flyfisher

+1 Ohms is the important bit, wattage is the 'black art' bit. Look after the ohms to protect your amp and your ears should protect your speakers, unless you like really horrible noises. I use the same amp with 300W 1x15 and 250W 2x10 cabs, both 8 ohms and thus 4 ohms in parallel. Works fine.

I can't recall any particular moment but I do remember picking out bass lines whenever I listened to music, right from a very early age. Like a lot of kids, I started playing on a regular acoustic six-string but, like a previous poster, I found myself picking out basslines as well as the usual chords and rhythm playing. For some reason I never did get the hang of playing lead guitar. It was a long time before I got a real bass guitar but I've never looked back since. Also, although I really love playing in a band, I've never craved any limelight and am very happy being 'in the background' and just getting great satisfaction from a good song well-played. My musical fantasy (don't we all have them?) would be to be a session musician - you know, the people that play on all the best recordings, are highly respected among their peers yet remain publically anonymous. That would suit me just fine. Fat chance though.

I understand the 'name and shame' sentiment but, without supporting paperwork and/or contracts it's just one word against another. If the venue took offence it could issue a counter claim and things could get very messy - regardless of the actual rights and wrongs. Seems to me that the lesson is to get such bookings in written terms, with specific provisions for cancellation (on both sides - supposing the band had to cancel for some unavoidable reason?). Who was it who said "verbal contracts are not worth the paper they're written on"?

Interesting dilemma. I've never been asked to learn new songs by ear. Presumably these are original songs or you'd probably be able to get the chords off the web. But even the originals we play have arrangement sheets written by the author complete with chords, which I can then easily work from. I guess you have a few options: 1. Work completely by ear, and accept this is the way this band works 2. Work backwards and write your own arrangements of the new songs. It shouldn't be too difficult to write down the basic chord structure from played-by-ear root notes. 3. Tell the songwriter(s) to write down the chords and/or help them to understand the names of what they're playing. 4. Find another band you can work with.

Unprotected inputs on any item of electronic equipment is pretty bad design really.

I call my bass various names when it insists on playing the wrong note . . . .

Most of my cable failures have been when someone or something has brushed past the jack plug in my old combo and physically broken the plug. This hasn't happened since I've got two cabs and a separate head unit sitting up much higher. The ones that have not been so abused seem to have lasted for many years. I'd say a cossetted 3-month old cable failure is a manufacturing fault.

Yep, it has SCAM written all over it. "Western Union" is the give-away.

Danny Thompson was on the radio, not so long ago, talking about Nick Drake and the forthcoming Barbican concerts. Might have been the Stuart Maconie show, I can't remember. Some wonderful stories from Danny!

Phase reversal won't solve the problem (unless the delay just happens to be the exact equivalent of a 180 degree phase difference), it's really just a simple mismatched delay issue and can be solved in various ways as descibed above. Television studios have a similar thing with their cameras and they use delay lines to match the effective length of the cables from each camera to eliminate any problems when mixing/cutting between them. A dual-beam oscilloscope is one way of checking the delays between two signals derived from the same source, but I accept this is not exactly a common piece of equipment in the average band or studio. But, as the original poster mentioned, if the delay can be calculated - and it manageably small - then it can also be easily compensated for using an extra length of cable in one of the sources.

If a fuse blows or an MCB or RCD trips then the normal practice is to replace the fuse or reset the MCB or RCD. Such things can ocassionally happen. BUT, if the same thing immediately happens again then there's a potentially serious fault somewhere. Regarding RCDs, it's worth understanding how they work. Basically, they monitor all the current flowing in the live wire and check that the same amount of current is flowing in the neutral wire. If less current is flowing in the neutral wire then the 'missing' current must be flowing somewhere else - which could mean through you - and the RCD will trip. Understanding this, it follows that if you put one finger on the live conductor and another on the neutral then the RCD will NOT trip, because there won't be any current imbalance; all the current going down the live will go through you and then back down the neutral conductor. That's no reason not to use them - in most fault conditions they are an extremely valuable, life-saving safety device - but don't belive you are immortal just because your rig is plugged into one.

I recall someone on TV telling a story about Brian Clough (the highly self-regarding football manager widely referred to as "old big head" in the media). Apparently he was a big Frank Sinatra fan and when he visited Las Vegas he nagged 'his people' to arrange a meeting with his hero. After much pestering and behind-the-scenes negotiation, a meeting between Sinatra and Clough was eventually arranged. Anyway, they duly met and Clough was overjoyed. Sinatra, of course, had never heard of Clough but was polite enough to humour his admirer. For years afterwards, Clough would retell the story whenever he had the opportunity: "You know Frank Sinatra? He met me once . . . . "

No idea where to get ready made ones, but I would make my own.

As the previous posts correctly state, everything about speaker impedance is 'nominal' as it varies with frequency and other factors and is not very easy to measure without a bunch of specialised test equipment. However, you could try this rough-and-ready approach: [i]If you just want to find out the nominal impedence of the speaker e.g. ist it 4, 8 or 15 ohms then there is a rough & ready way. Just use your multimeter to measure the DC resistance of the voice coil i.e. across the speaker terminals (with nothing else connected) and multiply the answer by 1.3. So if the DC resistance is say 6 ohms then the speaker is nominally 8 ohm impedance. [/i] So, the OP measured 5.6 ohms with a DC ohmmeter x1.3 = 7.28 = 8 ohms impedance. From: [url="http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/speaker_impedance.html"]http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/s..._impedance.html[/url]

[quote name='Stingray5' post='774800' date='Mar 14 2010, 11:27 PM']It's a well known fact that bass players are the most organized and are the saviours of any band. [/quote] Well that's certainly the case with my band. I'm completely paranoid about preparation, rehearsing the set list and having spares of everything (except a second bass come to think of it - might need to rectify that!). Try to relax and have fun. The build-up and first song might seem a bit daunting but get through that and you'll be fine. Just watch how much the audience are enjoying themselves and go with the flow!

