PinkMohawk

The little black buttons that surround the switch. I really don't like it as an interface, but I also have size 13 feet and only wear Doc Martens, so, I may be a little biased there.

For just the basics I'd do a cheap Zoom multi, I have the B1 Four X on a little board with a Joyo Sansamp clone, that covers me for quick and dirty covers and rock stuff. My main board has a Stomp XL, which in future I'm planning to swap to an Anagram when I've got the money. As for how you manage big, complex boards live, it's usually a MIDI controller. More and more pedals have some form of MIDI control nowadays, which allows a user to program a foot controller to switch pedals on and off, change presets, etc. all with one footswitch. Prior to my current board, I was running a Source Audio Aftershock and a Line 6 M5 as well, along with some other non-MIDI pedals (Pitchfork and a couple of others). I used a loop switcher that was MIDI enabled to control it all, switching sounds with a single press of a switch when I needed to. Great live, but the caveat is that you need to spend quite a bit of time setting up your sounds beforehand.

The low end stuff, sure, it's all basically equivalent at that kind of price range.

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone knows how I'd go about modding a DD-3 to take an expression pedal to control the delay time? Looking at the schematic, I think I've got a loose idea how to do it, but if anyone has any actual experience, that'd be preferable to me taking a blind stab at it and screwing the pedal up.

Every time I've messed with the mod shop configurator, I just find out how ridiculously limited it is. I get that it's just them bolting together whatever spare parts they've got kicking around the warehouse and probably charging you extra for the privilege, but the least they could do would be to add a few special options, no?

Ohh those lipsticks look sharp, I like that a lot. Personally, I'd be looking at a two piece bridge, LP shapes with typical bass bridges always look off to me. I recently picked up an LTD bass that uses a two piece design, just feels right on this shape.

Yeah, think the only tool I've ever trusted that came with a bass was the metal stick you sometimes get when you've got a truss rod with a wheel adjustment. Anything else, I use known, high quality tools from my days on job sites. Wera makes up most of my travelling tool kit, though Music Nomad make a tidy little kit, though it's a little pricier than most might be willing to spend for a small kit. Handy in a pinch though.

Something like that Behringer is probably the best move. Regular mixers tend to only have a single headphone output, intended for whoever's operating the board to be able to solo channels. One caveat to keep in mind though, it looks to me like you can only have one pair of headphones listening to one of the inputs at a time. In your case, this is fine, since your wife would come in on the L of Input A, and you'd be on the R on Input A, so you can both hear each other no problem. If you have any thoughts of inviting other people over and using this though, or even playing along to backing tracks, you'll be out of luck. You could very easily pick up a cheap little analogue mixer though, take the two outputs into the headphone amps inputs and then you'd be able to add more people/tracks easily.

I find it with a lot of companies, screws and other fixing hardware are an easy place to cheap out and save a few pennies for them. Odds are good you'll have some kind of fixing hardware specialist in your general vicinity, as I do, so in the event that I'm buying some hardware that needs screws, I'll go to them and see what the closest they've got is. A small expense for significantly better screws.

I 100% agree. I'll even offer up an alternative perspective. Currently, I'm doing the Sound, Light and Live Event Engineering course at Derby Uni. One of my lecturers is a guy named Jon Burton. You might not know this name, but odds are good you've heard his work, he's spent the last few decades as The Prodigy's touring sound engineer. He's also engineer for Biffy Clyro, and a number of other acts I won't bother naming because I haven't got the time. Last year, we as a class went to have a look at the Biffy Clyro shows in London, where they were playing their first few albums in full, a different album each night. During his explanation of what was going on, the guitar tech started checking the guitar rig, and you would not believe the amount of volume coming out of the cabs. Simon Neil runs three separate rigs, and when he wants to add more intensity, he doesn't swap to another amp and cab, he simply adds them to what he was already playing through. Naturally, we all wanted to know "Why are you using amps when you could just use modellers and have a quiet stage?". He told us they'd tried it, and they hated it, but they persisted for a while because they thought that they had to. Until he came in and said "Well, if you hate it, just use your amps, we'll figure it out at the desk." Anyway, moral of the story is, the right engineer can work with you to make sure that you're comfortable on stage, and that you're sounding your best, even if you want to drag your big rig with you everywhere you go. He intentionally sacrificed a little vocal clarity to make sure that the performers were as comfortable on stage as possible, because he knew that it'd make the actual performance that much better.

