Rosie C

It is. I have to admit it's been a bit of a learning curve, but I'm getting there now!

The very last pub gig we did with our Renaissance-rock band was 18 months ago - as well as the usual early stuff we had a few of 20th century covers on the set list - Moonlight Shadow, Lightning Tree, All is Found, Meet Me on the Corner, etc. Once we'd played those the audience were asking for more songs that they knew. So we stopped taking any pub bookings as I'm not doing it as a job and I want to play music I'm interested in. We get fewer bookings, but they've been awesome - historic buildings, medieval fairs, etc.

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention the ritualistic sacrifice at the end of the evening! 😉

Oh, I so need those! Our speaker stands get yellow/black hazard tape stuck on the front-most leg for some gigs.

I tried it today. The first strange thing was my Kaka ukulele bass just doesn't play nice with the AH300. There's a high pitched interference that sounds a bit like RF interference. My other instruments don't do this, so I'm thinking it must be the Kala's pre-amp circuits. Anyway, I switched to my Squier Jazz which is a much better choice anyway. I actually didn't like the 15" on its own much, the sound was too muddy and felt like it was reacting slowly. I loved the sound of the 2x10" cabinet on its own though. That's definitely the one to take.

Celebrating the old ways! Pouring cider over the roots of apple trees and singing songs to bring a good harvest, scaring away woodland spirits by banging saucepans, drinking mulled cider and Morris dancing!

Awesome skills! Can I ask, did you glue the carbon fibre rod into the routed channel?

Playing at a local Wassail this evening. I'm right in front of the camera.

I have tried to stick with old-school 5-pin DIN MIDI, but after some unsuccessful studio sessions with descant recorder, I've just bought an Akai 'electronic wind instrument' (EWI). The budget model only has USB midi - plugging it into my MIDI hub didn't work, so I had to do some learning about USB hosts, and USB clients. The upshot is I changed my U4MIDI WC hub for the H4MIDI WC which includes a USB host. Bingo! Now the EWI works through the Roland XV3080. I'll try to record a video over the weekend. Inside the rack: ... and on the front, a shiny-new 'usb host' port. Annoyingly I didn't think to see if there was a black one. Oh well!

We use generic foam windshields with our Sennheisers - helps with wind noise when we play outdoors, possibly helps a bit with pop filtering. Also, they're colour-coded with matching cables and coloured tape on the amp. That makes it really easy for competent people who aren't familiar with our kit to help set up - red mic, red cable, red mixer channel.

Our local Wassail & Mari Lwyd is next weekend and our Morris band will be playing throughout much of the festivities, including leading (with the choir) a public sing-along in the early evening - Farmer's Boy, Gluouscetershire Wassail, Cwm Rhondda, Calon Lan, Sweet Caroline, Delilah, Sosban Fach, etc. We had our first practice with the choir last night - about 40 of them! With pouring rain and an upstairs rehearsal room, I kept things portable with my bass ukulele and Roland Street Cube EX. It went very well - the choir were well-practiced and it didn't take long to synch together. One more practice then the wassail. There's talk of there being a couple of thousand people there, though the band will mostly be on smaller amps. I'm torn between the practicality of bass uke + TE Elf, versus making the effort [of] taking my double bass and my Trace AH300. The photos and video will still be there after the back pain has subsided!

A splendid plan! On 24th January I'm playing at a Wassail and we're going to lug half of it along. I just need to choose which half!

That is a thing of beauty!

I do like that idea. If I had such a friend prepared to do the machining I would be staining the side panels in a contrast colour before assembly, to make a real feature of the finger joints.

Well, in between here and being in Ireland we're staying in a 1-room studio flat so my stuff is staying with a friend who's learning saxophone. My partner drums, so we're going to set up the AH300 and my double bass and her drum kit to do some jamming when we visit. After that, I'm hoping to get into a band in Ireland on double bass. But I have my TE Elf combo for that.

There will be no future owner, well, not until I've popped my clogs. We're emigrating to the Republic of Ireland. So not as crazy as Australia or Canada, and I have the longer wheel base VW Caddy so I can get all my amps, basses, etc. in the van and take them over myself. As to which cab I prefer, I've not had a chance to really play with it yet - I'd only just got over Christmas when we had an offer on our house so everything has been pretty crazy since then.

Well, we are planning a farewell party at our local boozer and naturally I will be booking my own band as headliner 😉 so maybe, just maybe... Edit: Maybe one of those man-and-van services with a tail lift Luton!

Sadly, yes it is. I would like to gig it just once, but I'm not sure I ever will.

Yes, I didn't like to show off, but I guess it was obvious from the size of the stack that something was up

Not any more! The postage from the USA for the new badge was brutal, but this rig is all about the look of it, so it had to be done! In other news, our emigration plans have moved up a gear. I don't have time to fix the foot switch and I'll not really need it - so it's available here for postage:

This foot controller came with my Trace Elliot amp. It's faulty - it's suspected that the switches need a clean and some use, as it's been stored for 10 years. No charge, just cover the postage - or collect from Chepstow.

A trip to my friendly local motor factors later... I stuck the badge on with number plate sticky foam. For completeness, I hacksawed the fixing bolts the badge came with and glued them in the bolt holes with black gasket silicone - and ran a thin bead around the edge of the white sticky foam so you can't see the white.

It has occurred to me that there are famous musicians who are associated with drinking, drug use, etc. who still manage to be healthy enough to be touring musicians in their 80s and I can't quite tally the 'rock and roll lifestyle' with reaching old age in good health. I am suspicious that there's not as much riotous behaviour as we'd be led to think. We went to a small rock festival of cover bands back around 2011 and quite a few of the musicians on stage were drinking straight from 70cl bottles of Jack Daniels in between songs. Call me dubious, but I strongly suspected they were full of Irn Bru, or similar as they were all playing extremely well, not at all inebriated.

Sad news. I only managed to make the one last year, but it was fantastic. Thank you to all of you for the work you've done organising over the years.

Thanks. I'll probably just leave them, and stick the badge on with that sticky foam you fit car number plates with.