unimpressed alf

[color=#0000cd][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][size=3]As I am leaving the country I am leaving an Unimpressed Alf shaped hole in this new spazzy alt pop guitar synth manchester based band. The band is lead primarilly by my very good friend Mike who is currently exploring an unconventional approach to pop song writing. [/size][/font][/color] [color=#0000cd][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][size=3]There are a few time signature changes, some unusual phrase lengths and spazzy rhythms to get your teeth into but there is also a lot of freedom to move through the chords in your own way and put your stamp on the band. [/size][/font][/color] [color=#0000cd][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][size=3]I have really enjoyed playing with these guys, so wanted to help find them a decent replacement. Here's what Mike has to say about it all....[/size][/font][/color] [font=tahoma,geneva,sans-serif][size=4][b][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]We are E Numbers. You can listen to a track here: [url="http://soundcloud.com/e_numbers/come-and-see-my-new-wings"]http://soundcloud.co...ee-my-new-wings[/url] We're looking for a creative and versatile player with a distinct sense of individuality along with the awareness of when to be subtle and when not to play at all! Some bands of particular interest to us are: of Montreal, Deerhoof, Flaming Lips, Phoenix, The Chap, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Field Music. An eclectic mix. Please e-mail us: [email protected][/font][/b] [b]Thanks! Mike[/b][/size][/font]

I'll get the ball rolling with…. [b]Manchester [/b] [b]The Roadhouse[/b] - 200 capacity venue puts gigs on most nights of the week. I find this to be the most band friendly venue in manchester, the guys who run it (Jon and Lucy) are proper sound and they put on bands that work together etc [email protected] [b]Tuesday Tony Presents[/b] - weekly night (on a Tuesday) at the Thirsty Scholar off oxford road run by Tuesday Tony. Ideally for acoustic singer songwriter types but he does put full bands on. No pressure to bring a big crowd with you, its all pretty laid back. Free entry so you wont get paid but it’s a good crack! [email protected] [b]Leaf promotions [/b]- another guy putting on nights who's motivation is to put on good nights. Hes got a place in stockport (bakers vault) and has recently moved to retro bar in manchester city centre. Hes a good bloke who just wants to put on quality bands [url="http://www.myspace.com/leafpromotions"]http://www.myspace.com/leafpromotions[/url]

Hey! Where are the cool places to play near YOU?? Im trying to sort out a whole load of gigs for my band all over the uk but not getting very far… myspace has gone from a shower of s__t to being a ghost town (not sure which is worse!?) so its really hard to find descent promoters who are still actively putting on nights. I figured the best way to go about this would be to ask you guys for your local knowledge. What are the descent venues? Which promoters put on the best nights? Who are the pay to play promoters who don’t actually promote their own nights who are best avoided? Etc Theres quite a few resources out there online but ive found a lot of them (like myspace) are now outdated, so it would be cool to start our own with up to date info :-D I play in a heavy (kinda proggy) alt rock band with electronic overtones so if you know anywhere that’s specific to our kinda thing that would be AWESOME!! Either way I think a thread like this would really help all our fledgling unsigned bands get out and about round the country.

cheers guys sounds like the best option would be to sell the combo and buy a cab and head set up! in other words, if its not broke dont fix it hehe

Hi I have a little(ish) Ampeg B210 combo which sounds lovely but isnt I have to drive it fair hard to get it loud enough and it doesn’t kick out the kind of bottom end that id like. If I get carried away then I start to worry about the two little 10inch speakers in there and if they are coping alright! The obvious soluition to this (I would have thought) would be to connect up an extra speaker cab to handle the low end. However, the stupid thing about my amp is that it doesn’t have an external speaker output. I was wondering how feasible it would be to get into the amplifier and modify it to give it an external speaker out. Would it be a case of just tapping off the signal that goes to the current internal speakers or would that be too simple?! Im guessing aswell that I would really need to be careful about the whole parrallel/series thing so as not to overload the amplifier. Is this just a really bad idea?? Thanks!

cheers Dan! just wondering what kind of signal comes out of the midi pickup if it still needs go through a converter? surely in an ideal world, the raw signal from midi pickups would contain the note on, velocity and note off info?

