Today I picked up my new bass amp – an Ashdown MAG300 C210 Combo. What does that mean? Its a 307W combo amp (amplifier and speaker cabinet) with 2 x 10″ speakers. And its lovely.
When I was looking at new amps, I had a few choices. First, do I get a split setup, i.e. a seperate amplifier head unit and speaker cabinets (cabs), or a combo, with the amp and cabs built into the same unit. There were really two differences. Firstly, with split setups, you have more flexibility to mix amps with cabs, so if you already have some, or prefer a particular brand of cabs, you can mix and match your units. The other difference is price. You’ll probably pay about another 20-30% more for split setups depending on what you choose.
For me, price was a big issue, so I went with the combo setup. I saw the Ashdown amps in PMT in Birmingham and after some reading online, decided that this was my choice of amp. So I went over there on wednesday last week and picked up this bad boy.
Of course this was not the best idea as I had a gig on Thursday at the Hare and Hounds so I had about 10 minutes to give it a try out the night before.
Anyway, the gig went well, the amp is lovely. I hope to get more time soon (see Redundancy) to play around with it. I can say that the compression and Sub-Harmonics settings do some damn good work on the sound.
If you wanna see this lush thing, check out my Unboxing photos on Flickr.
Hello
Just a copy post here to let you all know that my band, the Douglas Furs, have got some gigs coming up. We haven’t played in a few months and have one or two new songs to play for the crowds.
Full details can be found via MySpace, Upcoming.org, Virb, and below.
- 11th April – Varsity, Wolverhampton. 7pm, £4 entry
- 1st May – Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath. 7pm, £4 entry
- 29th May – Bar Academy, Birmingham. 7pm, £4 entry
- 27th June – Jug of Ale, Moseley. 7pm, £4 entry.
Come along if you can, and bring some friends. We might be giving out some free CD’s too if you fancy it!
Date: 13/10/2007
Location: Dance Studio
Sorry! Its been too long since I’ve blogged the Douglas Furs action. We’ve been practicing! I promise. And we even recorded. It’s been 6 months since our last recording session and we were itching to get back in the saddle. Its just a shame it wasn’t as good as I hoped. Don’t get me wrong, the session went well (I haven’t listened to the results yet though) but it wasn’t as smooth as our previous session.
So I’ll be spending this weekend cutting up tracks to throw into iTunes and probably upload to Virb or somewhere. I’ll be sure to let you all know where to find them.
DF Out
Date: 7/8/2007
Location: Room 7, Robannas
After one hell of a hiatus, we finally got back together for a rehersal. It took a while since Rich Bitch seems to be out of order at the moment (why can’t we find out whats going on?! Oh yeah, too lazy).
Anyway, we tried out Robannas in town (which is NOT next to Sound Control, despite somone’s instructions). Anyway, we made it there, hiked our gear up the mountain of stairs and got our room (you pay at the end..intriguing). The room left a lot to be desired. It was small, which wouldn’t have been such an issue had the sun not been blinding us and making the room unbearably hot. So much so that we were all sweating like pigs. The gear wasn’t much good either. The bass amp and head were a bit dated, and didn’t seem to do a lot, plus the volume was all over the place. The guitar stuff was much nicer. The PA for the vocals?! A joke. The system was older than my amp, half the switches and dials were missing and the sound was just awful.
Anyway, we made do (even me without a tuner…probably was a bit off) and played our way through the usual songs. To be honest, our playing was rubbish. The vocals were rubbish. The room was too hot, we were all exhausted. It wasn’t pretty
But it was good to get back together and play. We’ll be trying out Madhouse next time, at least until Rich Bitch gets its act in order and we can get back there.
In the mean time, be sure to check out our virb page and have a listen to our songs, add us as friends, check out the photos and watch us playing Birclock live.
As you will have seen on the previous post, the Douglas Furs played their first live gig to a crowd of dozens at the Bear Tavern in Bearwood on 22 May 2007.
After being the first ones there, we got on the list, went to enjoy some food while being nervous, we were told we were 3rd on the bill.
After sitting through a guy on an acoustic guitar, and a guy playing Gary Moore with his massive pedal, we took to the stage. Our set list went as Russia, Sequoia, Birdclock, and finished on Dog in a Garden.
It seems like the cowbell alone got a lot more cheers than some of the songs, which is a shame, but I’d put it down to not knowing the songs.
As said before, you can check out the photos on Flickr, or the video on Revver.
After the half-success of the first gig, we planned to return on 12 June. Unfortunately, I had a call from James to let me know that the gig was cancelled. The whole night was. Apparently there was some trouble with fighting, and the night got permanently cancelled.
And as you would have it, the Douglas Furs take a short break. The other guys are in moving season and houses are scarce, so practice and gigs have been put on hold until July.
Hopefully, we’ll be back with a bang, with a new song in tow (and one less song thanks to a missing notebook). We may even get back to record again.
So until more happens, keep listening!
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