asingardenof

No, all from my Amazon wishlist bought by unimaginative relatives

That can backfire, I got something like 100 of the damn things last year.

A return to the Plumbers Arms in Huddersfield last night. The usual postage stamp-sized area for the band to set up in, with the added bonus of our drummist having some sort of tree-shaped lighting fixture next to him that took up one of the two available plug sockets, meaning that everything was daisy-chained off my 4-way extension with me having been the first to plug in. The lack of space also meant that I was stood facing perpendicular to the rest of the band because I was positioned right behind one of the PA speakers and I was in constant danger of knocking the thing into some unsuspecting punters as it was. I used the Siredowsky, and the lack of space encouraged me to give the Elf it's first outing since New Year's Eve and it performed admirably despite the terrible acoustics. For most of the first set I could barely hear myself while our singist who was stood next to me claimed I was too loud, until at the break we realised that one of the PA speaker's input levels had been set too low, and after that everything sounded pretty good. We all played pretty well apart from a minor stumble in the breakdown of A Town Called Malice when our keyboardist randomly missed a beat, but fortunately it was right before the bass solo so we righted ourselves after that. We had a few people dancing through both sets, and afterwards a few people came up to tell me we'd played well, which was nice. After having no gigs since August we have another one next Saturday, at a larger venue which promises to be rammed, so looking forward to that!

I'm liking the band name too

The Rumble will only be c.300W without the second cab, though that should be plenty loud enough as you say

If I didn't already have three sets in my cupboard, along with a brace of the XT equivalents, then I'd be all over this, but you can have too much of a good thing.

I've got one of these and it works well: https://www.thomann.co.uk/millenium_gs_3500_b.htm

Ocean Drive - Lighthouse Family

The NYXL equivalent set is also relatively cheap at the moment: https://www.amazon.co.uk/DAddario-NYXL45105-Medium-Bottom-Nickel/dp/B019JD0P5I/

Oooh! *grabby hands* Edit: I already have three sets of these so I think I'm good for the foreseeable future 😅

Unless you really want your room cleared while you're there, leaving the "do not disturb"/"do not clean" hanger on the door means that nobody will (should) go in.

I can recommend the Elf/Two10 combination

The website looks pretty unpolished, with the Ts&Cs and Accessibility Statement just the website templates. If this is legit then they need better website designers!

Just make sure you find someone that can actually teach you all of that as part of a structured curriculum, and not just someone that wants to teach people to play songs. I've made that mistake before and it was very frustrating

Great for smaller gigs too to save having to lug an ABM about

Definitely worth doing. After @Merton's ABM 500 went pop on me (no such bad luck with my ABM 600 yet!) I bought a TE Elf and it was well worthwhile.

Record yourself playing along to songs, then play it back without the background music. It'll probably be a bit of an eye-opener in terms of highlighting any quirks or flaws in your technique or timing, and give you things to work on.

We play Adventure of a Lifetime which seems to go down OK, that's from 2015.

Apart from those strings being slightly thicker and stiffer than mine (oo er missus!) I have the same ones and think they sound great for pretty much everything I want to play. EQ and tone controls tame most of the high end so they sound very flattish, but having the ability to get them clanky is also good.

As you say, with Squiers the QC can be hit or miss. My VM 70s Jazz was excellent other than being a bit on the heavy side.

I'd be surprised if that was the case, and would have thought they'd use the same for both like they have the same bridge across the V series, however I stand to be corrected. If it's a similar spacing to the SBMM Ray5 then I found that quite comfortable.

Lobster reckons it's a decent buy as well.

Sire have very much put a shot across the bow of SBMM. I'd been eyeing up a Ray5 as a possible future purchase, but other than it having a cooler headstock and the cachet of the model name there's no advantage to getting one rather than the Z3, given the Z3 is cheaper, better built and sounds more than a MM Stingray.

Tickets purchased to see Katy Hurt at the end of November, featuring @Merton of this parish on bass, the night before I also have a gig to play. Just need to find a babysitter now!