Ian Savage

...I'm not really doing much band recording-wise at the minute, anything I'm doing for myself I can cover with my Yammy 01X so I'm moving on my mobile recording setup.

Consists of a Presonus Firestudio Project Firewire interface (24 bit/96kHz, 8 mic/line inputs with insert points and additional high-impendance instrument inputs on the first two, plus stereo S/PDIF input - full specs here: [url="http://www.presonus.com/products/detail.aspx?productid=43"]http://www.presonus.com/products/detail.aspx?productid=43[/url]), an ART DPS ii stereo valve preamp (with S/PDIF output, hence bumping the number of simultaneous mic inputs available to ten, as well as providing some nice-sounding preamp alternatives and the option of compression for 'critical' mic recording - again, specs here: [url="http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp?type=86&cat=9&id=97"]http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp?ty...cat=9&id=97[/url]) and a 2U rack drawer with foam cutout for laptop power supply, external hard drive (not supplied) and cable, which will also house the laptop on top of it (I've been using a 15" MacBook Pro, which fits nicely).

All fitted into a Gator 4U shallow rack case - just add a handful of mics and a laptop and you're good to go! The Presonus came with Cubase LE4, and a whole bunch of plugins including BFD Lite IIRC - the discs are around somewhere, but I'm a Logic man so never used them. They WILL be included, there's no way I've thrown them away; also have the original boxes for the Presonus and ART.





I'll get a picture of the actual thing when the camera battery's got a bit of charge on it, but thought I'd get the rig up here before I bottle it and decide to keep it! The Firestudio seems to go for about £350 new, DPS a touch below £250, you'd pay over fifty quid for the Gator and about the same for the drawer, so to buy the whole thing new you're talking over £700 - I'm after £450 for the lot, make me an offer to separate but I'd rather shift it on wholesale as it's a great setup that works well together!

Here we go - a Samson Resound 15" eight ohm job, 200-odd Watts power handling; did a sterling job at a jam night at the weekend but I'm thinking of picking up something in four-ohm flavour instead. Hundred squid if you can collect it?





And these are unusual - two pairs of US-made Peavey ABS mini-monitors which clip together, 16 ohms each so each pair is running at eight ohms. 100W power handling each, nice and lightweight - again, did the job very nicely at the weekend but I'm going four ohms on everything to dedicate one speaker to each side of each amp. Perfect for acoustic stuff, rehearsals and smaller venues - would probably run out of steam for bigger gigs but as a lightweight simple solution for smaller stuff ideal! £60 each pair or the lot for a ton including cables, MIGHT be able to post these for twenty quid or so, I'll look into it.







Some guitar books (80s guitar and Live one have sold):

90s chart TAB book - Place Your Hands, Alright, Basket Case, Bohemian Rhapsody (?!), I Think I'm Paranoid, Marblehead Johnson, Pumping On You Stereo, Save Tonight, Secret Smile, Stairway To Heaven (!?!?) - £3 delivered

Bush - Just The Riffs (stuff from the first two albums) - £2.50 delivered

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Sugar And Spice (biography) - £2.50 delivered

R.E.M - Man On The Moon (full band transcription with three or four guitar parts, bass and drum notation/TAB) - £2.50 delivered

Essential Rock 2k - All Star, Come On Come On, Then The Morning Comes (Smash Mounth), Ashes Would Fall (Melissa Etheridge), Bawitdaba, Cowboy, Only God Knows Why (Kid Rock), Enemy, The Real, Weapon And The Wound (Days of the New), Every Morning, Falls Apart, Someday (Sugar Ray), Maria Maria, Smooth (Santana) - £3.50 delivered

SoundCheck - The Basics of Sound and Sound Systems (brilliant book for anyone trying to get to grips with PA systems and suchlike) - £5 delivered





Technics SL-PG490 CD player, decent bit of kit with optical outputs and a few bells and whistles (no remote though) - £20 delivered

NAD analogue AM/FM tuner - £15 delivered.



One for the drummers - a set of 'Rem-O' damping rings, rock set (12", 13", 14" (with, um, cigarette hole in it - still works perfectly!), 16"), with an Evans 15" one as well (no idea where that came from). Perfect for taming overly 'ringy' kits, for getting a drier drum sound in the studio or for cutting excess projection in rehearsals/small gigs - I only own one drum in these sizes any more, so surplus to requirements! These things are surprisingly expensive new, so £20 delivered as they'll need a BIG envelope to keep 'em flat.

And finally, a Behringer AMP800 multiple headphone amp - great bit of kit for 'live' studio recordings, specs here: [url="http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/AMP800.aspx"]http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/AMP800.aspx[/url]

EDIT - this has only got a European power supply with it, which it works perfectly from - if you're the worrying type you could get an adaptor for a couple of quid, I've been running from the time-tested 'car key in the earth plug' method of plugging it in quite happily

£25 delivered?

