Owen

That is the truth, but I live in the back of beyond and my daughter is in Brum so I will have to take a punt.

Gwilym is correct. The Bass Safe is superb.

Many years ago I conducted WSS. The college I was teaching part time at anounced we were doing WSS. Great, my fave, I thought. I then realised that Ianto would not be conducting it, nor Beth so it would be me. I was WAY out of my depth but gathered the good local players together, had one band call and off we went. There was one number (I honestly cannot remember which) that was a slow 3. In the band call I gave the option of a slow three or to count in quavers rather than crotchets and beat 6. We decided and I naively thought they would remember. Come the first night we hit that number. I had a 3 week baby at home and was undergoing extreme sleep depravation. I beat in and half the band were where they should be and half were rushing ahead on double time. It took me 4 bars to work out what was happening and stop the number, announce I was beating whatever I was beating and start again. Some years later we did it again. By then we had started the music tech course. So had to use our in house students who were a bunch of guitarists/bassists/drummers. I had the whole WSS score as midi files so hit the tab option in Logic and made arrangements. I had a piano part on CD underscoring it. Just for security. The whole pit were monitoring on cans and I had a student doing playback and running foldback in the pit. He got stoned and turned the CD off at the end of the segue into the finale of the first act. There was a huge rall into the final song and he presumed it was over. The music stopped at 2:36 (or something) into the track. There was zero chance he could find the cue. I frantically looked at the score and hissed at the pit keys player to give me a cue note. I started singing solo while the cast caught up with what was happening. There was a huge amount of adrenalin floating around. The cast picked it up and did the whole number acapella. How we laughed. A few months afterwards. The Rumble was done as a version of the Vai/Corea one. The players lapped it up and we had a ball. I cannot imagine being stupid/brave enough to try this now. We had about 10 guitarists, 3 bassists and 3 drummers. It was absolutely epic.

Fair play, that is cracking.

Aha! I was vaguely correct. That is a pleasant surprise.

The Variax tech has always struck me as a natural home for all sorts of retuning/drop tuning jiggery-pokery. It might even do it, but I have never been close enought to one to see. I could be completely wrong. It would not even be the first time today.

I got all excited and have just bought a Shure KSM8. Lots of good reviews, quite a wide pickup sweet spot and needs very little done at the desk end to make it sound good. Given the nature of what she will be doing it is unlikely that there will be stellar engineers there so this should at least give her a fighting chance. Thanks all.

The Shure KSM8 looks very interesting. Reviews suggest that it sounds really good with no eq etc. Obvioiusly if you have a decent engineer then happy days. However........ Sennheiser e935 has also been suggested as solid choice which is not so expensive and likely to do what is needed.

This is the info I need. Keep it coming

My daughter is doing some live work. I have always wondered why voclaists do not bring their own mics. Here is my opportunity to make it right. Obv I could go with a 58 or a Neumann 105. The 58 is super old tech. The 105 is a bit expensive and she is unlikely to be using rigs which would do it any justice at all. Her voice is a light soprano, singer songwriter vibe. She does not belt it. Sennheiser 945? Beyerdynamic M88? TIA.

I'm feeling that.

And I am a complete sucker for those oversized P90 alike white/cream pickups in the ASAT Special guitars. Has anyone had a pickup cover printed that looked like an original article?

Yep, basswood and 8lbs 8oz.

Dreamy.

I had a Peli-alike case (Explorer?) for my EUB. It was a fabulous, fabulous thing. Wheels and everything. Proper lush.

Out of idle interest, do the comp elements of the Spectradrive correspond to the Spectracomp, tone print wise?

I bought Blue in a 2nd hand LA recrod shop for 25c in 1982. I chose well.

I am about to launch a 'cellist into bass guitar world. She is 14 and at Grade 7 standard so is a very competent player. I am sorely tempted to tune a bass guitar like a 'cello (CGDA). This would mean that she has an extended range instrument from the off and she would be reading without having to adjust. I am aware that a lot of stuff we play is pattern based and a lot of those patterns lend themselves to 4th tuning, but if she is at Grade 7 then I am not worried about her dexterity and shifting. I am open to arguments against this concept. Am I missing anything?

Possibly, if the system is one of those mini tower jobbies. Otherwise, no.

You can never have too many channels, but you can NEVER have too many aux sends. There has not been too much talk of mixers on this thread, but FWIW I cannot think of a single reason to not buy a decent digital wireless desk. With the right system, everyone can be dealing with their own monitor feed which is a huge weight off whoever gets landed with running things. All the sends are saved, you get consistency from gig to gig. There are so many reasons to do it from the beginning of the buying process. People will whinge endlessly, saying "it's not the same". But if you can banish backline then what the audience hears is SOOOOOOO much better. Obv, this is several steps down the line, but getting a capable digital desk from the outset makes that an easy option. I believe RCF ones even have amp plugins on specific channels. I can get quite passionate about this stuff. And less chance of hearing damage.

If I was going out to buy a PA system for a band, I would be going IEM for monitors. You can spend gazillions and it will sound lush, but you will also get properly workable solutions with a pair of hard wired multidriver non moulded jobs earphones with a Behringer headphone amp. This means that each member can carry their own foldback. Shifting wedges around just adds to the schlepp factor and is really not great. It also means that you can limit stage volume so that your FOH just has to fight Guitarmaggedon rather than overcoming the combined output of 2 or wedges as well as backline. It is a MUCH better outcome for the audience.

Whatever I was playing at the time. It was that or an ACME 1x12. Completely excessive, but what a sound.

Yep. Straight in. No preamp needed to buffer the piezo. Really easy. I ran it through a Bergantino 6x10 which could be seen as excessive, but what a sound!