PinkMohawk

How easy do you find it to set up a patch? Is it easy to copy a basic patch and add onto it easily, or is it a big faff?

I think the Boss is just too big for what I'm looking for, unfortunately. Though it is a good looking option, I do like the physical controls. The Zoom MS sounds like kind of a hassle to use as well, since I expect to be wanting to build quick patches using a few effects each, depending on what songs we're doing that week.

Not at Bath, but I'd be shocked if any modern uni was offering a music course and didn't have at least basic facilities like amps and such. I would recommend a small head that fits in the gigbag, with a headphone output too. She'll struggle making friends with her flatmates if she's keeping them up at night with noodling through an amp.

How do you find the workflow with setting up a new patch is with one of them? Or even just switching patches back and forth, they've always seemed a little clunky to me though I suppose that's the tradeoff when you want to have something that size.

Is the Zoom B1-Four still the king of cheap and battery powered multi's, or has anyone else moved into the space and started competing with them? I'm doing a club at my uni and if I can get something cheap and cheerful that'll just go in a gigbag rather than needing to bring my board along for rehearsals, that'd be ideal.

Unsurprisingly from Mr Fitzmaurice, absolutely correct. You lose all of those things when you DI. If that's what you want, great, but but I'll always prefer the sound of a mic'ed cab to a DI. And yes, FOH can always f*** it up, but, they can f*** up your DI signal as well.

There's absolutely no pro's to mic'ing cab ports. As for mic'ing cabs in general, while that might not be 'optimal', honestly, when I'm running the desk, I much prefer having some character to the sound. Ideally I've looked up the bands I'm working with and have a loose idea of what it's going to sound like, but if I don't, having a tone to work from, rather than just 'clean slate' is more likely to get me to something that sounds like the band wants to sound. Live sound isn't just about reproducing perfect tones. I'd rather mix something to sound interesting than perfect.

I've not played a Digbeth, but I've heard them and I do find I prefer the Laney sound to Ashdown. Not to say the Ashdown is bad, it's not, I've played a number of Ashdown's for quite a while, but I do find the Laney more of what I'd want from an amp.

I've been looking at picking one of these up in the near future, and I was wondering if anyone here has owned one and has any thoughts on them? I've heard that the stock preamp is a little rough, so I suspect that might be a candidate to get swapped out, potentially the pickup too? I'd probably swap the bridge for a black Albridge part too, but that's purely an aesthetic thing.

Oh I had one of those before my old bands van got broken into, it was pretty damn good as I remember it.

Yeah, agreeing with Tau, looks like it's just a sliding piece that pinches the strap button and holds on that way. No idea what kind of strength the springs would have since I can't quickly find a video of one going on or off. Personally, I'd just do straplocks, the few minutes of effort to swap your strap pins really isn't much.

What you're looking for is one of these: https://www.mundomusicgear.co.uk/products/airpannier Ideally you'd have a cab at the practice space that you can just get a small head for, but if not, you could probably strap the amp to the other side of the rack and it'd be pretty safe like that.

Yep, you're absolutely right, that's a brainfart on my part, I've not had to do the cab link thing for a while now. Don't know why I assumed it'd be a series not parallel wiring to both cab jacks.

Ahh one day someone will take the bloody thing off my hands. But yeah, having two 2x12's would be plenty for most bands regardless of how enthusiastic the drummer is. Always annoyed me how they don't just label one of the speakons as a 'thru' and just leave them blank instead.

It's not ideal, really. My recommendation is to get shot of the 15 and pick up another 4 ohm cab. With two 4 ohm cabs, you'd be running them in series rather than parallel, all that means is that you'd go: 8ohm output - cab 1 - cab 2. The reason there's two speakons on the back of the cabs is so that you can use one as a passthrough to the next cab. Of course, you could always just buy my Ashdown 8x10 off of me...

Could be worth a punt for nostalgias sake, it'll remind me of the garbage combo I got as part of my Encore bass starter package from Argos all those years ago. This pedal does a great job of replicating the sound I got when I whacked the volume up to full. Really get that 'speaker about to tear itself out of its basket' sound.

It really does sound crap. Not sure what anyone involved with this was thinking. The only thing this pedal should have been was Ashdown putting a Hyperdrive circuit in the fancy new box. It just sounds like speakers farting out to me, which somehow they're not aware isn't what we're looking for out of a distortion.

Ehh, I'm not convinced, sounds like more of an excuse honestly. Secured with velcro straps not cable ties to prevent movement which would be the main source of issues with cables. And if you really need to pull a cable quickly, just disconnect the jacks from the sockets and jam a spare in there quickly, then you can pull the bad cable in your own time. Trying to pull one cable in a spaghetti sounds like a great way to take another three cables with it and really screw yourself.

I've noticed, especially with the shift towards modellers/silent stages, more and more bands, at least in metal, are moving towards all-in-one racks. An IEM rack, instrument and backing track racks too. Which does make sense, when you've got five guys, you can pretty easily move two big 10U+ racks with wheels, drums and instrument cases. Not having to haul cabs and heads does have a certain appeal too, and not even pedalboards for the bands who have their tracks set up with midi-switching to handle presets on their Helix's/Quad Cortex's. Just wish they'd learn to solder and tidy up the cable spaghetti they've all got going on in the backs of these racks.

Not even sure if this is the right place for this, so any mod who can think of somewhere this'd fit better, feel free to move it. Anyway, it's like the title says, I'm looking for old fire hose, in order to make some straps out of it. I'm a fan of making my own straps, and up until now, I've been using a big roll of nylon strap that I found somewhere. Recently, I found a video of Billy Sheehan making up one of his straps, and he does it in a relatively similar way, i.e. big strap, fixed length, direct mounted, but he also mentions in the video receiving some fire hose that he was going to try, and I thought I'd like to give that a go as well. So, yeah, does anyone know where I can get some?

I suppose it depends really. If you only use a little, which is all that's necessary, a good tug will separate it. If you use it like Velcro, you're going to need a pry bar.

Yeah, I think that board is about the same size as my old bands guitarists board, hated having to drag that thing out of the van and into the venue. For what it's worth, if you're finding velcro to keep failing to hold everything in place, have a look at switching to dual lock instead. It's a little more expensive, but the hold is so strong that you can get away with using a lot less. Or, in my case, use the same amount and need a pry bar to get pedals off of your board.

Good lord, is this board intended to make us uncomfortable? How is it that *everything* is sitting at random angles?

Yeah if you've got the gear and know-how, a total DIY would work.

I might be wrong, but looking at your board, I'm not totally sold on you being able to get everything pointed the right way around. If the power supply is good and small, or you even stack a pedal on top of it you'd be able to manage it, but if it's in the budget, I'd consider a new board, something that lets you put stuff on the underside, rather than the kind you've got now. Rockboard is what I use currently, and I've got zero complaints about it.