Sound equipment

I used my small PA system for a gig last saturday, here it is all wired up to rock the place, two mikes and two instrument inputs, MP3 player velcro'd to one side (along with backup MP3 and a charger) and my violin preamp velcro'd to the other, didn't need to remove the desk from the speaker at all and yeilded the quickest pack up in ages. Punchy sound, yamaha stagepass 500.



On my preamp is a very fancy button usually reserved for starships and sci-fi clifhanger episodes, its the "Phase Inverter", just flick that wee switch and hey presto your phase is inverted. You know the stuff: "captain, we cant penetrate their shields", "try inverting the phase, ensign", "huzzah it worked", that kinda stuff. I once played a computer game (star trek bridge commander) and the last level took about absolutely aaaaages to solve, eventually realising that the solution was to invert the phase. If only I had that button....



In a tetronian effort after the gig here is the fiddle and bike in the back of the hatchback without folding down the seats.



Also, I got one of these last week and cant recommend it highly enough. It runs on batteries for about 20 hours, also runs on mains (or the pedal-juice), and can take three inputs. Plenty loud enough to function as a speaker for one of my solo violin gigs, or as an on-stage personal monitor when playing with bands or just as a boombox out at the bbq. Also good for practicing at home with the electric viola without having to set up all the big equipment. Its really small, about the size of a small shoebox, here and here are demos where you can get an idea of the scale. It can be mounted on a mike stand or just leave it on the floor. I have a gig next week where I am going to use it to play jazz backing tracks for a few hours whilst I croon away and at the break the host is going to use it with a mike to make a few speeches. The best bit about all this is that I can now cycle to gigs with a PA system, score another one for the environment.