Huge Hands

I got to see it a couple of nights ago after Mrs HH used her Tesco clubcard vouchers to get Disney+ for a couple of months in an offer. Loved the footage - especially Stevie's bass player's Jazz bass. Not sure if it was actually British Racing Green or an effect of the film, but it looked lovely! Was almost matched by Larry Graham's burgundy one with blocked neck.

Just my advice, I bought an Ashdown rig about 2004 with a 2x10 combo and a 1x15 cab. I was never fully happy with the full rig. I could never explain it but it always felt like there was a "hole" in my sound when stood in front of the stack, as though it was phase cancelling or something. When I joined BC, there were some well respected experts on here advising against having cabs of different driver sizes due to comb filtering effects of the drivers. I began to wonder if this was what I was experiencing. I loved both cabs on their own. I even sometimes ran the 1x15 with the 2x10 speakers disconnected in the combo. This is why I would have preferred to buy 2 cabs and a separate head as others have suggested on this thread. I now have 2x identical cabs so I can use 1 or 2 depending on the gig and it is always a great result. I'm not blaming Ashdown BTW - I had many happy gigs with the component parts of that stack before I sold it on. This is all just IMHO of course.....

That's a whole other contentious thread right there....😄

I must admit, as a former drummer myself, I've never fully understood the Charlie Watts "mystique". I have watched and read many music documentaries and biographies over the years where bands say Charlie was an option for them in the early days and they wished they'd had him as he was the best, putting him on a par with Ginger Baker and Mitch Mitchell. I've also read Keith Richard's opinions on him and heard he (Charlie) started out playing jazz, so figured he must be good. I'm not saying he's not, but whenever I've tried to play along to Stones stuff in the past (I wore out Hot Rocks when I was a kid) or watched clips of him, I didn't ever notice what everyone was talking about. I thought he was solid, (if a little stiff), but nothing special that no one else could do. Whereas, Ringo on the other hand (another contentious one, I know) I've always stoutly defended as I felt he always had a good feel and have often thought there probably isn't much more or different that you would want the drummer to play on those tracks. What am I saying? I don't agree with NP slagging Charlie off when he did, but I struggle to believe he would have not been able to suitably replicate what Charlie plays on Stones tracks. However, I do agree with WoT that comparing NP in his prime playing big band to an 80 year old Charlie playing blues is not a fair comparison!

I think the fact that you've taken time to watch some of it and comment means your work is done in terms of the experiment. Wait....me too! Groan......!

I grew up playing drums in a church and played there until I left home and went to university at 18. I have since occasionally played bass in the odd church over the years. I do not feel I am personally religious. My mother was, which is why I started out at church. In my experience, there are some lovely people you will meet at church, and it is a great way to meet people and be part of your community. Those people will be happy you chose to attend their church and will accept you at your own pace/level of commitment to God etc etc. However, also in my experience, there will be a minority who take it all way too seriously and will push you to find out your own beliefs and try and convert you if they think you don't believe enough. There will also those that act as though they are more holy than anyone else and will relish the opportunity to shun or guilt someone like you who is not as anointed as they are. If you can deal with those people, then you can still have a great time, respecting the beliefs of others and letting them respect your position. I have struggled to deal with self-righteous a***holes over the years, which is why I don't tend to last too long in church settings. As others have said, I think that what I do or don't believe is my own private matter and no one else's business unless I decide I wan't to talk about it. (P.S. - I am speaking of my experience in mainly C of E (but have also been involved in Catholic, Methodist. Baptist and Evangelist churches). P.P.S. - Mods - if this is too religious, please feel free to delete....

Just to follow up @Steve Browning's point. I work in the tech sector and many equipment manufacturers have crazy lead times at the moment. I'm not sure if this is just Brexit and border changes, or raw materials sourcing issues too. I also know that we as a company are struggling to deal with the wave of spending that is starting back up because we had to lay so many staff off during the covid period due to there being no work. Customers who hibernated and weren't buying or paying during the pandemic are now expecting the same instant high level of service but we have hardly any backroom resources left to deal with quoting, purchasing, service, invoicing etc. We are doing our best to rebuild, but I'm sure the powers way above my head are nervous to splurge on recruitment in case this is just another short spike of business. All the time this is going on, those of us that are left are working flat out trying to save the face of the company but are undoubtedly letting customers down here and there. As I said, we are not the music shop industry, but thought it might be worth considering as reasons as to why they are so bad at the moment.

