Goodbyee

Expressive E Osmose. Haaken Continuum. I think you can get medication for that now though......

It would be great to think that this could go ahead - the tour includes a gig about 30 miles from me. As for 'back to normal'......listening to all the hoohah about kids going back to school on the news here, I can"t say I"m over confident of that! I wouldn"t mind 20 here in the UK in December - Celsius that is of course! - Fahrenheit (about -6 C) not quite so keen! I can see how your rotary wouldn"t have been overly happy being that cold! Lol!

If you are going to try cleaning the faders, I"ve found very carefully vacuuming the slots first to remove as much dust as possible is worth trying. Sometimes doing this, followed by operating the sliders back and forth a few times and another careful vacuum will improve things. As has been said, spray cleaner may help or in some cases make it worse. Main thing is don"t be tempted to use too much spray cleaner if you do use it. As Mike Rivers has said, electrolytic caps. are often a problem on older gear - particularly I"ve found, if it"s been used in a very warm environment. The classic giveaway can be a brief sort of 'click-pop' which is preceded by a slight 'shoosh' sound - often a sign of cap. leakage particularly on the power supply circuit. I must admit that although Mackie gear has always been considered by many to be at the budget end of quality, much of it is, IMO, surprisingly good performance vs cost. I"m sure many will disagree with my last comment, but I speak only from my experience of having worked in a mates AV hire business where some of it has had shall we say quite 'robust' use. Cheers.

I can honestly say it was him and Squib Cakes with TOP that got me hooked on the whole funky thing! I reckon you could make a few bob having bets with people that they won"t be able to watch and listen to him play and not tap at least one foot - I almost sent my ipad to the floor whilst watching this. Love it!

It's probably mostly of his own stuff, and stuff borrowed from other people or companies for the show - or possibly hired. Don't forget that back then, pro keyboard players pretty much needed big rigs, so this kind of thing was common for a working professional in a name band. Knowing how much the BBC paid for BBC2 educational programmes (basically nothing!), no one's itemising the cost of a brand new JX10/CZ1/Memorymoog/MC500/etc on the BBC budget sheet, for sure! Lol! Yes it"s true BBC 2 was the poor relation in budget terms. A lot of the gear could have been manufacturer supplied as it was notoriously difficult to get product placement on the Beeb back then - they even used to tape over large keyboard logos on TOTP - now seems very silly. They couldn"t really do that on Rock School given what it was. In fact a friends older brother was the frontman for an essentially 'punk' band that made it to TOTP briefly a few times, back in the day. Although a guitarist, (spit!) , he was inundated with offers of freebies, everything from strings, pickups and various clothing brands wanting to be 'seen' on TOTP which was then the 'holy grail' in the UK - seems strange now looking back at what it actually was by then, mostly a very badly mimed joke. It was really guys like Jools who eventually made live playing an essential with his 'Later With' progs. My comment about it costing an arm and a leg was more relating to any mere mortal (like me!) wanting to buy the same. What you said about pro players 'needing' a big rig was true as it became a bit of a 'mines bigger than yours' thing. Rick Wakemans rigs were astonishing, but then, he could really play 'em good too!

Ah wow - I"d forgotten about Rock School! The Beeb made some interesting, informative and (at the time) cool progs about music back then. That rig would have cost an arm and a leg, but probably financed by the BBC licence fee payer - without their knowledge. :grin: Back then, I used to work near an old school 'music shop' where most of the guys who worked there were quite accomplished pianists of the Classical variety, who tended to look down their nose at 'all this modern stuff', both music and instruments. There was one guy who was friendly and didn"t mind a bumbling young wannabe player (still now mostly bumbling but just a lot older...) like me, coming in during my lunch break and having a noodle around on all the latest stuff they sold, despite most of the staff hating it and knowing bugger-all about it, I didn"t stand a hope of affording it and he knew that, but providing I didn"t drool on it, he was ok! It was amusing to see a very young looking Jools Holland briefly shown in the 'coming later' bit - still going strong and a bit of a British 'National Treasure' now. I can see some time this weekend being spent looking at some of the other clips. Hopefully the Beeb didn"t wipe these programs to be thrifty and reuse the VT as the silly plonkers did with other programs like Top Of The Pops - I think they actually did it so they could even more overpay some of their 'star' presenters - not the guys on Rock School, but the knob brain Radio 1 DJs.......

EV have certainly made some good drivers over the years. With the tendency to smaller rooms (at least here in the UK) it"s less likely to be able to accommodate large speaker enclosures for domestic use, either for 'leisure' or home studio. If you have the space and, understanding neighbours (or are using them in a sound proofed studio), then all is good! I think the point others were making is that they are rather big and heavy to cart for gigging, unless you are fortunate enough to have a fit and strong crew to help. My joke about 'repurposing' one as the basis of a trailer wasn"t of course serious. Can"t seem to find any cheap enough here on ebay UK for that.....

Perfect, by now maybe gigantic speakers that weigh too much and should have a trailer hitch on them somewhere will be back in style? hmmm... no... Now that"s a good idea! The framework of my little old trailer I use for carrying junk about is getting a bit dodgy - if I could find a cheap one of those to use as the chassis, if it still had a working bass driver in it I could also surprise one of those young bass heads with their massive sound systems at the traffic lights.........

Congratulations. I must admit that initially I was relieved after you had said that the previous chap..... But then when I saw this.... I wasn"t so sure....... Sorry! My 'humour' is probably....um....a bit 'British'! ....I"ll get my coat....

Original Post was 13 years ago.......

EDIT: Whoops just re-read your earlier post, you already found Audacity - my excuse is only 1 coffee so far - not fully awake yet........ Another way to do it for any others who are 'DAWless' amongst us, is by installing Audacity > https://www.audacityteam.org/ this is a free donationware audio editor . This manual page gives the easy method to reverse the selected audio > https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/reverse.html Cheers.

For those that might be interested here is a link to the Just Giving page - I"m not soliciting donations, but it is a remarkable and still rising amount which changes every few moments if you refresh the page. https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/tomswalkforthenhs

Hi, I haven"t actually purchased it, but on their website it allowed me to add to cart and then go to the checkout just a moment ago. Perhaps you are able to do this too and the problem is when you continue to the payment bit? As I can"t really justify an orchestral plugin at the moment I didn"t continue to the pay part. I"m in the UK so I don"t know if that makes any difference. Cheers Hugh

Lol! But hopefully not whilst driving........

I can confirm they do exist, especially after a few beers and a curry.......

Maybe it should be OT, but, still a lot more inspiring than many petty squabbles found here and elsewhere! I also agree with Biggles that he is very worthy of a knighthood, however, with the dubious value of some of those who have been awarded one in recent years, perhaps just his former military title is enough. They don"t make 'em like that anymore in my opinion, and his modesty and delight at the response he has received is humbling, again, in my opinion. Thanks for bringing it to peoples attention. Edit - it is now of course changed, presumably by OP, to OT, so hopefully that will satisfy those that had 10 seconds of their lives 'wasted' by reading it and discovering it wasn"t 'keyboard related'........