Pics Gallery
(Click on the thumbnails for full picture)
Tools 'n' Tasks
This no-nonsense, military looking piece of equipment is a "STEPRIDER" (the machine,.. silly) and it was a great help for getting heavy things up and down stairs,
on and off the van etc.,.... We got it from CASTLE FORKLIFTS
in Rugby and it has proved to be not only strong but also very gentle with fragile kit.
Just the thing for those delicate "organ transplants"!
The no-nonsense looking lady is Kate!
And the "Toys"(Instruments I play with)
This is my favourite guitar,.. a Takamine 12-string.
It might get nudged into second place when Kev Chilcott
presents me with the one he is making for me! Actually, I shall still use this one for writing songs as long as I can
still get new sets of frets to stay in the neck,.. it's on it's fourth set right now. I guess it's a kind of love affair,
I think we're stuck with each other.
I bought this one from a place called Sharon's Music in Tunbridge Wells,
way back in 1982,.. for a really silly price considering what Takemine guitars now sell for! I have been asked if I want
to sell it many times,... in case you were thinking of asking again,.... NO!
I put a deposit on this Burns Marquee Double-Six before telling Kate,.. er, yeah she did rant a bit but only till she
heard it! The original vesion of this beastie I met up with back in the seventies, as you can see here.
It has some power with the "Trisonic" pick-ups,.. had it for months but still experimenting. I did
change the knobs the moment I bought it,... the ones it came with were really naff!
This modified Aria Pro2 Lazer Bass has been around a while and has been quite seriously PB'd by
having pick-ups, fretting and scratch-plate mods, as well as tweaks to the tone circuit.
Er,.. I think this is an old Aria copy of a Les Paul,.. and I mean old too!
I found this one in bits after a neck / headstock crack. To be honest, having sort of thrown
it all back together, the neck really needs to be re-shaped,... it's like trying to play a
baseball bat! I does sound nice though, I just had to have a Gibson shaped thing but just
didn't have the money for a genuine one. This was in need of rescue so I rescued it. Ho-hum!
Yamaha PSR540. This was also an impulse buy,.. secondhand. Actually I still like the old Roland JX3P too,
it's just that it makes it easy to mess about when playing around with a new song, or re-doing
an old one. Ah yes, there is the midi interface that makes score writing simplicity itself.
It isn't even close to a Steiner upright that fills the corner of the front room, just still
love that real accoustic piano,..
Yeah, yeah,.. I've done all the drummer jokes as well, this wee black box is the Alesis SR16 drum
machine. It's basically a load of rather good drum sound samples with preset patterns and also,
user patterns too. It's quite an amazing way of dispensing with that guy in the band who needs
half the van and six roadies to get between gigs! (Doesn't speed up, slow down or chuck sticks
at you in the middle of a number either,....)
Having said that, there's some things it can't do that human drummers do so well, like drop a beat
when you missed one, play an extra intro when the lyrics vanish into 'La-la Land' and attract girls
like a complete babe-magnet!
Hmmmmm,.. this little thing is a Yamaha QY70. It's basically a tool for putting whole songs together,
it can also work as a band in a box but to be honest,.. even if they are a pain at times, I still prefer
a band of sweaty real live musos!
When I manage to get a song finished, this is where I get into the studio, well OK, it's a bit small to actually
get 'into' but you get the general idea.
I've done the 'pay us a fortune to produce
your perfect demo' dance with professional studios too many times. This way I get to have all the time I want to mess
about with different tracks and arrangements without giving my bank account a serious problem! (Not that it doesn't
have enough problems anyway.)
It's a Fostex VF160 and with 16 tracks plus eight 'virtual' ones to try variations on a theme, it's possibly the best
investment I've ever made in my musical life! It also has two digital effects channels and a host of tone tweaks
that makes it a really useful tool-kit. I have found that the best way to produce a CD with this is burn the master
using the built in burner and then do the final editing and CD runs on the computer,.. the screen is a wee bit small
to actually do the editing and it's a bit hard to fool with a magnifying glass and edit at the same time.
Maybe I just need to spend some more money on some glasses?
This is the business bit of the PA for most purposes,.. well to be totally honest, this is an original
version of what I use because on mine, there's independent switches for phantom power and the VU metering
is now four LED meters. Just lets me keep tabs on a bit more of what's happening. This is a powered mixer
that puts out 350watts a side which is fine for smaller venues on its own but I hook up the main rack,
900watts a side, for bigger venues and use these amps for fill at the rear. This gives me a 'box' of
sound that is more controlable than just using raw power up front, in the region of 6 Kilowatts! (Less to cart around!)
Ah yes,... one more thing, it has is a record output so we can hear all those bum notes and mistakes when we
wake up the next day! No, seriously, it's a great way to produce a genuine 'gig' demo, or a 'live' CD, particularly
for solo artists. (Like me.)
These little Peavey Deltafex units have had some bad reviews but I notice always from people who try to
use them for studios. To be honest, they ain't that popular for studio use because they don't have the range
of effects that studio engineers expect. For my purposes, in live situations they are simple and quite
enough for the task, I hate wasting ages setting up gazillions of buttons just to get a slight edge of
delay,.. this one is only a couple of tweaks and job done.
These beasts are the result of re-doing an old PA cab design I originally put together in 1989,
I just happened to have the old drawings kicking around and figured that all those bins in the stack
would take much less time to set up, if I put them all in a single box. Well,.. it sorta works.
For those who wanted to know they are called PA900Bi_02 Bins.
