Tuesday, October 23, 2012

eBay tales

I've had an original line6 Bass POD for years - its seen me well for live shows for at least - what - 7 years or something? The floorboard controller for it does a great job, tuner, wah, volume, all in one.
When the PODxt came out I was interested, especially as it didn't have the annoying gap while changing patches, but the cost of a replacement system - bass PODxt plus the FBV short board - always seemed to put me off enough not to bother.
Well, fast forward to now, and there are good deals to be had on eBay! Fortunately, the gear is well built and often spends its life in studios: total cost on eBay (I was amazed to win both first time with a reasonably high max bid) was a very reasonable £170 including P&P.
I even had the chance to fix the FBV a bit - switch replacement. I can recommend Doctor Tweek on the web - fast, great communication and he's got the right parts for the job: after desoldering the old switches, easy job, completely fixed. Satisfying - an irony is that this means I now know how to fix it later, and also how solid it is.

Great new project, built new equipment for it!

New project: I've got hooked up with a truly talented, enthusiastic vocalist - She's had stuff released before.
Great energy in her songs, and a new genre for me: reggae, but with a lot of other styles thrown in. She loves her crossover - she's into loads of styles, and regularly likes to flip between them.
With that in mind, this time around I finally knuckled under and made up the monster live studio PC in a flightcase I've always wondered about... Net result, a machine which runs ableton live, with a behringer MIDI floor controller to kick off the scenes and modify tempo.
We've tested it, and it seems like it'll do the job - the drummer's got great tempo, and the gear is reliable.
All I need now is a better audio interface than the old 2x2 I'm using... Anyone got a MOTU 828 I can have?