Hey Dan Thanks for the info… although not quite what I wanted to hear! I was hoping that I could just get a GK3b, plug it straight into something like a MFB Nanozwerg and then off I go, sounds like that’s not the case tho So whats the deal with convertors? Is it possible to get a unit that is a dedicated converter without having any onboard sounds itself? Im thinking about keeping costs down here! It sounds like the Sonuus B2M is such a device, but from reading your blog I get the impression that they arent very 'musical' in the way that they handle the incoming signal. Just to aid my understanding though, hypothetically, would the following setup be functional? Bass (without midi pickup) > Sonuus B2M > some kind of midi controlled synth module (the above mentioned Nanozwerg for example) > Amp Are there any other dedicated midi converters out there?

hey i like experimenting with my sound, ive got abit of pedal board going on with an EHX bass synth pedal et al, my band plays hefty rock with electronic overtones so i like to contribute by having synthy bass sounds but im finding the EHX bass synth to be a little limited recently... i cant stop thinking that getting a midi pickup mounted on my bass and sending that through some kind of soundmodule could really be what im after... thing is, up until a few years ago i was completely anti-synths so i have very limited knowledge on all things midi and sound moduley but i figured that it cant be that hard... can it? does anybody else have this kind of midi pickup set up? if so, do you have any advise?! the obvious of the shelf package would appear to be the roland GR20 cos this comes with the pickup and looks like a normal multi fx, but ive heard the demos on youtube and im not interested making my bass sound like a crap GM sax or making my bass sound like a sitar or banjo or whatever! i guess what im looking for is a sound module that creates dirty filthy wet squidgy bass sounds - i just dont know how to find these, or if i have found them online already i dont know if theyd be suitable for my potential set up.... any thoughts??

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='1013727' date='Nov 5 2010, 08:38 PM']If you get stuck, pretend your lead is dodgy and stop playing...never fails.[/quote] haha good call!!

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='327594' date='Nov 12 2008, 01:56 PM']No. Not that does what it does. They come up used pretty often though - keep an eye on eBay.[/quote] yea there were 2 on there recently - they may have gone now or are about to go in the next day or so - they were looking quite promising but then ended up going up to about 40/50 quid which was dissapointing... i was hoping to pick one up for about 20-30 quid but it looks like thats not going to happen *BOO*

my question would be - is there a cheaper alternative to the LS2? i understand the functionality of the LS2 and really want one but cant afford to be spending over 50 quid on one at the moment (especially since the wife got her car clamped this morning...) if there is a cheaper alternative that doesnt compromise on quality too much, id be very much interested to hear about it i should probably mention that its having 2 effects loops plus a clean channel that interests me - the effects blending side of things is a plus but not essential cheers everyone alf

i have to say that i do like the idea of a phaser with a side chain so that i can plug a cheap mic into the sidechain and stick the mic inside the drummers kick drum... that would be fun!! unfortunatley my budget/wife says no to that kind of expensive thing - especially as i spent £169 of the BMS last month and xmas is looming over us... i did have a play with the boss phase shifter at the local (formally known as) soundcontrol - putting it both before and after the BMS and there was definatly some interesting results - some completely unusable sounds, some really crazy sounds and some absolutley cool as f*** sounds - its hard to describe but id kinda say that the phaser makes the BMS sound like a more contempory digital synth rather than the old style analogue synth that it is meant to emulate. i wouldnt say that one sound is better than the other but that digital synthy sound is definalty an extra colour id like in my pallette i would quite like to go back there and try out some more toys before i make any decisions tho - maybe a 15 quid behringer would do the trick?? who knows...

[quote name='Col' post='318505' date='Oct 30 2008, 04:50 PM']Chaps, I've been having a lot of fun with a new Bass Micro Synth pedal from Electro Harmonix, but like a dick, I tripped on it last night and busted three of the switches on top. It all still works but I'm less than impressed with the build quality. Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions about how to replace these? (or maybe recommend a similar, but better built pedal?) I really liked the way it's possible to play with the switches on the fly whilst playing, now I have to wedge a credit card in the gaps to change the sounds......[/quote] oh dear... i bought one of those a couple of weeks ago and im keeping it inits box with its bubble wrap (when travelling about with it) for that reason - the wife thinks im being overlly protective but it sonds like im doing the right thing... its a cool pedal tho - you can got some ridiculous sounds!! im only just figuring out how to get the usable ones (ie that dont sound something from an 80s horror film!)

