Woodinblack

`On the saturday night we had a gig in a local working mens club, we have played it many times.. Got a new rickenbacker on the friday, so it had to come, so going from the bass -> Mod Dwarf (svt model) -> X18 -> 2 x Evox 8. First setting it up for some reason it wasn't right, the microphones weren't at the right level, the sax was down and nothing was clear, 5 minutes before gig start it wasn't good, so I leveled all the microphones and started again, and then it was show time. All worked well, great gig and we were told it was the best bass sound they had heard in the club, not booming and filling the whole space. I am not sure how true that was but it was certainly the best bass sound that we had had, so I will take that!

For a short while after brexit and before Thomman harmonised their tax collecing, they were on sale for 1350 euros - was keen then but they ran out and they have never had any back. Even with the taxes that would have been good.

I also fell in love with it at (presumably the same) London Bass Show and I also couldn't dream of affording it, but luckily the following year when had done a lot of gigs and my gigging drawer was actually fairly full I looked on Shukers website and there it was, £1k cheaper than the london show, and although still not cheap, I managed to justify it to myself. It is still a thing of beauty, it plays very well and sounds good. And it still looks impossibly slender with that long front horn!

The behringer circuitboard hasn't got that many componants on it, and is very easy to see what is there (seeing as you have to get the circuit board out to change the batteries). The Aliexpress harder as you have to take it apart - I am betting they are identical - there are like £5 of componants there at one off cost, I would think it would be pennies at production cost.

Indeed - I had never seen that before, but yes, that is what the behringer is, right down to the exposed clip

I am not a fan of the sire, but I actually do like the G&L

I am sure it is easy enough if you have practiced it, but to be honest, I doubt I have ever listened to it all the way through and frankly we can mess up songs we have practiced so it wouldn't be an option. I just love the way random members of the public always say 'can you play this, its really easy', and they are always people who don't play anything and almost never can remember all the words anyway.

Indeed - and I have had so many good comments about both the sound and people (like random crowd people) about it, it is quite an eye opener.

I guess these ones.

And in a strange twist of fate, I only have 5-string Rics

Another gig tonight, this one local pub 4:30-6:30, really short gig for us, and really well paying. Easy setup (if tricky parking), noone started a fight, so all good. It was a good first half, second half was a bit weird, the guitarist complained to the drummer about always playing so fast, so we did a couple of songs really slow and it was actually pretty hard to do them at that speed. Think the drummer wasn't in the best of moods as the drum lights weren't working. and we were probably still knackered from yesterday Sound was good until half way through the second half when there was an edge of feedback. it was my mic which had somehow got much louder and had a resonant peak in it - no idea what happened, but turned it down and it was fine. My stand was near the PA, maybe something connected. Oh after the request last night of chesney hawkes, another woman came up to us with a request, I said, we can only do requests if it is on our list, expecting something equally as odd, but it was sex on fire so we did that one

The stereo is if you are being fed a stereo signal from an XLR rather than the more normal mono. I don't know if it actually reads stereo from a TRS - haven't tried it. The chapman stick sends stereo down an XLR so it is handy for me The behringer can do the same, but its mono / stereo switch is on the circuit board on a tiny switch that most people dont' notice. The casing is steel and seems like you would have to go out of your way to damage it.

The link I have doesn't go anywhere now, but this is the same thing https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007849338535.html The clip on my P2 is very bent, I dont' know how, as the drummer used it most, it does tend to snag on stuff, the clip on the fake p2 is the same style but doesn't stick out as far, and it has a thumbscrew that tightens it up, which is good. It is good that they took the P2, which is fundamentally pretty good, and made it better - I am not worried about the mono / stereo, never used that but not having to take the case off to replace the batteries (which I did every other gig anyway, with rechargables, is a good idea

`As long as you were facing away from that wallpaper it was probably good!

