nekomatic

Sounds good - there’s nothing wrong with the tempos. Nice arco 🙂 On first listen I was a bit confused by the double-time thing your drummer does on the first tune, which sounded a bit random until I went back and concentrated on it. Maybe something that works better live than on a demo?

That’s quite a lot of power, unless these are valve amps - I wonder if they actually need that much? Anyway I have no clever ideas sorry. Your cheapest option is probably going to be an 8-way mains strip and individual 24 V adapters.

500 mA each, or 500 mA total? Any idea if the outputs need to be isolated from each other?

GET OUT

I hadn't seen this thread before, and big thanks to all contributors for the recommendations - going to be going on a playlist near you (well, near me) very shortly. If I could choose three fantasy bands to be in, one of them would definitely be an Afrobeat band. Also I hope the people on page 1 who tipped the Ezras for greatness back in 2020 are feeling suitably pleased with themselves now. Here's The Fontanelles:

Having listened through good headphones to these (and previously other) examples of ‘upright sounds from an electric bass’, I’m going to say that the best of them do manage to replicate an OK double bass sound… but none of them manages a really good double bass sound, the sort I’d be trying to make if I were a double bass player. I like how that Ibanez SRH sounds on its own terms though, without the double bass IR.

There was a thing about this in the Washington Post recently (think the actual article is paywalled but the graphic has been widely shared). Basically, everyone thinks the best music was whatever was made when they were teenagers:

I’ve seen both live, loved Loose Articles, cannot stand The Lovely Eggs. Funny old business innit.

Thanks, that's good. Wasn't he young back then though! 😄

Manchester Jazz Festival summary… Starting with the last one we saw: Courtney Pine. Closing gig of the festival so the brief was to deliver a good time, which he did. We mainly went because we'd not seen him live before (at least I don't remember doing - maybe I have at some outdoor festival in London back in the day) and it was good fun, but not exactly as subtle as the others I'm reporting on. Samuel Dubois on steel pans stole the show really, although the guitarists were both excellent too. Nikki Iles Jazz Orchestra: worth seeing just for the rarity of a live 19-piece contemporary big band, Iles's compositions are lush and all members of the band are fine players in their own right including one of my bass gurus Steve Watts on DB duties. Can't see if they have any other live dates lined up but worth looking out for. And Tim Garland's Lighthouse Trio: these guys were simply stunning (in spite of having no bass player in the band). Garland is superb but Gwilym Simcock on piano and Asaf Sirkis (also a member of current Soft Machine lineup!) on drums are both monsters. Some of their material referenced themes of migration and hope with accompanying artwork projected on a screen and this was really thought-provoking, taking (I thought) a courageous step outside the standard jazz format. Sample here and tour dates also on that website - including London this Thursday, and some upcoming dates with Yazz Ahmed who I know is an equally top-drawer talent - and if this is remotely the sort of thing you're into, I strongly encourage you to go along to one. We caught some of the free gigs at Home on the opening weekend too - a short-notice quartet led by Tom Thorp with Luke Flowers on drums were excellent, and a really intriguing Iranian trio with cello/vocals + guitar + santoor - and there was lots more I would have gone to had I been able to get there. It really is a great festival.

Yeah, each time I've gone through the thought process of 'build my own power amp' I've ended up at this conclusion, and buying from the UK dealer with the cable set, VAT and delivery you're looking at at least £150, then you need to put it in a box with connectors and so on, and hope that your thermal design is OK, and by the time you've done all that then unless you cost your time and effort at zero you might as well just buy a Baby Sumo, or if you don't mind fan cooling then a BH250 or Gnome i-pro or something. I'm still interested in other people's experience of the same thought process though!

The TPA3255 datasheet says that for 250 W into 4 ohms (the Eich amp’s rating) the chip needs to get rid of nearly fifty watts, and even applying a factor for the actual power spectrum of bass that’s still going to be quite a lot of heat. Would be interesting to know if Eich have improved on the thermal management of the cheap amp board somehow, say by using the whole case as a heatsink rather than just the stick-on internal one in the eBay pictures.

Interesting, as it looks suspiciously similar to something like https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/283964862682?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=SsSiHyWXTLi&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=O0J6pgZgSC6&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY which I had considered at in the past as a possible mini power amp - but a lot more expensive. I wonder how long these can sustain their rated output without overheating but as you say, if Eich are prepared to put their name on it one assumes it performs. The external power supply brick slightly detracts from the ultra-mini aesthetic though, which will be why they don’t show it in any of the photos 😁

Seeing Nikki Iles's big band, Tim Garland's trio and Courtney Pine in Manchester Jazz Festival - plus hoping to make it to some of the free gigs on the first weekend. Possibly more of the paid ones too if I can manage to! This one sounds intriguing but not sure I can get to it…

Well tonight the house band had ACTUAL RICHARD WETHERALL on piano, and since no pianists turned up until later on he stayed on for the jam, which means I have now jammed with ACTUAL RICHARD WETHERALL. Blimey. For the benefit of non-jazzers this is someone I would be reasonably confident of placing in the Premier League of current British jazz pianists.

The iReal Pro website suggests you can use an Android emulator to run it on Windows. i haven’t tried this as they do a proper Mac version 😎

Lucas Santanna at Band on the Wall, on a mate’s suggestion. Brazilian trio playing sort of groovy er, Brazilian music with clear reggae/ska influences. Enjoyable if woefully under-attended - only about fifty people in the venue. Manchester’s Brazilian massive must have been otherwise engaged tonight. Those who did show up made up for short numbers with enthusiasm though.

Might have measured 78 V open circuit, but been much less under load? Disappointing customer service though.

The most obvious (to me) reason for doing this is so you can have positive, ground and negative power rails for your circuit without needing an odd custom 3-pin connector. Without knowing the exact details of the pedal, and taking on trust what it says on the label you’ve posted, any 12 volt AC/AC adapter rated 400 mA or more should do the job. If the power rails are regulated inside the pedal then choosing a 15 volt adapter will make no difference.

A music shop opened in my suburb about a year ago and I've dropped in a couple of times and chatted with the owner. I think he's retired from whatever it is he used to do and he told me he actually owns the building it's in, so his costs are low. He's got a fair selection of guitars, amps, pedals, some basses, various other instruments, and accessory bits and bobs… but the honest truth is that while I would be willing to pay a bit extra to buy something there rather than order it, I don't spend much money on gear and what I would be interested in is stuff he hasn't got. Last time I went in I bought a secondhand strap for eight quid and asked about a GK MB200 he had in, which I don't need nearly enough to buy one. So, you know, it's nice to have a local music shop and good luck to him but it's not going to survive on the custom of people like me.

My wife knows someone who has this, for music. The bizarre thing is that the reason my wife knows her is that she is a very good classical violinist, who my wife has often booked for gigs and played alongside. She only realised that she had this condition, and other people didn't, as an adult, and was apparently quite thrown by the discovery.

Well this thread doesn’t seem to have gained the popularity that the last gig and last rehearsal ones have, but anyway: Royal Oak Mellor jazz jam was great again last night, and just what my playing needs at the moment - a moderate workout and incentive to get practicing for next month. Got sandbagged on a trio number again though - next time I’m going prepared, with a tune to call that I actually know!

It feels as though a smaller rack standard for amplification kit is long overdue, because the advantages in robustness and transport convenience must still apply in these days of more compact Class D power amps and narrower speaker cabs. The 19 inch rack is somewhere between 90 and 102 years old! I guess there is absolutely no chance of this happening though, as most of the other domains where racks are used are probably still happy with their 19 inches.