Muzz

I'll have a pint before/during the first set, and another in the second. It won't be Turbo Nutter B*stard Lager, it'll be a low-alcohol mild or bitter, but it's just a nice zoning thing for me. I don't drink much; actually, if it weren't for gigging, I'd rarely drink at all...

I always, always look forward to gigging, tho on the day/night I'm never nervous, just keen to get on and get going. I don't mind the punters, mostly, as long as they're not hammered experts...two things which amazingly seem to go hand in hand...

Splendid. I'm printing this out and leaving a copy lying around the house, just to add perspective to any discussions about new basses entering the fold... 🙂

I had a gig Satdy night at a space-challenged pub, so I took the Rumble 100 112 I'd acquired for just such events. It was acoustic geetar, drummer with hotrods (initially) and I'd imagined if it got loud I'd go into the (house) PA, but thanks to parking issues (£9 to park for a gig?...pffft) we didn't have time for a soundcheck, and the singist got into a flap about it, so I wasn't in the PA at all. The Rumble managed it alongside the drummer, who got pretty loud (he ditched the hotrods) - I had it cranked just under Thrashed To Death, but it managed, so I'd say a bigger Rumble would be a lot better is the lad wants a decent amount of backline. With a decent PA, the 100 would be fine for a stage monitor (plus it does the Aux In/Headphones thing, too), and of course it's pretty damn small and very light... For what it is (i.e. a cheap, small 112 combo) it performed pretty well...

Just as an aside, the 414 I bought has really grown on me: it's much better for my purposes than the 1024x I briefly had, and that P-pup is a belter. I originally bought it for a song, thinking I'd be doing a fair bit of work on it (bridge, nut, tuners, pickup, possibly a John East EQ), but the more I play it, the more I realise it needs nowt*: I put some Elixirs on it (thereby increasing my overall investment by a significant percentage) and it's terrific as a passive P. I was in a similar position back in the day, when the backup to my BB3000A was a boggo BB300, and there'd be gigs when I just wouldn't bother with the posh one... * OK, possibly some Hipshot Ultralights, but that's pretty much window dressing...

For me, the only real stinker has to have three things go wrong at the same time: a bad performance, a bad sound and an indifferent/absent crowd. Any two of those three doesn't really count, as I enjoy the other one enough to not bring me down. And, thinking on, I'm not sure I can recall the last time that was the case...

Nope - I work on sounds at home (I'll borrow a PA top to get the EQ right, because I made the mistake at first of EQing for headphones, and it sounded ropey through the PA), make the odd tweak at rehearsals, and then save them as presets. It's very very easy from the laptop. Then I put them into a logical order (and I don't have THAT many, although I have several banks/iterations in different (dropped) keys...oh, and a differently-EQ'd set for if/when I'm using my rig - see above), and just use the Patch Up/Down switches to select. Simples. It has to be Simples, otherwise I get confused. I'm only a bassist, after all... Edit: that sounds more complicated than it is, so an example: I'll have a Rock Drive sound, then I'll copy it (and detune) to Rock Drive Eb in a run/bank of patches for Eb, then possibly Rock Drive D, then I'll have a Rock Drive Rig, with an EQ tweak. I'll never need all four on one gig, so I only ever work in one bank of possibly 8 presets per gig, each in the same order, all the Eb ones together, all the D ones together, all the Rig ones together. The next patch to Rock Drive might be Fretless, and in the Eb bank there'll be Fretless Eb, etc.

Covers bands? 6-7 hours door to door? Hardly. It does happen, but the money goes up - an average pub gig for us is 7:30pm - 11:30pm, and for normal money, no more than half an hour either way. Lugging heavy equipment? You've got the wrong PA/Backline 😀

I was always happy enough with the Zoom pedal for physical patch switching, and the Stomp's fine: Patch Up, Down and Tuner...all good. I have one set of patches for one band, and also copies of those patches for dropped keys in other bands. If I need more I'll just program them in...

