The Last Bass Outpost

I know, I know. Youtube: big deal. ... but I didn't upload this stuff and I'm pretty proud of it. I found this stuff when I was looking up an old promotional spot from 1982.  For those of you who don't know, I work as broadcast engineer, but (obviously) my first love is audio. The station where I work, WBIR, is #1 in the country for market share per capita, but East Tennessee is not a big market, and we're not a huge station or anything. We have a local variety show called Live@5@4 (don't ask about the name- the story is stupid) and from time to time, we have local and regional musical acts perform live.

 For those of you who have never been involved in TV studio work, it's nothing like stage production. Everything MUST be mic'ed in some capacity or the audience will never hear it, there is NO PA or built-in monitoring system, and no audience to play to and feed off. We've all heard too many instances of shitty performances done on TV by bands that kick ass, even from the "big boys" who have dedicated entire live music production setups larger than my entire station. Well, that pisses me off, because 90% of the time, it's not the band's fault, so whenever we have a band on our show, I'm the go-to audio guy.

Since our TV audio board is set up for anchor mics and line-level sources and has next to no headroom, whenever there is a band, I submix from another mixer in the studio and feed a line-level output back to the main board. My studio setup consists of a 16 channel Mackie mixer, two JBL Eons for monitors, and an old Yamaha SPX 990 reverb that I got when it was decommissioned from the Commercial Production Department. I have a really crappy AKG condensor mic suspended roughly 15' above the set where performances take place, two SM58's, three SM57's, a few EV 267ND’s and two Whirlwind Imp passive DI's run through a 100' snake to another set so that I can use headphones to mix, which are either Sony 7506's or Sennheiser HD280's. That's it: no graphic EQ's for the monitors or compression other than my fingers on faders. Occasionally, bands will bring in their own mics, but that’s it.

Now for the part so you know this is me talking: even with such a relatively modest setup, I’ll put my results up against the networks and the like any day. Here’s an example of the on air-product as the home audience gets to see and hear it:



You’ll notice that it is somewhat overcompressed: this is the compressor chasing the output of the main audio board which was set for a much too slow attack and too long a release. It worked OK for voices and it kept things from hitting the transmitter too hot most times, but there is definitely the ‘compressor set wrong’ pumping going on.  That was beyond my control that day; I didn’t set it, nor did I have access to it. Still, the end result isn’t bad.

This next example is resume material. It was taken from a recording sourced before the broadcast output compression and then tweaked /mastered at my home studio. The band uploaded it from a DVD I made for them. Everything in it is 100% live, with no dubs, no comps, no edits, and no re-takes. It was the first time they performed the song the whole way through. There are even a couple of minor rhythm guitar clams you should be able to catch.




So what do you all think? There are some others, but these two are the first ones I found on Youtube.

 

www.waterstoneguitars.com

...they sell direct.

The angle of the lens doesn't really present the body that well. It is HUGE, much larger than a T-Bird silhouette. It's wider than the OUTSIDES of a few cases. Add a 34" scale and that enormous headstock, and it just doesn't fit anything that I've found. I keep it on a Hecules multi-stand. You could haul a Barrett .50 in its gig bag, so I just keep that folded up in my studio closet.

17 basses, 37 amps, 19 cabs, 3 guitars, tons of PA and recording gear...

...and I take ballroom dance lessons. 

I've has three hours' sleep in the past two days combined, so I probably nuked it myself. It wasn't anything earth-shattering.

 I just talked about how Loud put that same label language of "designed and assembled in the U.S.A" on the first overseas-made Mackie mixers after they shut down the plant in Woodinville, WA. They say "designed and tested by Mackoids in the U.S.A." I was no fan of SLM, especially from a service angle, but they were light years beyond the example that Loud now sets.

As to answer the question of how long Ampeg has been foreign made, SLM ceased to exist about four years ago when Loud bought them.  A few months later, Loud shut down production in St. Louis and moved it to Arkansas, where it stayed for about a year or two before they laid off their entire US production workforce and shut down their service network, despite assurances as late as a month before the change that they never would do so.

Most of the problems with Asian Ampegs have been poor quality control and shoddy parts. I expect the "Heritage Series" to be decently assembled out of cherrypicked parts from the foreign lines, so they ought to at least work. And for all those who think I'm being racist or xenophobic about Asian origins, I'm quite fond of my MTI SVT, which was made in Japan and has far superior assembly to 70's SVT's.

Pictures... you know the rules... 

Here you go:

http://bassoutpost.com/index.php?topic=3216.msg50078#msg50078

There was mention of the Eurofighter, but does anyone know about the predecessor, the British Aerospace EAP (Experimental Aircraft Project)...

Yep... enough to know the Eurofighter was supposed to be the "EFA" until France pulled out of the EAP program and came out with the Rafale. I've got a few books with pictures of the first prototypes.

The monstrous scandal (as far as the RAF is concerned) is what they did to TSR2 (a "sister" to Concorde, and also powered by Olympous turbines) ... when they cancelled the project in '66 they (the Labour Government) ordered the destruction of all parts, all jigs, all information... literally burnt in front of the staff, and the then only flying prototype, XR219, was taken to RAF Shoeburyness and used for target practice...! this was always considered to be "suspect" and the the ordering of the F1-11 made it even more suspicious... (conspiracy theorists abound)

I thought it was common knowledge that the US leveraged the F-111 on the UK because Grumman was floundering under the weight of the naval version of the F-111 and the early failures in the F-14 test program in the early 70's.  Once the early terrain-following radar issues of the F-111 were worked out, it performed quite well for the UK, even with the lesser powered engines than its US counterpart, until the Tornado took over in the role of supersonic strike.