WalMan

IEM’s save me from digging in too hard, though that does require whoever is handling FOH to be on it else you’re fine but the crowd is thinking “what’s that bloke doing on stage?” 🤦🏼‍♂️

Yesterday I was a Punk Pirate, having been to the Brighton Guitar Show with #2 son during the day and managed to avoid an impulse buy of a 72 P bass. It was very nice as was the 73 and the canary yellow 75 , but I just resisted. Having left there around 3:30 and dropped son off I headed over to Emsworth for a little light pirating at Kingsfest. Almost didn’t bother with IEM’s because it was quick turnarounds, but guitar from my usual main band said the onstage sound was a bit muddled, so in the end I set it up and just took a mono aux with bass, guitar and vox and put one plug in and it worked well. Timings for the day got out of sync due to weather and the Fest starting indoors then moving out. Would have helped if the acoustic duo had used the second stage rather than main, so when the compère said “the Pirates will be on in 15 minutes” there were cries of “I don’t think so!” but we were on pretty quick. Still somewhat curtailed of set time, not helped by my right leg going through the stage just before we started so so quick patching required…”I be capsizin’ cap’n” … “‘‘tis but a scratch ya scurvy scum” 🤣 Pretty solid set generally. Some flubs, but we’re Punk Pirates, nobody died, and it was generally good. Good crowd up for it and a lot of money made for a dementia charity, so all good. 90725182-ba33-4dba-ac6a-e0da656b2980.mp4

Yup I just shrugged indicated the blue sparkly IEM plug and mouthed “I can’t hear you” 🤷🏼‍♂️🤣

That’s a curse, and why I eventually bit the bullet and got a sennheiser system…better sound to my ears and no problem with dropouts I had with xvive (which I must sell BTW 😁)

Hot and very sweaty was the order of the night last night. All good fun with the FrankenJazz sounding lovely, though the Darkglass master seemed to be at a point where it was lovely but a bit too loud, or knock it back the tiniest touch and the heft was lost. We found a happy medium and all good running the sound ourselves as our sound guy was running another gig. Had a girl come up and try to talk to me, mid-song and into the ear with my IEM in, 🤦‍♂️so that got us nowhere 🤣 Sets went well, but by the end of the night the crowd were flagging in the heat. Wifey did say that there was still singing and dancing going on round the corner in the other leg of the bar, so maybe the feeling that it fell slightly was at odds with that 🤷‍♂️ Generally a good crowd and lots of nice compliments after, which is always nice. Next week I shall be pirating at KingsFest 😁🤘 9370f972-e34f-4ffb-b44d-95013a28d48a.mp4

Yup reset my search terms and found them. 😁

I thought so but initial searches drew a blank.

Looking for suggestions on cleaning the tubes of moulded plugs tubes. I have a set of moulded plugs that are coming up fours years old (I have a new set on order and due this week). The right hand one of my original plugs stopped working I had that repaired but now find that the left one is very quiet compared to the repaired right hand one. I always clean my plugs after every gig, but either my hearing has got a lot worse in recent years on the left side or possibly there is some wax build up on the left side. I’ll have them checked when I get the new ones but it would be good to keep the old ones as spares so before I start poking around in the tube with a wax pick and break something else I wonder if there is something like a small vacuum unit that might be available to keep the tubes pristine?

We still roll out Stormbringer at selected gigs. I would have said we don’t do much DP, but expanded out to associated bands over the years we have actually done quite a few

Wasn’t in a great place when I arrived but Dr Gig helped to pull me out of the pit. Very hot last night with the windows and doors mainly shut, and a lot of people outside in the front garden of a small country pub, so it was a bit quiet but those that were inside were appreciative. All good with the IEM’s and the new better boundary mic I ordered after the old one wasn’t working last week w a marked improvement. Very tight on space and some of the videos look very static and somewhat disengaged from those in the crowd but I think that was to do with lack of space (at least I hope so)

