T-Bay

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!

Harmonica and saxophones for me. I have dabbled with acoustic and electric guitars and have a drum kit at work but 90% of kit is bass stuff.

Sharpie pens are a nightmare. Methylated spirits shift it, as does acetone as mentioned above. Meths is gentler but takes longer to work, I would try that first. Good luck!

And it’s easy to forget that few bands manage the personal aspects well over time. If AC was a massive overpowering personality they may have split years ago. I love their early stuff and I don’t see any issue with his playing at all, it works where it is. I think he probably realised quite early that he was on to something a bit special and has kept his head down and enjoyed the ride.

Keep safe Blue

Any Valves or even better valve Nixie tubes would be cool, in fact I think you can get LED fake Nixies now that probably run off low voltage.

I think you are confusing skiing with basejumping, skiing involves wearing appallingly awful clothing that even a kids TV presenter would refuse, whilst sliding into snow cannons at high speed on two fence slats, or even worse, the one planked brigade…….. (But joking aside, skiing is an awesome sport)

Another positive here, excellent service and incredibly helpful in every way.

You can’t beat a decent gig where the sound guys know what they are doing and the crowd and band are up for it. I have seen the odd dodgy gig but most have been great nights. I still get excited by a decent chance to see someone I haven’t seen before, or haven’t seen in years. Always have a few lined up but Offspring and The Hives in October should take some beating. The only thing I don’t like is where touts buy up the tickets and sell them on in a semi legal way. Thankfully most of the bands I go to aren’t big enough to attract that attention.