lozkerr

The Leg Warmers.

Agreed 100%. I've had to do that when permanent theatre lighting wiring decided to sulk half an hour before doors opened. I pulled the plug from the dimmer, ran 15 amp cables to the affected lanterns and the show went on. The sparky sorted it out the next day.

If I'm playing somewhere that doesn't have backline, or only has a weedy PA, I have three racks that get trotted out: A 2U rack for my Eden WTP600 head. A 4U rack that holds my stand-alone IEM set-up. A 6U rack that holds the PA amps and crossover. One thing that really speeds up setting up and packing down is panel-mounted connectors on the back of the rack. The PA rack has four Speakon connectors and two XLR connectors for the mixer, with the electric string tied neatly out of the way inside the rack. Everything's labelled and colour-coded, so the only thing to ensure is that the colours on the cables match those on the connectors. The IEM rack has labelled XLR and jack inputs and outputs, with the IEM transmitter permanently connected to the rack mixer via a jack cable with right-angled plugs front and back. The only fiddly bit is the backline speaker connections. The amp has a cycle switch that changes the colour of the Speakon sockets between 4 ohms, 8 ohms and 'do not use'. I've not yet found a reliable way to extend that to a rear rack panel, so there's a bit of faff involved in plugging the cabs into the right sockets. But apart from that, I've found that carefully-designed and wired racks can save a lot of time, especially at the end of the evening when I just want to get out and get home.

Great dealing with Rob for a Behringer mixer. Good comms and gear well packaged. Thanks!

Definitely my bass. I only do people when a nice Chianti and some fava beans are involved.

Hmm... he and I might have crossed paths. Or perhaps swords. BT could only deliver the contract they'd won by employing a shed-load of contractors, many of whom were incompetent wastes of space. Some of them ended up in manglement positions where they did a hell of a lot of damage. Others were in more lowly positions where they hoarded their knowledge and became deliberately obstructive. I ended up spending a lot of time devising strategies to circumvent those guys so that their contracts would not be renewed as their knowledge had been secretly transferred to permies. I even came across what I still think was a deliberate attempt at sabotage. If it had succeeded, almost every NHS system in England and Wales would have gone down. So yeah. The over-reliance on self-certifying chancers was a massive risk that TPTB were happy to take. I can well believe that an incompetent clown who was fluent in bullshit could have made (and in many cases did make) a packet at the expense of the British taxpayer.

I never knew they'd ported it! Every day's a school day on BC. I last worked with Solaris during the NHS National Programme for IT. All the Spine components ran on yuuge Sun boxes. I quite liked it.

I have rather too many memories of Xenix. It should have been strangled at birth. SCO was a lot better until the company sued itself into the ground. I used to run a SCO-based Usenet news server as part of my BBS set-up back in the 90s. Never knew Solaris ran on PCs though - I thought it was SPARC only?

So have I

I have a few: Brewdog, because of the owner's attitude. Which is a bit of a shame because the beer's decent. Wetherspoons, because of Timbo's treatment of his staff during the pandemic and because of his support for the B-word. BT, for being the worst employer I've ever experienced. Not so much lions led by donkeys as experts gaslit by sociopaths. On my last day, I nuked my laptop and Blackberry for no other reason than pure spite.

Not for me, even though my go-to bass is a Fender. I'd buy a Sandberg or a Sei and drink whatever was left over.

That's a shame. We've done two originals in the punk band by jamming. They'll have their first outing in a few weeks.

I guess it depends on your audience. In social situations, I've always had a more interested response when I say I play in a band than when I try to summarise what is a dull if esoteric job.

I do that. "I'm the Sabotagers' bassist" sounds way cooler than "I'm a data engineer in genomic research."

It's easy to be wise with hindsight, but after mulling this over for a bit, I'm pretty sure I'd have gone hell-for-leather for a pro career if I'd started as a carefree teenager instead of (cough, cough) years later. I absolutely love almost all* aspects of live performance - dance, drama and music - and I think I might have done OK. Even if I hadn't, at least I'd have tried. *Midnight load-outs, stroppy/drunk punters, lugging heavy gear about, hours on the road, crap hotels, colleagues with hygiene deficiencies and junk food from motorway service stations excepted, natch. But you have to take the rough with the smooth.

Thanks! I hadn't come across that one!

Indeed, but lighting software isn't cheap. All the packages I've looked at use a subscription model, which can cost £££££. I'd also need the ability to stop the moving heads without the stage going to DBO between songs and if anything went wrong on stage. A separate controller with pause and DBO controlled by a footswitch would be essential without a lighting person present. Experiments will continue.

Agreed. Without a lighting crew, there's only so much that's possible without making things look daft. I'm thinking about making wooden mounts to sit on top of the PA cabs, each holding three moving heads. Have them adjustable to compensate for the stacks being in different positions from the stage. Program some dynamic effects either along with the PAR cans chase or use a separate controller with a chase controlled by a footswitch. The latter might be a better option as it keeps the moving heads in a separate DMX universe. I'm still experimenting at the moment and it's possible I'll decide it's too much hassle.

Very much so. They also make the lighting bridge sway when all six of them are moving together. I'm thinking about putting them in two groups of three and mounting them on top of the speakers. That should at least keep the light off the dancefloor if they're programmed correctly.

I do the lights for my bands, and we have the same problem, even though the rig's pretty basic - Behringer LC2412 driving eight LED PAR cans. Chases are programmed into the controller and I just set one going when we go on stage. If we had a dedicated lighting person, there's a lot more we could do - I've been experimenting with adding moving heads and thinking about whether I could do anything with MIDI - but it's not practical to play bass, sing BVs and work the lights. Stomping on a footswitch is about my limit.

Well, that's Tier 2 oot the windae - just bought a set of drum mics from @EBS_freak. Might as well get the rest of the bits I need to complete the PA now...

Just bought a set of drum mics from Russ. Arrived very quickly and in great condition. I'm a happy gal today.

I'd describe it as full, warm and vintage, especially with an all-valve head. This might convey a bit of it - WTP600 head and 210 cab by Eden, song by Joy Division, mistakes by me:

It sounds like it. All the Eden stuff on the Gear4Music site is being sold cheap too. There's nothing there that I need, though. It's a real shame. I love the Eden sound.

"Eden are one of the most recognized brands in the bass guitar world..." Which I guess is why Marshall effectively let them go bust before flogging off the remains to Gear4Music.