Probably won’t get to that at mine tomorrow night but it’s a small pub and I’ll be squashed into the alcove with the kit and behind the guitars so I should probably try to find my fan before I leave the house!!! 😵‍💫

Similar accounts to GAK except they managed a small profit in £,000’s on turnover of £25M PMT t/o £43M, cost of sales £32.4M, Admin and other costs £10.5M, Loss £135k

Pretty good night last night after a few weeks off. One new song in the set that went ok for a first outing, though I mucked up the ending. Nice venue that’s almost always a good night and last night didn’t disappoint. Plenty of singing andan assortment of dancing girls. Plenty of nice comments after at the gig and on social media which always raises the spirits. Sound in my IEM’s was good with the repaired custom plugs and the new Sennheiser unit which is definitely better than hardwired with the Behringer, or the xVive that I have had problems with bleeding over the Wi-Fi link from phone to mixer for my aux. It did feel as if the other side of my plugs had failed, but that might just be that ear being more deaf so possibly need to tweak the balance. The boundary mic I chuck under the kit for a bit of ambient wasn’t working for some reason, probably the step down cable to the mic so I ended up coming home and ordering another before heading to my pit. Couple of videos from the evening… bass a bit low and rumbling but hopefully just the phone as general consensus seemed to be the sound was good at the venue - sounded great in my IEM’s 😁 Spot the cheats 🙄 VIDEO-2025-06-15-17-05-36.mp4 VIDEO-2025-06-15-17-05-36.mp4

Had that happen to our sound guy a while back and it killed the cab 😡 he built some pitched roof covers for them so it was impossible

Can't agree with you there...I luv' em 😁 That said in pre d-tuner days I did manage to detune on the fly at the end of this song

We always aim for at least three at the start of each set to run together with minimal breaks and links where possible. Great but when everything is running tight like that in the set getting to water or swap a bass (not something I do much to maintain the set momentum) can be a trial. with luck there’ll be something where the bass doesn’t come in for the first verse 🫣🤣

Fun morning with my buddies half remembering songs, having a chat and a laugh, and making noise. To be fair we haven’t had a get together since last November, this being a bit of fun blasting through our old new wave songs from 40+ years ago. Drummer was using a newer kit that he normally uses as a cut down set so had a chance to use the whole thing. Guitarist had a new big birthday guitar and refined pedalboard. I stuck with the FrankenJazz, usual pedalboard, and the studio’s Hartke rig. All sounded pretty good where I was stood and generally pretty tight - until it didn’t 🙄 Some songs fell apart when one or other of us forgot where we were in it, but much fun and hilarity all round which is what we’re after. Not really looking to gig, just make some different noise to what we all usually do in other bands. We were the only band in this morning and the youngster that let us in and hung around to lock up after made some nice comments (probably just humouring the old farts! 🤣)

Dammit. I’d been planning to come down, then we had a couple of nights in London at the last minute. Glad it went well

…and that apparently makes me 1033 - I certainly feel that sometimes

17/7/2007 😁

It was originally a single pickup, passive Pro1 that I picked up secondhand, but virtually new when someone p/x’d it at the music shop my then drummer ran (saw it on the wall in the shop, took it to our gig that night and it never went back 🤣) That was around 1982. A few years later I had a pickup built by Kent Armstrong into a Wal pickup housing and fitted in front of the bridge turning the Vol & Tone into two Vol with no tone, but still passive. In 1996 I took it up to Wal for a general service and Pete showed me another Pro1 that they had in that was being converted. He told me that the Pro’s were built with the intention that active electrics could be retrofitted if the owner desired in the future, and quoted a good price to do so for mine, so the die was cast and I went for that along with the service and a few weeks later I went back to collect my now active Wal with the Kent Armstrong pup swapped out. So it started life in 82 as a one pickup passive Pro and was converted by Wal to full active in 96.