I do think there's a visual loss with the move to modellers over traditional amps. Unless a lot of time and thought has gone into a stage design, to the point that having your amps and cabs on the stage would actually take away from the overall look of things. But, on the other hand, as Red says, it's now also a lot more possible to get to gigs in smaller vehicles, less vehicles, etc. which is a big money saver for a lot of people. Perhaps the middle ground is venues buying cheap empty cabs to fill the back wall of the stage with?

That's got to be the most phallic headstock I've ever seen that wasn't just a cock.

Some of you may remember Verellen Amplifiers, the guy who made the Meatsmoke, and other such good and tasty valve amps. Well, seems like he's not been idle since shuttering Verellen Amps and has formed Verellen Devices, which just popped up on my Instagram feed with this post: Given his past work, I'm inclined to think this might actually be quite an interesting item, at least for those of us who are still running valve heads and feeling the sting of the constantly shrinking availability of said valves.

Yeah, assuming he doesn't throw a tantrum and press the big red button because he didn't get his way. You're right, hopefully the US market will really pick up on these, frankly any of these new releases and not just the bass amp, will show them that this is the right move to make, and keep them going.

You know, that's a good thought actually. We all know how bulletproof the old Peavey gear is. Yeah, you're sadly right, I spoke to the guy who came up with the idea of reissuing it, according to him it took a good year to get some movement on the project, and even then it took another engineer picking up the project and working on it before it got OK'd. I imagine the pedals were an easier sell, but hell, even the Decade reissue, that video of Josh Homme bringing it out as the secret weapon was a couple years back wasn't it? If it took them that long to bring out a guaranteed money maker like that, it doesn't fill me with hope. Likewise, I'll not be sending my money across the pond, no matter how much I might want to (Damn I want one so bad) but sometimes, you just have to stick to your principles.

Old Peavey gear was something really special, I've got a lot of love and time for the old gear, from the aesthetic to the sound. Them moving away from those old designs was disappointing, though I suppose that, in the US at least, they were so ubiquitous that everyone was just tired of them. I do hope that this is the beginning of a move towards that older school of design that made them a staple though, with a modern twist since they do need to cater for the modern audience. After all, there's only so many doom players willing to drag walls of amps to gigs anymore.

For anyone wondering where to get the kind of battery box that has the integrated contacts, I believe you'd be looking for the Gotoh BB-02 for a press fit box, BB-04 for a screw in box, and the BB-04W for the 18v (2x9v) box. Other manufacturers may make their own, but that's the one that came to mind.

Your drum tech mate should stick to tub thumping. Slapping an extra bit of wood to the front of your bass isn't doing anything for the tone one way or the other. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that any tonal difference due to wood selection is minimal anyway, but that's another can of worms. Either way, taping a bit of extra wood to the front isn't going to make your tone suddenly crap.

NS-2 was my gate of choice, and I ran a lot of gain. The separate input for your instrument, while keeping the gain pedals in the loop is a game changer.

Looking better on the leg than it does isolated in photos, though I couldn't see the whole body at once due to the vertical phone screen editing for Shorts like that. Definitely sounds good though.

Hahaha yeah, I ran one of the old 2x15's for quite a while. I got so sick of the crap wheels they'd included on it that I went and bought some big and smooth ones from Blue Aran. Good lord it was so much more pleasant to move around after that. And just in case anyone is wondering, the ideal wheel replacement for an Ampeg 8x10 is using skateboard trucks, not wheels. Makes a great place to grab hold of when you're humping it up stairs too.

To be fair, impractical cabs is a very Peavey thing to do. The 3620 was a Peavey creation after all.

Likewise, I realise it's not the same, not really, but that classic style and design language is something special. I've spoken with the guy who made the push for this to happen, he thinks of it as something like his baby, getting this made. With any luck, we'll see some real numbers move for Peavey with these throwback releases and they'll start making a move back to the classics. I've still got a pair of old Century Bass heads in storage that need repairs, but I loved those amps when I had them working.

I enjoyed my Bass Terror while I had it, though that was a while ago, and I was always a "All the gain, all the time" kind of guy, so I never really messed with looking for that sweet spot, but I've no problem believing it, it had a great distortion, especially when I hit the front end with a DS-1, I think that's what I was using at the time.

Something pretty niche, but special for those of us who still love the old Peavey era. The old Super Festival has been reissued, as well as a 6x10 with the classic style. Remains to be seen just how accurate to the original it is, but given that I know there are at least a couple of amp worshippers on the staff there, I have high hopes about it.