Jo.gwillim

Yep, in the back of my mind I'm thinking have all the eq I'll ever need on the bass then i can use any old amp/cab or go  straight into the FOH mixer or both. Never works out as well as i imagine!

31 minutes ago, Gasman said:

They say that southern England is a very heavily populated place, but judging by the view from the field in the backside of beyond where we played last night I had to doubt the truth of that! Our band Mustang Sally was a last-minute sub for another that'd pulled out of a farmers 'working weekend' gig at Ebbsborne Wake, in North Dorset. Not heard of it? Well, I'll share a secret - it's not far from Sixpenny Handley... close by Fourpenny F**k. The event wasn't widely publicised, and was mainly intended for agricultural folk to try out their new and vintage tractors on a vast acreage of stubble (no, not my beard...) The hospitality tent and band seemed like a bit of an afterthought, while the two Portaloos stood like forgotten sentinels 80 yards away, a lonely walk of shame in full public view for those taken short and not prepared to pee in a bush somewhere...

 

We could only muster four of our possible six musicians due to the short notice so we set up with just drums, keys/vox, singer/acoustic guitar and me on bass doubling sax. The tent was mostly empty til the last 15 minutes (how unusual) while the punters sat outside and stuffed down hog roast and cider whilst watching a big orange moon rise over the distant horizon. There was absolutely no sign of any other human habitation from where we were set up, on top of a hill - total darkness. It was two hours bl**dy hard work. Still, we had as much fun as we could with our clothes on and it was my best-paid gig since last NYE, so no complaints on that front.

 

Talking of fun and lack of clothes, I got home at 12:30 am to find Mrs G still up and doing a jigsaw wearing nothing but her undies, sitting at a table in the front room window (it was a very humid evening). "What would you like?" she enquired sweetly as I staggered in. "Is there anything special you might fancy?"

 

"Oh yes please!" I replied eagerly. "A mug of Earl Grey tea and a couple of digestive bicklies would be absolutely perfectl!"

 

 

A night to remember, lovely images, especially your missus giving you bicklies!

I've fitted an East preamp to a jazz, it's too versatile for me, i end up fiddling about rather than playing. That's not too say it's not good i think it is, i just spend too long tinkering, especially with the mid and mid frequency. I can't easily see where the knobs are set, I'm better off leaving all the tweaks on the amp. Good piece of kit, but bad for a constant tweaker!

Played at the big tribute festy on Saturday. We were on first in the afternoon, but there was a good appreciative crowd. Still kicking myself misreading the set list and launching into the wrong song on the second number. Should have been playing on Bb instead of F# so really didn't fit

Quite agree, i was using the DI amp output so a nice line level. 

1 hour ago, fretmeister said:

 

How do you get Reaper to do that?

 

All I do is record with it!

it's not too hard though there's probably freebie software out there that will do exactly the same thing.
Set up 2 reaper tracks. track 1 has the white noise FX, output that on the master bus. track 2 has a slightly modified JS: Frequency Spectrum Analyser  FX. the while noise output goes into your amp input jack  and the DI output goes to the track 2 input. That pretty much works out of the box. You can change the amp EQ and see what happens. the only problem is the Freq spec analyser FX graph is rather noisy and I had to edit the FX to give a longer integration time to make it more useable. It currently goes to 10,000ms and I had to increase that to 50,000.  I have quite a few amps kicking around at the moment and it's been fascinating to see  the (far from) "flat" response of the amps before the EQ is applied. I'll write it all up in a day or two and post with the modded FX.

I bought one a while ago but it's sat on the shelf and never been gigged. It sounded great at home but it has too many options for me to get confused with for live. Not a fault of the amp, more a fault with me. I'm gonna dig it out today as i spent yesterday figuring out how to get Reaper to give amp frequency response plots, so I'm interested to see what they look like. I suspect it'll be up for sale here in a wee while.

3 hours ago, Old Horse Murphy said:

The Fender Mike (Wayne) Kerr is the new one. The Sandberg is currently all stock but I think I'll change the pickup too and am (at the moment) swaying towards the EMG Geezer Butler one but have had Fralins before so would be interested in your views. Did you just replace the pickup or the loom too? 

My Sandberg is an active VM. The humbucker is not very useful tbh, i don't even blend it with the p very much. I wasn't sure whether it was the pickup or preamp i didn't like, so just changed the pickup as a first port of call. Turns out the the preamp wasn't the problem. It always seemed to me the the Sandberg pickup had good lows and good highs but the bit in between seemed dead. The fralins are much better balanced throughout the range and make the on board EQ a lot more useful. I can't say they work too well with the humbucker but that's not a worry for me. I might take it out and save a bit of weight. I'm not very experienced with other pickups, i bought a bass with fralins in and changed them for norstrands which are great, but wish i hadn't so I'm glad to have the fralins back in use again. Happy experimenting!

