jimmyb625

I think they should make more of the Beatles connection, you'd hardly know they played there...

I don't remember there being any house gear (except PA), but then again we were supporting, so we brought our own stuff.

As Chris said, you load-in at the back, but you might not be able to park there.

54 minutes ago, 99ster said:

Anyone got any experience of the Behringer UL 1000G2 system?  It looks very interesting - especially at that price (£269 retail).   Thanks!

 

 

It looks quite similar to the LD MEI1000, which isn't bad.

As with the LD unit, if you're going to use it in the channel 38 frequencies (channels 5-12), you'll need to buy a licence.

Mine's a Nu-x mighty plug with some ear buds. I Bluetooth from my phone to play the tracks.

I bought a Boss RC30 for my youngest, courtesy of @SamIAm and it's great. It might be a little big/expensive if you're only wanting to mess around to start off with, but if you're planning on using them a lot, it's definitely worth a look.

I was recommended that one over the newer version, as apparently the newer ones can be trickier to use.

Our gig list is pretty sparse for this year, with only 4 booked at the moment.

We've been trying to get on to some of the bigger Americana festivals (Black Deer, Long Road, Ramblin' Roots) but we're getting nowhere unfortunately.

It's a little disheartening to be honest.

I have a Y.O.B. Precision, which is nice, but I never play it. I also have a Hiwatt DR103 from the same year (which wasn't a deliberate factor in the purchase) and I rarely use that either nowadays.

It'll give the children something to sell when I die.

Packed the gear, then hung around and chatted for however long, drinking 0% beer.

1 hour ago, itsmedunc said:

I’ve managed to get the PA speaker to the singers house! Job done 😀 Almost….. When I got home , I realised that the singer has put the box with all the packaging back in the van 😬 I now have to dispose of the box. But where? 😂

Set fire to the van, it'll disguise the burnt ashes of the box.

59 minutes ago, oldslapper said:

Old Don boy likes a legal scrap. 

He certainly does! He's also very hot on getting videos removed for copyright strikes.

Just now, itsmedunc said:

I’ve got the van parked right at the gate with the side loading door directly in front 😂 I’ll have worn a hole in the hallway carpet by the time it comes. She’s working in the front room too. Fate has conspired against me this time!

Easy, take a photograph of the view outside the front window, have it printed on a large poster, put the poster in a frame and place it outside. 

Job done!

3 minutes ago, itsmedunc said:

I have sinned. I’ve got two rather large packages containing errrrmmmmusical items arriving tomorrow. Booked to arrive on the only safe day of the week. The day that the Mrs is out all day! Hooray!😁

She has just informed me that she will be working from home all day tomorrow. Boo! 😬 I really don’t know how I’m going to explain a PA cab and a flight case arriving on the doorstep 😳 I’m going to have to go down the no comment route aren’t I? 😂

Fake an emergency at her work, or stand outside until the delivery arrives and stash them away.

This is an interesting watch, although I don't think it will be up for long.

Basically, it's an analysis of whether Don Henley has mimed on the live versions of "Desperado". 

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think (despite it being fairly compelling) it completely meets a "burden of proof".

https://youtu.be/jJ6DbH-X-L0?si=AbnsGGI3Zin6oxFW

I'm still in. There's only one bass that I want at the moment, but there's no way I can afford it at the moment, so I'm pretty safe.

25 minutes ago, TimR said:

Music is an art. If you want perfection be an aeronautical engineer. 

Unless you work for Boeing...

1 hour ago, bassbiscuits said:

Is he Guitar George then?

Well, his name is George and he does play the guitar.

A Flock of Humans

Seagulls League

Now that's what I call the 80's covers

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.

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.

Dragging back to the topic (I know, I could get banned for that) I thought it was really interesting. 

It's mad to think that he only got paid £600 for the job, given how iconic it's become.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.