The Last Bass Outpost

Well, my band very rarely practices, but we make up for it by gigging a whole lot, so I can see where you're coming from.

But I think a lot of that depends on the complexity of the arrangements.  I know if I could ever find myself in a band that did cool multi-part vocal harmonies, for example, I'd sure as hell want to spend some serious time on getting them right...

Cheers, Tim

All I remember about my first audition was that I, well, sucked!

Didn't get in the band, either!

 

Tim

Oh, that is absolutely priceless!!!

Cheers, Tim

Wonder what Rick Neilson's chiropractor would say. 

Eureka!  Now the kids can go to college!!!

 

Tim

It's definitely as big as a Strat pickup with a cover already on it, if not slightly bigger...

Cheers, Tim

It was in interesting weekend!

I had a duo gig with my brother on Thursday night that was uneventful. I played my "Pinky" Musicmaster through my Yamaha Magic Stomp modeler into the PA system, all went well.

Friday and Saturday night were band gigs at our favorite Ocean City watering hole "BJ's On The Water" (keep your mind out of the gutter, Billy J. Carder owns the joint!). My SWR Workingman head is ailing and I bought a new amp via eBay (an AMP BH 420, more on that in a minute). Unfortunately, the seller sent it USPS and it took its sweet time getting here, not arriving until today, so I had to go with my Magic Stomp into my PowerBlock into an old 60s Guild single 15 cab (my only 8 ohm cab, which is what the PowerBlock wants to see). Friday night, no problem, sounded like a million bucks.

Ah, but Saturday night, I got this annoying crackling noise as soon as we started playing the first song. Man, that sucks, trying to first identify where the noise is coming from and then which component or cable is the culprit. I THINK that I might have been running the Magic Stomp too hot into the PowerBlock, and hence the lineout to the PA system was too hot as well. Anyway, I may have negatively affected one of the PA main speakers. It sure sounded like that was where the sound was coming from. However, today I noticed that the 15" speaker in my bass cab was loose (only two of the screws were holding it in, and it was definitely moving around!), so that may have had something to do with it as well...

So today the AMP BH 420 showed up. It's an amp from the 1980s, designed by Steve Rabe later of SWR and Raven Labs fame along with Russ Allee who had a lot to do with Eden amps, and it's kind of the missing link between the classic 70s Acoustic 360 (which these guys worked on) and their later amps. It's also the amp that Dave Funk based his Thunderfunk amps on.

Mine looks just like this one:



400 watts into 4 ohms, very tweakable. Damn, it's loud! I might break down and get a bigger speaker cab (I'm running it into my 4 ohm 2x10 Steel Sound cab, and I can easily imagine blowing the Eminence Delta speakers in it!).

I'm gonna gig it on Saturday, and will report back!

Cheers, Tim

No access to Photoshop away from home, but I'll have to say this is my favorite plane:



Pure balls. 

The National Air and Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian, has an annex out near Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia, and a friend of mine and I went there about a month ago, and as you walk into the main building, there's an SR-71 Blackbird aimed right at you.  Man, that's a profoundly cool airplane!

Cheers, Tim

Sorry, only communists played country music on Gibson basses back during those times...

 

Cheers, Tim