NancyJohnson

The tough thing is that it's not a PD nor is it trying to be. A few years ago I bought a racked VT Bass, fully expectant that I would easily be able to dial in the same tone as my trusty BDDI and expand on it. I did one gig with it and sold it on. Couldn't have been any more wrong.

Just say no, kids.

Hi, thanks for coming back. All my basses are passive. I haven't actually gone the XLR route yet and to be honest hadn't given it any consideration. Just ordered an XLR cable (which Amazon tells me will be here tomorrow) to I'll give that a punt. Thanks for the input!

Just to follow on from this, I asked on said forum whether Richard Barbieri had any formal keyboard training pre-Japan. Now what follows is quite brilliant. Rob Dean (Guitar/Japan) confirmed Mr Barbieri was working in a bank when he joined Japan. Interestingly, Richard Barbieri also chipped in - and he's in hospital today having his gall bladder removed - and remarked that he 'was just getting the hang of it when [we] split up'. What a bloke.

I concur that RB wasn't the most competent of players when Japan started out, but he's progressed way outside of that box. Rhodes hasn't. The rest of Japan were incredibly adept.

Blimey. How did you get them to last so long?

What do I value? Yikes. Nothing. My local/nearest shop, and I'll name and shame here, is Amen Corner Music in Bracknell and it's a filthy, ramshackle, woeful dump of a place. Tired old stock, dire stock selection, ancient string and spares selection, the place stinks of dog and general unpleasantness. The owner said once that he didn't know whether he would have what qualified as a goid year until he knew how many violin kits he'd sell at the start of each school year. It is honestly little wonder it survives and while it's always worth the trek to Andertons in Guildford if I want to peruse gear. Otherwise, I'll buy online.

In order(!), yep it was literally this: ...I just found it remarkable that for someone who up to that point had been the keyboard player in one of the most successful bands in the world needed chord-structure prompts in a live environment. I think you only need to watch one of his more recent fawning promo videos for Roland to see how inept he is at actually playing and how adept he is at making synthesizers go wooooo and brrrump. Get a decent player on (say, Jordan Rudess in showboating mode) and you'll easily see how useless Nick Rhodes actually is. It saddens me what Duranduran turned into really. The original Taylor trio were all decent players and more than able. You can't begrudge them their success, but sadly 40% of the line up were just talentless posterboys.

I remember seeing some live footage of Nick Rhodes where he was required to play chords, yes, actual chords. He had a Mac/PC near his keyboard with the finger positions displayed on screen. Never thought of the guy as being musical...always thought of him as being the guy who made all the clicks and whirrs.

Back of a Matrix GT1000 poweramp into a Barefaced Big One (15/6) enclosure. Now don't get me wrong, I adore the unit...I didn't actually think anything would supersede the RBI and the n you bought out the GED and then you trumped that with the dUg.

Question 1) Yes (the unit isn't faulty). Question 2) Yes, I know, otherwise they'd only make one unit, wouldn't they? When referring to the GED or BDDI (or the VT Bass or the VT Bass DI or the GT2 or the RBI or the Landmark 300), I really couldn't be any more specific. All these units will give a robust tone with very little in the way of swings in the tone knob positions; I've tended to find that with Tech21 gear (in general) is neither whumpy or toppy and there isn't much of a requirement to have great swings in the tone knobs position(s) for cut or boost. Small adjustments have always been the name of the game and it doesn't really matter which bass I'm using either. The dUg just seems to buck that trend; it's just bright. If I set the unit to his personal setting from the manual, I still feel the need to roll back the treble from that position. It's really not a problem. It's just an opinion.

Preamp, so in truth it should be fairly transparent; I've not utilised any amplifier's pre-stage for over a decade - I've always used either the effects return or like now, straight into a power amp. I love what it does, although it has to be said it's a little unusual to have to roll off the top. I've used a bunch of TEch21 gear and still run a GED and a BDDI and bothe these are fine/normal. The dUg is simply over-bright.