I REALLY want to see this!

I wouldn't normally comment on this kind of thing but I really enjoyed that. If that lady singer in the silver dress isn't a Kylie impersonator on the side, I'll eat my hat!

If it is, I worked with him a couple of times about 20 years ago when he was in a Creedence Clearwater thing that also morphed into a version of the Animals mid weekend. i thought he was a bit of an arrogant k**b at times but didn't think he would be capable of that. Glad you got it sorted.

One of the points I've not seen mentioned yet is that I was always told when doing a bit of music business studies about 25 years ago that big bands used to see touring as a "loss leader" to promote record sales. I seem to remember being told gigs like Pink Floyd and their huge Wall building tour or Fleetwood Mac and their 7 separate limos between airport and gig would cost more than they got from ticket sales at the concert, but they would still amass a fortune from those people going home and buying their albums. I've read so many stories of UK bands trying to "crack" America and saying the second half of their low key tour was better because they would get gigs upgraded and better facilities as the sales went up. Now that the only income is from streaming services, I believe the focus to get the money in is now on huge stadium gigs - i.e. trying to get as many bums on high priced seats and a much merchandise bought as possible. I assume the up front costs to put a stadium gig on put too many fledgling bands off in case they don't recoup it, which might explain Flea's comments?

I just thought I'd pipe in to say that I tried adding a kill switch to one of my bitsa basses a few years ago. I basically added a toggle switch to the scratch plate and soldered it to where the contacts would be on the jack socket. The new jack socket didn't have the switching on it, or I made it so it wouldn't work when you plugged the jack in, I can't remember. The problem was that when you flicked it, you still got the loud "bang" you get when you normally plug in an active bass to an amp that is turned up. So, it adds a another layer of "what are you prepared to do" - You could leave the bass plugged in, but there would be the faff of turning your amp off and on or up and down before you did (or you'd need a pedal). I wanted mine for the break between sets in gigs to save touching my amp once I'd set it. I suppose an in-line mute pedal might have solved it but I didn't really use any pedals in those days. To get a nice smooth on/off switch like I wanted I reckon you'd need some kind of additional smoothing circuitry to cover the "thunk" effect of the switch.

If you're ok with a soldering iron and there's room, you could solder short fly leads on to your replacement and then solder those leads to the board, then the socket would be free to be a different size - as long as the nut around the socket held it in place against the front panel.....

"Switched" means that when you push a jack into the socket, it will break the connection between the legs, i.e. switching something off. In otherwords, two pairs of the 4 pins will be connected together until the jack is pushed in and forces them apart - the jack points will then connect to 2 of the legs on one side. They are used in patchbays/inserts a lot. -The signal from a fixed source is constantly connected to the output until you push a jack in and then that is connected to the output instead. I'm afraid I don't know Markbass stuff enough to know if it uses these for a particular circuit or if they just use it as a standard jack socket and the non plugged route is redundant.

There is also the case for doing both. I remember sitting with an MD a good few years ago who looked after several cabaret bands - watching one of them rehearse. He was saying "Listen to that bloody drummer". I told him I couldn't hear anything wrong. He replied - "He's playing it exactly as it is written - boring! He should be going boom boom da cack cack da boom! Putting his own thing on it". I've always remembered that and with the concert band I now play in - if we're playing a classical piece - I will try and do my best to play it note for note as written. However, if it is a cheesy cover of pop songs from the last 50 or so years, I will use my ear and experience to add grace notes or runs to make it sound more like the original or a bit more funky, or whatever. This is of course being careful that you're not clashing with the Tuba or other instruments that are following the script. That's my story anyway. I'm not the strongest reader so sometimes I play what I think it right because I couldn't read it fast enough 😆