I'm in the West Midlands but often up into Staffordshire and down into Warks if anyone's around there for me to drop bits off...

[quote name='kingofthestuntmen' post='614770' date='Oct 2 2009, 01:29 PM']Fnaar, fnaar etc...



Koch Amps website here - [url="http://www.koch-amps.com/"]http://www.koch-amps.com/[/url][/quote]

I always thought they could have some of the best advertising ever, simply by singling out famous players who DIDN'T use their amps.

"Dave Navarro...has no Koch."

"Kirk Hammet...has no Koch."

"Yngwie Malmsteen...has no Koch."

And so on, and so on...forever

[quote name='BigRedX' post='897229' date='Jul 17 2010, 12:46 PM'][url="http://www.spectorbass.com/bass_perf_rex4_1.html"]this is probably what you're thinking of[/url].[/quote]

That's the badger, cheers Red - at least now I know I'm not going insane on that front...

[quote name='Wil' post='896710' date='Jul 16 2010, 05:28 PM']I was a bit bored this afternoon - forgive the sloppy MS paint job, but if I were to ever have a custom thunderbird made, it would be something like this. Essentially just a bit of body streamlining - something between a mockingbird and a thunderbird.[/quote]

That top horn screams 'Schecter' at me, and I could swear that I've seen one of their basses that looked exactly like that - Google gives me nothing though, I might have dreamt it.

Love the look of 'em, love the feel of 'em, love the sound of 'em - can't get on with the neck dive (Thunderbirds that have buckle rash on the back of them haven't been played at the right height IMO - they should be well below the belt buckle ), and irritated by the fact they they neither stand up on their own nor fit into any normal guitar stand.

Still holding out for a MusicMan Stingray SUB as my rock bass, then

I don't see why it wouldn't work, it's a nice idea for bigger stages with less-than-great monitoring/engineering - an additional idea, rather than getting a kickback cab made you could just pick up a cheap secondhand wedge monitor and ram a bass speaker into it?

I'd bloody love to play with my last couple of bands again, in no small part down to validation (neither of them exist any more, both having splintered within weeks of me leaving or being sacked)

Great songs that've been left to rot, superb lines from everyone in the bands...dammit, what's wrong with me?

[quote name='paul h' post='784627' date='Mar 24 2010, 02:03 PM']Thanks.

I think I would probably go for a couple of wiring mods first to see what happens, but new pickups would definitely be an improvement.[/quote]

If you're still looking at new Tele pups, I can't speak highly enough of the Iron Gear Steel Twin bridge pickup - humbucking, sounds like a Tele bridge on steroids, about £25 new (I got mine for a fiver, but hey ).

And fitted into my 'bitsacaster':



It's now got a cheeky Fender-esque decal as well, sounds really bloody good with a slide.

[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='890962' date='Jul 9 2010, 11:44 PM']Yes, but they're usually drunk and being egged on by their drunk mates. Honestly...don't they know anything? Thats no way to start a deep and meaningful relationship based on trust and respect. [/quote]

[quote name='The Hold Steady']If she happens to suggest a love based on trust and respect, tell her I've been wasted since last week...[/quote]

I met both of my major 'significant others' of the past seven years through playing live...

Yes

I have a sneaking idea with the MAG range that Ashdown widened them to allow more space for cooling in the chassis - they originally came out in the narrower format without a fan (apparently the 'magnesium alloy' casing would disipate enough heat on its own), after they all started burning out they came out with a fan, when they carried on burning out they made the casing wider. Don't know if they started doing the same with the ABM range at the same time for the same reasons (as I'm fairly sure the ABMs had nowhere near the failure rate of the early-mid period MAGs), it's more likely that it was to make it more easy to rackmount them.

[quote name='sjohns' post='880686' date='Jun 29 2010, 09:57 AM']Chance of a photo of the the Westfield 5u case or link to info about case.[/quote]

I might be interested in that if sjohns passes, although I'm in Brum so not even resembling convenient for Epsom...

[quote name='sprocketflup' post='886752' date='Jul 5 2010, 10:21 PM']Have they? Cant say as Im surprised...[/quote]

Don't get me started on Sound Control I bought a secondhand power amp from them a while back for a bit of extra 'umph' for my PA rig that night - got it home and it didn't work. Of a panic, I dashed back over there, and since they had another one of the same model in (also secondhand, I assume from the same trade-in or whatever) I arranged to simply swap the one I'd bought for the other one. To be on the safe side this time, I asked to test it out before taking it home - I was told that there were no staff available to help me. THIS WAS EARLY AFTERNOON ON A SATURDAY AND THERE WERE AT LEAST THREE MEMBERS OF STAFF STANDING AROUND DOING SOD-ALL!!!!!!!

Grrr.


Haven't been into GuitarGuitar yet, but shall at some stage - it looks a bit flash from the outside, mind.

