Archive for December, 2007

My Bass Rig

December 28, 2007 by john No Comments »

Yesterday I posted a diagram of my guitar rig. After a bit of minor tweaking last night, I finished the new configuration of my bass rig, which is shown below. Click the diagram for a larger view.

John Hendow - Live Bass RigIt incorporates many of the same components as the guitar setup, which is by design. This way I can actually leave the whole combined rig in a single rack and simply repatch when switching instruments. It will also allow for full-range amplification of instruments such as Chapman Stick. If I wind up doing more full-range work, I could add a crossover in the rack to appropriately split my signal between the guitar and bass cabinets.

The final touch on this rig would be the inclusion of intelligent routing for the signal path. This probably isn’t necessary at this point, but I’m considering it as a nerd project. My G-Force will do some great signal management, and it’s possible I could accomplish this routing without any additional hardware. And yes, it all still fits in my car!

 

My Guitar Rig

December 27, 2007 by john No Comments »

As a follow-up to my recent article about rewiring my rack, I’ve finished assembling a new snake to connect between my rack and floor pedal. It contains three 1/4″ unbalanced guitar cables and a 2 conductor power cable that will eventually provide remote DC for my floor pedal. I need to do some testing to determine the correct DC power supply that will provide the necessary voltage / amperage via the 30 foot cable run. It took me a few hours to put it together, using loops of heat-shrink tubing. As much as I love duct tape, it’s the wrong tool for building cable snakes. Ditto for cable ties, which always catch on each other and often have sharp edges. Heat-shrink tubing doesn’t leave adhesive residue, is very low-profile and if you ever need to repair any of the cables, you just snip the loops to separate the cables. The resultant snake is easy to handle and coils neatly.

My guitar setup is fairly straight forward. Click the image below for a larger view.

John Hendow - Live Guitar Rig

I have 2 transmitters for my Audio Technica wireless system, so both my main guitar and my backup guitar are ready for action. The good news is that I can select from hundreds of channels, so I can always find a clear frequency at any venue. The bad news is that my UHF wireless setup transmits within the soon-to-be-auctioned 700MHz frequency band, and I’m not certain what will happen once that part of the spectrum is sold. Quite a lot of professional wireless equipment runs in this part of the spectrum. Chances are the music industry will need to find a new place to broadcast our signals.

Rock N Roller R8The big excitement of yesterday was the purchase of a new Rock N Roller R8 equipment cart, which neatly transports my entire rig in a single trip. This will make my load-in much easier, and will be especially important when I’m moving my own gear. I’ve noticed that it sits pretty level in “cart” mode, so I may even set up my guitar rig right on top of it when I need to move it onto the stage for quick change-over between bands.

 

Rewiring The Rack

December 24, 2007 by john 1 Comment »

I put a little time into rewiring my gear rack for the upcoming 80s Invasion gig. I’m using a shorter signal path these days, and I wanted to rebuild my patch panel to make setup easier at gigs. The most important change to the interior of my rack was going through all the wiring and replacing the patch cables. In the previous configuration I had a rack-mounted POD Pro, but I’ve replaced it with the floorboard version (POD XT Live). I built two sets of StarQuad wired cables with Neutrik plugs for the internal routing. I also assembled a new rear panel, which I punched with three 1/4″ interconnects, a MIDI connector, and an XLR. In order to streamline my setup / teardown time, I’ve built a new snake to connect between the rack and pedalboard. Next up: find a new handtruck / cart to move my gear around.

 

Holidays May Be Closer Than They Appear

December 20, 2007 by john No Comments »

BumbleWith the Christmas holiday approaching rapidly, we’ve been trying to get all the shopping / packing / shipping done. And in the midst of all this regular activity we’ve got a kitchen project underfoot. Literally. We’re in the process of having the kitchen floor tiled. I’ll be uploading some pictures to document the project, but we’re not quite done and I want to have that final “all done” image as proof that it really did happen.

In the mean time, we’re prepping for family visits and some festive loafing on the couch. Every year the holidays seem to arrive sooner. I don’t know if this can be blamed on an expanding universe, or whether it’s just that we’re so busy. Seems like a good question for Dr. Feynman.

 

Ashdown Customer Support = A+

December 19, 2007 by john No Comments »

MAG300As I wrote in my post “The Bass Gods Smileth“, I recently acquired an Ashdown MAG 300 bass head. It’s a great bass amp and I’m really happy with it. The only minor concern was that it was missing a knob. No big deal really, since I figured I could just order one from the manufacturer. I contacted Ashdown via email and received a very quick reply. Impressive, since they’re located in Essex, UK. I explained my situation and the service manager said he would just mail me the knob. From the UK. For free. And he did! That is amazing customer support. I’m impressed with this kind of policy. It seems most companies have lost the ability to recognize the long-term value of solid customer service. It makes the difference between being a loyal customer and being a shopper.

