mike257

I've had some less than stellar experiences with Gee (admittedly a long time ago), as have various acquaintances over the years. If Liverpool is in range, look up Dan Whitelock-Jones, he's by far and away the best amp tech around here, and a lovely bloke too. Based in Aigburth, South Liverpool. Roland Lumby in Salford too.

Doesn't the 03D have a desperate shortage of mic preamps?

+1 for Powercon. Rubber boot on the back into a plastic enclosure mounted inside the rack. Use block terminals inside to split the power, cable glands with flying leads out to the IEC inlet of your kit.

I've got mixed feelings about it. I think it's a very well featured piece of kit for the price, capable of a lot of useful stuff, but that's been very much hobbled for me by the connectivity issues I've had with it. I think it's (in principle) a great solution for small gigs where putting a desk in a FOH position is impractical, but reliability of connection has to be paramount in a device with no physical controls. Bear in mind that despite the excessive Soundcraft/Lexicon/Digitech branding liberally splashed across it, the Ui began life as the SMpro Umix - it was a fully developed product and Harman bought out the company to save them designing their own entry level tablet mixer. It just got a swish rebranding, but the interface and features are near exactly the same as the original SMpro version. This wasn't developed by Soundcraft in any way.

Electronics don't just fail on 7 year old basses. All my instruments bar one have been with me longer than that, and all of them are more than seven years in age. The only electrical problems I've ever had are the mechanical failure of jack sockets, which is normal wear and tear and easily replaced. As for customs, it's a game of chance that I wouldn't like to lose. I brought a bass back from Australia when I was 19 and naive, luckily I didn't get challenged about it. The general rule of thumb is to expect charges of around an extra 25% when importing to the UK. Wuth regards to the value of custom instruments, a custom build from a small luthier is often hard to sell anywhere near its original cost. They simply don't have the name recognition, it's a much bigger risk in that respect. I'd feel safer about buying a production instrument from a known brand in these circumstances because they generally have a fairly stable market value and you'll be able to move them on for close to what you paid. Rarely the same for an obscure custom instrument, no matter how we'll put together.

Be aware that you'll need a splitter of some description. You'll get Aux 3 on the left side of the headphone jack and Aux 4 on the right. Also, I'd strongly recommend an external router. I've had horrendous reliability issues with a Ui16 over at a small production company I do some freelance work for.

Took my little 300w 1x15 out for an evening with the soul band last night. Stingray straight in, no preshape and bypassed the graphic. Sounded absolutely bloody lovely. Makes me miss the monster stack I used to have!

[quote name='tonyquipment' timestamp='1502405167' post='3351303'] Try some ex dj stuff Fog machines Pyrotechnics Boom! Get cheap cheap! [/quote] As someone who has operated pyro professionally, I'd suggest not trying to do it on the cheap, and in fact not trying to do it at all without proper training, knowledge and safety assessments.

STS are a great backline hire company in Manchester, based just behind the Apollo. They'll no doubt have a selection of P Basses in their stock if you need to hire one for a couple of days.

Traded a Stingray for my California JM4, think it's a 2004, before they changed the shapes to be "less Fendery". Just a really well made, versatile workhorse of a bass. Never felt in any way restricted by any aspect of it.

The Creamery and Oil City both do their own takes, or will rewind the modern Fender efforts (which are basically a standard humbucker in a big shiny box) to something more closely approximating the original spec.

[quote name='dand666' timestamp='1496833074' post='3314119'] I've been currently depping on a lot of gigs through an agency and all of their acts use backtracks. The track is full of 'sweetner', keys, horns, synth bass e.t.c - Works well with some of the new dance track. We all have IEMs and click is in our ears, if you're lucky you'll get a guide track as well. Perfect for a last minute dep! Having said all that, I'm not the biggest fan. [/quote] Earcandy, by any chance?

I'm afraid if you want to do a metal gig (or any moderate-to-loud band show) in a 700 cap room, something like that is unlikely to satisfy. They don't really function like a "proper" line array system you see at big shows. Those systems are designed carefully to suit each venue, with the position and angle of each box carefully selected to ensure an even coverage across the audience and to avoid firing at reflective surfaces etc. These little column systems aren't doing anything that clever. Based on what I've heard them do, I wouldn't use them for anything bigger than a small acoustic ensemble really. They'll do that just fine, but unlikely to have the headroom to do a loud rock band even in your venue's 150 cap configuration.

[quote name='LewisK1975' timestamp='1495806826' post='3306773'] Interesting - I bought myself an AKG D5 and was ribbed by my bandmates for not buying an SM58. [/quote] Your bandmates are daft. An SM58 wouldn't even make it into my top five choices for vocals on a small, loud stage.