I do find it quite bright through my set up, irrespective of the bass I'm using.

It never went away...

I have a mate (drummer) with a similar thing. Before I made his acquaintance, he had (very) limited success with a generic hair-metal band in the late 80s and every time we hooked up you could put money on him saying, 'Well, when I was in <band name here>...' We'd jam and record every so often, but you knew it was a waste of time as there was little chance of ever playing live as he wanted to be solely studio based. The sadness was that he's never really held down any long-term position in a band; I mean that while he's a lovely guy, technically adept (think Mike Portnoy-lite) and a wonderful player who also records, produces and teaches, his drums never leave the house or his home studio. He always seemed to be held back by what could have been 30 years ago and was of the belief that one day the phone would go and it would be someone from the 80s unit saying, 'Get your leopard skin print budgie-smugglers dry-cleaned mate, we're going to get the old band back together.' Well anyway, cut to the chase, one day the phone did ring. Someone had uncovered a box of old master tapes and somehow or another these got put in front of someone with influence and they released an album that had been recorded 30 years previously. The guy telephoned me about a year ago to give me the cough, good, cough, news and said he had some signed copies at his house if I was interested (I said yes purely out of politeness), but when he told me the signed ones were £5.00 more than the unsigned copies, I kind of shook my head and thought he could just swivel on it. I still don't own a copy. Doubt if I will. He went on to regale me with yarns of what they were doing, how album number two was going to be recorded, there would be tours, TV and radio promos. I congratulated him on his good fortune and wished him well. Fast forward a few months and I did bother to do a quick search on Spotify to see if the album was up there. Yes it was. In fact, I'm listening to it now and it's awful, truly awful. The second album? Nope. Tour? Nope. Drummer is working as an electrician in a technical college locally, living off memories and ten songs on digital media. I feel sorry for him really. He held out for decades waiting for the call and when it arrived it pretty much amounted to zero. He could have just dispensed with the waiting and frankly been a spectacular musician elsewhere.

Time moves on. Certainly, I'd never buy Laney gear again as my long journey to tone heaven is now complete. However, Laney was part of that trip; maybe I just got a good one.

Can I make a weenie request, if anyone has one (or a pair) of Barefaced BB2s or TKS 1126s, could you squeeze them in please. I really need to do a side by side test. Thanks muchly.

Yeah, I've known Jay for over ten years, but our paths don't cross that much now. He's moved back up to Wolverhampton and I haven't needed to use his studios for a while (he obviously comes down this way as he blocks out days at the facility periodically). I think I've seen that video before, but to be honest, I have no memory of it. I'll forward it on to our guitarist as he's the guy driving this; we're recording again next week. Ultimately, it's down to discipline and the band being on point; using the stuff AW is going through shouldn't be an issue, but you clearly have no place to hide if you screw up and I really fear screw-uppage!

Thank you, that's very kind. If you want more, you sound be able to navigate through to the other material we've uploaded to Soundcloud. You can like us on Facebook (search 'Lutz Official') too (hint hint). Cheers!

Harsh.

1) Cetera - Spector NS2 & Legend 4X, Dingwall NG2, Epiphone Vintage Pro Thunderbird, Yamaha BB3000, GK800RB head, Genz Benz Neox212 cab, Tech-21 Dug DP3X preamp/pedal 2) Ezbass - Maruszczyk Elwood L 4 string fretted (J pickups), Maruszczyk Elwood L 4 string fretless (MM pickup), Rickenbacker 4003s, Rob Allen MB2 fretless, Phil Jones Flightcase + PB300 3) Happy Jack - AliKat DB #004, Mike Lull 54P, all I need to play a doubling gig (that evening) on those two instruments 4) BlueJay - Eminence Upright (left-handed), loads of camera equipment 5) obbm - TBA 6) Nancy Johnson (Paul) - The Big One, rack (GED/poweramp), possibly the dUg DP3x. A bass.