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Ride Your Pony — Lee Dorsey

I wonder if, when leaving your message, you could have said something along the lines of 'how are you doing?' rather than leave a message that might have come across as a bit 'it's not you, it's me'. Just the interpretation I get from your reported message.

As others have said a basic DI into the PA is fine (and a sound hole cover isn't a bad idea to control feedback). Most guitars have a bit of onboard EQ that does the rest of the job, otherwise the desk can EQ it fine. As acoustic guitar amplification is more about amplifying the instrument itself (in comparison to say an electric guitar) I don't think a separate amp is needed if you have foldback. I've used this setup hundreds of times without any problems. Of course if you want to start playing with toys adding a Fishman Platinum Pro and then a Strymon Cloudburst to make things more fun (as one of the other guitarists I play with has), although I would go for pedals before getting an amp every time if expanding.

Minor update: I decided to contact Mr B (the member earmarked to be removed) - it took him a week to respond to my text, giving me time/day to phone him, which I did, got instantly to his voicemail/answerphone, I made a comment saying we need to chat about the band... and then heard nothing more. So I can only assume he doesn't want to talk to me or perhaps doesn't want to hear about bad things. Anyway, I'm done with this now, my conscience is clear I made a positive move to reduce any hurt. If we once again meet up (band rehearsal) and they boot him out... Worst I had like this was about 4 years ago in a band. The "lead" guitarist was really awful, I don't know why the BL (Band Leader) chose him other than being his friend. It came to a point where he had to go, ok, them being friends should mean a nice quiet chat etc. Anyway the BL called me and the drummer in (like a works meeting) and was quite abrupt with the guy, like a public humilation! As the discussion unfolded I could see this was more a public humilation so I left the room. I'm not having ANY part of that nonsense. Some months after I left the band, as you guys will know, if that BL sacks his friend like that he will do the same to me. When I gave my reason for stepping out the BL gave a nonsense reply, in my view he's a joker, not worth spending time with. There's some really crap people in bands.

I really like him, he’s an antidote for the world of social media bassists and musicians in general. He’s carved a niche out for himself, and fair play to him for managing to do it. Musicians have a bit of a habit of taking themselves too seriously and he’s doing a good job of injecting a bit of fun into things without any of the pretence. Like it or not social media as a platform for musicians is going nowhere, so why not someone like him.

i play a fair amount of acoustic (i started as a guitarist) my go-to solution is a T-rex Soul mate acoustic, it gives me tuner, eq, chorus, reverb, delay and a looper in a single unit. I mainly use the tuner and the reverb, it's also got feedback rejection and a boost function (very useful when swapping to fingerpicking from plectrum) I do own a little trace acoustic cube for when i don't have foldback but I've not needed it much. they're not a cheap item but i know that there is one for sale locally to you (and me) by a basschat member on facebook. I've lent mine out and they went out and bought one for themself. I'm running a very nice guitar (£3.5k) into it with a good quality pickup and onboard preamp (AER) and the Di output from the t-rex is excellent. if you want to try mine out let me know. I can PM you the sellers name if you can't find it. Matt Edit - ive just re-read your original post and i'd missed the part about budget, the t-rex will run you somewhere around the 300-350 mark, even used, I've also put together mini acoustic pedalboards for the guitarist to use in our band (we often both play acoustic at the same time). the Micro board is Tuner - eq - chorus - reverb - Di, mostly with tc electronic and ENO pedals and a radial Di at the end, I'll see if i can get a photo tonight. with some canny shopping around this should be a bit cheaper but possibly not that much cheaper when all the parts are taken into consideration, again i'd be happy enough to bring kit over for you (and the guitarist) to test and play with.

On a carousel- Hollies

Hi Tim, Using wi-fi links sounds really interesting, winding up DMX cables every gig is already getting very boring on top of the XLR's. I'd be really interested to know how that works out.

Here is my recently refurbished 1998 Stingray 5... was originally a trans red finish but has been stripped and professionally finished with a buffed open pore nitro clear coat with a subtle brown wash. Tuners and bridge changed to black to match in with the scratch plate and knobs (3 months wait for the bridge from EB!!) Well chuffed with the finished result. Finally strung it up and played it today and it made me realise why I love a SRay5!

This is what I do, including using a pick where the song calls for it.

Ride My See‐Saw - Moody Blues

For years I worked on a mobile 'heavy rock' disco but we didn't want the disco flashing light thing, we wanted to created a mood. The lights were all DMX controlled and we had a PC in a flight case with a USB-DMX adapter. From memory the rig was 6 x PAR56 on dimmer packs with rainbow gel selection 4 x gobo scanner 2 x moonflower Each PAR can was one colour of the rainbow and we worked out which gobos were which, I wrote simple programmes that were just red, or just orange. Some move complex ones that moved the scanners, flipping gobo as they changed direction. But it was all very low key. We retired from that game a long time ago, but a couple of years later someone asked us to do one last gig. We didn't have the PC anymore and had to borrow back the lights from the local high school we'd donated them to. I found that with only one scanner running a built-in pattern, the other three set to mirror it, we got 4 scanners all with the same colour, all moving in a sequence and it was fairly low key and not flashy. The dimmer packs let us put the PAR cans on a slow fade between channels - maybe a minute to move around them, and that worked OK. So looking back I probably wasted a lot of time programming fancy light shows - the built in stuff could be tweaked to be OK. Of course this is going back years to the days of single-colour halogen lamps.