I’ve done a lot of shopping this holiday season, and most of the customer service I’ve experienced has been deplorable. Cashiers carrying on cell phone conversations while working at the register. Disinterested / aloof salespeople, ignoring obvious customer support opportunities in the store and clearly telegraphing their annoyance at being on the job. And no authority… there is a near-total lack of empowerment to make good customer support decisions. It doesn’t matter how much the managers care or how hard they work if the line employees don’t internalize these values as well, and that won’t happen if those employees don’t feel like they’re invested in the outcome. Simply put, there are businesses on the “naughty” list and I won’t be in much of a hurry to return to them. And there are some businesses like Ashdown, who make the “nice” list. I’m officially a loyal customer.

 

Thoughts On The 12/15 80's Invasion Gig

December 17, 2007 by john No Comments »

Stratocaster HeadstockLast Saturday’s show was a lot of fun, and I think we played really well. The staff at the Capital Hill Arts Center was very helpful and friendly. We definitely benefit when the house crew is so easy to work with. The overall enthusiasm we experience at these gigs is amazing, both from the audience and the support staff.

Parking on Capital Hill is always difficult, and I was lucky enough to find a spot just down the street from the club. It didn’t help that it was raining, or that I still needed to make four trips with the hand truck to / from my car. I definitely need to get a hand truck that converts to a cart. This will allow me to move my gear in a single trip. It’s on my “to do” list before the New Year’s Eve gig.

One of the additional challenges of this gig was the limited monitor system. We didn’t get much of a soundcheck (ok… none) and there were only two monitors for the whole band. One didn’t work. Guess which one I was using… I think we need to invest in an in-ear system for the band. Then it wouldn’t matter.

The next week of practice is going to interesting; I need to do some tweaks on my patches and prepare the blocks of presets to match the set order. New Year’s Eve is going to be a lot of fun.

 

WordPress Install Upgraded

December 15, 2007 by john No Comments »

UpgradeI finally got around to updating this installation of WordPress to version 2.3.1 today. This version of the code base has been available for several weeks, but I’ve been too busy to perform the upgrade. Looks like it was successful.

 

Practice Practice Practice

December 14, 2007 by john No Comments »

During the past month I’ve been putting in about 2 hours per day of practice. A lot of it has been guitar practice in preparation for tomorrow night’s 80s Invasion gig in Seattle, but I’ve also been working on my bass parts for The Preons. It’s interesting because these are three different instruments:

  • Six string electric guitar (Fender Stratocaster) with a scale length of 25.5″
  • Four string fretless bass (Warwick Corvette) with a scale length of 34″
  • Five string fretted bass (Tony Levin model) with a scale length of 34″

These instruments are all pretty different and require different techniques. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover that my practice time on any of them seems to improve my playing on all of them. I’ve also noticed that my pitch detection and concept time-to-execution is much improved. There might be something to that old thing about practice…

One of my new approaches to practicing is to work on parts much more slowly than before. I am attempting to keep my tempo very controlled until I can execute the parts flawlessly, then I’ll develop speed. My guitar teacher in college told me “practice doesn’t make perfect. practice makes permanent.” It makes sense. Once errors are practiced repeatedly, they are much more difficult to address. So I’m putting in some miles with my instruments, getting ready for upcoming gigs and hoping to break through to the next level of my playing. Meedly meedly.

 

Christmas Music

December 13, 2007 by john No Comments »

For the last two days I’ve been attending another installment of my PMP class, which is going very well. I’m enjoying the training and looking forward to next month’s classes. The classes are being held in downtown Seattle at a hotel conference room. As a regrettable consequence, I’ve been subjected to a huge amount of Christmas music, piped in via overhead speakers. I despise Christmas music. I especially loathe reinterpretations of Christmas music turned funky, bluesy, an into R&B workout. It doesn’t improve the music. If it were possible, I’d chew my own ears off. Can we just please hear Bach’s Christmas Oratorio?

 

Ouch! My Finger! Ouch! My Tire!

December 10, 2007 by john No Comments »

Yesterday 80s Invasion rehearsed our new material in preparation for the upcoming shows. But just getting out of the house with my gear turned out to be a comedy of mishaps. First, while loading my Mesa/Boogie guitar cabinets into the trunk, I managed to smash a finger… I was moving one of my speaker cabinets to make room for my rack, and got the middle finger of my right hand caught between them. The knuckle got squished pretty hard, immediately swelled up and turned purple. A short improvised dance was performed. Oh well… the show must go on… so I finished loading up and got ready to leave. That was when I noticed that I had a flat tire. Fortunately there is a tire place near my house, so I limped my car there and got it fixed.

As the saying goes “That which does not kill us, only makes us late”. Or something like that.

Remarkably, despite the challenges I still arrived at rehearsal on time. We did a pretty good job of getting through the songs. The gods of rock must be testing me.