Happy Jack

Oh yes! The big corporates can still afford to pay proper money, but they're not all booking gigs yet. Smaller pubs and independents are looking for big reductions and - let's be realistic about this - we're not arguing about it. Many of these places are hanging on by their fingertips, and expecting them to cough up £300, or even £250, is just barking mad.

Each of my two main bands has eight gigs in the diary for 2021 so far (including those already played), so I'm already ahead of the game for last year ... which is setting the bar bloody low! Until 2020, @Silvia Bluejay and I would routinely land 3/4 gigs from each of seven or eight pubs, plus another 10 or so one-off gigs, to make about three gigs a month for each band. This year, one band has been offered TWO gigs by one pub ... every other gig is a one-off and many of them are at pubs we've never played before. In short, the gigs are out there if you're prepared to put in enough work, but BY GOD it's hard! My own estimate is that each and every gig we've landed so far has involved ten times as much effort as pre-Covid.

I bought these some years ago when first experimenting with mic'ing up a band. They've had very little use and have long since been replaced by serious upgrades! Send me a fiver to cover P&P (UK only) and they're yours. I found this very informative review, which gives far more details than I ever knew: Nice price for a decent sounding mic. Solidly built with heavy brass body, electret condenser element rather than true condenser,. It requires external power to operate (9-48V phantom delivery). Internally the PCM-6100 is quite similar to the Pulse CDM1000 (which comes with 3 interchangeable heads for different pickup patterns) and mayb the similar appearing Samson CO2, and a few other Chinese manufactured mics. Unhappily, the threads that attach the head are different between these two mics so I couldn't swap elements between the otherwise nearly identical bodies and electronics. I though it odd that the PCM-6100 shipped with a shock-mount holder rather than a more standard and more rigid clip type, but this mic seems to be rather sensitive to handling noise (almost a metallic ring to it likely due to the brass body). I'll try damping it a bit. There must be less isolation between element and body, and maybe the issue was "addressed" by isolating the entire mic in the holder. I don't think this is acceptable for a $67 mic, though since it can be found at considerably lower prices could be a good deal -- as long as you're not going to hand hold it. apparently pencil mic doesn't always equate to hand mic. It uses a cardioid electret element (I haven't remove it from the head yet since I don't have a tool with me to accomplish that). The circuitry includes an FET front end external to the capsule, 2 bipolar transistors, and numerous resistors and capacitors. A zener diode regulates the applied voltage down to the ~9V the circuit requires. Since it isn't a true condenser, it doesn't need higher voltages. And while is does have a balanced XLR output (neither pin 2 or 3 is grounded), it does not have a transformer coupled output, which shouldn't be an issue.

You've specified "high quality" ... is that a particular need? Come to that, is there actually such a thing as a low quality adjustable DB bridge?

Don't know if it's a great time to be buying ... pretty sure it's a very bad time to be selling.

Nothing gives the impression of 'filling out' the sound without clutter quite as well as a walking bassline. If you walk between the chords of the song, it also helps to remind the widdle-meister where he's supposed to be.

I reckon I play this WAY better than he does. 😂

You've tried my cooking then?

I'd go beyond that. Most of the time, when I use FX live even I struggle to hear that effect in the mix and it doesn't get much better when I listen to @Silvia Bluejay's high quality recordings later. I still use them, because I know that in isolation my chosen FX sound great so the chances are that they are a net benefit to the band sound overall, but can I hear the exact moment at which I kick in the octaver or the distortion? In the main, no. Did I mention that my hearing is pretty poor these days?

My gig wagon is a Jap import (Toyota Alphard), and a very sophisticated thing it is. When I turn the ignition key, the satnav shows Yokohama harbour and the dash starts talking to me in Japanese. Seriously. Wakarima-sen.

I was disappointed to find that Joanne Joanne didn't come from Newcastle. https://www.facebook.com/joannejoanneuk/

I've had so much trouble with band line-ups, organisation and attitude, and it's happened in so many bands, that I've started looking for the one common factor that explains it all. Turns out, it's me. 😎

In all fairness, @Silvia Bluejay was there too and she has much better ears than I do. 🧐 I tend to avoid these topics since they end up being so sterile but, seeing as I'm here, here's my tupp'orth. My hearing was never that great to start with, and adding pretty severe tinnitus has done absolutely nothing to help. I've never been able to distinguish between tonewoods or between active/passive or between cheap/expensive basses. I hear the output and decide whether or not I like it. I've tried compression, everything from one-knob pedals to DBX166 rackmounts. I don't know how to use such stuff properly, I hate devices with lots of knobs and switches, and I've never understood the attractions of "transparency" ... if I can't hear what it's doing then how do I know it's doing something? So that must put me in the Anti camp, right? Nope, not a bit of it. I am well aware that pretty much every serious musician, recording studio and radio station uses compression as a basic tool all the time, on everything. What that tells me is that compression is great, it's my lack of understanding that's the problem here. So I live with it, and stay away from topics about compression ...

I've used Alesis Crimson drums into XR18 reasonably often, including recording sessions, without any issues so I'm afraid I have no answers for you. It seems that you've checked / tested / swopped all the things I'd have tried, but there are so many moving parts involved here (all those individual cables connecting pads to brain, all those different virtual kits, etc.) that - especially with an intermittent problem - I think you have to adopt a very back-to-basics approach. Is the drumkit yours or does it belong to the rehearsal space? In other words, are you in a position to carry out further tests on dull evenings at home? Can you clarify why you thought the problem was drum-related? I have to say that my start point would always be to look at the guitarist's pedal board ...

That's what they told you, eh? 🧐

Oh Good Lord! It's only Music Outlet Shop up to their usual tricks. There's no suggestion that anyone will buy this complete POS ... this is a type of marketing, and the existence of this topic (and many other, similar topics) tells you that it works. 🙄

That looks like a very nice gig for someone, Nik. Shame they're not closer to Harrow.

Unless you were in France, in which case it was Nouvelle Vague ...

Technically speaking, of course, this post constitutes a Wanted ad and should be moved elsewhere ...

Where do we all stand on the brown M&Ms?

I love Earthquaker Devices generally and I've had quite a lot of their stuff, but six knobs for a Chorus pedal? SIX KNOBS??? The pedal I've ended up with actually an 'anti-chorus' - https://reverb.com/uk/p/digitech-luxe Very rare and hard to find these days, but I just love this thing with fretless bass. It's a simple 2-knob device, almost all of the settings are musical (whatever that means) or at least useable, and it doesn't give you that seasick sound that so many Chorus pedals saddle you with.

That's close on a thousand quid! You'd need to be pretty obsessed with 'quirky' to justify blowing that amount ...

Unbelievably, they actually removed my SnoPake dot markers and I had to re-do them!