They are a trapezoid cab with a 15" horn mounted + 12" front mounted, both 300watts RMS.
The top end are a pair of 8" 150watts RMS with piezo horn and tweeters for the squeaks. This is
driven from a Bi-Amp set-up giving 900 Watts RMS and trust me,.. they really do sound nice. I thought
they would work out really heavy but as they are made in 18mm hardwood ply, they are surprisingly
light for the size. (They still don't quite come under the heading of 'pocket rock-boxes' though!)
Oh yeah,.. I know there are some other bins very similar to these around and no, I didn't poach
the design, I worked them out from three 8x4 sheets (cos that's what I had at the time) and a
couple of months of playing with acoustic dimensions.
This little Carlsbro GLX 30 is quite amazing really. It handles both the electro-accoustic
Takemine as well as the electric guitars and for only 30 watts, sounds great. It didn't cost
an arm and a leg in the first place but out-performs other more expensive amps. It will DI to
the main PA and so acts mostly as a stage monitor for me really. For some reason it reminds
me of the Vox AC30,... without the hum!
This little box often gets a comment from people at gigs! No, I don't shoot hecklers, though sometimes,....
It actually is the case for my microphones. Lined with a layer of foam, these little ammo boxes are really
cheap and you can find them at any surplus store. They actually are far stronger than any "flight-case"
and how do I know this? Well, someone actually drove the van over mine once, by accident of course.
All the mics survive to this day! I use several of these cases, in varying sizes and shapes,
for loose gear like leads and stuff. There are also some plastic 'shock-boxes' (surplus stores again) that store
the leads and the multicore.
Most of them get re-painted but I left this one with all it's print on,... just for laughs.
© PB 2004
Back Home
This no-nonsense, military looking piece of equipment is a "STEPRIDER" (the machine,.. silly) and it was a great help for getting heavy things up and down stairs,
on and off the van etc.,.... We got it from CASTLE FORKLIFTS
in Rugby and it has proved to be not only strong but also very gentle with fragile kit.
This is my favourite guitar,.. a Takamine 12-string.
I put a deposit on this Burns Marquee Double-Six before telling Kate,.. er, yeah she did rant a bit but only till she
heard it! The original vesion of this beastie I met up with back in the seventies, as you can see here.
This modified Aria Pro2 Lazer Bass has been around a while and has been quite seriously PB'd by
having pick-ups, fretting and scratch-plate mods, as well as tweaks to the tone circuit.
Er,.. I think this is an old Aria copy of a Les Paul,.. and I mean old too!
I found this one in bits after a neck / headstock crack. To be honest, having sort of thrown
it all back together, the neck really needs to be re-shaped,... it's like trying to play a
baseball bat! I does sound nice though, I just had to have a Gibson shaped thing but just
didn't have the money for a genuine one. This was in need of rescue so I rescued it. Ho-hum!
Yamaha PSR540. This was also an impulse buy,.. secondhand. Actually I still like the old Roland JX3P too,
it's just that it makes it easy to mess about when playing around with a new song, or re-doing
an old one. Ah yes, there is the midi interface that makes score writing simplicity itself.
It isn't even close to a Steiner upright that fills the corner of the front room, just still
love that real accoustic piano,..
Yeah, yeah,.. I've done all the drummer jokes as well, this wee black box is the Alesis SR16 drum
machine. It's basically a load of rather good drum sound samples with preset patterns and also,
user patterns too. It's quite an amazing way of dispensing with that guy in the band who needs
half the van and six roadies to get between gigs! (Doesn't speed up, slow down or chuck sticks
at you in the middle of a number either,....)
Hmmmmm,.. this little thing is a Yamaha QY70. It's basically a tool for putting whole songs together,
it can also work as a band in a box but to be honest,.. even if they are a pain at times, I still prefer
a band of sweaty real live musos!
When I manage to get a song finished, this is where I get into the studio, well OK, it's a bit small to actually
get 'into' but you get the general idea.
This is the business bit of the PA for most purposes,.. well to be totally honest, this is an original
version of what I use because on mine, there's independent switches for phantom power and the VU metering
is now four LED meters. Just lets me keep tabs on a bit more of what's happening. This is a powered mixer
that puts out 350watts a side which is fine for smaller venues on its own but I hook up the main rack,
900watts a side, for bigger venues and use these amps for fill at the rear. This gives me a 'box' of
sound that is more controlable than just using raw power up front, in the region of 6 Kilowatts! (Less to cart around!)
These little Peavey Deltafex units have had some bad reviews but I notice always from people who try to
use them for studios. To be honest, they ain't that popular for studio use because they don't have the range
of effects that studio engineers expect. For my purposes, in live situations they are simple and quite
enough for the task, I hate wasting ages setting up gazillions of buttons just to get a slight edge of
delay,.. this one is only a couple of tweaks and job done.
These beasts are the result of re-doing an old PA cab design I originally put together in 1989,
I just happened to have the old drawings kicking around and figured that all those bins in the stack
would take much less time to set up, if I put them all in a single box. Well,.. it sorta works.
This little Carlsbro GLX 30 is quite amazing really. It handles both the electro-accoustic
Takemine as well as the electric guitars and for only 30 watts, sounds great. It didn't cost
an arm and a leg in the first place but out-performs other more expensive amps. It will DI to
the main PA and so acts mostly as a stage monitor for me really. For some reason it reminds
me of the Vox AC30,... without the hum!
This little box often gets a comment from people at gigs! No, I don't shoot hecklers, though sometimes,....
