StringsReunited.com

Plank's Blog

A blog for guitar stuff, tech stuff, woodwork, electronics and other random stuff!!   I will try to answer any questions but touring and recording keeps me very busy; plank3000@gmail.com.

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Festivals.....

Thurs 3rd July 08

Days and weeks flying by as usual, we are now at Hot and sunny Roskilde festival in Denmark, the stage and setup area is small, hot and very crowded, this coupled with shortage of sleep makes it all too easy for people to snap at each other but any blow ups are usually short lived. Having all spent a long time working together we all know how it goes and no one can be grumpy for too long....
Having finished the UK leg of the tour.....we ended in Glasgow , which was a cracking gig after a nightmare with torrential rain all day which reduced to drizzle for showtime, the Glasgow crowds are always up for it which was great.....
We are now into the European festivals where, on the first day you can usually get a hot shower and a cold beer no problem, by the last day this has often swapped round to become cold showers and hot beer!........
A nice travel day and much needed day off in Copenhagen yesterday, time to get washing done and buy a rather expensive dinner!...
The old Martin may have to be swapped for something a little more robust for touring as a few cracks are starting to appear......SG being used more than ever!...,.
Q's...Keyboard stand was custom built in a friends workshop, 25mm box section steel frame, welded and coated with hammerite, Aluminum / Aluminium checker plate shelves and 100mm case wheels greatly useful for festivals as impossible to move all the gubbins quickly without it!............. Time to see if all the cases have been shoved into a corner! ...pic is car that was being driven out of the hotel lobby as we arrived in Milan..cool eh? :-)

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Summer ?

Sun 22nd June

Well.... sitting backstage at the Hurricane festival site in Germany...... there is some rain with a force 10 gale expected so it's anyones guess what's going to happen today.......haven't done a festival in a while but it took about half a second to remember the situation...general chaos with many bands all setting up at the same time on the back section of the stage behind a black drape that has presently blown away... sound good?....
We did the Southside festival yesterday in the south of Germany with the same bands on the bill so we all kind of have a rough idea of each others timings and space requirements but things invariably run a little late......if there are technical problems during the day then ten minutes here and five minutes there can easily end up being half an hour or more at the end which can cause large problems if there is a curfew.......
A half hour change over yesterday made it a little tight but an exciting show with a few breakages and some old songs adding to the day............Q's string on all acoustics are Martin SP 11sets which are fairly bright without being too zingy when new......... a drop of araldite will keep the selector switch tops on but have to be cut off if the switch needs replacing - usually ok as you can get a new top with a new switch....Jonnys teles are '92 - 93.......
I've had many emails and questions about the old tech tips that were on the site, these have been removed for more work to be done on them and will, along with other useful stuff will be in our Guitar Tech pocket book that should be out before Christmas....
Time to put raincoat on, find some more plastic sheeting then have another look at the stage - pic is of view from the bus about 5 minutes ago - hope everything doesn't get wrecked as we are off from here tonight to start the big UK shows....we will see.. I have just noticed that it's called the 'Hurricane' festival.... ho ho :-)
update 8pm... nice and sunny once more!! you never know...

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Apart from the roads..

Sunday 15th June

In Nimes today for the second show at the Coliseum..... I just looked at the last blog date and can't believe a month has passed so quickly, each day meaning to do a bit then forgetting......after a short break, we started again in Dublin with the UK rig so there was plenty of re setting going on for a couple of days as though everything had reverted to 'restore factory settings' !! - all the minor tweaks here and there through the US tour had to be applied to the setup we had left in production rehearsals, this is a problem with running two rigs as each needs to be matched to the other when getting to the next territory........
Great crowds in Ireland as always.....from there to Paris Bercy which was very weird being indoors for the first time in ages, with everything sounding completely different.....the second day there was overshadowed by the truck drivers strike going on in Spain and the border being blocked, a massive headache for production department having to make plans A- Z with everything changing every five minutes....eventually we resorted to various unconventional ways round the blockage which involved being up all night and splitting up gear and personnel........by the time of showday everything was back together in Barcelona and the show went ahead.....a beautiful day and location but there is a sewage plant about 50 metres away from the venue, making the whole place stink terribly!.....
a few technical problems here and there with pedals breaking and lines going down........it's never surprising being as there are around 100 channels of audio stuff going on along with plenty of prototype lights and video...
I took a scary high walk around the top edge of the Coliseum earlier and looked down on the whole setup ... a weird juxtaposition of all this technology in somewhere a couple of thousand years old...if walls could talk?..
Q's...The 60's Jazzmaster wood is Ash or Alder......also Jazzmaster pickups and wiring back to original'60's configuration.......piano pickup is a Helpinstill from the US......New guitar radios are Trantec UHF 5.3 which so far have been great and a vast improvement on the old ones...........a quiet afternoon today as we can make no noise due to local regulation, so time for re stringing and maintainance, oh and this.. :-)........ pic yesterday day in Nimes.

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Jazz....

Saturday 17th May

Today in Texas at the Cynthia Mitchell woods pavilion and another good show.......bit hard to get moving this morning as long 900 mile travel day on bus and day off before show......sounds good but it's better to do a few in a row and get into the rhythm of things.......spent an hour on the 2nd Jazzmaster today, replacing worn vintage bridge with mustang replacement, these are more solid and have set saddle heights with just two side adjustments and are less prone to movement, it's good to keep stuff original but some of these guitars are over 40 years old and reality is that they need to work as a reliable day to day touring instrument ........the old SG still feels fantastic and so light! what a brilliant guitar, shame they cost so much now...

Q's... the new bass amp is an Ampeg SVT VR which is an uprated version of the original and sounds great and punchy with plenty of mid range... this and the CL would seem to be an ideal combination ( erk..sounds like I'm reading it off a sales brochure, maybe I should stop there!......

We have also had to find another way of loop switching space echo in and out as it's wrecking the tapes and motors quicker than we can fix them...

Vox amps are '62 vintage with original blue speakers...nice!.......Preferred volume pedals are Boss FV500H - tough and reliable, I think boss have stopped making them now but there are some on ebay here and there...

Off to Dallas in an hour or two for the last show before flying back to the UK for a few days off before sorting out stuff for the European tour...

pic is of '64 Jazzmaster '2 :-)

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This page shows just the last few items - the full archive is held on this other page.