Happy Jack

PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock 'n' roll route? DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13- year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say? PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock 'n' roll singer? DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis. From the Bob Dylan 1966 Playboy interview

Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/377691255697549/?hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen&multi_permalinks=3078242042309110&__cft__[0]=AZWZqBK_jABeU95GSlaPRCNEZiLmXfsm8gcEunAPlRSrjZQ2EG5laysTjB71xDPw8QZavct0SBH7TxXJ_nVDwednssuam4i75Uxbrs-l_rbqKWWzzWDV4SwFwJIhozY4B41YgvHrEqTXVcmAzgbIht1FjKG8JFbtYyVWeiCDTaq-STGQmpl21smsKuCuNFRIWvCiAOA4BfdXZfwG8WyT7sGp&__tn__=-UC%2CP-R has one for sale at £700 this evening, in Pulborough. No idea if that's a good price.

So the estimate has come in. £600. So that's a Panama Moment, when I sit back in my chair and stare at the screen, and then I say "Far Canal".

Can't help but wonder what that 2-string sounds like with all four pole-pieces aligned with one string. Could you put one (or more) of the poles slightly out of phase with the others and have an on-board fuzz/distortion sound?

Rehearsal? Unless you're rehearsing at The Who style volume levels then it will be way more than capable of delivering what you need. At any real gig big/loud enough that you might run out of headroom you'll have PA support anyway. @Obrienp is spot on with his comment about hearing damage.

I've kept digging on this subject due to an issue with my old H4n Pro - the Mic capsule has for some months now been producing seriously lop-sided recording levels, as if panned Left by about 50%. The Input signal is perfectly balanced and no adjustment I can make to the Mic capsule (switch between 90/120, hard-pan the signal to the Right by 50%, etc.) seems to cure the problem. Unfortunately, the capsule itself is not removeable, so cannot be replaced. All this is First World problems, and I can 'fix' the sound by hard-panning Right in post (at the cost of losing rather more than half the level which must then, in turn, also be fixed), but it is clear that my trusty H4n Pro is no longer completely reliable. Given that it's done well over 300 gigs with me and my bands, that's a shame - I don't see this device as 'optional'. So I've taken a long hard look at the H4 Essential and decided that actually the only thing I really like is the Float 32 thingy. Pretty much everything else appears to be at best on a par with the H4n Pro and in many cases (pun intended) it's clearly a step towards "built down to a price". This would make sense if it was cheap, but they sell the damned things for £186 at Bax and that's the cheapest price I could find. 🙄 Meanwhile, the H4n Pro is clearly now seen as obsolescent, so GAK are selling them at a heavy discount, down from £205 to £149. This just became a complete no-brainer for me. A fully-featured, solidly-built H4n Pro for £149 or a reduced-feature piece of flimsy plastic for £186? And very probably an H4 Essential Pro in the works right now which will retail for £220-£260? I've just ordered another H4n Pro; I'll keep the old one as a spare and for use when all I need is a feed from the desk.

Tonight's venue (The Fiery Bird, Woking) with a full-on Pro sound system & engineer. He's using the Glyn Johns method PLUS a couple of close-mics on the toms. I'll see how it sounds when I check the recordings tomorrow.

Cheap condenser (designed for the kick) inside the kick, then two general purpose cheap condensers for the kit - one on a low mic-stand with the mic between the snare and the hi-hat, one on a normal mic stand above the toms and ride. I own some very nice condensers (and a couple of ribbons) but I prefer to use cheap mics for the kit, especially at live gigs. Unless you're re-recording Dark Side Of The Moon ain't no one ever going to hear the difference. Basically I use the Glyn Johns method. Not only does it work very well and can be set up in minutes at any venue, but it also attracts compliments from the inevitable know-alls in the audience. 🙄 I've seen bands close-mic the kit for a pub gig using all seven mics in the box; I have absolutely no idea why they think it worth the effort but it's their gig. The Glyn Johns method is also nicely unobtrusive. Here it is in action last Saturday:

Put the decimal point back and they'll be way cheaper. 😂

When quoting figures like .35% it's traditional to state them as 0.35%. There's a reason for that. 😂

All I can say to you is Sodor.

I don't think Mendes is planning to deal with Ringo's time playing with Johnny Storm & The Hurricanes or with Ringo's Allstarrs ... the films will be about The Beatles in their hey-day, as seen (in turn) by each of them.