This is the sort of thing that kinda upsets me about the music industry. These guys are clearly brilliant musicians but if it weren't for the web how many people would ever hear them? And there are countless other examples of wonderful musicians and songwriters who will never make a living at their craft while the "pop industry" feeds us all pap. Ho hum. Just feeling a bit grumpy today.

I went to school with William Orbit. He left school after our first year of A-Level Zoology - I knew he'd never make anything of himself. I was also in the same class as Neville Brody, who seems to have made quite a name for himself in the world of graphic design. His Mother took us to our first concert when we were about 13 - a 'Carribean Music Festival' at Wembley Arena. We were seriously into reggae at the time.

I sat behind Ray Dorsey (Mungo Jerry) on a flight from Milan many years ago. Coincidentally, I'd watched him on some Italian TV show the previous evening in my hotel. At a Clapton concert at the Royal Albert hall in the late 80's a friend who was with us went off to the bar in the break between the support act and EC's set and bumped into Elizabeth Taylor - literally! Apparently she was flanked by two big guys dressed in DJs and while he was staring at one of them he walked into her. He hadn't noticed who it was until he apologised.

[quote name='steve-soar' post='770190' date='Mar 10 2010, 11:31 AM']Lump in the throat? I was in tears, they were astounding.[/quote] Isn't it amazing how such music can cause such an emotional reaction? Ballet can also do the same for me. Perhaps I'm just getting soft as I geot older - either that or I keep getting something in my eyes. I still can't stand operatic singers though.

Would a simple switch across the two pickups do the trick (wired across the two outer terminals of the existing switch)? When closed, it would connect both pickups to the "V" pot regardless of the position of the existing selector switch. Or am I misunderstanding what you're trying to do?

[quote name='jezzaboy' post='764346' date='Mar 4 2010, 07:27 PM']If you get a chance, check out the album Focus 3. The last track is called Anonymus two and lasts 26mins and was mostly done in one take. It even has a bass solo played by Akkerman.[/quote] Always difficult to name an all-time favourite band but Focus is right up there on my list. I've read that Focus III was recorded in just two days. Agree that Anonymous II is a great track, but I've never heard that Akkerman played the bass solo and have always assumed it was Bert Ruiter. I went to see them in December at St Albans Arena - absolutely fantastic, even though not the classic line-up.

I was once in a very stylish band. We had Tee-shirts with our band name (The Banned) printed on them. Pretty cool eh?

Farnell stocks them. [url="http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/browse.jsp?N=1000291+294745&No=0&getResults=true&appliedparametrics=true&locale=en_UK&catalogId=&prevNValues=1000291&filtersHidden=false&appliedHidden=false&originalQueryURL=%2Fjsp%2Fsearch%2Fbrowse.jsp%3FN%3D1000291%26No%3D0%26getResults%3Dtrue%26appliedparametrics%3Dtrue%26locale%3Den_UK%26catalogId%3D%26prevNValues%3D1000291"]http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/browse.js...alues%3D1000291[/url] I'd guess RS Components would have them as well.

Some good pointers there - thanks. I'm not bothered about having more than one unit, especially if a combined unit is very costly. I wasn't planning on spending into the thousands, more like 'some' hundreds, excluding the PC. Good idea about the SOS forums - I'll nip over and have a read. Cheers.

I've been thinking of putting a recording set-up together for a while now, but I'm still trying to get my head around some particular things and this seems like a good place to ask. I dabbled with multi-track sound recording while at school about 30 years ago, so I think I have some idea, but that was using an Akai reel-to-reel tape deck with a 'sound-on-sound' facility that allowed songs to be built up by bouncing from track to track, albeit at the cost of ever-increasing background noise. Clearly, things are all digital these days and I'm assuming using a PC with appropriate software and suitable soundcard but I'm confused about an external mixer/control surface (I think that's the term). Basically, I'd like to be able to record multiple instruments simultaneously and to use a physically separate 'mixer' to mainly set the recording level for each individual input without much regard for the overall balance of the instruments. Then, having recorded all the instruments using a combination of multiple simultaneous recordings and subsequent layering I'd then like to be able to play everything back and use the 'mixer' to control each track when mixing down to a stereo recording. Q1 - Am I making any sense or have I completely got the wrong end of the home studio stick? Q2 - Can I buy a single device (control surface?) to perform the record and playback and mix-down functions or are these things mutually exclusive Q3 - Would the DAW software 'remember' the mixer control movements when mixing, so it can be 'replayed' and modified? Q4 - Any recommendations for learning more about this stuff, a sort of 'Home Recording for Dummies'? (I hope that doesn't actually exist!). I've tried reading Sound-on-Sound magazine but it seems to assume a higher level of existing knowledge than I currently have. Many thanks for any pointers.