Al Krow

Speaking of massive pedal boards the Fratellis bassist clearly had one! What do folk reckon he's using to get the funky filter / delay sound at the start of the track and on the verses? He seems to kick just one pedal on to engage the effect.

Interesting. What were you finding the Octabvre was adding vs the OC5?

Nah, just very good practice! Bit like doing a sound check before a gig!

A couple of ideas from me (YMMV! etc) Suggest checking out the Boss OC5 for an excellent and great value octaver? I share your pain re. drives: I've got 7 of the things sitting on my shelf which I really need to get around to moving on, haha! I found that my most recent multi (GT1000 Core) managed to match / out do them all which my cheap-as-chips Zoom B1-4 hadn't really come close to doing. But the most important thing about the GT1000 Core is the always on preamp setting, as we're not using backline, and finally getting a tone that I really like and seems to be getting plaudits from fellow BC'ers.

Query sorted!

Thanks Phil. Lighting is often very much overlooked as being key to a live performance - certainly has been by me and my crew! On my agenda to upgrade our lighting set up over the next 12 months...

Also interesting, given the thousands of Spectors you've owned 😅

Interesting. I have a similar, but significantly lower intensity, high pitched whine on my Euro 5LX, which I assumed was a shielding issue and have been meaning to get looked at by a bass tech. Paging @cetera !

^^This 100% !

That sounds fab Pete! Not gonna deny that Led Zep are one of my all time fav bands and JPJ right up there with his bass lines. Am I right in thinking he only ever had one bass? If so, did anyone ever mention it's all in the fingers?! Any clips / promo material of you guys?

A little August bump to see if we can catch a few more BC bands 😊

Ah ok. In my experience it's been the guitarist who wants to stick with backline and "real amps" which, tbf, I can completely understand. Whereas singers, in my experience, generally jump at using IEMs as they can hear themselves really well and only have acoustic drums on stage blaring out. Particularly helped if the desk has really decent preamps which our CQ kit does (a noticeable step up from my previous Soundcraft MTK12). The combination of having a personalised mix at the volume we each want (potentially also giving much less damage to our hearing?), decent IEM earpieces, and quality desk preamps has made the gigging experience a much more enjoyable one for me, and I'm blessed that my current crew (7 of us, in total, on rotation) are all totally on board and very happy with IEMs. I guess I could probably say I'm a convert, haha, having switched to IEMs for the last couple of years whilst previously regularly gigging with amps and monitors for a much longer while before that.

I guess one huge advantage of IEMs is removing a major source of potential feedback from the stage sound?

Xvive A58 Guitar Wireless System review | Guitar World Nice little review on Guitar world - pretty positive

Hadn't come across the Xvive A58 - looks like new kit out this year with good reviews. I'm a fan of their U4 for IEM's. They do look quite bulky though! Btw - if you don't want to take the Nux case to gigs, there's nothing's stopping you leaving it at home - it's just there for convenience and doubles up as a back up battery pack. It's also available in 5.8 GHz.

Had to look up what that phrase meant! Apparently means: something that is self-referential, self-aware, or cleverly referencing itself or its own category. It often implies a level of self-awareness or commentary on the thing itself, rather than just the content. That phrase is so meta

Nope. I think the Boss SY synth sounds are much less "classic synth" in comparison to the MXR, C4 and FI. But there are enough decent options for me to use on a few tracks with my covers band which is all I am really needing. And the "faux-tracking" is super tight. This is a pretty cool demo, albeit on guitar

Admin costs of £14M on what??! It's not like they have a huge amount of staff...

So useful to know that the MXR struggles to track at pace, thank you! For bassists less competent at "synth bass technique" than you (like me for starters), that could be an issue. Together with the arpeggiator and a decent display, another reason to stick for a while with my Boss SY-200 which delivers idiot-friendly "tracking" at pretty rapid speeds.

I don't quite follow the economic argument about prices having to go up with scale? I see Pirate's business model being more akin to Weatherspoons vs local boozers. Becoming national hasn't meant Spoons' prices increasing.

Reading through this thread, seems to me there's a bit of a regional divide here? Pirate seem to be competitive on price and are regularly used by several London based BC'ers (me included), whereas there often appear to be better value, manned alternatives outside the capital?

Oh I'd definitely use them ALL the time if they paid me 😅

I guess the principle is that BVs should be secondary in prominence to the lead vox. But that will always depend on: - how strong the singers are relatively (key variable); - what mics they are using. Given the first of these, not sure it's possible to give a general rule?

Thanks, that's very kind of you to say - I'd best not ask which of three female vox featured, haha! And hopefully an endorsement of the RCF 932As delivering the sound.

We use Pirate a lot and have happily done so over a number of years. Yes it's automated/unmanned locally; the flip side is it's decent value, certainly compared to other London studios we've used. Also they have many studios per site which means you can usually get a booking and a very flexible cancellation policy. The aircon wasn't working on a recent booking and a hot day! They couldn't fix it remotely in time and so offered us 25% off our next booking. All good.