I haven't been there in ages, they can be totally crap customer service-wise. Far too much over-priced Chinese-made rubbish in stock as well last time I was in. There's a dearth of decent music shops in Brum now, Sound Control/Reverb were also dreadful for customer service and now they've gone, I THINK Bass Centre's disappeared as well (haven't been over that way for a bit) - won't go anywhere but PMT now, personally, as they've always given me sterling service.

The SGC Nanyo stuff goes for absolute peanuts on eBay considering how good they are - I think any of their basses for less than a ton is money very well spent. They're lightweight, balance well and have very slim, comfortable necks - they'll do any kind of music with ease, although IMO the look of them doesn't fit some genres.

I bought my SC441 in the late-90s for about four hundred quid, and the 301 was the 'budget' model at the time - that one definitely looks like it's got the slightly more steamlined body contours of the late-90s models as opposed to the oh-so-slightly more chunky-looking curves that came a few years after. I'm only guessing, but I think it's probably about ten years old, and for that price it'll do you great as long as you get on with the skinny neck! Certainly pisses all over anything you'd buy new for a hundred notes...

EDIT: as far as I know the serial number should be either in the neck pocket or on a sticker on the inside of the control cavity cover, and I believe that the bass player from Muse is a fan of them; the body wood, IIRC, will be either poplar or basswood, hence the light weight.

There's precious little about these on t'interweb, but someone here (I'll look it up and edit again in a minute) managed to identify mine after I'd totally forgotten the model number so there's some expertise 'round this very forum!

The Eurosys were always the bottom end of Peavey's speaker line, a pair of HiSys or Pros would be a worthwhile upgrade IMO.

Boss LS2 Line Selector will do either, I think.

Just to give you an option, I've replaced all of my Shures with Sennheiser Evolutions - A/B tested the E345 pissed all over the SM58 in terms of sound quality and feedback rejection. I think they're a bit cheaper too.

Wasn't Hendrix a bass player originally, or have I made that up?

And Ginger (the band's guitarist/frontman) apparently played a lot of bass on mid-era Wildhearts albums, mainly due to the actual bassist being a smackhead.

[quote name='andyjingram' post='876602' date='Jun 24 2010, 05:02 PM']Intriguing- What's that then?[/quote]

Music Man Reflex innit?

[quote name='Fat Rich' post='875465' date='Jun 23 2010, 02:43 PM']Neck wise, you might get away with it if you plug up the truss rod adjustment temporarily, maybe wax the fingerboard and any bare wood. And lightly oil the bridge and tuners.[/quote]

Those are very good suggestions actually, hadn't thought of waxing/oiling.

[quote name='Lysdexia' post='875408' date='Jun 23 2010, 01:52 PM']Hi guys - serious tech question.

If I was to throw a bucket of water over a bass would there be any resulting damage?

And any tips for drying the bass to ensure there is a happy outcome for all?

The bass will NOT be plugged into anything in it's moment of torment.[/quote]

Hmm...it's been done, but it's going to depend on the finish and quality of the wood whether there's any lasting damage. Personally if I had to do it, as soon as possible afterwards I'd get the electronics out and give them a blast with a hairdryer to get the worst of the water out (but be prepared to replace the pots regardless if water gets into them). I'd then leave the bass itself strung at fairly low tension (say, down a couple of tones) and let it dry out naturally (after, maybe, if it's a bolt-on removing the neck briefly and towel-drying out any water that's got into the neck join/behind the neckplate.

DON'T try to accelerate the drying process on the bass itself, combining excess heat with excess moisture will not end well for the wood. EDIT: a quick towel-dry would be a good idea, mind; I've played gigs in the past where either it's been an outdoor show and it's rained or an indoor show with sweat dripping from the ceiling and all I used to do to the bass was wipe it dry, *touch wood* never had any damage.

If it's for a photoshoot, video or something, I'd be seriously tempted to strip the electronics out altogether beforehand and 'dummy' the look of it with cheap/non-functional stuff (superglue some control knob heads onto the scratchplate or something, and just slam a broken pickup in there for the look) so at least you've only got to worry about possible wood damage.

[quote name='Buzz' post='874989' date='Jun 23 2010, 12:06 AM']If it's got to be one I already own, then it's going to be my (soon possibly up for sale) MIJ Non-Export Aerodyne:

That's a picture from when it was new, 4 or 5 years ago, if you look closely it's got the plastic film on the pickguard in the picture.
It's not really changed as I've kept it mint. Although a small dent in the paintwork is present on the bottom edge from when I accidently knocked it against that wooden chair in the background. That chair has now gone.

I've also got a different sofa.[/quote]

That is beautiful, and well done on the change of furniture do drop me a message if you come to sell, don't know if I'll have the money but you never know...

One of these please:



It's on the shopping list once I've got my finances together, don't think i'd need anything else.