Happy Jack

Happy to be told I'm wrong but, based on previous experience, one DB is enough at a BassBash. It's a bit like taking a functions band to a punk gig. 😉

And when has that ever mattered? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Any plans I had to sell my less-used basses are currently on hold ... I feel like 'freezing' things for a year or two, see how things develop.

I could have been there ... but I wasn't. ☹️ Astonished to see that @MacDaddy once had hair ...

Greene King have cancelled ALL entertainment tbis weekend, so that's tomorrow night's gig gone. On the other hand, tomorrow afternoon and Sunday afternoon are both still on, which I'm very happy about. I'm a lifelong Royalist and I'm terribly sorry that she's gone, but I don't see that it's disrespectful for life to carry on, and quite frankly I doubt she would give a toss that I'm gigging tomorrow afternoon.

All together now ... low end WASTE-land, just a low end WASTE-land

By "action similar to a real piano" I'm guessing you mean a weighted keyboard? IME these tend to be heavier and more expensive and, while excellent for piano, are much less so if you're nearer the Hammond end of the scale. I know NOTHING about MIDI and I plan to keep it that way, so bear that in mind when reading my comments below. 🙈🙉🙊 In my sitting room I have an Alesis Recital Pro and a Casio WK-7600, both for home use only. The Alesis was an excellent buy, just over £300 (new) for an 88-key stage piano with proper weighted keyboard and a (limited) range of other sounds. The Casio is surprisingly competent for an entry-level 76-key synth. Nearly £400 new if you can still find one, plenty of pre-owned on the market. I'm not keen to gig either of these. The Alesis is large and heavy and, while the piano sounds are excellent, no pub or festival audience is ever going to notice the difference between those sounds and the ones that I actually use on stage. The Casio is, frankly, a bit on the flimsy side ... knock it off its stand or have a drummer tread on it by accident while setting up and it's not likely to survive. Also, the brass sounds on the Casio are really quite poor. For live use I have a Hammond SK1-61 and a Korg Kross, both bought pre-owned for less than half the new price. Which is just as well, since those two bought new today would cost £2700. 😱 I bought the Korg specifically because I like the brass sounds so much. It does everything else really well too, including drawbar organ, but it's the brass that sold it to me. Keyboard is fairly standard synth-type, not as lightweight as the Casio but not really 'weighted' either. The Hammond ... well what can you say? It's a Hammond, plays like a tiny, lightweight B3, sounds like a B3 (if you want it to), has a 'waterfall' keyboard that is excellent for Stevie Winwood swoops and whooshes, and it instantly, utterly NAILS the whole Hammond vibe. No matter how well the Korg does drawbar organ, the second I switch to the Hammond I can see smiles breaking out all around me.

Mind you, that recording is appalling quality. 🙄

I quote: Frost also hosted the 1975 TV documentary, A Salute To The Beatles: Once Upon A Time. Though falling far short of anything deemed acceptable by fans nowadays (being largely a clip job produced for late night TV), it IS notable for featuring fresh interviews with a handful of Beatles insiders, including George Martin, Mal Evans, Peter Brown and Derek Taylor. https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2Fa5pff25v%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2i-COGG_A7xvmdNomhvoq3OIAPRjVqDXBx_PbDMoZQUktuEfAfoTJLg40&h=AT0VvMneFMpf9jj6AW66vjE8V4cdgF_YGeP-LoFIKgfyvO6XvMkV7zys-aSxX_9RXpLZkGOUYoPfHvOrVWZvvfdiSyCmW1SnN1FV_wyX8qvsvsM25Gk3w0BH5rMoSuBrqhd3&__tn__=-UK-R&c[0]=AT3wj8CaW-Y_9y0aIkhMPVztnNNoK0Rj5gASX3BUNuNpuCnAyV_NxbmqUDXwgpgr0fMgdStiV43Xsbu98HNTq9KeHu_MrEjLX0SM2FnKtGnAnIFSsZzJNmfIvSjYmT69Kb_35XbWRWIaSfrpUd4yOEu_ZmcLTL3VcAAX39uur6Fm2uu6vBHuK-14KIbUVo8-cdlfvGwbHZYSrNOsmjG3-fLDCGiIW-lbfg

I see what you did there! Not much gets past me, y'know ...

If you have Netflix, you may like to know that they've just added a bunch of new material including a 70-minute film about a gig at The Rainbow just shy of 50 years ago. The band is a bunch of proggers called Yes and the film is, of course, Yessongs. Apart from the sheer joy of seeing (and hearing) this after all these years, the film is well worth watching because the triple live album (which I wore out at the time) was a 'best of' from three consecutive nights at The Rainbow whereas the film is the recording of a single concert. At least half the songs in the film are therefore versions that I've never heard before - not wildly different, but enough so that it feels like getting into a time machine and going to one of their gigs. Sublime.