Last one before Friday’s prog extravaganza. I made a load of silly mistakes so hopefully they’re out of my system. As it’s prog I took the kitchen sink: - two basses (Wal and FrankenJazz) - pedalboard - acoustic guitar and stand up player stand - BB2 and power amp that was going to be for the bass pedals but in the end was an expensive, but rather nice sounding monitor for the acoustic through a TwoNotes Opus - Alesis Strikepad loaded with two kits for the drummer, one with rototoms and a pad for the clocks at the beginning of time, and a second with two pairs of timpani, one tuned for Fanfare for the Common Man and the other for Life on Mars - I had the McMillen 12Step and bits to connect to soft synths on my iPad for bass pedals, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and I shan’t use those. I can get by with the Source Audio C4 on the pedalboard. Friday we have a non proggy support who I don’t know (our guitarist does and I found a couple of videos) but have been asked to share kit and amps. I was going to take both BB2’s to run separate rigs for bass and basspedals/acoustic and I always carry a spare amp so I’ll probably just run up both rigs and he can tweak the spare then I’ll swap it out for the power amp. Had a bizarre “cheese dream” about it last night where we soundchecked in a wooden shack scout hut then I went out to sort out sharing my gear only to come back and find the drums and bass gear stripped from the stage, taken outside and unceremoniously dumped in a deep crater. I woke up as my WTAF rant started 😳 I’m sure it’ll be fine 🤣 Used the FrankenJazz that’s my current main squeeze most of the night, but swapped to the Wal at the end of the first set and first couple of the second. Both sounded great and I’d have used the Wal more but didn’t have my Duo strap and my shoulder started complaining. I love the Wal dearly, it was my only bass for a good 20 years but damn she’s a heavy old girl.

Barock Project with support from Peter Jones at Trading Boundaries on Thursday night. Love the venue and both artists. Peter Jones on fine, nutty form and got up to do one number he had co-written with BP just him and Luca. The BP bass player couldn’t make it this time so they had his parts recorded - I’d have offered but it gets a bit technical at times 🤣 Had a great night at our favourite venue with #2 son and his g/f. I’d have gone for the second night on Friday if I hadn’t been gigging myself

Not a bad night in Portsmouth but quiet at the venue which was a shame. We were pretty tight having thrown in a few we’ve not played in a while but they went ok despite having played them on the 5 previously and have been using the FrankenJazz with a Hipshot so I was still experimenting with different positions and flipping between E and D to fit which led to a few errors in position when dropped. Worst for me was the end of Rollin’ In The Deep when I got songs muddled and was playing (in our tuning) D-E-F#-E-D instead of F#-E-D-E-F#. Guitarist said after “I thought you were going for different inversions but actually it ended up as the “jazz” version. Sound was good from where I was and at one point vox came over to me, nodded at my rig and said “oooo that sounds awesome” … he was right, it did 😁 Annoyingly I’m still waiting both for my new IEM’s with a new mold for a hopefully better fit, and the old ones repaired after one side stopped working ☹️ Meant I had to use the KZ’s I picked up as spares. I haven’t managed to get a good fit so the sound from them is never as good as the molded set, but it was better than nowt. I ended up one in / one out which was ok. On stage the sound seemed well balanced. Hopefully out front was the same!

Sunday night was the prog covers. Drummer works late so only managed the last half hour but sounded good. Gave us a chance to work through stuff in readiness for his arrival which helped with the following. Keyboard player has had ancient keys that have been disintegrating for years and showed up with two much newer instruments so there was some tweaking of sounds and arrangements that has not happened before. Gave me the chance to say "can you not play the bass bit as well as the main part in Turn It On that opened things up and stopped trampling over me 😀 Last night was my main band. Ran through some songs that haven't been in the set for a while and tidy up the new ones. Considering some of the old ones haven't been played for a while - a couple could date back to lockdown recordings and videos - they were all still pretty tight and can be brought out for soundchecks in future.