T-Bay

Quick update, I thought I had sorted it but turns out it was cow poop again. I have opened a PayPal dispute now. I will never use them again and judging by their Facebook page, and the new scammed by Bax Facebook page, I am not alone sadly.

What is this mythical Hermes customer service you speak of? They are impossible to contact, I have searched everywhere for a number to contact a human being and it always ended up with the same bot chat crap with no suitable options. Reading around they are notoriously impossible to contact. If you have a number that works you could make a lot of people very happy! However in this case it turned out that it wasn’t actually Hermes to blame (although their appalling tracking system and contact issues above added to the hassle). It looks like the issue has been finally sorted but according to my phone I have spent just under 4 hours on to them, I waited in a day for a non existent delivery, my Father in law did the same, someone will have to wait for the replacement. So far from a decent service, I could be wrong but I wonder if my stating that I would seek recompense in the small claims court could have been the reason that my last email was answered whereas the others weren’t. It’s sad as they have some great stuff you can’t find elsewhere but it’s just not worth the hassle.

Sounds like I have been lucky so far then! To be fair, I have never had an issue before but getting anything sorted is a bloody nightmare. I won’t be using them again.

I have used Bax many times without issues but had a bloody nightmare on two recent orders. The latest one of which may well end up at the small claims court. Takes an age to speak to anyone, when you do they are incredibly helpful. Or so it seems, but then nothing happens. You ring again (another 30 mins plus waiting time) and again someone very helpful tells you all is well, and again nothing happens. Repeat for two weeks so far.

Sounds like some real chancer, how loud are most gigs? I was at The offspring on Wednesday and the guy next to me was messing with a db meter on his phone that was showing 115-125 db through the set. I had my passive earplugs in for some of the set but not all and was fine. I have ever been in a pub gig that has come anywhere close to that (or many many other gigs at medium- large venues). I would imagine you would get loads of complaints before you came close to that level.

Should be back with me Monday, so a week from when I sent it with at least 5 of those days in transit, and I only had to pay for parts on an amp I have had about 10 years. Needless to say that my next amp will also be an Ashdown.

In case anyone was interested the cause was the breakdown of insulation in the transformer causing a short which then cooked it. It now has a nice Polish made version which has a lifetime warranty. They also replaced a few pots and it has a new valve. All done for cost of parts only. A lot of companies could learn from their customer service.

So I sent it off to Dave at Ashdown. Their service was beyond superb. I cannot rate them highly enough. I would recommend them to anyone without the tiniest hesitation.

The Hives and The Offspring this Wednesday, I will be knackered for the rest of the week.

Thanks guys, I will send them a message. Luckily I only use it as a practice amp so not desperate to get it fixed super quick.

My Ashdown head has died this evening. It was sounding as though I had a distortion pedal on lowish, then went full on hiss for a few seconds before it died completely. There was a smell of electrical’hotness’ if that makes sense. I whipped it out the case and the main transformer was too hot to touch. All boards and the valve looked ok. One fuse has blown, all others ok. No obvious signs anywhere of any issues, no burning, no fat capacitors etc. So what are the possible causes of the transformer trying to cook itself?

Holy thread revival! Just had a Fazley acoustic delivered today. £55 delivered (down from an alleged £153). I bought it to take to work to have a quick play in my lunch break so wanted something cheap and cheerful. I am gobsmacked at the quality for the money, it is finished way beyond what I could expect at this price point and has a very nice deep tone. The strings that came with it were meh as you would expect, the fret wire isn’t the best if I am being really picky but the intonation is spot on. Even the action height was ok out of the box. It’s no Martin but at not much more than the cost of an expensive set of bass strings it’s a real bargain.

There are some songs I would walk away from a band rather than play (Mustang Sally, shotgun to name but two) but what I enjoy playing doesn’t match what I like listening to necessarily. There is some overlap, the Pearl Jam songs we play I love, but most stuff is ok at best and some I would never listen to but love playing live. I would rather play stuff that is ok and the crowd love than stuff I love but the audience have never heard.

Not humiliating for you, just wrong venue. Sad when it happens but one of those. I help a mate run an open mic at a social club and it’s ridiculous, the main crowd sit as far away as possible and grumble all night but it brings in 40 or 50 people wanting to play/ listen so makes decent money on the bar. It always feels slightly awkward.

Just had The Last Internationale cancel this months Brum gig so it will be The offspring and Hives in November now. I am getting withdrawal symptoms.

You can look for obvious things such as burnt components or swelling/ leaking capacitors, but unless you are happy to test and replace them it’s best to go to a tech anyway. If the signal is ok then it’s on the SS side as the Terror’s don’t use valves on the output/ power amp side (at least my 1000w one doesn’t and 99.9% sure the 500s are the same).

If you want to see the effect of rapid changes in temperature, put a scrap neck in a hot car for an hour and take a look. Our lead guitarist did it with his main guitar a couple of years back and it was frightening how much it moved in such a short time. It took a couple of weeks and a good tweaks for it to settle but is ok now thankfully. Changes in weather won’t cause such rapid changes but I bet they are quick enough to have significant effect.

There was a taxi driver in Derby that filled baths in his cellar with diesel and ended up with of ‘issues’. But thankfully such stupidity is rare even in this land of knuckle draggers.

At least with fuel it’s hard to hoard, I bet some of the morons who hoarded loo roll are still working through them now.

I have no idea how they are so unknown, the response I usually get if I mention them is ‘who?’. Bloody awesome band.

Filter - short bus, amazing album

Not a gig as such but helped out a mate at his open mic last night. Ended up playing about an hour or so, I have missed this so much!