Silvia Bluejay

I'll be off to Florence (NOT on holiday) soon so I won't have time to re-engage with BC but I'd like to sum up a few points you will find me and the other lefty Basschatters repeating over and over if you do a search. 1. Learning to do something the unnatural way is damaging - physically and especially mentally. I was taught to write with my right hand and I've had a dislike of writing by hand for the whole of my life, as well as a horrible handwriting, a signature that changes every time (thank God for chip and PIN and contactless) and, later in life, some episodes of quasi-dyslexia on occasions when I have to write by hand and I'm tired. 2. Those righties who appear to imply that lefties, as a minority, should learn to play instruments righty should hang their head in shame and try doing anything left-handed, for real, for a long time, not just once. Especially something essential, something they love, or something that has no alternative way of being used (scissors, computer keyboards, joysticks, can openers etc.). Then come back to us and tell us how they enjoyed the experience. 3. If the fretting hand was the more important when playing an instrument, then all right-handed players would be happily playing what we call left-handed instruments but, surprise surprise, they're not.

Anyone going to The British Motor Show in Farnborough this weekend? We're playing there with not just one but two bands. Our established rock 'n' roll trio Damo And The Dynamites will be on stage twice every day of the show: Our new Classic Soul band Soul Purpose will be there on Sunday only: @Happy Jack will probably want to tell you about our trials and tribulations re. actually understanding what we're going to find the first time we set foot at the show, and how we may deal with the situation... 🙄

To go back to the main topic, yes we have an XR18 which we are reasonably happy with, but not to the point of being wedded to it for our next purchase - hence our questions. Ideally next time we would want something with a proper user interface (to us, XAir Pro has been a pain from the start, fiddly, unintuitive, moody, etc. - you guys' MMV), something without the hardware/software glitches we have identified in our system with use, and something we don't need to hook up additional devices (router etc.) to in order to get reliable functionality. @Dad3353, while I do understand, and until relatively recently shared, your aversion to smartphones and tablets, it would be unreasonable to expect a wireless desk to not use either or both. You would always need something with a screen and a means of communicating with the desk wirelessly. That would be, um, er, a tablet or a smartphone... 😉

I'm currently working on a slow but perfectly viable 7-year-old PC that was a cheapo even at the time I bought it, and i don't think it's just about to die either - so it also depends on how good the user is at, er, not screwing the device up and keeping it happy for a long time. In the past, the winning aspect of Macs was the total compatibility. Now not so much, as the rest of the world has caught up. Same for IoS v. Android. I hate a lot of things on Android but I haven't found ioS to be any better. 🤷‍♂️

... and before anyone says buy an iPad just for this purpose, and then you'll fall in love with the system and eventually switch over for everything, no we won't. Beautiful beasts, MacIntosh devices, loved working on them for what at the time was called DTP, rather pointless nowadays as they're so similar to PCs both in look and in functionality, but are usually quite a bit more expensive.

It is, online. The website gives a list of shops where it can be bought. https://www.rcf.it/en/where-to-buy/-/dealers/country/192 However... Andertons: https://www.andertons.co.uk/search?search=rcf m18 AC Entertainment: https://www.ac-et.com/search/RCF+M18/ Gear4music: https://www.gear4music.com/search/?str_search_phrase=RCF+M18 Etc...

Oi! Mic the effing kit or I'll down tablets and walk off. Aside from late July to mid-August, there is no way a drummer* can be heard properly by anyone not standing right in front of the band at the George on a Friday or Saturday night. * Perhaps only our Paul The Drums on a channelling-Keith-Moon night. Certainly not our Mr Dynamics Roy the rock 'n' roll band drummer.

It would, however, look 'orrible. 🙄🤷‍♀️

The acoustics in that pub is dreadful. I have had to deal with (and improve, although usually not fix) boomy bass, muddy bass, shrill high frequencies, feedback on the vocals, faux-slapback effect due to the wall behind the speakers, when the speakers have a tendency to leak sound backwards, you name it. It's a lost cause. But it's huge fun (for the band), so we put up with the issues.

Except I better not end up under one of those because, lightweight or not, they're almost as heavy as me, and I would probably be turned into a pancake... 🙄

What's most weird in this case is that it happens after the end of a song, not during the song when you'd expect the pill- erm, the punter, to be dancing (or attempting to). I was taken by surprise too, although there would have been little I could have done to help from where I was, in any case.

Next time we play that pub we may revert to the big-subwoofer-and-linear-array PA setup... 🙄

No, I actually had her in mind too, but in my view she's another more-pop-than-rock singer. She is awesome regardless of how we choose to pigeon-hole the band, obviously.

