radiophonic

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1499891941' post='3334408'] So if you had in ears you could do your perfect own mix in rehearsals then at the gigs you'd get a consistent perfect fold back. [/quote] Our rehearsal sound is living-room loud and doesn't require 'mixing'. We can just hear everything. No drum-kit makes a huge difference. We certainly don't need in-ears. If the wedges are matched to the necessary output of the loudest thing on the stage - rather than assuming we need 110 dB of snare drum - everyone can hear everything. It works every time the sound engineer uses their brain and therefore fails 90% of the time but not because of tech. We are a band who need to be amplified FOH, not on stage. It's an ongoing problem when you share bills on the Guit/Bass/Drum/Vox circuit. I've heard us described as a 'nightmare'. We really aren't.

I wish. "The way to solve this and to play your best is to use in-ear monitors". No. The way to solve this is to have a sound engineer who has a clue. Tech is only ever a helping hand. My band don't have a drum kit, but try explaining to a house sound guy that this means the wedges don't have to compete with a snare drum. I've played gigs with my rig turned to zero before now because house sound guy won't do his job, listen and think. Instead they try and [i]make[/i] the cajon as loud as a kick drum, then crank everything else to match it: [i]et voila [/i]tinnitus and feedback[i]. [/i]

Eek. So Boss have been telling us about how they've serially improved two of those pedals over many iterations over the last 40 years and now they want 250 quid a pedal. I think not. My experience with Boss gear back in the 80s was that it didn't work too well with bass anyway - certainly not active basses.

45 - 100 ideally. I have 45 - 105 at the moment but I find the 105 a bit heavy. 40 is too light on the top for me.

[quote name='dlloyd' timestamp='1499680606' post='3332861'] When we talk about "understanding" (or "getting") a band as we have done in this thread, what I think we really mean is "understanding why people like them". I really don't like anything I've heard from Crosby Stills and Nash. I have their album Deja Vu and I've listened to it a couple of times. I fully understand the music, but I don't understand why people like it enough that it went 7 x platinum in the US. It's just a bit "meh" to me. [/quote] Which is a long way from 'things I don't like == crap'. I don't like Soul Music at all. Especially Northern Soul. I get why other people do though and I'd never dismiss it out of hand. It's just not to my taste and I can't envisage ever wanting to listen to it.

We played a private / corporate booking, which was a bit odd for a band that both play originals and sing in Hungarian, Latin and Sanskrit. I'm not sure why we were asked, but the money was right, the stage was great, the PA was excellent, the monitor mix was the kind of thing we usually daren't dream about and we played flawlessly in the first set although lacked a bit of energy at the start of the second. Audience were largely indifferent of course. Singer got a bit disgruntled about it and made us drop a song. No-one else was any the wiser. It's not our natural habitat, but I could really get used to the facilities.

When I'm told 'house back-line' or 'the promoter is organising it (especially the latter). I take my own. Last time there was some sort of combo of possibly 200 watts. If they are DIing, there shouldn't be any problem swapping the line. It's just a line level signal. If the house gear looks remotely OK, I'll go with it though and save myself some lugging.

[quote name='Barking Spiders' timestamp='1499355575' post='3330987'] I' ve not gigged for a few years now but being a bit of an exhibitionist - although not really a showoff - I was always in my element with other blokes in bands putting together a few moves and looking like we were having fun. In the samba band I recently played with playing while also doing a choreography was what is was all about, not just standing there hitting things. Yeah we're all different etc but Radiohead at Glastonbury were dull not because of the music as much as the stillness and lack of banter. Better to be more like Dave Grohl than Tom Yorke. [/quote] On Radiohead (who I'm a huge fan of). It's a few years since I've seen them play live, but I found Thom an engaging front-man at regular gigs. However, I do get bored by the total lack of any sense of risk. It's all so flawless that there's no edge to it. I'm not sure that I'd make the effort to see them again, even though I love their music. Back to the topic. Somebody just posted an FB vid of us playing last weekend. Even though it was a very cramped acoustic stage and two members of the band were seated due to the occasion, I bounced up and down a lot more than I expected. Slightly guilty of neck watching but I also do this slow L-R head shake, like 'I'm really getting into it man' or possibly disagreeing with someone. At least I don't look bored. I do make a colossal timing flub 4 bars from the end though, but because I'm the bass player nobody off stage noticed. I can't see my stage moves developing any further at my age. Decorum.

