Phil Starr

Sudden panic there do we have a booking for 4th. No thank goodness

There is quite a dilemma for us here isn't there? the first is that we owe loyalty to other band members, and they to us. Two of mine depend upon their band income to pay their bills and support their families, tow of us don't. I'm the oldest band member but I've had the disease and the others haven't. We also have a responsibility to the audiences and the community as a whole. Government advice is confused and now based upon economic imperatives rather than primarily health concerns. I'd find it tough if I played at an event which triggered another localised outbreak. I'm going to talk to the band and see what they think and I'll almost certainly trust the majority decision but it isn't a simple one. It's tough to turn down a pub you play in regularly and have a relationship with. It's hard to fathom Govt thinking but how about quiet music? Two of our band members go out as a duo and I am part of a separate duo. I can see more work for acoustic acts over the next few moths and maybe for a while. Our current band set is designed to get people up and dancing. That's an interesting challenge, design a set to stop people dancing 😔

People are talking as if the only options are more of the same until a vaccination comes along or allowing a few more tens of thousands of deaths, mainly of the elderly, diabetics and BAME people. This just isn't true. Plenty of other countries with a short sharp lock down, sensible hygiene measures and aggressive test, track and trace have got infection rates down to well below other seasonal diseases and have had days, sometimes weeks with no Covid related deaths. If we did the things South Korea or New Zealand did then not only would more people be alive today but there would be nothing special to be frightened of, the economy could have restarted by now and we'd all be able to get out gigging. We didn't do those things, the governments own advisors are predicting a second wave of infection, no end is in sight and our excess deaths are amongst the worst in the world. Not a political point, we'll never know how a Corbyn government would have done but it didn't need to be like this. This is about competence. Apparently as rare as PPE.

The 'as many as a third' comes from direct measurement and basically depends upon people who have had multiple tests. The paper I read a month or so ago when I got my negative test shows that the figure of 62% accuracy came from the swab test, other samples like sputum tests and testing samples from deep in the lungs give a higher figure for accuracy. My test was taken 6 days after symptoms first started so basically useless. The test took five days to arrive but arrived 10 mins too late to book collection, hence adding an extra day. The swab test is just about 100% if it is positive as it only works if Viral RNA is present but has lots of false negatives.

These things shouldn't be taken too seriously, but they are really interesting. The shoot outs we've been doing at the SW Bass Bash have only really conclusively proved a few things The source sound is really important, different basses and different players suit different speakers. Room Acoustics are really important, even moving the mic a few feet might change your preference of speaker and what works in one room doesn't guarantee it working as well in another room. No two bassists ever agree on what is a 'good sound' FWIW I preferred the SC to the BB2 but only marginally The sound of the BB2 was particularly impressive on the lower notes but less so on the dusty part of the neck. The SC din't sound so full on the bottom notes but was IMO rather sweeter in the midrange and was more even across the fretboard. One of the things we noted at last years bass bash is that most bassists prefer more bass in shootouts however accurately it is reproduced. Bassists like bass, who'd have thought it?

It would be simple enough to knock up something that would do the job. I don't know if he does anything other than leads but I wonder if @obbm would make something up for you.

I believe the reason the SW is so well represented on Lemonrock is that Mac absorbed another gig website early on. Lemonrock is great when most of the local music scene uses it so new bands join too. Anyway my band play North Devon from time to time with our 'bog-standard' covers band. Anyone who comes from the home counties is in for a shock, there just isn't the population density to drive a commercially thriving scene and you'll probably have to be less fussy about what you play. I've played with a few people who were pro or semi pro in London and they kind of feel they are slumming it playing with the likes of me . the other thing is the pubs are usually smaller too. The other thing to factor in is the holiday trade, we get most of our gigs in the summer and there is a fair bit of open air stuff around. Beer festivals are usually fun to play. A lot of the hospitality trade close off season or wind down so gigs are sparse from Jan to Mar/April The first thing is if you want to gig then you have to travel, a 60mile round trip isn't unusual, though the travel time isn't that bad as there is less traffic. The busiest areas are in South Devon, Exeter and Exmouth so North Devon isn't great, as people say a bit in Tiverton and around Barnstaple and that's about it for the pub covers bands. Lots of other music around though, there's plenty of open mic/jam sessions and acoustic music going on. Cornwall I know less well, it's a long weekend for us but we usually take some gear and play the odd open mic. I've seen some great local bands down there too so something is keeping them going but talking to them this is a place to retire to if you are a musician. Most of them gig just for the love of playing. I've met lovely people down here (I moved from Reading 20+ years ago) there are loads of musicians, lot's going on but it isn't as a commercial thing for all but a few. You may have to adapt a little and look further South if you want a livelier scene.