I didn't find it that hard and as a standalone thing it seems good, its just a pain dealing with the software, but I didn't have to install or anything

More a tribute than a clone - it isn't pretending to be a behringer, but it is sort of a copy. However, not only was it cheap, the volume knob is better and on the clip on the back, you can undo a bolt and put batteries in a holder, rather than sliding the tube out. Also the button which opens the sleve on the behringer is actually a stereo / mono push button. Well, amazon is a proper store, designed to funnel all the money out of the country and peoples livelihoods in the uk and into Jeff Bezos private space fund, whereas aliexpress is a bizzar of cheap cloned tat funneling money out of the country to a whole group of people. Neither is perfect, clearly, but I know what i am buying on aliexpress.

Our drummer ordered one too, because he was using mine - but at the same time I ordered one of the aliexpress copies. So now he doesn't borrow mine I have mine free, and the aliexpress one (which I must say is very good and also £17 inc), but they are handy when I need one!

I was also sporting Solovair 8 holes but mine were greasy leather size 8½ and they broke in some time ago

Yeh, I was happy that ours waited until we finished!

Well, that was a more interesting gig than last week. Despite having my new Ric for less than 24 hours, I decided to gig it, easier to find out what something is like when you gig it, and I am glad I did. It was a gig at a local working mens club, good layout, played many times before. However this time it was harder to load in as there was a 18th birthday party in the back room. We set up fast and for some reason, when we were done I was looking round as it was quicker and the stage was tidier - we had so much more space than usual. but it was all connected. Couldn't get the sound right to start with but I leveled everything off, turned it up and adjusted and got it pretty perfect. Did the first half of the set and really enjoyed it, people were good, the stage sound was good, the ric was great, and everything just seemed to go well. At half time people were coming up saying it sounded great and asking about the bass (which is unusual, noone ever really notices). Also had comments that it was good without the keyboards, which is handy, it is the first giig we did there since our keyboard player left. And well, one woman was insistant we should play 'one and only' by chesney hawkes, and we should do it because it was easy and everyone knows it. Second half all went well, played a bit long stopped before 12, everything went very well. Finished, everyone seemed good, the owner of the club came up saying it was the best bass sound they had had in the club, and how did I get it (bass -> Mod dwarf -> PA) and was impressed with the ric as well (he played in a band). We started packing up, the drummer went to get his stuff and said 'I would leave it a minute, there is a guy in the party that was getting pretty lairy'.. shortly afterwards a guy who was clearly the Lair came out, went up to the woman who seemed to be organising the party and started yelling and trying to strangle her, then a few people dived in and people went flying and it all kicked off. We carried on packing stuff. So then the fight moved to the back room then outside, so after we deemed it safe we went and got the cars and loaded up, just in time for the police car and meat waggon to turn up. So that was all fun. Felt sorry for the 18 year old girl whos party it was, she seemed way younger than 18, really friendly and having a great time with everone unlike most of her too cool friends. At the end of the evening she was in tears being consoled by people - but you know, a few days in perspective, and she had a birthday that was both fun and had an ending she won't forget - who wants a forgettable party?

As seems to be the trend here, I bought a rickenbacker from John, good communications, fast packaging, all went well, thanks!

I had that, and it was annoying me a bit after I connected to the pedal, so I went to the tonex website, logged into that with my ikmultimedia account and then went back to the tonex software and I had everything there. Whatever you think of it seems that IKMultimedia will have though of a way of messing it up before you get there!

I am guessing if you have the feedback it has defaulted to using the microphone or something? I haven't tried to put sounds in yet, there is so much going on, I am hoping to get to it later, but I don't think I will be gigging it just yet So you go into the dwarf and then the output of the dwarf goes to the tonex? That sounds like a good plan, currently I am back to gigging witth he dwarf but I find its switching quite slow (between patches), if the dwarf was doing effects (and keyboards) and the tonex was just doing the amp, that would be good.

Well, see what you mean by the software. Took about 7 attempts to download it last night, where I kept pausing and restarting it and it would just stop, if there was a straight download it would have downloaded in no time. Read the quick start guide - I guess it was a long night as it made no sense, I will give it a try today!