soundian

It's only through you that I know how heavy Trannies can be! Can you wear the blue dress next time, you know it's my fave. I only said that cos I know I'll have a plethora of spotty faced guitar geeks refusing to take their valve amps off-stage 'til they've cooled down.( The amps, not the spotty faced guitar geeks)

It could be difficult leaving the mains power on and not moving the amp until the valves cool down if you're a support band.

Yea, from the safety point of view, you don't want to plug in a 115 to a 250 supply. Getting them to bring a couple of yank fourbars and wiring them up to a 110V connector would be best...don't ya think?

Depends how long you need it for. You'll still need to make a cable though cos those hire shops will not give you a converter cable.

If they don't have switches on the amps then get hold of one of those transformers they use in building sites and a plug to go into it. Wire the plug into a 4 bar and you'll have all the pussy american power you want.

When I'm under pressure anyone who doesn't fuck around gets my thanks. I've got to think of the bigger picture and most bands are only concerned with their little bit of the evening. Oh, and when it comes to packing up, take the equipment off-stage as quickly as possible. Pack it offstage. Other people are trying to set up and an open guitar case takes up a lot of room, never mind drum cases. No 232 in the Stupid Things Bands Do list

Er, no. The Lemon Tree, The Loft, The Moorings and Drakes never need my services.There's also at least a handful of freelance engineers. I just work in two venues which have a high turnover of bands with the occaisonal freelance job if I can be arsed.

I like this guy. One more tip for bands in general though. If your next to soundcheck, don't stand watching the band, use the time to tune your guitars, check your batteries etc. Then your ready to go on stage and soundcheck without everyone else standing about waiting while you tune up/frantically run round trying to get a new battery etc.

Yup.

Try sticking a 300W 8 ohm rated amp through a 300W 4 ohm cab.

The E-bow did cross my mind but the proviso was that it could work for leccy stuff as well. Try an E-bow on a keyboard.

Now I've thought about this for a bit, I don't think you could get a sustain pedal that would work for electronic stuff as well as guitar. compression would gain you a little more time but most sounds would get fucked up with that sort of compression on it. Guitar sustain relies on the interaction between the strings, pickups and what comes out of the speakers, electronic equipment doesn't have that interaction. Delay wouldn't work either. If you had a short enough delay time to sustain the note it would also colour it, normally making it more 'boxy and 'middy'.

Earplugs!

Erm ,don't know much about guitar pedals, since they automatically qualify as Somebody Elses Problem. Simplest and cheapest route to sustain. Move your guitar nearer to the amp with the pickups pointing at the speakers. Get your gain structure and tone in the right ballpark and your all the way. Oh and spellchecker, I think a piano sustain holds the hammer just above the string to let it sustain, rather than resting on the string to dampen it.

Now that's definitely condescending. On second thoughts, no it's not. How can you be condescending from a position you haven't reached yet.

And I was explaining what rms was. In a slightly condescending manner but I found your next statement condescending so I couldn't resist giving you a taste of your own medicine. Am I doing your physics homework for you?

What, all of it?

Not everyone has though, and some haven't done it in a while. I'm sure I wouldn't remember it if I didn't use it on a regular basis.

IMPEDANCE actually! Amplifiers have a finite gain limit, when you try to amplify above that limit the top of the waveform gets chopped off (clipped). Your peak/clip lights on equipment will come on when you get close to this limit as a warning. RMS is based on sinusoidal waves (the type you get out of your mains socket, normally produced by a rotating coil in a magnetic field). The average output of a sinusoidal wave is 1/ root 2. (basic trig and calculus) Any 'o' grade physics student could tell you that. The 'peaks' I'm talking about are when you overload the pre-amp to such a level that it 'clips'(cutting off the top end of the signal). These can deliver significantly more power than un-clipped waves. Hence the safety factor. To put it simply, if an amp is rated 300W peak, that's your max. power and a 300 cab should handle it. 300W rms on the other hand is a convenient shorthand for average and a 300W cab wouldn't be able to handle the peaks. Capisce.

Most guitars will have the lower (fatter) strings longer then the rest. Look at the fixed bridges in acoustics, They slant, making the thinner strings shorter, and generally have a slightly different saddle posiotion for the B string.(M3rd interval as opposed to a 4th) I agree with Rob as well, in the absence of a tuner harmonics are easier because you don't need to hold a string and stretch the other one to the machine heads. If your intonations not right either method will make you go out of tune higher up the neck.

What I'm trying to say is: if your intonation is fine then tuning by harmonics is just as valid as tuning using fretted notes. Using frets always introduces slight tuning difficulties because musical scales are not mathematically precise.

Jeez, that even gave me a headache and I know what it means.

I think that would be fine. I doubt you'll ever need to use it full whack. Unless you fancy the sound engineer stabbing you with a rusty micstand.

Whoops, well spotted G. I don't think I mentioned it but that would be the minimum. Allowing for the possibility of clipped waveforms and the current trend for bass distorion 50% would be a figure I'd be happier with myself in a professional situation. Rms figure don't take into account the extra power you can get from clipping it.

Sorry I'm not Craig. Will I do anyway. Cabs are rated in watts but most people forget the other important factor: resistance. A cab with a 300W 4 ohm output will deliver less than 300W into an 8 ohm cab. And if you want to get really picky (and I would advise this, especially for bass) is the output rms or peak. If the output on the amp is rms, you need 30% more power handling in the cab to handle peaks. Therefore a 300W rms 4 ohm output would require a 400W 4 ohm cab.