30 mins is pretty standard - the tours I'm on this and next week are both one support and headliner, with 30 min sets for support.

[quote name='timhiggins' timestamp='1492758173' post='3282879'] Neck/fret impact is no different from playing a robust slap line its just the loosening that de-cruds strings [/quote] Well, it's far less damaging to your reputation, to be fair

Alpha Male Tea Party - tremendous band, mainly instrumental, great guitar work, time signature madness, and their drummer is probably the best hitter of things I've ever had the pleasure of being in a band with (back before he joined these guys), he's unreal. I dep for the bassist in his function band when they're touring too. Lovely chaps all around and new album due out pretty soon.

[quote name='MoonBassAlpha' timestamp='1492342687' post='3279500'] Have you actually tried them? It does have a whiff of something about it. I had a quick look at the website, not quite sure about the speaker claims as there isn't much real info, but one that caught my eye was a speaker with claimed 10 degree vertical dispersion, 120 deg horizontal, seems a little far fetched. [/quote] They claim their speakers actually achieve "zero distortion" and have also said in marketing materials that this alleged property means you can run them at high levels with a lesser risk of hearing damage, so not only bollocks but actually encouraging unsafe and irresponsible use. They've made spurious threats of litigation against anyone challenging their claims, but have refused to facilitate independent testing. They're a running joke in professional audio circles.

Flare are snake oil merchants who make scientifically impossible claims about their PA speakers, refuse to publish proper test data on their earplugs, and harass and block anyone who questions them on social media, to the point that their marketing director left a one star review of a venue whose in-house engineer challenged their claims about their products. Spiteful and immature. According to the limited data they've published, the isolate plugs perform about as well as those 3M disposable foam sets that cost pennies. You want plugs for £20, get a set of ER20s. You want proper isolation, get some moulds done from ACS or similar. These are questionable at best.

No worries, hope you get sorted one way or another!

[quote name='crez5150' timestamp='1492165307' post='3278383'] This is the easiest way [/quote] I'm pretty sure you can't Dante directly out of a Pro1 and you need the DN9650 network bridge with a Dante card fitted to do it.

Woke up today with another option to consider! If you've already got eight analogue inputs to your computer from the 828x, you could add a Behringer ADA8200 for ~£150 and give yourself a 16 input recording system, then just get a couple of TRS to XLR looms and record from the direct outs of the Soundcraft MH3 - assuming you can fit it on to 16 channels, that is. Cost difference between buying that and hiring the digital stuff will be negligible, and you have the benefit of expanding your own recording rig in the process

Also - the Mac/iPad editor software is irrelevant here as it doesn't transmit audio to the host device, it's solely for control of the console. So definitely don't go and buy a Mac/iPad for that!

Another alternative is to check if the venue is also running a monitor desk and if that is going to be simpler to take a feed from. If it's another Pro series on a digital split from a Midas stagebox then it makes no difference, but if it's a different desk on an analogue split, you might be able to find an easier solution. In fact, if it's a different house monitor desk, you could (with agreement of the venue) hire something like a Midas M32 (or Behringer X32) to be used as house monitor console for the night, as that has a 32x32 USB interface on board and is much simpler to record from. If there's no monitor guy, it might even be cheaper hiring an M32 locally for the house FOH guy to mix your show on and taking a multitrack over USB. Not as nice a console, but perfectly capable of mixing a great show and much less complex to record from.

Pretty sure you need to connect a Klark Technik DN9650 to the AES50 port of the Midas, and the 9650 needs to be loaded with either: A: a Dante card which can be connected to a computer running Dante Virtual Soundcard Or B: a MADI card which can be connected to a computer with something like an RME Madiface in between I'd start with asking the venue if they're happy to facilitate it, as it's a bit of extra faff and configuration for the guy behind the desk to worry about, when he's likely to already be dealing with tight changeovers and all the other complexities of a live show. If he's happy to do it, I'd approach a pro audio hire company local to the venue and enquire about the kit. Might have to do a bit of ringing around as it's quite specialist equipment and will probably only be carried by rental houses that predominantly use Midas consoles. If it looks like it'll all come together, I'd go in there with a well prepared template file in your DAW of choice, and have an extra person with you to operate the recording laptop, as there's every chance that the house guy might be pressed for time to check it's all good before your show starts. I'd also suggest either bringing along or asking the venue to supply ambient mics to be recorded along with the rest of your input list. These can be phase aligned with the rest of your mix and blended in to add the feel of something actually happening in a real space, and can be brought up at top and tail of tracks to give crowd noise etc.