flyfisher

[quote name='Hutton' post='1235222' date='May 18 2011, 09:00 AM']I don't get the appreciation of Seasick Steve. I think it's fashionable to like him.[/quote] I should think that 'fashion' applies to well over half the mainstream acts out there today.

Natural selection. People will tweak a bass (= mutation) and the buying/playing public will decide if the change makes it better or worse (= selection). Over time, the 'best design' (= species) for the job (= survival) will become dominant.

The train option looks good to me; a nice day out, you get to see and try the bass before completing the deal, you're in complete control and won't be worrying about what state it may be in if a courier delivers it, plus you won't have any insurance hassles if it all goes wrong - and I'd reckon you can guarantee insurance hassles on anything not properly packaged.

I don't think that age and life history is a good reason to excuse a poor performance, nor does a poor performance have any bearing on the original quality of the songs in question. The two things are not connected at all. Everyone gets old and their faculties wane, hence the saying that it's best to go out at the top. No one can seriously deny Brian Wilson's massive contribution to popular music but, sadly, that doesn't mean he can go on forever.

If you only want a rough record of jamming sessions then pretty much any mic will do the job as will pretty much any recording device - even a smartphone. Of course, you won't get studio- quality recordings, but that's not usually the aim. Mic placement and amp volumes will need a bit of attention so you can at least hear every instrument, i.e. one doesn't drown out another, but otherwise that's about all you'll need to do for a basic record of the proceedings.

Both my bands are here tonight: [url="http://www.woodmanware.co.uk/woodfest.html"]http://www.woodmanware.co.uk/woodfest.html[/url]

Blimey Maybe we'll be lucky as it's a thursday gig.

Looks like our guitarist has got us a gig here in the near future. Just wondering is anyone has played there or knows about the venue.

[quote name='BottomE' post='1224911' date='May 9 2011, 11:26 AM']this is a joke thread right?[/quote] Yeah, come on, someone admit it, please. Surely the ultimate wind-up thread.

Most solos are for showing off. Most bassist are introverts. The two are simply not compatible. A wild generalisation, of course, and there will be notable exceptions, but it's spot-on as far as I'm concerned.

[quote name='OldGit' post='729337' date='Jan 30 2010, 12:33 AM']+1 Love the bass on Maggie may. Noodling is good.[/quote] +another 1 It gives the whole song a loose sort of feel but without it ever actually falling apart. Far less 'clinical' than a lot of really tight stuff that's perfectly bang-on all the time. A lot of the Faces stuff seemed to be like that; not to everyone's taste I suppose, but I love it.

[quote name='Bigjas' post='1223616' date='May 7 2011, 08:09 PM']You just turn it on, select what mic setup you want, and press record [/quote] Ah, but you're assuming their drummer could open the packaging. Oggy did say it was still in its box.

[quote name='Mykesbass' post='1224023' date='May 8 2011, 12:05 PM']Possibly his birthday!! But yes, hugely influential on all rock music that followed and thanks for pointing it out Pete (shame Google didn't do a banner)![/quote] I didn't know that and, yes, shame on Google for not having a suitable banner! It's amazing how one man could have been so influential, given his short life, just a handful of recorded songs and being virtually unkown in his lifetime.

It's been a long time since I've seen so much tag-strip This is nothing special but it's the guts of a bass combo so I guess it qualifies for this thread. One of the high-power resistors decided to start playing up and one of the PCB tracks had cracked, causing an intermittent fault. A little tricky to find but very easy to fix, so it lives on. [attachment=79310:BassComboInnards.JPG]

Yes, I wondered about reflection problems . . . possibly the reason I've never seen it done before. I think IEMs are probably a bit too advanced for our humble status, though I can see they would give the ultimate control . . . assuming there was a really experienced tech on the mixing desk. I reckon we'll just have to try tilting the on-stage amps, being a bit more critical with the existing monitor placement and aralditing our errant guitarist's volume control. Good discussion though, very helpful - thanks to all.

That all makes sense - we may have been getting a bit ambitious for the monitors we're using. Any comments about placing the guitar amps (they're fairly small after all) at the front of the stage facing towards the band (and suitably tilted), like standard floor monitors, rather than at the back facing the audience?

I certainly agree with the point about complication, but the idea was to help us achieve a better overall sound balance than just putting the vocals through the PA. We used to just have a small on-stage mixer for the vocals-only PA, but while this could give pretty good results during the sound check, we were always at the mercy of people changing their amp/guitar settings during the set and screwing up the sound - at which point it's all a bit too late. Last night was the first time we were responsible for the entire PA system so we took along all our gear including a half-decent mixer located at the rear of the not-very-large venue. Basically, we have a 220W Yamaha Emx212 'powered mixer system with two speakers (not independent outputs). We used to use this as a vocals-only PA system. Then we added a pair of Mackie SRM250s and a SWA1501 subwoofer with a Soundcraft Spirit M12 mixer and a 30m snake. So the aforementioned signals go to the Soundcraft mixer and the main outputs drive the Mackie PA. The AUX1 and AUX2 pre-fade outputs go to the Yamaha powered mixer which drives the two passive speakers as monitors. Judging from the above comments I'm now thinking that we have enough mixer controls but not enough independent monitors on stage. or perhaps the venue was too small to warrant such a set up and it was always going to be difficult to "remove" the on-stage amps from the overall sound to the audience. We've played larger venues with everything through the house PA system and it was fine . . . but they also had their own sound guy, who was no doubt rather more experienced than we are!

