casapete

I’ve often wondered the same thing. People spend a fortune on some high end amp and then get ‘their sound’ from the ( often expensive) additional pre amp. Beats me. Just find an amp you like the sound of, or get an outboard preamp and run it into a power amp or FRFR powered cab. *For complete transparency, I run a Sansamp into my GK rig, but only for DI purposes. 😁

My brother ( 4 years older than me ) had a big effect on my musical taste when we were growing up in the 60’s. We both loved The Stones and The Beatles as they were everywhere, but then he got into Motown and soul music which was always playing for a few years. Then (inexplicably) he veered off into folk / rock stuff like The Strawbs and Lindisfarne, and I found Chuck Berry, all the main blues / r’n’b stuff along with the great pop music of the time, which have never left me. Through older friends I found country and country rock, and thanks to my boss at the record store where I worked I discovered some great soul and funk music which would otherwise have been hard to find. Around this time I also discovered Springsteen too, who I still admire. My parents didn’t like pop music, so I was restricted to things I heard on the BBC Light Programme ( R2) and classical music - Chopin being my Dad’s thing. When I went round to friend’s houses, I heard Sinatra and Tony Bennett etc for the first time being played by their parents. Learned to appreciate them many years later.

I find exactly the same ‘dilemma’, and not just when there isn’t a feed to the PA being used. At sound check when playing solo for the FOH guy, I often don’t like my onstage sound much, yet when placed with the rest of the band the sound becomes somehow ‘right’ and allows me to hear it effectively.

Played at the wonderful Harrogate Royal hall last night. Capacity crowd of around 950 in a beautiful room, probably the most impressive theatre we regularly do. Had a good soundcheck but once the show started there were some sound issues for us onstage, which our new engineer did a great job of battling with and eventually winning! This may explain my rather serious face in the pic below - the booming was around a 'C', and you've guessed it, plenty of the stuff we do is in that key! The other picture shows a guy who came to our Sheffield gig the week before - he's a professional Ringo act from Detroit called Michael, and he's seen here chatting with our guitarist Jan after the show.

Unusual pressing, maybe a USA copy? The UK ones were the grey A&M logo IIRC, with some done on blue / coloured vinyl too. 🙂

Ha ha, agreed! Or evenings of Queen and Freddie stuff.....

1970 - you finally finished that time machine Mick? 😆

Tonight on Sky Arts at 7pm there is a Sheryl Crow gig from 2020. ‘Live from the Artist’s Den’ is small gig at The Plaza in New York. Later on the same channel at 12.15am there is a repeat of ‘Jeff Beck Live at the Hollywood Bowl’ from 2016. BBC4 have a load of Sting / Police related stuff starting tonight at 9pm.

I have both similar GK models and totally agree. The RB just has that something extra.

Howie Epstein?

Under ripe banana may come in handy for this.....

He is steady, but not in name. 🤣

Heard this in the car earlier. A great Laura Nyro song, performed by Streisand. Not a fan of hers at all but this is funky as hell, with some great players on it - maybe Joe Osborn on bass.

We played a couple of gigs this week - in Peterborough and then at one of my favourite venues, Sheffield City Hall. For anyone who doesn't know it, this magnificent building was designed in the early 1920's but not opened until 1932. The Oval Hall holds around 2,200 people seated, and we had about 1,600 people in on Friday night. It's the first time we've ever brought in a 'flown' PA system, and it really made a difference. We've just acquired a new desk too (an Allen&Heath Avantis if anyone's interested) and it needed a fair old soundcheck in order to get everything right. Despite our singer fighting off a cold, we all played well and the audience were amazing - definitely one of the best gigs I've done with the band* over the last 13 years. *The ELO Experience

Does David Bowie’s ‘ Aladdin Sane’ qualify? Also think there were some Ozzy Osbourne albums with mild puns - ‘The Blizzard of Oz’ is (thankfully) the only one I know.

Tonight on Sky Arts at 9pm - Jeff Beck Live at the Hollywood Bowl, from 2016.

My PJ Precision Lyte has one master vol along with a pan control. Suits me as I find having to turn two volume pots down ( as per a Jazz bass) to mute the bass is a bit of a pain in live situations.

For anyone that missed it, BBC4 had a half hour ‘In Concert’ of Crosby and Nash on Friday night, currently available on iPlayer.

In my previous life (in an 8 piece function band) we had to often use deps in order to carry on working. Can’t remember any booker ever complaining, but the key part of this was ensuring everybody had reasonable parts available should a dep be needed. Sounds easy, but the state of some of the player’s pads meant that deps had to be pretty experienced to make sense of the gig. As the band moved away from using parts/music stands then it obviously made using deps more difficult. Singers were the hardest to obtain, as (in my area at least) few or none of them could read music - some had trouble with reading lyrics! The larger the band, the more likelihood of needing deps. If we’d had to cancel gigs when anyone was unavailable we’d never have lasted long.

I seem to remember the MM cabs were marketed for either bass or guitar. Got an old catalogue somewhere - Clapton’s band all used them in the late 70’s. Either standard MM drivers (Eminence maybe?) or EV as an option. As you say, 1x15 or 2x12 configurations available.

Played a couple of gigs at the end of last week in Weston Super Mare and then Wimborne in Dorset. Both theatres sold out, which always makes for more atmosphere. A long journey in torrential rain but still well worth it. Absolutely knackered the next day though! 😫

I have a Ukulele bass - it's a Countryman, bought it about 4 or 5 years ago when they first appeared. Tried a few, and couldn't see how the Kala models were nearly 3 times the price when the sound and quality were so similar so I went for the Countryman. (on the right in the first pic) Used it quite a lot at first, and had so many people interested in it at gigs. Sounds great in my acoustic duo, with a nod to an upright bass kind of noise! The strings did take some getting used to, as well as the scale length but with a bit of use it gets more familiar. Great little thing though. Couple of years ago a friend of mine got an Ibanez PNB141E short scale, and I instantly loved it. Bought one straight away, and it's now taken over as my main bass in the duo (see 2nd pic). It's 24.7" scale length, and combined with my Fender Rumble 100v3 makes for a great gigging combination. Strings are the same as on the Taylor GS mini bass (which I also had but prefer the Ibanez).

I use D’Addario EXL 170 strings , and leave them on until they start dulling off too much. I get around 20 gigs out of a set, and they’re never too far gone when I take them off. I do like the new set feel, and if finances allowed would change them more often. When I use a bass that hasn’t been played for a while, the old strings thing can be a drag, especially if I only need it for one gig and can’t justify a new set just for that. Tried coated strings and don’t really like the old string feel from the off. Nothing beats the feel and sound of a fresh set of EXLs for me.

On the few times I’ve done some serious recording, I found that half worn strings seemed to be best for me. Not so dead that they gave intonation issues but not so brand new that they showed up my lack of technique with overly bright rattles and squeaks. 😂