it became somewhat unofficial. Well it's good to get that cleared up ...

You've spayed it so it can't reproduce, I imagine?

Book yourself at least ONE lesson with someone who knows that they're doing. The number of wrong turnings you will avoid, mistakes you didn't need to make, simple things you didn't think of, will more than justify the fee. If you tell us where in the country you are, you may get some helpful recommendations as to who to contact. Oh yes, and you will NOT regret buying a DB.

I don't follow. If all the instruments tune down a tone, would it not make more sense to tune them all correctly but play in a lower key? Not trying to extract the urine, just puzzled.

Mind you, the thing that worries me most is that we've made it to near the bottom of p.3 and no one has yet had a pop at the concept of 'Exoctica', which sounds like a nightclub where they show pornography.

Personally, I'd buy a ZIG bass (base?) every time.

And now, the previously-quoted meme in its full, unexpurgated glory: Captain: What happen ? Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb. Operator: We get signal. Captain: What ! Operator: Main screen turn on. Captain: It's you !! CATS: How are you gentlemen !! CATS: All your base are belong to us. CATS: You are on the way to destruction. Captain: What you say !! CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time. CATS: Ha ha ha ha … Operator: Captain !! Captain: Take off every 'ZIG'!! Captain: You know what you doing. Captain: Move 'ZIG'. Captain: For great justice.

In my experience, the best books for musicians are really short ones.

If you study the photos really, really closely, you may spot the 'feature' that the vendor inexplicably forgot to mention. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hofner-President-Bass-approx-1965/192831895281?hash=item2ce5ad36f1:g:o0QAAOSwNJlcCVGq

I always end up with the side with jam on touching my shoulder ...

Good grief! How did that get past QC?