I used to be a FOH and monitor engineer. I was more than happy to call myself an engineer, because not only did I think I had a bit of a talent for it, I also had been to university to study audio and theory,. Although I came away with a BSc and not a BEng, I felt I was "engineering the sound". I also made sure I knew how everything went together and could make up cable looms, repair certain bits of kit etc. I think a good example is the corporate audio visual world where I now work. We have staff who can go to a room, dial up your call, connect your laptop and ensure your mics/speakers are working and do very basic diagnostics. We call these AV Technicians. The staff who can go to the room, read schematics, strip the relevant bits of kit out of the system that may be faulty and replace with/set up spare ones are the AV Engineers. I would probably say the sound persons are similar - there are some who twiddle knobs but have no real grounding or experience as to why they are twiddling them. I would call them Techs! I agree on the bit about doing the sound for the room and not the sound desk. This is another reason I used to not understand engineers in wide rooms trying to pan everything in the mix - it might sound great at the sound desk in the middle of the room, but what about the poor lot on one side of the room that only hear half a keyboard or toms etc?

I've never been in bands with stage names, but I always used to want to borrow the name of the Cardigan's drummer - Bengt Lagerberg. I've used that one a couple of times when spam callers try and ask my name!

I used to be a pro live engineer. I would have always frowned upon swapping mics as I would have rung my monitors out using my own mics and wouldn't want some weird battered thing with a phase off messing about with gain and feedback, or an unknown thing frying the phantom output on my mixer. However, I was open to ideas, and for example I do remember agreeing to allow bands to swap in a Shure vintage 55H type mic to look the part for rockabilly bands. At the time I used to mainly use Shure Beta stuff so a lot of bands with SM57s and 58 would be happy to go along with mine. This was all before covid of course. I do remember a vocal trio who used to visit once a week and wear so much lipstick the mic mesh shields were just constantly red for months, even after cleaning. We weren't so hot on cleaning them back then and they were in constant use. I have fond memories of a muso once soundchecking and saying loudly over the mic "Hey, these mics smell of badly wiped a**e...." I do remember a "urban myth" type story going the rounds at the time that Texas front lady Charlene Spiteri used to get someone to go out front and disinfect her mic before she would agree to sing at every gig. We would always be incredulous at the snobbery and pomposity of it all, but after last year, I think she was totally right! EDIT - by disinfect, I assume a wipe over with a anti bac wipe. Not good for the paint on the metal, but best for cleanliness you'll get without wrecking the mic, I reckon.

It always concerns me when I see basses for sale pictured with no strings on - makes me think they have been taken off because everything is so out of alignment when they are on.....

Funnily enough last night I stumbled across one of the Anthology episodes online last night. I was watching various clips of them playing live in the Beatles for Sale/Help era. I noted that whilst you could hear scuffed notes from George and the odd one from John, Paul's basslines sounded (to me) note perfect and in time even while he was singing some complex lyrics. That's the bit that amazes me - they always complain that they couldn't hear each other, but he still plays in time with Ringo. I know it may because a different track was dubbed on later, but it sounds different enough to think it is the live track each time. He was/is a quality player in my opinion and the main reason I got into playing bass.

I remember having a Barron Knights skit of Boney M's "Rivers of Babylon" on 7" single when I was a kid. I seem to remember the lyrics started off: There's a dentist in Birmingham He fixed my crown And as I slept He filled my mouth with iron......

I have the more budget NXT5. In my experience, you need to try one live and get someone to record it - I never find it sounds amazingly "double bass" when I stand next to it and play it, but when I listen back to a recording someone has done at the gig (usually on an iPhone at the back of the room), it sounds really alike. All IMHO of course.....

i haven't seen Flight Of The Conchords mentioned yet (apologies if I missed it).

I would check out 60s bands - I did sound engineering in the early 00's and it seemed to me that there were a lot of big name bands that were being toured with one guy who joined just after the lead guy had left and they'd their major hit(s). I seem to remember there being about 5 versions of the Drifters all touring as well!

I just wanted to say that before you totally discount the NS Design - I have an NXT5 and have gigged it many times. I find that even though the stand is a tripod, you can still rock it around and tip it on the feet without feeling it is going to collapse in half.. It is never going to be as mobile as a DB on a single pin, but you can still throw some shapes beside it without it just standing still. I love mine -I just wish I still had the gigs to play it.....