I use the Antex XS25 mine is about 30 years old and it replaced an Antex 15W model. I don't think I'd go down to 15W again, you need a bit more heat for lead free solder. I've not tried a temp controlled iron because my Antex still works. All the above about cleaning the metal before soldering and keeping the tip clean. If you are new then practice soldering old bits of wire together until you get nice joints, tin the tip of the iron, tin both parts you want to join and then just a touch of solder should complete the joint. I was taught to heat the lead/solder tag or whatever first and run the solder on to that rather than to try and apply it off the iron. The solder will melt as soon as the thing you are soldering is hot enough. Works for me.

@NancyJohnson My experience is more like that from your previous post. One of blanking out inexplicably, embarrassingly on one occasion 'losing ' Seven Nation Army' and having the drummer have to hum it to me. Three weeks later he blanked out on the drum intro of a song we'd played a hundred times. Human memory is a truly strange thing.

I asked this question years ago to be told that everyone remembered everything they had ever played. At least the first few responses did. I was just starting out then and didn't know enough songs to start forgetting them. It's nice to see some more thoughtful replies this time though. Since then I've played something like 500 songs according to my playlists I use for practicing. I have played in several bands at once and with no overlaps I find I can cope without too much trouble with the sets from three bands simultaneously, that's about 100-120 songs. Beyond that it takes a lot of effort for me to keep the plates all spinning and some get very wobbly. I've played through old set lists and they start to fade about 6 months after I've left the band. Songs I've gigged a lot just stick though if I've learned them and they don't get out of the rehearsal room they'll fade really quickly. The funny thing is that sometimes it's in my head and sometimes not but my fingers still find the notes long after I've forgotten the chord sequences and the lyrics. At one point I was running a band night/open mic type thing. I had to learn a lot of songs and that was one of my three concurrent band times. Really good fun to be so busy but I found out the hard way that to keep the standard up you need to keep practising the bread and butter stuff for your bands. For me pushing the envelope up to over 120 songs needed a lot of extra work. I suppose the last point is what do we really mean by 'remember' a song. I can pick up a song I regularly played a while ago much more quickly than something I've played only once or never played at all. there must be something left there still I guess.

Yeah it's good to have Peavey back on form, let's hope it heralds a new dawn of better worked out class D bass amps from all the manufacturers.

That's really interesting, as a sometime designer of speakers I'm always really interested in people's experiences with new gear. The real problem with designing stuff people will like is that the language of engineers is so different from the language used by musicians and the words we use generally to describe sound mean different things to each of us. Ask a hundred bassists what they mean by heft for example...... Anyway we've done some blind shoot outs of a collection of cabs at a couple of the South West Bass Bashes. The last one involved a mix of 12" cabs including a Mark Bass. Technically it was the least impressive of the speakers (partly because it was modestly priced to be fair) The bass response was peaking by about 4dBat 100Hz and there was very little deep bass, the horn was poor quality and the crossover not very well worked out. Bassically it was all boom and tizz with all sorts of distortions. This was compared with @stevie high end FRFR design a Fearless and a couple of other high end FRFR designs. The Mark Bass was the speaker liked by the biggest section of the bassists present. Interestingly people scored it as the best or the worst speaker on display. It was Marmite. Interestingly for a speaker with a poor response below 100Hz it was described as being very bassy. It was easily the loudest of the cabs we tested, but on the sound level meter it measured no louder than the others. It had a shouty frequency response that made it subjectively loud. The thing is that we could all hear the differences and they were measurable, we just didn't agree which sounded best. So maybe you are like the majority, you aren't looking for a clean neutral sound but want grit, growl, bite and heft. Nothing wrong with the Mark Bass approach if you like their 'sound'. I loved my old Hartke HA3500 and my Peavey MkIII with a 2x15 before it. Rationally I know I ought to like FRFR with tone shaping to get the best tone but in practice on a live gig with 20min to set up you can't beat a bit of baked in tone. Just before the lockdown I bought a Peavey minimax, absolutely loved it in the few gigs I squeezed in with it. It was a stopgap for my MBTube which I dropped off the stack and broke. It's going to be my go-to for a while I think, love the little thing. There's one on sale in the ads here, bargain.

