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My 'band' consists of a drummer and me. I swing between bass and guitar, but tonight was guitar. I have no pride and no skill. As a laugh we decided to do one of my original songs as if sung by Lemmy in Motorhead. I was using a Laney LC15R valve amp with a Strat, brought from this very parish from @kwmlondon. As Kim lives London and I live North Yorkshire, I only managed to pick it up at Xmas and due to other commitments, tonight was the first time it got used in anger. Bloody hell, for 15W it's loud, it's very loud. Its my first and only valve amp and I still don't understand why a tiny 15W valve amp should be so, so loud. Not just loud, it sounded really good as well. We wound the gain up, wound the volume, I did my best to channel Lemmy and play and sing at the same time whilst Bev the drummer was laughing so hard, she couldn't play. We did a second even faster run where we tried to combine The Ramones and Motorhead and it was a wonderful joyous experience. It's been a utterly sh1tty week at work with issue after issue and escalation after escalation, so putting it all behind me for 90 mins of manic singing (badly) and playing at stupid volumes was great therapy. Now I can't speak as my voice has gone and I still have lines in my fingers from playing so fast and hard, but it was worth it. We've decided we're going to do it at the rather staid open mic sessions in either Settle or Sedbergh. I suspect they'll kick us out but it will be fun. Rob

Tell him Paul (with the jazz n the ric) said hi. Will be taking my vintage p there when i get a sufficient break in gigs

Solid - Ashford & Simpson

That's a slogan we can all f-ing get behind!!

Only if you are very lucky, Tizer and brown ale more likely, though I might have a decent Chablis cooling for afterwards.

It's a T2 fail. I went out last year on the bits for a Raspberry Pi MiniDexed: https://magazine.raspberrypi.com/articles/mini-dexed I built the synth on a breadboard and have made the case and started to solder it up, but that stalled completely. My plan is also to make a cheap Taurus, but actually I need to practice playing my normal bass.

I feel your pain. I originally bought a PA because I got fed up with having to get someone less than ideal on board because they had a PA. So I decided to become that person 😁

Any pink Champagne on ice?

I always feel sorry for the guests at a Hilbert hotel, pretty much every night another infinite number of guests arrive and everyone has to move up. Not too bad if you're in room 6, but if you're in room 2,967^456 then it’s a bloody long walk!

Hard As A Rock - AC/DC

You're very welcome. We're a bit like a Hilbert hotel. We can always find space. However unlike Hotel California you can leave 😁

Had the pleasure of meeting Stephen and selling a double bass to him. Nice chap and great bass player. Hope the bass serves you well Stephen.

Very nice Bagman, looks great

I'd like to try and make it this year. Would you please add me to the list. I can bring a few 4/5 string basses as well as my double bass if anyone is interested in that (and there's room in the hall :)). I can also bring a Fearless F112 and one or two PJB Cab 27s along with some amps.

Thanks for the tips everyone. Dropping it off with PSG tomorrow.

Got it with the mail yesterday, and have been spending much time ever since experimenting with it. As expected it is much more quiet than the Joyo Oxford Sound clone of it, though still a bit of hiss with the drive set relatively high, nothing I can't live with though, and who knows, it might go away when I finally pull myself together to remake my pedal board, which got a powersupply with isolated and filtered outputs. Other than that it also sound better, the controls works a bit different though, and the build in cab sim filter seems somewhat more aggressive than on the Joyo clone, so it was not possible to simply 1:1 replace the Joyo. With a lot of experimenting, trial and error, though, I managed to come up with an even better solution. That is that the Tech 21 Oxford has single handedly replaced, well, the Joyo Oxford Sound, of course, but also the Joyo Orange Juice, that I used as my always on overdrive in conjunction with the Joyo Oxford Sound, as well as the NUX Melvin Lee Davis Bass Preamp, which otherwise functioned as my main tone shaping preamp. So now the Tech 21 Oxford functions as both my always on overdrive and as my main tone shaping preamp, and I couldn't be happier, the result is a much clearer tone, with much less background noise, and a s a welcome bonus it simplified my setup quite a bit too. I use it with cab sim turned off, and in one of the loops of a Boss LS-2, using the remaining empty loop as dry blend, to retain some more low end, just a bit, Oxford/Dry blend set at an about 67:33 (~2:1) ratio, that is 100% Oxford and then about 50% dry signal. And with the EQ of the Oxford actually nearly flat, having it dialed in as follows: Level: Unity - Mid; Ever so slightly boosted not even full 1 o'clock (12:30) - Character: same as Mid (12:30 o'clock) - Drive: a bit above 1 o'clock (1:30) - Low: noon - High: ever so slightly cut, not even full down to 11 o'clock (11:30) - Cab Sim: Off Thing is you can really hear the subtleties of the controls on this pedal, so even small changes actually makes a notable difference. Fortunately the pots of the controls are super tight, that is they do actually move perfectly smoothly, but you have to apply a bit of intentional push for them to turn, so you would have to do an effort to accidentally knock the settings of the pedal out of whack. Anyway, to conclude this ramble: The Tech 21 Oxford works really well in my "amp-less" setup, as the main tone shaping preamp and always on overdrive, followed by a Zoom MS-70CDR, that I use exclusively as an EQ based cab sim filter, making use of the dual parametric bass EQ effect model in it (personally I found that I prefer this over every single IR based cab sim I ever tried, and believe me, I tried a lot). Gives me a really grindy overdriven tone, without any of the fizzy artifacts you tend to get with most drive pedals, and with low end, punch and attack intact. You can hear it here: Signal chain : HoTone Trem (tremolo pedal, acting primarily as buffer, but also got some very subtle tremolo dialed in) -> EHX Black Finger (tube driven optical compressor, though primarily used as tube preamp, with minimal compression dialed in) -> Boss XS-1 Poly Shifter (set to a 1 octave up, to emulate an effect somewhat similar to that of an 8 string, octave course, bass) -> Boss LS-2 -> [Loop A : Tech 21 Oxford |+| Loop B : Dry blend (67:33 ratio)] -> NUX Tape Core Deluxe (emulates a Roland RE-201 Space Echo tape delay, dialed in with spring reverb, and additionally is set to deliver a reverb like subtle delay) -> Zoom Ms-70CDR (utilizing the dual bass parametric EQ model to emulate a cab sim filter, back at the same settings as the old Joyo Oxford Sound setup, where I used a Zoom B1Xon) -> ART Tube MP Project Series (tube preamp) Playing a 28.6" scale length 5 string Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro Bass, with just the stock J bridge pickup wired directly to the output jack socket, and tuned to G#1 (51.91Hz) standard tuning (that is as in one half step bellow the upper 4 strings of a 6 string bass in regular B standard tuning, plus a high E). First half or so of this sound test is finger plucking, last half, from about the 1:48 mark, or so I use a pick.

Turn To Stone - Joe Walsh

Maybe I don’t push things hard enough ?