Thoughts On The 6/18 Dudley Manlove Quartet Performance
On Saturday 6/18 The Dudley Manlove Quartet played at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard. Our keyboard player Chris Joss opened the show with his accordion stylings, much to the enjoyment of the appreciative audience. We hit the stage and kicked into our regular set. We had a fantastically great show and the sold-out room was enthusiastically dancing all night. I had two minor gear gripes…
Gear gripe #1: My Fender Twin has been acting up for a while, to the point where I’ve become suspicious of its reliability. I actually brought my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe as a backup amp, and parked it onstage where I could easily get to it in the event of a problem. During the soundcheck the Twin seemed OK despite making some odd crackling sounds, but once we got into the full set the amp suddenly dropped about 50% in volume. I unplugged from the reverb channel and went into the other one, which at least had normal volume despite making some crackles and odd distortion. It did get me through the night, but that amp is headed back to the shop (again) to see if we can’t get it working happily. I’ve had these symptoms from the Twin since I bought it and it’s been in three different repair shops, all without any success at diagnosing the issue. The issue seems to be something very difficult to isolate, likely a circuit board issue. I’m working to convince my amp technician that we should simply pull out all the circuit boards and replace them with a hand-wired point-to-point turret board. This essentially would turn my 1965 Twin Reverb Reissue into an actual 1965 circuit. It would be a serious effort but I think the project would be fun and the outcome would be wonderful.
Gear gripe #2: My newly rebuilt pedalboard was perfectly behaved at the gig and I’m really happy with the way it sounds. My gripe is actually a little silly, but it’s for real. A few of my pedals have intensely bright blue LEDs on them, and since my corner of the stage is especially dark, it’s tough to see where things are on the board with those blinding blue lights in my eyes. I fumbled around in the dark trying to find some of the pedals and eventually gave up and just felt around with my hands to turn things off. The solution would be just to have a little light on my side of the stage (seriously… there isn’t a single light pointing in that direction) or to have some light at my feet.
All in all, a fun show! It’s a blast to see so many familiar faces at these local shows. Thanks to everyone who showed up.