[quote name='mewsie' post='318019' date='Oct 29 2008, 10:57 PM']i like indie pop i possibly like experimental metalish progish type affairs too, but i am not convinced i have ever experienced any. welcome to the forum! x[/quote] theres some rough recordings of my new band on [url="http://www.myspace.com/hayabusaband"]http://www.myspace.com/hayabusaband[/url] the tunes have come along quite abit since they were recorded - most noticably theyve got some bass on them now! would be interested to hear what you think x

i do tend to think abit too much about stuff!! ive got an early finish on friday so i was going to pop down to what was formally soundcontrol with my muff and synth and see what thayve got and see what works etc

[quote name='Telebass' post='317926' date='Oct 29 2008, 08:51 PM']Ignore them, nowt wrong with a bit of indie-pop...is there? Welcome! And, believe me, you're not old... [/quote] cheers telebass nowt wrong indeed - aslong as you enjoy what your playing and beleive your playing it well - im not normally one for pigeonholing music into the boxes we call genres but sometimes that the easiest way to describe generally what something sounds like without writing a whole essay on the subject - personally i prefer music that takes a much more mix and match approach

this time last year i wasnt into the idea of using effects on the bass at all - then i got a big muff for xmas... i had an old dod envelope filter knocking about which i had 'borrowed' from a mate and tried using that before the big muff and found that it sounds absolutley filthy! - so that was my sound for the last year... a couple of weeks ago i invested EHX bass microsynth after reading the live drum and bass thread - i was after some kind of synth pedal anyroad and that one seemed to not have anything bad said about it! ATM ive got 1 loop which goes envelope filter>big muff and another loop for the BMS what i was thinking was having a phaser (or some other kind of oscillating effect - any thoughts?) to go after the BMS - the reason i was thinking this is because once the filter has opened/closed on the BMS the sound stops being so 'exciting' so i figured having a phaser after it would keep the sound interesting once the filters have finished doing their job what do you guys think to that? any suggestions on which phaser would work best? i was thinking small stone/boss phase shifter or that little orange one (cant remember its name!) but from what i gather thatd need modding to make it sound good thinking about adding a phaser to my 'board' (i dont actually have a board for my pedles yet) led me to wonder if there was a way of having the phaser in such a way that it comes after the BMS but also before the big muff - at the same time - using something like a boss line selector. i dont want to have to be jumping around on individual pedals, so would like to be able to leave all the pedals activated and use line selectors to bring in different effects loops, this would be preferable esp as the BMS sucks the tone when its in bypass mode. the other thing to bear in mind is that the BMS running through the big muff doesnt actually sound any good (disapointingly) so the muff and the synth would need to kept separate... i spent about an hour thinking about this yesterday and nearly came up with the answer but then realised that in having the phaser running after the synth it was then running through the envelope filter and big muff - in which case i would potentialy have to be jumping all over my pedals to switch between the different sounds... any of you guys up for puzzling that one out?? sorry for the epic post but ive been thinking about this quite alot recently... cheers in advance!!

the AB guide to theory came in handy when i was at college

ive been browsing this forum for a while (mainly at work...) and decided to sign up and register but to the dismay of my lovely wife anyroad, gear and that? i play a red fender jag (with matching headstock - ever so pretty) with modified pick ups, most notable being the music man style bridge pick up. This goes through a dod envelope filter and a big muff (i love my big muff!!) and now more recently an EHX bass microsynth - which im still getting to grips with, Ill post my pedal setup under the thread for pedal boards later - ive got some questions about it anyway bandwise ive most recently been playing with a band that no1 has ever heard of called hayabusa, which is a kind of experimental metalish progish type affair with some electronics thrown in for the crack - hence the BMS before that i was in A Boy Called Doris which was mint - essentially indie pop but there was a bit more to it than that (honest! - thats what all indie bands say...) which enjoyed moderate success of a single release this time last year but were unable to keep up the momentum and ended up splitting up about a month ago - which was very sad really (but not in the alan partridge sense) so thats me really (i could go into my influences and all that but wont bother - unless you guys are particularly interested), im new to this whole bass forum thing but ive been playing bass for about 10 years now which makes me feel somewhat old... cheers for reading Alf x