[quote name='gjones' timestamp='1499335611' post='3330786'] As somebody whose strings tend to last a long time before they go dead (I just put a new set of DR Hi Beams on my bass after the old set had been on for at least 4 years) , I'm curious as to how your E string could go dead after just one gig. What on earth are you doing to destroy a string so quickly? [/quote] Your guess is as good as mine. I don't slap or play with a pick. Just fingerstyle and although I do dig in a bit, it's not like I'm playing Death Metal. I suspect it could have been a dud string. Anyway, I'm playing two sets on Sunday at an outdoor thing, so we'll see how the D'Addario's last. They seem to be a superior string when new at least - very solid sounding compared to the EBs. Subjectively richer treble too. Not [i]much [/i]in it, price-wise but higher tension by the feel of it. I suspect all these things are related.

Well I've wrung out all I could from the EBs and picked up a set of ProSteels. First impression is that they are very solid sounding but of somewhat higher tension than I'm used to. Some of this may be due to having to raise the gauge slightly due to needing a 45 G. My usual 45 - 100 wasn't an option. Possibly denser steel than the Slinky's. We'll see how they fare at the next gig. Less than week to go.

Saturday night was the Oxfam 'Oxjam' (Semi-) Acoustic night in Beeston. A warm up of sorts for the Oxjam Takeover in October (18 venues confirmed and we're playing that too). We played third out of four, and limited our material to things that could be adapted to an acoustic guitar and relied more heavily on violin than keys. Aside from more of the mystery 80Hz feedback intruding badly on the final song and making the pitching of the vocals a exercise in guesswork, all was good. Enthusiastic (if somewhat older and largely seated) crowd and plenty of people wanting to know when we were playing again. The recording reveals us to be tighter than I'd thought we were. It also reveals that someone called Christine had ordered a curry but seemed reluctant to collect it. Two gigs in one day is quite tiring though, even playing shorter sets.

Just back from an early afternoon set over in Sherwood for a bunch of folkies. I swear, every Guardian reader in North Nottingham must have been there. A bit worthy for my tastes, but we went down well. Playing again tonight as part of Oxjam in Beeston. My strings are dead but it's too late in the day to risk changing them.

[quote name='paul_5' timestamp='1498640334' post='3326007'] This, although I haven't really made friends with 'King Of Limbs' yet. [/quote] KoL worked much better live IMO. Once they'd worked out how to play the songs live, they seemed to breathe a lot more. There's a 'Live From The Basement' DVD with Clive Deamer on second drums and I prefer it to the proper album.

Something of a car-crash caused by a completely incompetent sound-person. We've gradually pieced together what happened after the event. Several channels on the desk were dead, but instead of systematically remapping the snake to the working inputs and relabelling the desk, he just randomly swapped things round until the right number of channels worked. Howling feedback caused by two open mic channels led to panic as he tried to mute the mic channels but instead muted the bass and the keyboards in the monitors just in time for a big breakdown that consists of (you guessed it: bass and keyboards). I couldn't hear her. She couldn't hear herself or me. His fiddling had already removed most of the Cajon from the FOH and drowned the singers (I have a recording, so I can hear all this happening in real time). None of this removed the feedback because the two errant mics were still live. Despite being totally butchered, we actually went down okay - with the comment that the music was great even though the sound was extremely bad. The evening was redeemed by headliners 'Scriptures' who were totally epic. It's great to hear a band doing originals that are this strong and are actually original. Some credit to our guitar player though, who spotted at the last minute that the sound guy had connected their singer to a dead channel too and fixed it just as they started. The sound guy wants to put us on again apparently. I'm not one to burn bridges but I think that's a big No Thanks. Fingers crossed for Saturday's 'acoustic' set. Rehearsal went well, so only the sound tech to worry about.

