Dan Dare

I had a similar experience around the time of the Boer War. We played in a hotel which had been built in a sort of faux Art Deco style. The ballroom was shaped like a cylinder cut in half along its length (we joked that it was a Nissen hut). There were few soft furnishings and walls/ceiling were hard plaster. The sound was appalling in the way you describe. Massive natural reverb - I had decent eq on the PA, which made virtually no difference - and any low frequencies caused huge booming. Probably the worst gig, soundwise, I've ever played. We tried to adapt, but I think it's fair to say we died...

Sue for ownership of an everyday phrase? Good luck with that.

I hope you laughed in his face at that little gem. Translated, it reads "You can't read my mind and follow me when I make mistakes. I'm a musically illiterate chancer and you show me up by knowing what you're doing".

Sums it up nicely. Since I've been checking sound/balance with wireless or a long lead, I've realised that striving for some mythical perfect sound is a waste of time. Move ten feet away from your rig and the sound changes completely to that which you hear standing next to it. You can easily end up chasing your own tail.

Given that on gigs, you are often playing in poorly lit venues, brightly coloured ones might not be a bad idea. I have a couple I bought from a builders merchant. I run them to where they need to go and plug a couple of 6 way Lindy boards into them. They work well.

Originally, Trace fitted mainly Celestion drivers to their cabs. I'm pretty sure they weren't branded on earlier models. The drivers in my old cabs weren't.

This is a good point. If you remove all the strings at once, rather than changing them individually, the neck relaxes and angles back as the tension is taken out of it. When you put on the new strings, it can take a while to be puled back into its previous position by the string tension. It's worth leaving it for 24 hours before adjusting the truss rod, so it can settle.

Bill's correct that the watts don't matter. See many other threads for explanations of how quoted/claimed wattage is not an accurate indicator of what an amp is capable of delivering in real world conditions. Just because your amp is set on just over half power, it doesn't mean that it is only delivering half of its power. It depends on the gain structure of the amp. The clip light may be being triggered by the input level (if, for example, your instrument is active or has particularly hot passive pickups). Lowering the input gain and increasing the master volume may help in that case.

I don't know how you'd feel about not giving an actual present on the day, but it can be a little risky buying something specialised, such as musical equipment, sports kit, etc, etc that you may not have knowledge of personally. The suggestions above are all good (and of varying cost), but choosing can be difficult. When I want to buy something I don't have knowledge of for someone, I will design and print a mock gift token on the PC - with lots of snazzy type-faces, colours, etc - that says something along the lines of "This entitles the recipient to choose a bass amp/golf club/fishing rod/etc of their choice". Then I go shopping with them and pay for it. Maybe not as good as giving an actual present on the day, but it means they get something they really want/like.

Good one. I hope to be able to use that myself some day.

I think that may well work well. It appears you're not looking for huge volumes. That's an assumption, based on the fact that you are looking to augment small PJB combos. I'm a PJB fan and user, btw. I have several of his 4x5 cabs, which I like very much. You could think about trying a C4 with a suitable amp as your sub'. That will certainly give you good quality bass. I have even tried my C4s as subs (with a suitable crossover and amp) to augment my home hi-fi and they worked very nicely. However, any clean powered PA cab should to it, too.

Perhaps "bright" and "vintage" don't really inhabit the same universe.

Different strokes for different folks.

Another 👍 for Armstrong from me. Quick, reasonably priced and good work.

I agree with Bill. Domestic subs, even quite powerful ones, won't cut it in a larger space. Good subs are also expensive (cheap ones sound vague and tend to suffer from one note bass). Given that your PJB stuff will sound clean, you'd need something decent to complement it, which means not cheap. I'd be thinking of hiring if it's only for a one-off series of shows and you're not likely to need it again in the foreseeable.

A BF Super Compact would be my cab choice. I assume you like a more old school sound, which they do very well and plenty loudly.

Loft find? Skip find, more like.

Glad you're on the road to recovery. I know you are aware of this, but don't push things too hard. We don't bounce as swiftly in our 60s as we did in our 20s and take longer to get back to full fitness. As for what I want to do now I'm in my late 60s (68 last week), number one has to be playing good music with people I get on with. I'm fortunate in that money is not an issue for me, so it doesn't matter whether I get paid or not (although I don't do things for nothing unless the event itself isn't for profit - a charity gig, for example). I'm trying to improve my music theory knowledge, which is a never ending quest and concentrating on keeping the fingers supple. Gigging at 65 plus as opposed to 21? I'm less inclined to travel as far and don't want to be lugging equipment up fifteen flights of stairs, or to play in a dump or to people who hate the music. I'd rather go fishing or head for the golf course. I want the people I work with at 65 plus to appreciate subtlety, dynamics and ensemble playing. Team players, if you like. I won't play with volume monsters or ego maniacs, no matter how good they are.

But that's my point. Everyone hopes/believes that what they make or produce will appeal to an audience of some sort. Failing to pay attention to whether something will be likely to recoup the time and money spent on producing it can be a shortcut to bankruptcy (as many find out, sadly). It may be nice, romantic even, to imagine that companies "design and make things for a super niche audience, or without one in mind at all, because they love it", but it is rarely the case, unless they are sufficiently well off to be able to not care (a point I made earlier). The notion of "cool", which flatters us by inviting us to believe that something is made specially for us and a few other like-minded souls, is just another marketing tool.

The tone of your posts was somewhat dismissive. That's what I was responding to. We're talking about pop music, after all. It's a fashion product, whether we care to admit it or not.

Hardly "nasty". I was responding in a similar tone. "99.9% of the audience don’t know what’s good for them"? Really? Wouldn't you say that's more than a touch arrogant? Who has the right to tell anyone what is "good for them", save perhaps a lawyer or medical practitioner?

So the answer to my first question is that you don't? "Creative" is an over-used word these days. In my experience, people who use it a lot tend not to be all that "creative". I have indeed read your posts. You sound quite impressed with yourself.

Perhaps you don't need to worry about making a living. Do you adopt the same stance with what earns your daily bread and tell your employer that they are getting what you choose to give them whether they like it or not?

Many replies on this thread are slightly tongue in cheek. Don't take it too heavy. If I find through experience that a company produces good stuff (or stuff I like, which is why I use PJB cabs), I will, within sensible limits, tend to favour its wares. That's why I drive a Toyota. Having invested the time and effort in finding something I like, I'm not going to start at square one every time I want to buy something. Life's too short.

A Polish builder, perhaps?