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jimmyb625

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Posts posted by jimmyb625

  1. 3 hours ago, bassbiscuits said:

    Not sure if this is genuine, but I used to do solo acoustic guitar / vocals gigs at a city centre pub, which had double booked acts on a couple of occasions. 
     

    This time I arrived to set up and found an older guy with a guitar also expecting to play.

     

    We tried to establish what was going on and he proudly told me he was called “Guitar George” - as in the guy referred to in Sultans Of Swing.

     

    Apparently he’d been working on a visiting market that day nearby, and the landlord had suggested he played.

     

    In the end he didn’t take up my invite to both share the gig as he didn’t want to take any of my money. 

    So I never found out if he indeed did know all the chords.
     

    That sounds like George Borowski, he's a really nice guy.

    • Like 1
  2. I've not seen this thread before and it's been quite an interesting read.

     

    My own tale goes back to 2012, at Forsyth's in Manchester. My partner and I had an agreement where we bought each other something significant to mark the birth of our children (in 2007 it was a 5 string Bongo for me) and this time, I was thinking about a nice acoustic. 

    At the time, my eldest (5 years) had started to take piano lessons, so we took her along with us, so she could look at the selection they had (they specialise in pianos). 

    The staff in the guitar department couldn't have been more helpful, bringing a selection along to me to try out and at no point pressured me with anything. I was pretty much left to my own devices with a brilliant collection of high end guitars, although it only took 5 seconds on the second guitar to decide.

    Whilst I was ham-fistedly banging away on these, my daughter took it upon herself to go and "try" some of the pianos they had in stock. For a good half hour, she played a range of acoustic pianos going from "cheap" uprights to some top of the range Schimmels. The staff in the piano department never once told her she couldn't touch them, or tried to move her on and encouraged her to continue.

     

    That's what I value about a good music shop.

     

    As a footnote, we didn't buy either a guitar, or a grand piano that day, but a few weeks later on Christmas day, the guitar I'd fallen in love with was presented to me.

     

     

    • Like 3
  3. I had a very nice chat with Stephen Morris and his wife Gillian, backstage at the Krankenhaus Festival. They live in Macclesfield, which is just down the road from us, so we chatted about how rubbish the council was, plus the best way to get to Muncaster Castle from Cheshire amongst other things. I didn't have the first clue who he was, so it was somewhat surprising to see him on stage later in the day being interviewed. 

    • Like 3
  4. 17 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

    The other problem with tee shirts is you need a range of sizes.

    This is the biggest drawback with T-Shirts, you need to carry about 6 (Small, Medium, Large, Men's, Women's), in order to sell one.

     

    We also went down the route of having some tote bags made, which didn't go down too badly. They're also quite useful as an "add-on" so people can put their other purchases in them.

    • Thanks 1
  5. 35 minutes ago, Pirellithecat said:

    I spoke too soon!  The Fractal doesn't really do DI out - you can get a feed but it's preEQ/FX etc so sounds pretty naff.  I suspect I could insert a DI box into the FX return lead from the Fractal to the amp and run a DI out from there, but it's probably too difficult to get agreement to do this.   On the bass side of things, is it possible to actually insert something like a BDI21 into the Feed from the DI out from the Bass Amp to the mixer?  Probably over egging this but I just can't get an acceptable sound for IEM's using just the Mixer tone controls. 
    Basically I want independent tone/volume control - one for the stage sound and one for the Mixer/IEM feed.  

     

    Have you got a spare input channel on the desk? If you have, dependent on the type of desk you have, you can take a direct out from one channel into a separate channel. You can eq that duplicate channel and set it to only got to the IEM mix (basically the channel fader would be down and the aux send would be pre-fade).

     

    Edit to add: What model of Fractal are they using? One of their biggest selling points is the ability to provide amp sim's. It might be that (if they're using it in front of an amplifier) they aren't using the modelling functions. From what I can see, both of the main outputs are capable of having the amp modelling. I will caveat this by saying I haven't personally used this particular model, but I have seen similar devices.