When i read 'fun gigs', I immediately thought 'Puppet Show + Spinal Tap'. If it were bar or club gigs they would say 'paying gigs'. I'm guessing it's a second iteration of a band that floundered in the rehearsal room because of someone with an ego problem / unrealistic expectations of what a local level originals band can expect to achieve in terms of audience. They've all been playing a few years, some of them have probably gigged and the original line-up was mostly based on friends. They dumped the ego problem and want to move it up a notch. Wouldn't surprise me if they've replaced another member in addition to the bass player. The first gigging band I was in was like this band.

I run my Stingray into the passive input of my Hattke LH500. The loading of the two inputs is (according to manual) the same, but an active bass into the passive input gives an edgier tone. I assume I'm pushing the headroom and maybe clipping the valve a bit, although it's not audibly distorted. The active input has so much headroom, it might as well be solid state. It's pretty easy to tell the difference. I should probably try a few alternative valves too.

I've bought and sold via discogs.com. Get your grading correct and package up in advance. It can be a good method for working out what is even worth selling too - the catalog listing there is absolutely huge and includes exhaustive detail on how to recognise a specific pressing / mastering from deadwax inscriptions and sleeve details. Far more reliable than ebay, for sure.

I've had exactly the same experience, but only with high-gain type pedals. I'm currently using a Pork Loin though and all is good. Clean pre-amp blended with a BiFET overdrive. Curve control and a clean blend. Big fat sound, no loss of low end, no signal drop, no 'fizzy on top' type of sound. It will of course depend on what frequency bands other members of your ensemble are occupying and I suspect that part of the problem I had with a Pike was the very scooped guitar sound I was often competing with, rather than the pedal itself.

Thought I'd bump this up again purely because I just bought a Pork Loin from the classifieds here. I got it to do real distortion and it does that really well and manages to totally avoid the 'fizzy on top' problem I had with a high gain pedal on a Stingray. However, I accidentally ran it with the gain set down at about 30% last night and it just totally fattened the sound, adding just a little grit. With a guitar playing, it wasn't even clear that it was distorted - it just sounded fatter and with improved sustain. The bottom end stayed rock solid too. This is a great low gain pedal.

[quote name='NancyJohnson' timestamp='1496911177' post='3314592'] I had two PedalTrains before the TempleBoard...I think everyone goes for PT because it's the easy option, a little like supporting Manchester Utd. Once in a while, I need to run a two-channel setup and trying to get everything in the right order on the PT board just didn't cut it for me...I was going to get a bigger PT a couple of years back until a guy in New York suggested I investigate the Temple Audio gear. Glad I did. It's well worth the investment. I might add a couple of XLR outputs at some stage, but for now all is good. [/quote] I do like the I/O jacks being part of the board. Very neat. If I had the money, I'd definitely consider it. Unfortunately, children etc...

[quote name='NancyJohnson' timestamp='1496905960' post='3314549'] If you're looking for an viable alternative, check out Temple Boards ([url="https://templeboards.co.uk"]https://templeboards.co.uk[/url]). They're great boards, loads of modules that can be added to the end boards to handle power and output. No Velcro! [/quote] Very tasty looking. But quite pricey too, esp once you factor in mounting plates and an extra 50 quid for a case. Duo 17 would be north of 150 quid! I think a secondhand PT Jr will answer my needs. Hopefully one will come up in the classifieds in the hear future/

[quote name='GazWills' timestamp='1496859921' post='3314365'] the PT Jr that I showed a picture of is the model that you can still buy. It's only an inch or so different from the old PT Jr... [/quote] Ah - It was the old style one that fits. The new one does look a bit big. I could always buy more pedals of course.

What's the difference between Nickels and SS? I've only ever used stainless.

[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1496797519' post='3313946'] +1 on DR's, they last a long time for me and I kill strings fast. Also DR HiBeams in particular sound pretty good even when they're dead, I kept a set on my J for a good couple of years. (I like dead strings for the stuff i play but some sound better than others, dead nickels usually sound bad.) Also watch Scott's advice on avoiding dead strings on Youtube, if you're getting one dead string you might find his advice useful. [/quote] Got a link for the Scott Devine thing? I've seen his string changing vid, is this something different? I have had luck in the past, with this though - [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8pxjE8AuAc"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8OYeN9mAL4[/url] - based on the 'work hardening' model of dead strings. Nothing worked for my last set of Ernie Balls though!