jazzyvee

BBC video evidence of the dutchie returning home to Birmingham.

A better photo from BBC WM

Finished my gig tonight at the commonwealth games closing ceremony.  First stadium gig and biggest audience especially if you count the live tv audience. 
not a great photo but. 
 

The advice I got from Nathan East some years back when I met him back stage after one of his gigs was. Paraphrased 

"Take every gig you get offered even if it's music you are not familiar with. You will learn something about either the music, yourself as a musician or both."

I've tried to do that as much as I can.

I made the mistake of overlooking that and mistakenly thinking it only applied to new instruments. I bought a guitar from a shop in Texas about 13years ago and when it arrived at customs in Stanstead airport I got a call from Customs & excise with a huge bill for duty and vat. Not something i'd budgeted for. This was around the time the MP's were getting caught being creative with their expenses so it made paying it more frustrating.

If you don't pay the taxes and duty it gets sent back to the sender. Thankfully the guy on the phone was really down to earth and a good chap. But paying it still hurt.

Pinegrove make excellent quality straps I had 5 custom ones made for me over the past year or so and they are superb.

😁Yeah i'm one of these "one strap per bass" kind of guys. 🙂

The Reggaeland gig went really well. We were limited to a 1/2 hr slot. 

Stage for tomight’s gig at Reggaeland Milton Keynes. 

Tonight's rig 
 

Is there any reason you couldn't take your existing bass with you?

I have one of the old Zoom 2QN recorders which sounds good but the battery life is not enough to do even a 40 minute set and also the socket for external power supply does not respond when plugged into a usb power supply. 😞

On 11/07/2022 at 14:29, EBS_freak said:

Just out of interest, what are the gigs you are doing @jazzyvee?

I am doing a rare guitar gig at a jazz festival in Birmingham tomorrow and on the 30th i'm playing bass with Musical Youth at the Milton Keynes Reggaeland festival.

I have seen Alison Raynor Qt a number of times and they are a great band.

Mostly Jazz festival is a more representative of what I would consider a Birmingham Jazz festival. Shame it is only over a long weekend. Actually my band has played there a few years ago.

The Birmingham Jazz festival is not put on by the organisation called "Birmingham Jazz". Birmingham Jazz put on smaller gigs which I have been to over the years and occasionally have a small festival.

The Birmingham Jazz festival now called (Birmingham Sandwell & Westside festval) is put on by an organisation called Big Bear Music which i think is based in wolverhampton. Here is this year's lineup.
http://www.birminghamjazzfestival.com/calendar/

Let me know of any hard hitting jazz funk or fusion bands in the roster.

I'm a brummie through and through and a lover of jazz but I am embarrassed by the Birmingham Jazz festival it's a joke compared to any other jazz festival I have been to around the UK. 

Every year that festival is on i'm put off because most of the bands are the trad jazz and little of the modern jazz and rarely any kind of  fusion or jazz funk.  Anything that has Tom Hill, Art Themen or Chris Bowden playing in is worth going to see. Both are extremely good players.  One year when it covered Solihull, i went there for and there was not a single band playing jazz music at all. There was a bands playing country, ska and other non jazz genres.

There are a lot of superb jazz musicians and younger jazz musicians with new slants on the genre in and around Birmingham but they don't seem to fit with the theme of the Birmingham "Trad" Jazz festival.  If i'm honest i think it needs to be scrapped until it can provide a more diverse range of music.

Let me have a look at the lineup for this year and see if i can be pleasantly surprised. 🥱

I play quite a bit of reggae and hence need a lot of bottom end at fairly high volumes. And I have found that to get the least noise/distortion and risk of farting out from my rig (rack), I put the power amp (class D) on full or virtually full and set my bass to about 3/4 full volume then start to increase the gain on my preamp till I get to the volume I need for the gig. That way I get a clean sound, lots of clean headroom and less chance of farting at low volume from my cab. If I do it the other way and set the pre-amp high and then use the power amp to set the stage volume i tend to get more hiss from the preamp and more chance of the cab farting out at low or high volumes.
 

It i'm using a standard type of bass head, the ones i have tried are too hissy if i turn the master volume to full and then bring up the pre-amp gain. That said my Mesa boogie Walkabout has never made my cabs fart out but can start to be edgy if it's  up to loud and it is quite hissy if up loud. 
The worst for causing farting out I have found are those heads with a sub/octave button, i turn those off.

On 09/07/2022 at 22:20, Count Bassy said:

Personally I disagree with this. A gently plucked string highly amplified does not sound the same as a "dug in" string.

I agree and I also used to play harder with the result, sore finger tips. Generally that was for tonal reasons or if the band was playing loud and I needed to hear myself clearly. During the lockdown I took the opportunity to work on my technique and play with a lighter more even touch and dig in only when I needed that dynamic dug in sound rather than for volume. I now don't have any sore fingers. 

Hmm, most likely the drummer. 🤣.

Seriously though, maybe the pre-amp in the rig is overheating and clipping??. Maybe try a lower pre-amp setting and open up the master volume a bit more to get the same overall volume and see how that works out? 

Having not had many bass rigs I most likely understand far less than you do. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable on these things might offer some insight. 

I've had my BTII for just over 4 years and if anything happened to it, sure i would buy the most up to date version of that cab. I did a lot of reading about cabs when I went looking for a new one and mainly due to the good reviews of owners here, video reviews and a few conversations with Alex I realised this would be the best cab for me and so far I haven't played through anything else that makes me think otherwise. 🤑

I have a few large gigs coming up this summer and the latter part of the year, and I am looking for a video camera that will fit on to the headstock of my bass so that I can record and film what i'm doing on stage and what's going on around me. Also that has over an hour recording time. Can anyone recommend such a camera that has both good quality sound & vision and not heavy enough to pull my headstock down.

Thanks

In equal measures, Aston "Family Man" Barrett && Stanley Clarke they are so different and their playing represent the largest influences on my taste in music.

They are joint No:1

On 01/07/2022 at 20:26, Bigwan said:

Have to agree with @LukeFRC, the Alembic is based on the Fender Dual Showman preamp. 

Alembic F-2B was based on the Tom Walker design for Fender Preamps.

https://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=288.msg1116#msg1116

On 04/07/2022 at 03:12, Kiwi said:

Does the cab weigh less than the rack?

I have never weighed it but it certainly feels a lot lighter. 

On 28/06/2022 at 19:24, WHUFC BASS said:

 

That Alembic looks gorgeous mate. I do like black and gold on a guitar.

Thanks. The gold coloured knobs are a recent addition.  i thought they were a bit blingy at first but i've got used to them now. 😂🤣🤩

On 06/06/2022 at 21:44, Happy Jack said:

 

Enjoy!

 

 

SUPERB!!!!!!

My main gigging rig. Alembic preamps and Synq power amp into the Big Twin II