There's plenty in the For Sale section...hoist by the twin petards of moving into a new house, and band requirements changing, it's been Last In, First Out 😕

He's apparently sold more records in Australia than the Beatles, and he's at least as big as ACDC over there. If you don't mind some polished AOR-type stuff, 1987's Freight Train heart is basically him and most of Journey, and a good place to start, but his range is wider than that. He would have been perfect for ACDC in 1980 (with all due respect to Brian J), but he turned them down... I love this: terrible quality vid, but they're obviously having a lot of fun...

See you, Jimmy... Night before last at the Garage in Glasgow, Jimmy Barnes. My favourite rock vocalist, whom I've rarely seen for a variety of reasons. Nine piece band, sound was great apart from the ridiculous subsonic-cannon kick*, which meant the bassist might as well not have bothered plugging in. To the best bit: there is nobody amongst his peers who has retained the quality and intensity of vocal performance for more than 35 years as well as Jimmy: not a note was ducked, not a key dropped, not a melody compromised, and it appears in the Barnes way of thinking 99% is for bedwetters, under-achievers and fixed-wing pilots. Fantastic. He still has the stage presence of a builder looking for a fight, tho...which is in itself a joy 😁 * Dear sound engineers, can we just move on from this now? I know it was a thing for a while, and naive punters go 'Oooo, you can feel it in your chest', but unless it's THAT sort of gig, it's just pointless and ruins 75% of mixes.** ** 'Hello Darkness my old BOOOOM, I've come to talk with you aBOOOOM,,,'

When I read 'roasted maple' I was interested, but the lack of grain just makes it look like it's had a coat of gravy browning... Other than that it looks nice...

While there's much to applaud in the above, the second paragraph can clearly work both ways, as the OP has highlighted. I'll be more impressed with the last sentence when I see actual evidence of Mr Rollins exchanging salaries with his techs. Although at this stage of his career there might not be much in it... 😀

Yup, it's a very insidious thing, although as you describe (albeit in a much odder (but classier 🙂) context), it really did do that thing when it went from not being an issue one day to always being an issue. I have to say a lot of Da Kidz I play around are already using some sort of attenuation, so the message must be getting around from somewhere...

Adequate research can actually produce better questions to ask, especially if said research uncovers a possible or common fault with the model/year. It can also point towards fakery and plain old seller's ignorance of specs. Other obvious ones sometimes need asking - weight, for example, can vary in the real world from anything which may be on a spec sheet, and sometimes significantly.

Hence the 'finally'...this time the noise was so bad it never went away...the point being it wasn't standing in front of a stage full of 4x12 Marshalls: 40w and 1x12 was plenty... 😕

I've just strolled the Dingwall site - I could get used to the new shape, I guess - but there's also a Hellboy Limited Edition 'to coincide with the major motion picture release of Hellboy (2019)' I happened to watch the new Hellboy last night. Holy cow. It's not even 'so bad it's good'...it's just plain awful. 😕 He's not having much luck of late, is Sheldon... 😕

None on their website any more (or Bass Direct's, and he's the biggest stockist anywhere), tho they might have one stashed under the counter...I'm in Glasgow tomorrow for a couple of days for a gig, I might pop in and ask...

I wish...

Yeah, I'd put a C&D into 'imminent legal action' territory. Awful timing for Sheldon, mind.

I'd suggest that the first line of their announcement 'Due to circumstances beyond our control' suggests very very strongly either imminent or actual legal action from Gibson...in the end, it makes no difference: they've changed a popular design (and the name) due to external circumstances. No point in taking on extra work, and possibly losing sales, if that wasn't the case.

My tinnitus was (finally) triggered by a guitarist dep's 40w 1x12 combo. Albeit positioned badly (for me), but that's all it took...

This is the most sense I've heard all week...we do it occasionally, when the guitarist/singer gets into the 'volume creep' thing with his presets* - it's like a Sanity Reset... 🙂 * You know, when one preset is louder than the next one, so instead of turning the first one down, he turns the second one up...and so on...repeat until deafened...

I think that seeing as they've gone for Dingwall, whose only Gibson-reminiscent bass has a completely different headstock and so many improvements on the original it's basically only the overall body outline that's in any way similar, then Mike Lull had better be lawyering up right now...his are straight copies by comparison, plus he's also the right size for Gibson's legal team to push around...