Jack

Tiny little pub for us as we wind down the indie rock band, only 3 gigs left! Silly setup in a silly place, but I think we were super professional and hid the cables well enough... The singer and lead guitarist went to plug the IEC cable into his amp and the thing just disintegrated, leaving the power socket inside the amp and inaccessible. Thankfully, because I'm lazy, I still had my other pedalboard in the car from practice a few nights ago so he ended up with my Sansamp and straight into the PA. Where was his spare stuff? Good question! After the show a nice young man came up and told me that I sounded amazing and that Stingrays were his dream bass. He showed me pictures of a copy he had and everything. Sweet.

So it looks as though they're not held in too high regard! Mostly mineral oil with some snake oil?

I'm not normally that bothered about keeping my strings amazingly-super-bright but I have always wiped down after playing with Fast Fret. I kind of feel like it does something, but maybe it's just placebo. However recently a few things have happened all at once which has got me really thinking about the life extender type products. Firstly, I've joined a pop punk band and need the brightness. Secondly, strings are ridiculously expensive nowadays. Thirdly I've sort of hit a concentration of needing new strings. It's like this year when the 5 year and the 7 year cicadas will line up, several of my basses would all benefit from new strings at the moment, to an investment of around £120. It's be nice to keep them lasting as long as possible. I have used Fast Fret, Dunlop XLR8 (that felt useless) and more recently the Dr Duck's Ax Wax, which I kind of feel like it does something. Anybody else swear by anything that I might want to check out?

Ooooof. I bought mine almost 20 years ago and it was half that. Having said that, I still use it on the regular. Plenty of people offering similar functionality though.

The only sensible point that Jeremy Clarkson has ever made (that I'm aware of) is that councils and pedestrianization are doing as much if not more than the internet to destroy the town centres. The town I grew up in still had the Blockbuster livery on a shop unit the last time I went back, the high street is dead. Meanwhile there's the Metrocentre shopping mall 20 minutes drive away, Team Valley (industrial estate/retail park, 15 minutes), the Arnison Centre (retail park, 10 minutes) and Dalton Park (outlet shopping, 30 minutes) that are all absolutely thriving. Why? Free parking.

Good! I'm in the middle of getting a new band off the ground and we'll be using one of the RCF 708ii from my other band with two 910 that the singer owns. We're aiming to be quiet, but I was wondering what stepping down from either 932s or Alto 15s would be like.

My wife has gone that route before as well when her Sumup was playing up, but we feel it looks a little less professional. Agreed that it's actually better though. We regularly do an alternative market that's all witches, bedroom toys, tattoos, exotic dancers, that kind of thing. You want to know who has the best card machines? Drag queens and sex workers. They are NOT missing a tip. If you don't have any cash they'll whip out a car reader from somewhere that I don't want to think about. They all use either Sumup or Square, with a bias towards Sumup. It just didn't work for us.

Admittedly a sample size of only 1. But then, they've been useless 100% of the time we've needed them. Statistics, eh?

It took me a few goes to realise you meant a couple (of bands) and not a (romantic) couple.

My wife has just moved from sumup to square after 3 years with sumup. When there's a problem (hardware in her case) they just don't want to know.

Now discontinued.

Phil brings up two or three times that, if one does get a digital mixer, it can be beneficial in many ways even if you don't use a lot of the more advanced features. However, IME it actually starts you down a path to using them. Yes, a digital mixer has a lot of channels usually, yes it can instantly recall settings, yes it's easy to meter and monitor. My hard rock band quickly outgrew the ancient desk, Maplin power amps and passive 1x15" tops we'd used for the first six months or so. We agreed to buy an active Alto system of tops and subs and whilst the band plan was just to keep the analogue Soundcraft desk I took it upon myself to treat us to the then-pretty-new Behringer XR18. What we found is that, because of all of the features that could really be used to tighten the sound up, we started putting more and more through the PA. It helped that we were already bringing a more capable speaker system too, which meant that the guitarists could bring smaller amps, but even just in terms of the mixer the eq, highpassing, dynamics processing and in built effects meant that over about 3 or 4 years we just started putting everything through and we slowly became an 'everything through the pa' band. Because we could do more monitor mixes it meant that the drummer could finally hear what was really going on, so they played better. We finally had enough channels for us all to sing backing vocals. We can multi track record to a laptop and listen back to the gig after the fact, allowing us to work on both our sound and our performance. I wired in a music player permanently so that the second the set is over the drummer just leans over and instantly the break music comes on. That makes us look super slick. When we ask "what's the best bass for metal?" the real answer is "it doesn't matter". Most gear choices we make are more to do with want, gas, lust and epeen than anything else. But the revolution in pa, both in terms of affordable digital mixers and small lightweight active speakers, has really been transformative in a way that I don't think anything else has been recently.

Just seen this advertised in chrome. I've actually been looking at adding a thumb rest to a bass but I can't see anything about shipping to the UK. Loving their terms and conditions.

See on the other hand I would absolutely try and stay away from passive speakers and separate amp racks. You can pick them up cheaply yes, but that's because nobody really wants them anymore and when you come to upgrade in the future (which you will) then you won't be able to shift them on. A cheapy pair of active tops can be mains now and then wedges or sidefills later when you upgrade the mains.

Couldn't agree more, Bill. However, we all have to start somewhere and £750 is very much just a start.

Yay, pedal! Ooooooh, prices.

A pair of Alto TS or similar should be about right. My hard rock band has been using an Alto system for about ten years. 2 TS115a tops and 2 TS118a subs. It's not the RCF that my indie band uses, but it's enough.

That amp seems to have 6 outputs on the back, which were you using? For the future, with your markbass, just use the normal di output and it should be fine with nearly all mixers. If it ever is too loud then use the pad on the mixer.

Last night I had my first ever paying gig as purely a soundman. A friend of mine is in a band that was hastily put together to play one of their other friend's 50th birthday party. The entire band were amazing musicians, but they have about 4 gigs total experience between them. I was asked to come along and provide some direction and a lot of plugging in advice as well as sound duties. Rig for the evening was an Allen and Heath desk, Martin Audio PA, lots of Sennheiser vocal mics, an e609 on the guitar amp, Radial stagebug on the bass, and whatever drum mics the drummer brought. PXL_20240127_222727719.mp4

Had a work colleague who went and said it was brilliant, no idea if he specifically saw your band but I'm going to just imagine that he did!

In that situation I'd be keeping an eye out for an Ampeg B100R or a GK MBE.

Well I can't comment on the jack cable paragraph but I do appreciate the ebay link thank you. I also know what I've done wrong now, I thought the pedal standard was 2.2mm inside barrel. Oooooops.

Perfect! Thank you. Although, quite where that was when I put exactly those words into the search bar on Amazon I'll never know! Thanks again.

Hi all. In my office I have a wall wart that powers a multi effects unit. It's all standard Boss-sized plugs. However, the cable isn't long enough and it isn't a right angle. Can anyone point me in the direction of either an extension cable (female to right angle male) or just a female-female coupler that I can use to join two other cables I already own please? Every time I look I end up on patch/signal cables, rather than power cables. What I want is either of the pictures, but for Boss-sized power cables and not signal. Thanks in advance!