Following up a recommendation by Ray-B, I have investigated the battery-powered Roland BA-330 portable PA system. Here’s a MusicSchmidt , you should be able to keep up with this guy. The 330 is a generation ahead of the previous unit I checked, the Fishman SA220 Solo. The reviews say it has a warmer sound and completely lives up to its reputation of up to 80 person rooms. I’d be very happy to have a crowd that size these days. It has twice as many channels as the Fishman at around half the price.
I’ve heard complaints about the bass depth of the Fishman and compliments for the Roland. And at 28 pounds, it is scooter-ready. It is far better thought out, right down to features such as a volume input control for your MP3 player. (Remember, I was one of the first to use MP3s for this purpose. Having nobody to copycat, I devised my entire original usage pattern in a month back in 2006, and that, Sparky, is why I can appreciate a good product when I see it.)I am still ahead in this field by using DVD players, not MP3 pods, on stage live, for what, six years already. Pods have midget displays. I regard 2004 as the real birthdate of the MP3 as we know it, regardless of its tangled history. I know lots of people now use MP3 backing tracks, often a derived midi version, but they learned their methods, they did not create them. That’s why I know I can pull a solo bass show out of thin air, I did my homework.
The club meeting was cancelled due to rain. The spare time I used to find more information on ICs and as with computer information, I find I am increasingly going to sites in the United Kingdom. They are better written, don’t say free and then demand “membership” and they have bloody proper spelling.
I further praise UK sites for clear understandability. They are written with a better anticipation of what the reader needs, and this is so in an overwhelming number of examples, such as Doctronics . By comparison, US instructions seem written to sell or to impress rather than to impart useful knowledge. When an American video starts off with some jerk saying “Hi guyzzzzzz”, I hit the kill button.
Dave-O’s life has ten times more drama than the rest of us. He was driving down the freeway and got channeled into a lane by those orange construction cones. Next thing, a police squad car comes roaring straight up an on ramp toward him. Clipped off the passenger mirror of his Jeep. Then, he winds up in jail while they sort things out. Cost him $25 to get out. So we went up to the Oakwood Red Lobster for the Captain’s Feast. That’s the $35 seafood special, lobster, crab, shrimp and all the fixin’s. Topped with their excellent key lime pie and three cups of coffee. We gained three pounds each but what a food fest. Hey, the doctor said I should eat more fish. Took us an hour and a half to clean our plates. My first time in Red Lobster since 1998 on the west coast. Great food but too expensive to patronize, I’m just not a restaurant kind of guy.
Trivia for today is how long it takes a dedicated student to learn Mandarin. Statistics show it takes 88 weeks (about 1.7 years) and 2,250 hours of classroom instruction. That means if you start now, by 2013 you will speak the language of the world’s biggest economy with three years to spare. That’s correct, China will surpass the USA in 2016 just like it passed now second place Japan this year. And China is only beginning to gear up. One comforting note is that most of the products built in China are designed in the USA. We could cut them off in an instant if we ever elect another Reagan. He bankrupted the Soviets, and he could bankrupt China.
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