Live, the multitrack levels are noticeably higher which inclines me to think that the Level sliders are involved somewhere along the line but - curiously - the stereo recording system remains at very low levels regardless. You can record using both systems simultaneously with no drama at all. There's clearly some basic stuff that I'm missing (or misunderstanding) but since none of it is life-or-death I've not yet invested a lot of time in exploring. At a typical gig I still use the same system I've used for years ... take a feed from the Headphones Out on the desk into my Zoom H4 and place the H4 where the mic capsules can pick up the drums clearly. If I haven't got the H4 with me for some reason then I take a stereo recording on the Ui-24 and marry it to room sounds from the various Q2 devices being used by @Silvia Bluejay for video recording - that yields a very similar result. We always have a DrumCam so there's always a decent soundfile available that's dominated by the drumkit. If I have reason to believe that I will need to either re-mix the sound or make up for an under-recorded source, then I use the multitrack recorder and process the whole thing in post. Gosh, doesn't it feel grown-up to be doing things "in post"? 🤣

That on its own makes this one of the most interesting adverts I've ever seen on Basschat. I had no idea combos such as yours existed. Sadly I am nowhere near Chepstow, but good luck with getting the right person.

Jaco only needed four ... 😉

We've struggled to get a handle on that so far. My research suggests that the recording level is set purely by the Gain on each strip, but that doesn't seem to be borne out in practice. It's easy enough to add make-up gain in the DAW (and of course you can't get rid of clipping if you've recorded at too high a level in the first place) but I'd prefer to have a stronger signal from the start. We've only been working with this sytem for six months so we're still learning.

Spent yesterday afternoon doing exactly that ... running some test recordings to check the new soop-dooper pickup against my existing Schaller 411 and using the Nadine condenser as a benchmark. Setting up "the recording session" took nearly five minutes from a standing start (i.e. with the closed mixer rack case on a shelf in the studio). With 24 channels available (two of them Hi-Z) it's a doddle to do this stuff and you end up with lowish-level but completely raw stems that can then be processed in a DAW in whatever fashion you choose.

The Soundcraft Ui-24 is probably overkill for your needs, but if the smaller versions of the same have the same multitrack recording features (you'll have to look that up) then from my point of view it's a complete no-brainer. As a stage PA it's way, way, WAY easier to operate than the Behringer XR18, and you can do multi-track recording in any environment in a matter of seconds so long as you have a suitably formatted memory stick. If you can get to Harrow (unlikely) then come and have a play.

Not a PITA, more a case of things moving on and changing in such a way that there seemed little point in adding the Tone Dexter to my signal chain. I'm in the middle of a major overhaul of my DB thinking right now. Last year I replaced my Zeller 3/4 (which returned to @Clarky) with a Zeller 4/4 (having been egged on by @Beedster), before Xmas I sold my EA Doubler head (ex @Beedster) to @pete.young, and last month I bought another KK BabyBass (from @PTB) while my go-to bass for most gigs remains the Kolstein Busetto (ex both @Clarky and @bassace). Basschat has a lot to answer for. The Kolstein is, essentially, fragile. It plays just beautifully but at every single gig it looks as if it's about to collapse. 😂 Part of my thinking with buying another BabyBass is that it would offer an instant short-term replacement for the Kolstein should disaster strike. In that scenario, I would revive the Tone Dexter to improve the tone of the BabyBass. Meanwhile, the BabyBass is just ideal for taking along to jam nights when I feel like playing a bit of country. If you fancy borrowing the Tone Dexter for a fiddle abaht, fiddle abaht, let me know.

Completely forgotten the first. Never heard of the second. 😂

Mozart - done once AFAIK and that was nearly 40 years ago. Beethoven - not sure there's been one in my lifetime. Bowie - probably two, maybe three, but one of those was a contemporary documentary anyway. The Beatles - more than I care to count, on every possible aspect of the band, their music, their history, their influence on contemporary culture, their money, their recording techniques, their choice of footwear, you name it. If you can't see the issue Douglas, I suspect you're not looking very closely.

As a massive, lifelong Beatles fan I cannot tell you quite how much I dread yet more necrophiliac equine flagellation. They were great. Their music is still great. I still listen to it. Now can we please move on?

I have no problem with paying a graphic designer to design the perfect logo, but had I done that with all the bands I have been involved with over the last 20 years I'd have shelled out a fortune (most of the musos I've played with were either stony-broke or incredibly tight-fisted 😂) and ended up owning a couple of dozen beautiful logos for bands that never got to play a gig. By the time a band is sufficiently well-established that you can see that it's worth having a decent logo designed and paid for, chances are that the temporary logo you used for the first dozen gigs has already become equally well-established. Just follow the line of least resistance.