tvickey

My gig wasn't last night, but rather last weekend when on Friday we opened up for Subhumans at The Drill in Lincoln (a 550 person venue, but I heard that around 300 tickets were sold). I'm a huge Subhumans fan, have been ever since I was about 13 or 14 years old (I'm in my late 40's now). Fortunately I met them once before, otherwise I would have been completely geeking out. There is a Subhumans cassette tape that I have had since the late 80's / early 90's, which I used to just leave in the tape deck of my car for a long while... I brought it on to stage with me when we opened for them. The Drill is a really impressive venue, and the organization in advance was superb. It was the largest stage that me or any of my bandmates had ever played on, and we felt a bit out of our league (in the same way that you might feel flying business class when you normally travel economy). We certainly enjoyed the experience, but at the same time we were playful and laughing about how unusual certain aspects of the show were. I had brought my Mesa 6x10" cab specifically for this show, but sadly the main sound engineer did not want to mic it (he mic-ed the Subhumans bassist's cab, and commented it's only done for the headliners). For me he used the post-eq DI on my amp... oh well! We had one dedicated sound engineer just for monitors. He seemed very attentive during soundcheck, but when we played our set in front of the audience he seemed to forget my request to kill the vox in my monitor. This threw me off a bit at the start, and our songs came fast and furious... I was only able to communicate the problem to him on the fourth song of our set, which starts with the bass and gave me the opportunity to briefly pause. We had a dressing room complete with mirror and large round bulbs, a couch, fridge, and the wifi password. Beers and other drinks were provided. My family came along, and my son ran the merch desk. He did really well on sales! He sold 5 tees, 6 CDs, and 3 cassette tapes during the show. We played really well, and someone who had seen a lot of our performances commented that it was the best show yet. Most of us stayed overnight in Lincoln, and I went around the town the the fam for some sightseeing the next morning. We didn't stick around too long however, as we had to hit the road and head to Boston. There we were headlining on Saturday, but given a lot more time for our set. We played every song that we had, and I honestly think that the Boston performance was the very best show yet. They get better and better... I had to take the fam to Manchester airport on Sunday afternoon, and Subhumans were playing at the Star & Garter, so I popped in for their show. I caught the opening bands too, and between acts I went into the loo... I find Trotsky (Subhumans drummer) taking a leak next to me and he says, "Hey, what are you doing here?!?" Funny. I chatted with the Subhumans merch guy (he owed me a shirt from the Lincoln show, when I traded tees with Dick but they sold out of my size), as well as Phil the bassist (there are two flights of stairs at the S&G, and he said he was too lazy to carry up his bass cabs). I'm honestly not sure that we'll ever play such a large show again... but who really knows? Anyway, we enjoyed this weekend, which was awesome.

Nice one! Thanks for letting me know and I hope that the promotion is not too annoying! Ha! 🤣

On Saturday May 4th my band 'Shreds.' hits The Victoria Inn in Derby... if you're nearby and like punk / hardcore, you won't want to miss this show! Tickets are only £10 !!! Let me know if you plan to be there! If you aren't nearby and want to catch another show, you can find other dates on Bandcamp and Songkick (https://shredshc.bandcamp.com/)

We're taking pre-orders for vinyl here (vendor is now making the master disks for our LP, with delivery of the records expected by end of June): https://shredshc.bandcamp.com/album/step-back

Today is April 15th, so our album has been released on Bandcamp. You can listen for free, so be sure to check it out! https://shredshc.bandcamp.com/album/step-back

And the CDs have already come back from pressing. These look amazing!

My band 'Shreds.' are playing at the Star & Garter in Manchester with 80's hardcore legends NEGATIVE APPROACH on May 28th. The guitarist in my band is a huge NA fan, so this is basically a bucketlist gig for him (my bucketlist gig is our show with the Subhumans in Lincoln at the end of April). Anyway, this is pretty awesome especially considering the recent death of the licensee at the S&G, and the fact that my band has real difficulty playing anything other than weekend shows. We knew it was a bucketlist gig for our guitarist, and everyone went out of their way to help fulfill his wishes. Hurry up and get your tickets though! I heard that more than 50% of the tickets have already been sold!

Our studio work has finished, and the tracks are finally ready! My band Shreds. (punk / hardcore) is releasing our debut album on April 15th. You can pre-order it (digital download and vinyl) on Bandcamp here: https://shredshc.bandcamp.com/album/step-back

Early or late 70s Ric?

All excellent comments! I did apply some graphite, but that was not sufficient enough to prevent the glue break. I became convinced that a small bit of glue is needed between the nut and the edge of the fretboard (and when the nut first broke off, there was evidence that Ric had put a bit of glue there too). The nut on the Ric is very tall and narrow. Anyway, it's holding now and the bass that we recorded for the album sounds massive.

This is certainly true on my Warwicks, but has not been my experience at all with this recent Rickenbacker 4003. When the nut breaks loose, the string tension tends to pull it away from the fretboard (you can see what I mean in the photo).

Update: The CA glue that I used the second time around held... This time I did put some glue both on the nut bottom and on the side that faces the fretboard. Perhaps that was the key... I took the bass into the studio this morning with strings added, but not fully tensioned. We made sure to track guitar first today in order to give the glue as long as possible to cure. By the early afternoon it was time for bass and I tensioned the strings up... and I managed to record the bass tracks in the studio without any problem. Those were the last tracks for the album. Yay, all done!

I have to confess that the A and D string gauge difference bit me the first time that I had the nut pop off. So, it is very likely my fault and I probably precipitated this following that mistake... However, I widened the grooves prior to gluing the nut back on that first time. The nut stayed on just fine, until the next time that I changed strings (same gauge). As I wrote, I've used CA glue again but this time putting it on the bottom as well as the fretboard-facing side of the nut. I put strings back on this morning, but have not fully tensioned them into tune... I'm trying to buy as many hours of cure time as possible before hitting the studio this morning. Fingers crossed that the stays in place! The entire point of going back into the studio this morning was to re-record bass on a few tracks specifically for the Ric sound... the studio time was booked months ago. Argh! My GAS is saying, "You know what this means? We have to buy another Ric... you know, to have on-hand as a back up." 🤣

I'd pay myself just for the opportunity to play with some of the headliners at the shows that we've got lined up this year... but don't tell the promoter that!