56 minutes ago, Old Horse Murphy said:

We have the same issue with our singer unfortunately. She's a phenomenal singer and we've won many a gig because on her voice, but her "banter" is almost non-existent and if the gig is quiet in terms of audience feedback she clams up entirely. 
 

We've got a double-header this weekend: tonight at a campsite/caravan park bar which is usually very lively (think Mos Eisley with gore tex) and an afternoon slot at a popular pub. It's likely to be a quiet one though with the football and the local County Show on too, but I'm sure we'll make the most of it and I am planning on using my new toy for at least half the set. 
 

 

 

Which is the new one? I've just this minute put fralin p's on my Sandberg, can't believe how much more i like it..... Until i change my mind if course! Hope you find a bright spark in the crowd, only takes one or two to make the world of difference.

Totally wonderful, they say i smile from ear to ear!

22 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

Sounds like the times we've played beer festivals - far and away the main focus of the attendees is beer, we're background music to most.  Some people stuck around and listened, but most were just going about their beery business.  That's OK, we knew it would be that way.

Yep it doesn't worry me i can just enjoy playing with my mates but our singer is the one that banters with the audience and makes the connection and she can get despondent. 

10 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

I have had very little issues in the last few years of using the U4, inteferance wise, but most of my other wireless is 5GHz

Yes I'm sure that makes a difference. I'm not sure that digital mixers (behringer and soundcraft both cut out) can be switched to 5Ghz to keep them clear of the u4, but it's worth a look, thx for the suggestion.

54 minutes ago, lurksalot said:

I had a cousin who died of leukemia , he chose that as well , and voodoo chile to leave the church with 😁

That's nice to hear thank you. Was your cousin punning on the slight return?

1 minute ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

We’re getting on with it okay. It takes a while to find the optimum channel work out how to use it around other devices, but we’re getting there. For example, we recently discovered that the singers wireless mic receiver should be kept at least 3m away from other wireless devices. This is one of the reasons we now run the Xvive transmitter from the passive splitter than sits next to the bass drum in the middle of the stage away from another wireless devices. We also found out that channels 1-4 clash with the Xvive U2 guitar wireless, so 5 and 6 are the better channels to use.

 

We still get the odd drop out in certain environments but I guess that’s unavoidable in certain environments. We’re trying to remember to put out phones and other devices in airplane mode that might help.

Thanks Greg, i shall digest what you've said. I think there's some nuggets of usefulness there. Many thanks 

Just now, Jo.gwillim said:

How are you getting on with the xvive? We find they either interfere with wifi based mixers or we get poor reception in about half the venues? Give over to wired p2 more now

Sorry going but give!

11 minutes ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

As a band, we've recently dipped out toes into IEM. We're all generally happy with the same mix, but have a mix of wired (P2) and wireless (Xivive U4 packs. Our solution is a simple passive xlr splitter. Packing one of those for our gig could have been a useful solution to your monitoring issue.

How are you getting on with the xvive? We find they either interfere with wifi based mixers or we get poor reception in about half the venues? Give over to wired p2 more now

My daughter knew she was dying and specified what she wanted. Bless her she asked for bob Marley's 3 little birds. In our grief the "don't worry about a thing cos every little things going to be alright" was a lovely message to us all.

Great gig at the bank vaults Aberystwyth last night. We're a 5 piece band and the stage is very small so i was overspilling into the main path to the toilets. It sounds rough but it's a lovely little bar where the punters go for the music and really listen. we had a great time. Our regular drummer couldn't make it but the stand in did great after just 2 rehearsals and kept us all on our toes with his radically different approach to each song. 

That wooly e string annoys me all the time. I play p basses. I've just gotten used to moving my right hand much closer to the bridge if it sounds muddy 

I'd go along with the last post. Our covers band i think it's tight and well rehearsed and there's a lot of banter with each other and the audience. We go down well and get repeat bookings. The only thing we don't do is play stuff that's well known as covers band material or play stuff we don't like. I think if we weren't tight and fun it wouldn't work, but we are and it does!

Two thoughts

Have you tried plugging the guitar into the bass amp and vice versa, that should tell you whether it's the guitar or amp.

Second thought if it is a single coil guitar pickup if there's more than one switching them both on with a selector switch/blend knob could create a sort of humbucker. My jazz was picking up horrendous buzz from the stage lightning until i turned both pickups up.

Sorry if these points have been covered already haven't read the entire thread.

Never more than one pint until the last song is over. If i make a mistake, and there are many, i laugh at myself rather than frown. Looks better and i get over it faster. I always take a backup bass cables and amp. Hardly ever need them but you never know!

Just bought some strings from Paolo, arrived next day, great comms and great deal, many thanks!

Pm coming

Just bought a lovely cable and set of flats. Thanks for the super fast helpful purchase Etienne. 

Best wishes