Stub Mandrel

Just got sent this 🙂

Yes the Embassy 🙂 Sound courtesy of a chap who understood the utterly confusing controls on a big Line 6.

My Embassy in the wild. Great bass for blues rock.

Went to an open mike at the Earl Haig in Cardiff with Alex, guitarist in Bluesfire. Both very nervous as probably Cardiff's top blues rock venue and hoping to make an impression. Met loads of great musos and some really impressive music. We were lucky to find a great drummer (sorry didn't catch your name!) who knew our songs (Walking in my shoes, All your love, So many roads) and an ace saxophonist, Stuart who did a great job on so many roads especially some wicked call and response with Alex. Got a few nice compliments which was nice as there were some cracking basists there. Hopefully get the gig!

Both my band do let's stick together, totally differently, but it's a storming riff to hammer out. Should add it's guaranteed dancing!

My brother's band Stonehouse at the Earl Haig.

Probably Jamie 🤣 @jebroad he's mad enough to do that!

There's long history of Lotuses being made from parts bins of other manufacturers, especially GM. Was it the Esprit that had Opel Manta suspension?

I'd love to know how they do that. I find it very hard to believe one (or a few) companies have discovered a way to make characterless pickups. Increasing magnet strength increases the sensitivity, but potentially interacts with the string/strings. So older, weaker magnet types tend to be more neutral. Coils have two key properties - inductance, related to the number of coils, and resistance, related to the number of coils and wire gauge. Coil placement - obviously. Coil physical size also has an effect, wider coils cover more string, changing the harmonic content as they 'average' the signal over a longer length of string. Varying these factors will change the 'tonal character' of the sound. I suppose you could use individual pickups per string, small, very low number of windings to minimise the contribution of the pickup. But these would still only tell you what one point on the string was doing, and would have a poor signal-to-noise ratio because of the additional gain required.

Hey! Don't pick on me 😉

Cat got your tongue @Frank Blank? 🤣🤣🤣

Bit of self aggrandisement now. Earlier was at my brothers, where his partner's restives werd visiting from the us. He put on a cd of my first gig with yhe blues band. Yo my surprise it sounds great. The mom's an ex-music journalist and she said we sounded like Pete Green era Fleetwood Mac 😎

Jack the Biscuit on Saturday. Sunday, The Stonehouse Collective make their post-covid return to the Earl Haig.

My experience of being in originals bands is that, to be brutally honest, a lot of the material wasn't brilliant. There were a few really good songs, that would possibly have worked as minor singles if produced well, a lot of 'album filler' songs and a few lemons. One of the biggest issues is that when playing popular covers you generally have one or even several versions that are well produced to emulate, especially if you are bigger band that can have lots of dynamics. If you are an originals band, your songs can be a bit flat unless you have a BL with a bit of nous and an ear for things like quiet passages, impactful bridges and tasteful key changes.

Back in the 80s, 90s you could play a pub with a 100% original set and people would love it, even though the bands I was in weren't known far beyond their home towns. Most people had the radio plus the music they were into., so when they went out they were just happy to hear a genre they liked. Now, everyone hears everything and 'popular' songs are known by everyone. That's one of the good things about the blues band, we can play really obscure stuff, improvise and rearrange so what we do may not be original but it's very creative (Feeling Good in the style of Frijid Pink, anyone?) My brother's band play rock classics, but every single song is in their style, they've all been in tributes and originals bands, and now they have a following. They've dropped from over 60 gigs a year to two a month, max, and now only play venues they like (they have the whole of 2022 and into 2023 booked up). But I have no shame in enjoying playing accurate covers of crowd pleasers; let's face it, the CBSO do it all the time...

Gigging. When a bunch of people are leaping around enjoying your music. How often do get to experience actively giving people joy as directly in that way? One if the best feelings there is.

Last night, first gig for this band.

Gigged this last night, for the first time.

First gig for the covers band last night, as a private party for one guitarist's birthday/friends of the band. Bonkers audience all waving their phone torches for 'with or without you' much fun but sometimes felt like chaos on stage. Really fun friendly night and some nice appreciation from audience.

"About Time", which may just have been a comment on making a decision seems to have some traction. It came from the drummer so it may be a reflection on our ability to keep time, which is more challenging when you have four people who aren't drummers or bass players.

I was thinking more of Vindaloo Chicken.

My money is on "The Plastic Chicken Experience"