I did not say that. Regarding what I actually did say (scroll up if you like), I suppose I'm bound to know what makes a woman a little uncomfortable better than a man would. I don't tend to talk nonsense, at least in this case. As for girls learning to drive later - grain of truth, but mostly, in our society, for people our age, the *expected* priority for young women was to look good while the expected priority for young men was to have a good job and a car. Things are different now, so much the better - it wasn't as much fun as it might sound like. Childcare - same applies, for people my age but also those a little younger and still able to have kids. Carer/provider role separation is still far from balanced. In all of the above, weare not talking what would be FAIR. We're talking what still too often happens in real life.

Yes, you're right, Doro! Forgot about her, which is rather criminal considering how few hard rock frontwomen there were at the time. You're also correct about childcare and going out to practice (and gig). Perhaps things will finally have changed for the better once the younger generations reach their 60s. We current over-55s females grew up in a world where a girl playing an instrument other the piano/keyboard was often frowned upon and therefore a rarity, and obviously a girl in a rock or pop band would often be judged to be of loose morals and not be wife material even years later. 🤷‍♂️

Oh, and just to add another thought - most hard and classic rock lyrics are not what a woman with a modicum of self-respect would want to sing.

There isn't much of a tradition for female-fronted rock bands. Especially in our age group (55+). I'm racking my brain. Debbie Harry? Joan Jett? Suzi Quatro? Pat Benatar? Chrissie Hynde? I'm sure some will say they are all, arguably, pop rather than rock singers. Courtney Love? Hmm. Perhaps Lita Ford, who at least was fronting a hard rock band after the Runaways, but she's not as famous as the others. And even I can't remember the name of the frontwoman in Vixen*, and I was a fan! There are very few, and relatively unsuccessful, female hard rock and rock bands women my age may have wanted to emulate when we were younger. How about younger potential female rock vocalists? Well, does anyone under the age of 30 like rock or hard rock nowadays? * Janet Gardner - thank you Uncle Google.

Like with all social media, you need to decide if you have the time and inclination to interact or only that to broadcast. Taking the example of our rock 'n' roll band, we have a very active Facebook page where fans comment, tag each other, and talk to the band, and we interact fully by replying, publishing videos, advertising gigs etc. Then we have Youtube where comments are disallowed, so we only publish videos but don't get into any sort of exchange, and Instagram where we publish a customised poster for each gig (one or two a week) and occasionally upload a video. We follow back bands who follow us and accounts belonging to rock 'n' roll radios and DJs, and rock 'n' roll fans, but other than that we rarely interact - usually it's a matter of responding to some direct messages from venues and similar, and that's it. If @uk_lefty feels he has more than one or two blog posts in him, and is likely to want to keep writing, I'd do it. If it looks like it's only going to last a week or two and then life takes over, I wouldn't bother.

Um, where did he say he sold it as a real Fender?

How about being at a sunny 30 degrees in my childhood flat in Florence (family duty, not holiday, though) but also insisting on not just ogling gear on BC, but also moderating the forum a bit? No, don't answer. 🙄🤷‍♀️😄

I bet there were also additional problems and costs related to it being a lefty model - the Germans seem to have always had far less trouble than the Americans (and UK manufacturers) producing LH guitar models, and far fewer misgivings of the "am I going to be able to actually sell them?" type. See also Framus/Warwick. My Hofner is an Ignition, made in Indonesia. Looks great, especially after I got rid of the horrible plasticky pickguard and @Happy Jack gifted me the proper teacup knobs. Having said that, I don't like the sound - despite installing TI flats; I don't like the tiny scale - despite having tiny hands; and I don't like not having a pickup in the "proper" middle position on which to rest my thumb. I wouldn't get rid of the bass (like the Steinberger Spirit, I want one of each in my collection) but it's certainly not the bass I tend to pick up when I want to have a play.

"... a sound that sounds just as good in a live setting as in a rehearsal" doesn't exist I'm afraid. Your bass will always sound different in each of the rooms you play in, even before considering how it sits with the rest of the band. Short of getting a sound engineer with a good pair of ears, knowledge of bass frequencies and how to manage them, and experience of what to do to correct the problems that you hear in each different venue, I would suggest you go wireless with your bass and walk up front while soundchecking with the band. Then go back to your rig - or even better, your channel on the PA - and make adjustments.

And that doesn't show my own collection! No prizes for guessing why we had to move out of our lovely bijou flat and into a larger dwelling... 🙄🤣

While I agree with the basic concept suggested above that, if I want to hear the song like it's on the record, I'll put on the CD, there are certain phrases, riffs or 'bits' of a song that are iconic and absolutely need to be reproduced faithfully. The audience will be waiting for them, and will usually want to sing along to them, going 'nah nah naaahh' when there are no words to sing.

You are correct, the non-4k version was dreadful on several levels, but luckily it has been discontinued. The Q2n 4k is a very good device for the price. We use ours on clamps or tall monopods and power them through external battery packs and USB leads. We use 256GB micro-SD cards and re-format them after every gig.