Wilson_51_

I’m in Sandy myself so literally just down the road. Practice spaces I would echo what else has been said in this thread, I’ve used London Road studios in Baldock and Soundarc in Shefford for rehearsing for years. There is also a room at Bedford music centre that is available for practicing. Music scene is quite good in Stevenage for pub gigs. Hitchin has a really good metal scene centred around the Club 85 venue. They do Rhythms of the world in hitchin too which is a weekend town takeover festival. Baldock has Balstock as previously mentioned which is a similar affair to ROTW. And uses lots of pubs and places as venues up the high street. Bedford has quite a few pubs that will put live music on and Esquires is the big venue in the town and has a good scene for music.

Artwork was done using Inkscape, printed onto water slide decal paper. It’s a plain box, cleaned. Bit of lacquer on the box and the decal. Then when the decal is slid on lacquer applied over the top.

Yeah I’m running the dod into the megalith. The germanium mod on the dod makes a big difference to the sound. I don’t think I’d get what I want out of it if I didn’t have that mod.

Ha it is Druid but does look like David. yeah the covers are called dust covers but I find them handy as insulation from the pot back touching things.

Built a couple of pedals this past week. I usually use veroboard but bought a couple of pcbs this time instead. I only tend to build them if there difficult to buy or I’m going to modify them a lot. The smaller pedal is a dod 250 with switching between Ge or silicon diodes. I couldn’t find an original to buy/modify. So this was easier. The larger pedal is a megalith fuzz. I wanted a mk1 version but again couldn’t find one for sale.

Thanks fella! the megalith is absolutely bonkers. I think it’s the fuzz sound I’ve been looking for. Thanks for the suggestion on that one! Really works well with my current set up. im running the dod all the time as a always on dirty tone but have had to add back in some bass on the amp.

Bit of a change for me and built myself a couple of pedals. The smaller box is a dod 250 clone with ge diode switch option. The bigger box is a megalith clone. Both sound wonderful. The wah is a Wilson freaker mini wah.

As Fireman changed to Firefighter, can we call them Soundfighters? sounds about right to me. 😀

We had our first one back on Monday. Absolutley loved it, i was a little worried before hand, that for some reason the magic wouldn't be there but after the first song it felt great. I did manage to get a blood blister on my index finger seeing as it's the longest i've played in a long time plus i tend to dig in more when playing with others!

My personal experience with compressors is that i have never spent a lot of money on one. i tend to buy a relatively cheap one, it either doesn't do anything audibly that i like or it is too complex for me to get what i want out of it, so i sell it on. I understand the reasoning behind them but i find them to difficult to use.

Many years ago i let everyone at a gig use my amp as we were on last. When it was our turn to go on stage i found that the input jack had taken a hefty whack and was broken and kept cutting out if not in exactly the right place. from that moment on i have been a "you can use my cab but not my head' kinda guy, and most people are fine with that. My pet peeve is when people just expect to use your stuff (even just the cab) without even asking, if it hasnt already been talked about pre gig night. Whenever i'm not using my own cab i will always find out whose cab it is and ask them directly if they don't mind me using it.

I usually take two basses to gigs but it's mostly as there both in different tunings. one in C and one in C#, i could probably get away with one bass and retune it but it makes my life easier and takes a little amount of stress out of the situation for me. Also means if things do fail i have a backup. I've only had one time at a gig where a bass failed and it was an active which stopped working (battery) when we only had time to line check. I was sure it was a new battery and didnt have a quick release to change it. Ended up quickly changing it, losing screws in the process and being annoyed for the rest of the gig.

If i quit my band and decided to not gig again, i would be inclined to have/keep at least 2 basses. It depends on what you will be doing at home, i tend to gravitate towards playing along with tracks of bands i like. A lot of them downtune but some don't so my preference is to have a standard tuning and one which can live in a lower tuning.

However for certain genres and bands a clean mix is not what is wanted and sometimes it is obvious that a sound man has a sound he wants (which isn't venue dependent) rather than what would fit the band.

I've always been throughly confused by this and i guess some of this will be down to genres of players. I use my SVT for that lovely tubey power amp goodness in a stoner band. The use of a few pedals (fuzz and wah) I get to a gig "please plug in to the supplied DI pedal" it now sounds sterile to my ears when i walk out front. The ideal scenario that ive had before is running both a DI and mic. this then being blended. It sometimes depends on the sound guy, they are not all created equal, some can work wonders with a DI, others struggle to do anything with it but i guess it would be the same if they were given a mic'd signal to work with.

as Kiogon says its almost impossible to diagnose. It sounds like it could be a loose connection of some sort if you say tapping it can make it work. i would be looking for loose wires or bad solder joints first off. maybe look at whether it shorts on the enclosure. go back to basics and omit the footswitch if you think that is the issue. a couple of pictures might help people diagnose an obvious fault but to be honest it is very hard without looking at it.

Looks great! My guess is your output is shorting on the copper tape. Take the control plate off and plug it in again . If it works it’s the shielding touching

I bought one a year or two ago and it turned into my main bass quite quickly. Wonderful tone and I also ended up not using the bridge pickup on it but it’s nice that it’s there.

I just moved across to Amplitube 5 too. So far I've found the differences with layout which are an improvement and everything has moved over from 4 OK for me. I'm happy with it for what i use it for and on mac it wasn't at all difficult to install.

May 1998 according to the ampeg website: TCL is the model (SVT-CL) W is worldwide K is the year starting from A being 1988 5 is the month so May and the last numbers are the serial number https://ampeg.com/support/files/Knowledge Base/Ampeg_Knowledgebase_Dating Ampeg.pdf

For my band (Stoner rock: Black Atlas) : Fingers Kallium Strings (Hybrid .124, .082, .061, 0.45) tuned to either D Standard or more frequently Drop C G&L SB2 or Franken Precision with G&L MFD pickup fitted Van Damme Leads Polytune 3 > Wilson Effects Mini Freaker Wah > Barefaced Machinist > Boss BF-2 Ampeg SVT-CL Barefaced Two 10

Go for it... live - Fu Manchu is my favourite

I’d start with the patient and the grudge. There the two I first learnt. If you can/like to use tabs tooltabs is a great resource.

Big doom/stoner fan here! I was pretty upset that desertfest had to be cancelled again this year. My band Black Atlas first album was stoner, the second album were writing has a bit more doom on it. https://blackatlasuk.bandcamp.com

In my old house I had a plug in WiFi extender. I found whenever I used my amp it was quite noisy unless I unplugged the extender plug. So if you have one of those see if it’s making noise.