I find a bath towel wrapped around the neck does a great job of stopping the open strings ringing. It also gets rid of that horrible 'slapping' noise. 😉

Sorry Jon, but I'm still struggling to get past the ... erm ... well, it's where a headstock would normally be. 😂 For (originally) a £99 bass the rest of it looks seriously fit for purpose, mind.

In fairness, that only happens occasionally in pubs.

Given the name of the band, there's an obvious irony here ...

Re-titled to avoid (further) confusion.

Don't be fooled my by sister's sheet music ... I was banging out honky-tonk blues.

Agreed that the condition is almost worryingly good, but the finish on those very early Precisions does seem to have been less prone to checking. Here's my very early 1957: Now compare that to my 1966:

Mine of course. That's a 6W Clubman. In my studio it sits next to a 12W Westminster and a 17W Dominator.

Mind you, no matter how good those pedals are, they can't save you from

Incidentally, this is what we're talking about:

The Question I'm Asked Most Often Is ... "Is that a cello?" BUT The question I'm asked most often by other musicians is, "How do you do those harmony vocals?". There doesn't seem to be a thread anywhere about BVs, so I thought I'd stick this here. At every live gig with my two main bands, I bring That's a Pedaltrain Nano (plus an extra pedal off to the left) fitted on top with a Diago mains power distribution and underneath with a battery pack that can deliver up to 1A - note the label on the Harmoniser pedal. The bread and butter end of the board is I still rate the red Mic Mechanic as one of the most useful things any vocalist can carry, a genuine Swiss Army Knife of a vocal pedal. https://www.tc-helicon.com/product.html?modelCode=P0DDW The green Duplicator is, essentially, a Mic Mechanic with the Echo function replaced by live ADT, really useful if you need a voice 'thickened up' on stage. https://www.tc-helicon.com/product.html?modelCode=P0DDX In The Junkyard Dogs I route lead singer Rick through the Mic Mechanic and drummer/BVs Paul through the Duplicator. In Damo & The Dynamites I route lead singer Damo through the Duplicator and I put my own voice through the Mic Mechanic solely for some subtle pitch correction ... essential (IMHO) if you're going to use a harmoniser of any kind. Ah yes, the harmoniser. For that we need the other end of the board. Since The Junkyard Dogs routinely sing in 3-part harmony there's no call for a harmoniser pedal. For those gigs, I swop out the harmoniser for the TC Helicon Voicetone X1 (on the left there). I've always sung and I carry a tune well, but my voice is a muddy baritone which simply does not cut through in a pub rock setting. The X1 is frankly a bit of a novelty act thing; it has eight settings, of which just one I find useful but thats OK, I only need that one setting! https://www.tc-helicon.com/product.html?modelCode=P0DE4 With Damo & The Dynamites it's a whole nother thang. The drummer doesn't sing so all the BVs are me, and we do a lot of stuff where the song is 'made' by the harmony BVs ... think how lame a lot of early Elvis would have sounded without The Jordanaires. To achieve that I use the TC Helicon Voicetone H1, and that's the pedal that gets noticed; used wrong it's the most complete train wreck you can imagine, but used right it can really deliver. This pedal has the facility to run your guitar/bass through it which will automatically set the correct key, which is cool but of surprisingly limited use. Firstly, if you operate it like a pedal (i.e. with your foot) then you are either restricted to a single set of harmonies or you have to kneel down and fiddle with it between songs. Secondly, if you play a fretless bass or a double bass then the smallest error in your intonation can have catastrophic impact. 😂 I keep the whole board at waist height beside me and operate it manually. Note the Tippex marks at E and A for easy location on a dark stage. As an aside, on one occasion I used this pedal to tune my bass at a gig ... I sang each note (EADG) with the pedal correcting my pitch, and tuned to it. https://www.tc-helicon.com/product.html?modelCode=P0DE1 When multiple harmonies are not needed but I still want it to sound as if more than one person is supplying BVs I switch to the TC Helicon Critical Mass. This is something of a halfway house between the Duplicator and the Voicetone H1; it can be used in quite a subtle way but it certainly beefs up the sound of a stripped-down 3-piece. https://www.tc-helicon.com/product.html?modelCode=P0CGT I should probably state for the record that I am NOT sponsored by or affiliated to TC Helicon ... I just like their pedals. All five of these were bought by me, with my own money. Speaking of which, all these pedals have increased in price substantially since I bought them, by well over 50% in a couple of cases. On the other hand, we now have blue passports. For context, in the unlikely event that someone wanted to duplicate precisely my vocal pedal board today, and bought new all the way (I always buy pre-owned if I can), they would still have change from a grand. That's including the Nano and both power supplies. If my board got nicked and I needed to replace it, I would expect to spend half that figure. Now ask yourself how much a half-decent bass guitar costs ...

Did you know you've fitted your tuners upside down? 😉

1972 2022

He could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you.