     

  6. 1 hour ago, Pirellithecat said:

    Had my most successful outing with IEM's on Saturday and am getting a better mix from all the instruments/vocals.   
    But a few observations/questions if I may .... 
    Observations
        1) The importance of good isolation can't be underestimated.
        2) As I get the hang of mixing the IEM's better it's noticeable that I'm probably using too much volume - need to turn IEM Aux down.
    Q's
    Bass
    How do you get a decent Bass sound? 
    On the mixer  have Bass, Semi Parametric Mids, Treble, and HPF, but I just can't seem to craft the sound - twangy top end and a mushy bottom end.  Probably just need practice but any help appreciated.
    The IEM bass tone bears little resemblance to the on-stage bass sound.  Any thoughts on Pre vs Post EQ from the DI out of my Ashdown ABM600?  

    Guitar(s)
    This is a direct DI from the valve amp (some kind of cab sim involved I think).
    Seems to accentuate the guitar "dirty" channel which merges with my Bass IEM feed to produce a combined sound that I hate - keep checking to see if something wrong on the amp!!
    Worth using a Mic on his cab or is there any other way round this? 

    I was getting a bit pessimistic about ever getting this sorted but I'm more optimistic following last weekend's outing!! 

    Are you using your own desk and is it handling both FoH and monitors? 

    Sometimes, what eq sounds good out front, isn't as great through IEM's.

     

    For both the guitar and bass, you need to find "space" for them in the mix, which will take a bit of trial and error. If you've got your own desk, which you're just using for monitoring, you're on a winner, although you should definitely set some time aside with the band to get a mix you're happy with. 

     

    As @Bassmonkey2510 says, a mic on the guitar cab will be better, but a modeller is bestest! Getting the guitarist to make that switch though, may not be the easiest.

     

    For bass, I'm moving more and more over to just my pedals and the last two gigs, I didn't bother to use my amp at all. I've set it now so that the DI sound is one I like, which means I can feed it pre-eq into the aux mix for my IEM's. That way, if the FoH needs channel eq, it doesn't affect what I hear.

     

    The major downside for IEM's in my opinion, is the desk and engineer that you might get at some gigs. If you've got a good engineer, who's used to using them, it's great, but if not, it can make it quite difficult. Similarly, if the desk doesn't have enough spare aux sends, it gets tricky, as you need to start sharing mixes and the like.

  7. 20 hours ago, mike257 said:

     

    There's a real skill to hiding the mics discreetly in the costumes and still getting them in a good spot for the audio. The advantages they have on a West End stage is that they're working with top notch musical theatre performers who really understand how to project their voice, and the band are quiet, and below them in a pit (usually with the drummer in a box) so they're not fighting stage spill.  They also mix the shows line by line, with the FOH engineer having every scene in the script blocked out with a corresponding scene in the console to recall mutes/levels, and riding the faders of every live mic with each line. It's a whole different art/skill set than mixing a band! 

    Mixing live musical theatre is a full-on task.

     

    I used to do some for an amateur group, prior to the widespread adoption of digital desks. It took 2 of us to do it and even though we only had 10 channels of radio, we were usually filling a 48 channel desk.

     

    I don't think the OP would want to use the same type of microphone as musical theatre does though. One of the more rugged types with a boom arm would be a better choice (imho) as the capsule types have a tendency to succumb to sweat and stage makeup.

  8. 2 minutes ago, Dankology said:

    Weird! We were there last week and had a completely different room - the green room in the adjacent theatre.

    Yeah, we've had that one as well. I think it depends what's going on in the theatre.

    • Like 1
  9. 43 minutes ago, sandy_r said:

     

    Just to clarify (now that we can see colour coding of your cable) - my question was "Presumably you've tried your cable using say, the red plug as input to your HX (with black in the HX output), as well as trying the black as input to the HX (with the red in the HX output)"?

     

     

    This.

