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Aye, I have the NUX in ears so ‘wanted’ their wireless as its 5.8. A plus point is the charging case! The thing that pushed me to Blackstar was that the NUX only have a 2hr (ish) battery life before needing to be charged in the case. An Open Mic play at goes on longer much than that - and generally people use my gear even if I don’t play - and a lot of gigs are 2 1/2 hrs. Didn’t want to risk it. I saw both at the Bass Show and another plus is the Blackstar fit in an old glasses case and take up a lot less space in the old leads bag (should we still be calling them that now?).

Holy Father Inferior - Martin Grech

Last night saw my duo return to The Blue Boar in Aldbourne. What's been a good regular venue will sadly be ending soon. The current landlady / landlord are retiring and the local gossip is that they are trying to get out the contract early. Our show was moved back a week due to other music activity in the village and I think that hurt our audience as I had a lot of people who were coming who suddenly weren't. This was my local until we moved and I have been out of the loop. When we arrived the clientele seemed much younger than normal. The barman said afterwards that he thought being goth would mean we were very metal which to me summed up what an awkward fit we've always been on the local music scene. We set up and the younger crowd gradually left. Prior to going on, we had an audience of my wife, my stepson and a guy who'd added me on social media a while ago and I didn't know him! However, we were getting paid and I learned that the pub is open so sporadically at the moment that recent shows haven't been well attended across all acts. A genuine shame. The twist was that we played really well. I was on mandocello for most of the first set, finishing on the bass (my trusty long scale Hofner Verythin). The second set was three on guitar for me and the remainder all on the mandolin. My step son has Down Syndrome and stole the show by shouting "yes!" when I announced that we'd be taking a break in a moment. It was funny! He's a big supporter of the band as amongst other things, he really likes Nick (my musical other half). Thankfully it started to fill up a fair bit during the second set and a good night was had by all. Honourable mention must go to Nick's 87yr old mum, who apparently ironed our backdrop for us! I'd have done it myself, had I known it was bothering her!

Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield

Is anyone using this Behringer MX882 mixer/splitter (or similar) at the heart of a band IEM solution? Interested to hear about your experiences with solutions like this. Mine arrived today and it's very promising for my use case: a cheap, easy to use reliable starter IEM solution for small bands. It provides a split for each signal (vocal mics, 2 drum mics, guitar bass) to FOH and a common mix from it's twin XLR main outs to this simple multi-headphone amp powering 4 x IEMs, wireless or wired. When I route the main XLR outs into my Scarlett 4i4 XLR ins I set them to route to the headset out (3/4) and connect that with a TRS cable to the headphone amp. Because there are 4 line outs on this audio interface I can create two extra stereo pairs for extra IEMs. And can record the whole lot live over a stereo mix to my laptop (Linux with Ardour using Pipewire). Any band member can add more of themselves with these personal monitoring amps that they use to split their own signal before it gets to the MX882. The IEMs we're trying out are the inexpensive KZ EDX Pros, in keeping with the low cost as we are experimenting with our first foray into IEMs, with a view to upgrading everything as and when.

Yep the Boss WL20 works well, pretty much the easiest to use on the market, just plug them together and they do it all for you. If concerned about running on 2.4 as the Boss does then NUX do one that runs on 5.8 and is almost as easy to use - a couple of small on/off buttons.

I bought a TC BH800 off Kim. Great to deal with, super efficient and I can't wait to get stuck in with the Toneprint effects! Highly recommended.

Tried plugging 2 basses in (1 in A 1 in B) with A+B disengaged. Channel A selected and the bass is nice and clear, select Ch B and the bass is inaudible unless the Drive is cranked and there is a low level (massively overdriven by now) output. Pretty sure that is not how it is meant to work; I've even read the manual. I can only surmise that Ch B is fecked! It can't be used as a 2nd channel nor can it even be summed with A to give a bit of Drive because any combination involving Ch B drops the volume and you'd need to put the Drive on 100% to even hear anything (which would still be loads quieter than A). Looks like a repair job or return to seller!

I had a Boss WL20 (with the Cable Tone) for ages and love(d) it. I just set my EQ to allow for the slight ‘top’ it gave. I found it gave me some ‘punch’. After struggling with dropouts recently I put this down to the (slightly) busier pubs we were playing so changed to the Blackstar Airwire i58 as it was the ‘most similar 5.8ghz from a brand I trust’ I could find. This one has switchable cable tone which I’m currently liking ‘on’. OK I have to remember to charge them but I don’t have ‘another thing to plug in’. I would add that I don’t really run (or walk!) about that much but I like the tone it gives me and they are great for sound checks as you can get to the back of the venue to see how it sounds.