[quote name='TimR' post='1223601' date='May 7 2011, 07:56 PM']What other instruments do you have in the band? Maybe look at arrangements. If you have two guitarists doubling the same parts this can lead to problems. What are you putting through the monitors?[/quote] I'd say we're OK on arrangements. Although we have three guitarists, they rarely all play on a song and we only have one (well-behaved!) lead guitarist, so there's no conflict there. It's mainly the acoustic guitarist, who also plays harmonica, who seems to always want to be too loud. We put 3 vocal mics and three guitarists through the monitors. We don't put my bass through our PA because I have enough grunt already for most of the places we play and having no keyboards there is really notthing else to compete with the bass range. We don't seem to have any particular issues with the bass anyway. The suggestion of getting our errant guitarist out into the audience area during soundchecking sounds like a good idea. At last night's gig we had complimentary comments about our sound from a lot of the audience we spoke to afterwards, including someone who has seen us play many times and is known to be particularly critical about such things. So, at least we're probably getting the FOH sound reasonably OK, it's just the on-stage sound that the band is hearing that we're struggling with. All part of the game I guess. Thanks for all the comments.

[quote name='icastle' post='1223395' date='May 7 2011, 04:44 PM']We put everything (except drums) through the desk and use AUX1 to set up the monitor mix. Although we only have one monitor amp, we each have a monitor with a volume control so we can adjust it according to what we want/need. Once we've got an on stage mix using backline and monitors that we're happy with only then do we then set up front of house.[/quote] That's pretty much what we do, except we only have two monitors and they don't have individual volume controls so they sit in front of the two singers, hence the lack of foldback to the guitarists. Hmm. From all the comments it seems we're trying to do the correct thing but we're probably being a bit hampered by our lack of monitors. Actually, our on-stage amps are not particularly over the top - possibly even underpowered. We have three guitarists, (one acoustic) though they don't all play on every song. One has a 60W peavey (1x12 I think), one a small marshall combo probably much the same as the peavey, and the acoustic has a 60W Roland cube. I use an Ashdown 300W Mag EvoII head plus 1x15 and 2x10 cabs, so I don't struggle to be heard in comparison. We generally try to get the guitar amps off the floor but, coincidentally, we didn't do that at last night's gig where we had the on-stage balance problems than prompted this thread. I like the idea of tilting the guitar amps upwards and effectively using them as personal monitors - definitely worth a try methinks.

How do people manage balancing the sound from on-stage amps and the PA system? I'm thinking that our stage monitors are not up to the job, with the result that our guitarists (well, one of them mainly) can't hear himself well enough (he says), so he'll crank up his amp volume. This then makes it difficult for the sound person trying to get a good mic through the PA, especially in a small-ish venue when the PA is not cranked right up itself. Obviously, the sound guy can reduce the guitar level through the PA to offset the additional on-stage amp volume, but if it has to be backed off completely then the sound guy has no more control over the guitar volume. When putting everything through the PA system, is it normal practice to keep the on-stage amps quite low and use the monitors to provide the correct sound back to the band? If our monitors are not really up to the job (we only have two and our config means they can't really be used separately, i.e. we have two speakers but only one monitor amp), it it feasible to turn the on-stage amps to point to the players and use them as monitors? i.e. the on-stage amps "play" to the band and the PA "plays" to the audience. I suspect we need to bite the bullet and improve our monitoring arrangement, but I'd appreaciate any suggestions of how we could better get the most out of what we already have.

I can't remember my first bass lines (probably a generic blues) but I remember first learning House Of The Rising Sun on guitar.

[quote name='bassace' post='1220653' date='May 5 2011, 09:32 AM']Thanks for all the helpful replies, guys - and some of the unhelpful ones from those who didn't really read my OP (I said the manual didn't specify any fuse ratings so there's no point in going down that road)[/quote] The fact that the manual doesn't specify a fuse rating doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't have an internal fuse. If it's internal then it's not "user serviceable" and will therefore not be covered by the "user" manual. Such things would be covered by the "service" manual though, which is intended for a more technically competent audience. [quote name='bassace' post='1220653' date='May 5 2011, 09:32 AM']And the 'kettle lead' stuff. It almost turned into a 'god I love jazz' sort of elitism thing. I and most of my colleagues will no doubt refer to them as kettle leads for the rest of time.[/quote] Indeed. It's just pedantry and not at all relevant to the matter in hand. But you can't argue against pedantry. [quote name='bassace' post='1220653' date='May 5 2011, 09:32 AM']So I am going to fit all my leads with 5a fuses from now. That will provide a sensible compromise between protecting both the lead and amp, and will I hope withstand any start-up surges.[/quote] Time will tell. But it's interesting that this discussion is only really relevant to the UK. I wonder how all those US and mainland European users manage with their completely unfused "kettle leads"?

[quote name='chris_b' post='1219984' date='May 4 2011, 03:47 PM']They are right. You can do that but then you're relying on the amp's internal fuse for protection. If that blows how do you fix it? If the fuse can't be accessed from the outside of the box you've got to start messing about inside, and maybe on a dark stage! It's far easier and within most people's grasp of electronics to change a fuse in a plug, or better still use your backup mains lead. You do have one don't you?[/quote] That's all very well in theory, but what fuse rating are you going to use? Suppose the amp's internal fuse is 3A. If you fit a high-rated fuse in the mains plug then the internal fuse will still blow first. But if you fit a lower rated fuse (to 'protect' the internal fuse) then you risk it blowing under no-fault conditions. In my experience, fuses rarely blow for no reason (unless poorly specified) so the chances are that when they blow something else is going to need repairing anyway.

Fair point about the technicalities of "kettle leads", but it's a bit like explaining that my Henry vacuum cleaner is not a "Hoover". Anyway, it doesn't affect the topic of fuses.