Another vote for the Zoom B1 if what you want is flexibility and simplicity. It really has as many sims and fx options as most of us would ever use and for so little money. For recordings it may be a little noisy but so are most multi-fx units. As a bonus it is great for silent practice with headphones and has a tuner and metronome/drum machine built in

Glad to hear you are mending. Welcome back.

Without hearing it I'm guessing. It's probably worth going round any fx jacks with some switch cleaner but I still suspect you may have an electrolytic capacitor on the way out. It could be a number of other things of course. It's better to get it checked rather than have it go down at a gig. Assuming they are still working and not in lockdown you have nothing to lose by ringing Ashdown. They really are helpful. Oh, if the pops are really loud they may damage the speaker. Keep the amp turned down when you switch on

There aren't enough details for an accurate diagnosis. If you used the amp for practice I assume its working after a fashion but making 'pops' as well? Anyway speakers don't 'pop' on their own so it's likely to be the amp. Possibly capacitor problems if it is a definite pop, if you have old electrolytic about to fail anyway they sometimes fail when left off for a while. Anyway you are in luck as it's an Ashdown, give them a ring and see what they say, Best after sales support in the business.

Servisol for me too, I suspect they are all similar though.

I'm guessing you're fairly new to bass amplification? Sorry if that's not the case. a 2x15 is already a bigger cab than most of us currently use, it sounds like something from the 1970's, nothing wrong with that and a lot of older gear sounds great for not much money. A 4x10 alone is also a big cab by todays standards. Both will probably be louder on their own than you strictly need for any gig. Basically all you need to do is be able to produce the sound you like loud enough to match the drums for volume. Given most drummers that's already extremely loud. Any louder and you'll have to put both bass and drums through the PA. You may decide to run these two together just for the hell of it but unless you want to be antisocial to the rest of your band you'll need to turn down if you do. The other thing is mentioned above, you can't really successfully mix two cabs of different impedances. If your 4x10 is an 8ohm cab then it needs to be paired with another 8 (not your 4ohm cab )so the amp sees 4ohms and the power is shared evenly. If your 4x10 is 4 ohms (less likely) it will match the 2x15 but the amp will 'see' 2 ohms. Not all amps can manage the current needed for that and will shut down or maybe even mis-function. TBH save your money. Play the 2x15 with pretty much any bass amp and it'll be loud enough. Most bass amps are in the 3-500W range nowadays and that is pretty much enough for anything. My first rig was a 2x15Peavey with a 200W amp and it was more than loud enough so a modern 3-500W amp is going to be plenty too. If you hear the 4x10 and prefer it that's great too but choose it because it sounds good not because you want to be louder.

Supertramp and another band Brewer's Droop (Mark Knopfler) were 'our' university bands. They did a lot of gigs at Reading. They were always good, interesting and charged just the right amount that you could afford to book them and still make a small profit/loss. I think I saw them six times and I didn't see then every time they played. They were always good and just got better over time. That album must have been the result of many thousands of hours of collective music making. The same for Dire Straights too later on. I think a lot of UK rock came out of that university scene as well as the venues in London and the other major cities. Regular venues paying well enough to keep the band fed and watered whilst they grew their craft in ront of a live audience. Years of hard work before you were spotted and became an overnight success.. I still listen from time to time, it still sounds good to me, Im not huge on nostalgia but it's great music with real craftsmanship from people I know did their 10,000 hours. Just a thought, does the music made by people who make their living playing to paying audiences always end up more immediate. Mozart and Beethoven were gigging musicians

I don't know Al, they all probably come out of the same factory in China. Mine have more controls so you can set fan speeds and the target humidity and they are more powerful, they routinely remove 2l of water a day and can do more if the air is really wet.

