Woodinblack

Gig last night, a wedding. I am not generally a great fan of weddings, but they do pay well and many of them have been great. Normally it is a pain to load in and out while they are doing speeches etc. This one we had a little flap at the back of the tent to load in, but luckily it was just me and the drummer so loading in wasn't too bad, the guitarist came later once we had everything in. Quietly got everything loaded through the various speeches. For some reason the X-Control wasn't working - I know it wasnt the X18 or the router as I had wireless, but swapping cables didn't work. In the end the singer found if he started it holding the ethernet cable up, it worked. Time for some new ethernet cables! They had changed their mind about the first dance song, and wanted something to dance with everyone with, but didn't have an opinion what, so we went for 'saw her standing there' as it is generally love based and we can't normally play it as the drummers dad always wants to sing it, and he is at all of our public gigs, it went down a storm. So everyone danced for 5 or 6 songs and then went out of the tent - it had been raining for a while and suddenly got nice. So it was largely an empty tent for most of the first half until obviously 2 songs before the half time, when everyone came back in and danced. we extended a few songs then had a break. Came back in and everyone had gone off again, half into the pub the marque was in the garden of and half outside, so we did half the set to one woman, who to be fair was enjoying it, and her other half came in later so there were two of them. Towards about half an hour before the end, a large group came in and started dancing and enjoying it and then inevitably everyone was in for the last 2 songs and after the landlord gave us a hard '1 more song' and we did that song, were all shouting for more songs. As usual. Then as we broke down, or trying to, a couple of the guys were trying to set up a silent disco, which involved lots of them standing in the way while we were trying to break down and making it really slow. It was ok but I am not a fan of weddings!

Well, I will do two, although the first one was last saturday, just hadn't got round to it. Last week was a local 'pub on a beauty spot' event - they play gigs on sunday afternoons through the summer, and they are well attended. They don't pay well, the landlord is tight and he knows that people really want that gig, they do, only certain bands are allowed in. The venue is a semi-permenant marque over a fixed shed/stage, its made at the start of the season and taken down at the end. Parking in general is a nightmare, but the band have access to an area at the back, getting to it is another issue due to the traffic trying to park, took 10 minutes to get past the car parks! This was the first of the summer gigs, so looking forward to it. Luckily got there before the guitarist so it was an easy setup, I took my BC12 speaker and a TC450 as I was a little concerned about the Evox8 not starting when we were at the last gig, and didn't want to be doing an ourdoor gig with everything through one Evox8, turned out nothing to worry about, it was fine. Busy as usual, sound was clear and good, crowd were good, although the bass (the rick) sounded lifeless. Midway through the third song realised that the compressor on the 450 was nearly flat out, which was the issue, dialed it out, all sounded good. First half went ok, but seemed a bit flat for some reason. At half time people were doing their usual complaints about the sound, although not usual, in that noone complained about the vocals, I took the mixer in during the week a few weeks back and spent some time eq'ing the vocalist from a multitrack and since then he has been gushing about how it sounds, and noone has complained. People complained the guitar was too quiet, I didn't think it was, they also complained the bass was too quiet, well, not having that, so that went up a bit. switched the Maruszczyk at half time (for no particular reason) and the second half the crowd were more into it and it went down a storm - the second half songs are more poppy than the first - also the new tracks 'A little less conversation', 'staceys mom' and 'all the small things' went down well. In the end we must have been going too fast or had too short a break as we started to get really close to the running out of 44 track setlist time! Later someone posted some grainy videos of us on facebook, the bass was pretty loud in the first half!

Is that from the fall at the gig the other day?

Think i will stick with my £35 Lekatos for a while yet! To be fair, I have now done 5 gigs and 5 practices with them and no issues at all.

Normally I go every few years, have decided to leave it for the next 4, for some reason!

Anyone feeling lucky?

Oh he was always a maple on black P bass guy, whenever he had time to jam in Covent Garden!

How do those saddles stay in that position? are they bolted to the bottom of the bridge?

Well, at the next bass bash you can try it on the 42" scale bass!

So I tried the speaker at home, couldn't get it to go wrong. I took it apart, and checked the switch and the socket, they were fine, very solid. I disconnected, tested and reconnected the power terminals, and they are also solid, so I put it all back together. Had a gig on saturday, also open air, but also one we put the whole drum kit through so just in case of issues, I brought my BC speaker and an amp to drive it instead of the bam, in case there is a drop out. And it was rock solid all day, so who knows what that was about, the sound was great.

Its certainly going a bit crazy when suddenly £2k for an indonesian instrument is being talked about like a bargain!

Surprising myself in that I haven't put my own Ric in this forum. So here is a picture of it, on the event of getting a new strap after my birthday (most of my basses have their own strap) I have just redone the nut, which was too high and fitted lighter strings, which meant I didn't have to adjust the neck as it has brought the action down. I probably do need to do the intonation, but this will be coming with me for a gig tomorrow. Am toying with the idea of putting a dual gang pot in place of the volume to give me a mix of the two pickups.

Yes, over time you get to realise that their standards aren't the ones of any community that you would want to be part of!

And they would ignore them too. This is where facebook gets their money, promoting scam sites.

Well, you are lucky they aren't too prolific but you still have quite a few albums to go back through!

Can connect the S3 to logic if you want

Thats good, hope it stays that way. https://mixmag.net/read/uk-lost-venue-every-two-weeks-2024-news

I loved doing you should be dancing, and it went down a storm as we segued into Does your mother know when it gets to the instrumental part, but can't do that anymore as our keyboard player left, and it sounds a bit empty with a bass and a guitar!

It is quite a striking loss, so I am sure you will see it eventually. we have no shortage of places to play at the moment (pub covers), but since I have joined my current main band, 6 venues in my local town (2 of which weren't pubs and did a variety of music) have closed for good, and 2 new ones have opened. This is quite a small town, so it is noticable.

I would have thought they would be the same? I have only had one dingwall and quite a lot of ibanezs but I didn't get that feel from my dingwall.

Yeh, I had this before with one singer and drummer, I felt annoyed afterwards I had accepted it rather than pointing out that it was actually more my band than theirs. However we watched them over the next few years go through successions of guitarists / female singers / bass players before they finally seemed to give up. It was clear the weak area was the singer, I guess even if you refuse to accept you are the weak link at some point you get fed up trying to find out why everyone else is wrong. I was annoyed at the start, but the time they split up I was quite dissapointed I wouldn't be able to keep up with their facebook posts introducing the new singer / guitarist, and the next post saying about that same person going off to explore other avenues. You dodged a bullet, find someone else, make a new group, but yes, get in touch with the singer. If they signed on for a cafe / wine bar vibe they are probably not going to be happy doing blues

Is the singer ok with that? Looks like you need to start another wine-bar vibe band with someone more reliable.

That is often the way!

Why would you be updating the apps you use on a gigging iPad? I have an iPad for iPadding, like the latest thing, and I have a cheap iPad air which runs the mixer / lyrics / Some soft synths (though not currently, it used to). It does exactly what it did the day I loaded that software, and will continue doing so until it fails or gets replaced with something else, gets smashed falling off a stand (which note it has done many times, the falling, not the smashing), or gets nicked.

For the same price the Luminute graviton will do that. And can talk to the MVave probably