     

    It's fairly common for the red cable to be the "right" side, which corresponds to the "ring", which (if I'm looking at the right pocket amp) is the return. This means, connect the red jack to the output of your HX. 

    The black cable should be the tip, so connect that to the HX input.

     

    The single jack is known as TRS - tip, ring, sleeve.

    • Thanks 1
  10. 37 minutes ago, ossyrocks said:

     

    I could write quite a long piece about this, but it's all out there to see now.
    I knew Justin quite well, and his Dad Rick. I used to deal with them quite a bit in the 90's and early 2000's. Mostly old amps, amp components and speakers. Only later did the full extent of their deceit come to light. They actually carried out/arranged robberies (the one in Italy was huge), they faked gear on an industrial scale, Dumble amps, plexi Marshalls, custom colour Fenders, Korina Gibsons, it must have run into £millions. There was a fake Marshall factory, with all the head cabinets out in the sunshine fading and being kicked about to relic them. There was even a Chip Shop Salt Shaker with vintage dust in it to shake dust inside the cabs.

    They also managed to do a very good job of signing Harry Joyce's name on a load of HiWatts...

  11. An evening out in Chester with Fine Lines, playing at Telford's Warehouse.

     

    Almost had a major disaster, as I went on stage without my hat, fortunately our eagle-eyed sometime tour manager noticed it. Positioning himself at the side of the stage with said head-gear, I was able to wander over allowing him to return it to its rightful location. It makes using a wireless all the more worthwhile!

     

    I was really pleased with how we played and we didn't get bottled off, which is always nice.

     

    Had a very pleasant brief chat with @lurksalot of the parish, who kindly turned up to support us.

     

    Obligatory photo's below.

     

    *edit to add, my jeans aren't too long, my legs are too short!

     

    IMG-20240224-WA0005.jpg

    IMG-20240224-WA0015.jpg

    20240223_231457.jpg

    • Like 17
  12. 2 hours ago, lurksalot said:

    Finelines at Telfords this evening with our @jimmyb625 , tight as a tight thing and a great selection of material .wouldn’t know what genre to pin it in as they played ballads and some superb rockin tunes.

    I’m not sure if the gigs don’t pay well (being a 7 piece to share the £250) or radio doesn’t pay that well as the drummer has to work in the morning 😉

    enjoyed the evening , but had to rush as Mrs Lurks was passing by in her new car , result .

     

    Lovely to meet you and thanks so much for the kind words.

  13. LD. I had a damaged antenna cable on an IEM belt pack. I wrote to them and asked if there was a replacement part, or if I had to send it to them for a factory repair. "No can do" came the response, with the suggestion that I pay £150 or so for a new pack. Ebay provided a replacement for £5 and it took less than 30 minutes to repair.

    • Like 1
  14. 1 hour ago, police squad said:

    interesting mate, thanks. Can this be done with an Allen & Heath sq20 I wonder. If I change desk it will be to the SQ20

    Allen & Heath do have a similar system, albeit more expensive. Do you mean the CQ20? That doesn't have it as far as I can tell. The QU-SB does, although they're more expensive and (imho) will probably end up being phased out fairly soon

  15. 28 minutes ago, BillyBass said:

    Although I work for myself, technically, I’m the director of a company and, therefore, an employee.  So, if I create a new policy that any employee who works for 13 years (I incorporated 13 years ago) gets a new bass, that would, correct me if I’m wrong, enable me to acquire a new bass but still keep my 2024 gear abstinence intact.

     

    if you disagree, it’s solicitors at dawn!

    Your honour, I direct the court's attention to this post on the Internet, where the defendant clearly expresses the manner in which he attempts to circumvent the rules.

    • Haha 2
  16. 31 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

    4 of use do use Mixing station for our personal mixes, but i find i still get asked to put more in/out of their mixes. I have my iPad sitting on my keyboard and it seems easier for me to do it over them having to get other phones out and reconnect etc. 

     

    I tried to get my lot to sort their own mixes out, turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.

    • Like 2
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