Lidl and Aldi do them at around £100 every now and then. They are better than the pro ones I used to use. make sure you get one of the ones with decent automatic control, you can set the humidity level and they are pretty accurate. The only other thing to look out for is the size of the tank, they can fill up quite quickly. The other thing is you will have a supply of endless distilled water. It's pure enough for going into car batteries and great for use in irons and the like, or for watering your acid loving plants.

I have dehumidifiers for drying plaster having done that for years they are now drying clothes so I have data. When we put the washing out the humidity in the room quickly climbs to 80% the washing is dry when the air in the room reaches 43%. That's quite a range and I wouldn't want my basses going through that cycle too often. I don't think you'd get sudden catastrophic failure but I can only suspect the neck would distort in the end. One of the luthiers might ha ve a better idea. Remember this is with forced dehumidification (wasn't that a RHCP song) natural drying will take longer and the humidity won't go so low, which is good, but the bass will be damp for longer. Could you leave it in a case or compromise in another room with some wall hangers

Good point, sweeping statements are almost always nonsense. I should have said don't choose on the basis of the magnet material alone. The whole process of choosing ends up with a compromise of budget, convenience, taste and practicality. My own go to cabs are tiny, simply because most of the venues I play are pubs and stage space is almost always a problem. Sound still comes first but only just and the point about neo speakers is you can get a great sound in a lightweight package.

you've probably asked the wrong crowd We are all bass players you know, the ones who hang around with musicians. People sing because they like music, like performing or just like singing. Some people don't have the skill or the charisma or even the desire to be up at the front. The bassist is rarely the star of the show even if they are the best musician in the band. I love the sound of bass and the role it fills in the music, and I love working with people to make something greater than the sum of it's parts. I also love vocal harmony but I can't do it, even the little bit of backing vocals I do to thicken the melody line I really enjoy and if the song sounds better with it I'll give it a go. It's great to work with a really good musician, everyone sounds better, even me. Why wouldn't anyone want that, and if you don't have the confidence to lead a band or you just have the second best voice why let your ego get in the way of the music or the fun. One of the great joys of music apart from the music itself is working as part of a team.

There is definitely a premium to pay for neo speakers but there is also a lot of profiteering on the exotic for early adopters too. There was a big price hike for neo when the Chinese cornered the market for Neodymium pushing up world prices. Now the prices have come down as other countries started to produce Neodymium the difference is less than it was. Just checking on the retail prices equivalent B&C drivers the neo driver is slightly cheaper (but has a pressed steel frame) against the much heavier ceramic magnet equivalent. For Eminence Delta Pro v's Deltalite £113 plays £142, that's roughly a 30% increase. Ironically a pressed steel chassis makes more sense when you have lighter magnets and don't need a fancy supporting structure but neo speakers tend to be higher standard all round. Neo magnets size for size are much more powerful than cheap ceramic magnets and even small neo magnets often outgun the traditional ones. It really is that much better at being a magnet. Elecctric cars would be milk floats without neo magnets and wind turbines would be massive too. So given that the cab cost and labour should be the same and in a combo you have the same amp a neo cab should have maybe a 20% mark up and a combo less in percentage terms, maybe 10-15%. but the neo speakers are seen as the luxury model, they may have better finishes or other tweaks or the speakers may just not be identical to the traditional ones. I couldn't find any information on the gorm but on EBS's the neo combo's were showing an extra 3dB of output so better (louder anyway) speakers are being used in the neo line. People pay silly money for all sorts of extras on their cars, or their basses to be honest so if super lightweight is important expect to pay silly money until the early adopters have all bought them and the prices start to flag. In the end I'd buy mainly on sound rather than anything else. If the specs are different then the sound is going to be too.