Getting in gear

So you wanna be a rock ‘n’ roll star? The Big E for any aspiring musician doesn’t come in tablet form and doesn’t have names like Dennis the Menace or Strawberry Fields. No, the Big E is Equipment.

Whether you want to be the next Jazzie B, Jello Biafra or indeed a future Queen of Soul you gotta have the medium to put that message across. Even acappella needs acoustics. But you have to start off small. A 40k rig can wait but a good quality guitar is an essential.
The story is the same the world over. You have the dreams, you have the vision and the music is in your veins, just a-itchin’ an’ a-scratchin’ to get out. You’re a burgeoning blues man but you ain’t got them good ol’ greenbacks. Not to put too fine a point on it you’re strapped for cash. Well help is at hand. Let Hot Press take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of music technology and zoo too can be a rock star . . .
First stop is the instrument shop. The Sound Shop in Drogheda is presently offering a number of good deals. They have an acoustic guitar package for beginners: for example, Yamaha FG300A guitars are retailing at £125 and the price includes a cover and a strap.
If you want to really rock, the Fender Mustang is a great bargain at £150 and the price includes a fifteen watt practice amp. Not a bad present to find under the Christmas tree! The Sound Shop also has an ongoing offer with all synthesiser and keyboards. Given that many keyboards are as complicated as kitchen sink dramas, The Sound Shop gives a full training instruction with each keyboard sold. The C.D. range of general keyboards goes from beginners models to professional. They also have in stock the WX2 multimedia work station and the award winning S2, which is a sixteen-track work station, as well as a complete range of Roland synthesisers and keyboards in the E series from E16 to E86. Keyboards range in price from £99 to £2,000.
If you’re in a two-piece and need backing music there’s a selection of minifiles and discs with packages such as general media song files. D’unbelievable, eh?
According to Maeve Duane, company administrator for Music Maker, quality has become increasingly important for many bands. “People are a lot more aware than they were a couple of years ago," she says, “and there’s a lot more technology but products are becoming cheaper in the long run” Maeve agrees that the Fender still seems to be the favourite with many musicians.
On 20 November Music Maker are having their first ever Sunday sale. In the past Music Maker’s sales have caused quite a stir with a couple of hundred musicians waiting outside for the doors to open. So don’t say you haven’t been warned! The sale is on for four hours from 2pm till 6pm but in the Exchequer St. branch only. Some products have 50% and 25% off the marked price so you can get your hands on a Paul Reed Smith guitar for £895 or a Patrick Eggle Milan bass guitar for £495. A definite buy for the serious musos has to be the Trace Elliot 80 watt lead combo amp at £399.
Music Maker are also the distributors of Pearl drums. This means that not only is there a huge range in stock, but there’s a better back-up service and spare parts won’t be a problem. Drum prices have remained fairly constant in the last ten years at around the £600 mark (although last year the currency crisis pushed the price up to £695, so if you bought your drum kit last year you can blame the market economy. If fact while you’re at it you can draw a picture of Maggie Thatcher or Major or Reynolds on your snare drum and beat it with vigour). Thankfully this year is the cheapest it’s ever been for drums and you can buy a full kit at Music Maker for £549. The most popular kit at the moment in Music Maker is Export.
Music Maker also have cheap and second-hand guitars. They even have a financing facility, where bands or individuals can pay off their equipment at a certain amount per week. Many bands start off with a cheap guitar and trade it in after a year or two. As Maeve Duane put it: “If bands develop, we have the products to develop with them” This means that if you buy a second-hand guitar, you don’t know who might have used it before you! I suppose that could be a good thing. New guitars have a twelve month guarantee and used guitars have a three month guarantee.
If traditional music is more your scene, you could take yourself to J. McNeill on Capel St., a shop that was established in 1834 and has that old-world ambience. A lot of well known professional musicians are regular customers here. J. McNeill sell all manner of traditional instruments bodhrans, banjos, concertinas, and accordions as well as some rather more esoteric pieces. I was intrigued to discover that they have sazs in stock. A saz is a long-necked Turkish string instrument. And I thought it was one of those beers that comes in a fancy bottle!
Niall who works there told me that if you’re looking for any instrument and it’s not there then they’ll get it. “Anything weird and wonderful that you won’t get in a music store, we’ll either have it or be able to get it”
If at this stage you’re accomplished enough to take the show on the road, then an essential is a flight case. Anything that is in transit, from guitars to amps, can get damaged. Although flight cases may seem expensive at first, in the long run they’re cost effective. If you have expensive equipment then you need flight cases. It’s definitely worth it at the end of the day and it means that if you want to do a trade in, then your instruments will be worth all the more for not being scratched or chipped.
At Kelsey Flight Cases, flight cases are made to order and discounts are offered to bands for multiple orders. Likewise at Dublin Flight Case Company - it’s not simply a case of making cases so to speak. The company will look at the overall needs of a particular band and assess the overall situation. Dublin Flight Case Company have recently done some work for Schtum. According to their sales director Rory Winston, the company looked at what type of cases the band would be able to manage and they also took into consideration such factors as storage, transport and the band’s budget.
The next step - and if you get this far then you’re half way there - is stage equipment. An all important consideration when it comes to a stage show is lighting and Arena Lighting is a key player in the field.(You can get full details about them elsewhere in this issue.) But whether it’s a couple of amps you need or a 40k rig, then Stage Services North are very competitive. Operating from Belfast they are a team of professional engineers, manufacturing amplifiers and other forms of specialist equipment.
They do everything from two-way headsets to bellringing for theatres. They also do a lot of work for both the Gaiety and Gate Theatres in Dublin and the Hawkswell in Sligo. If you need a computer controlled lighting desk, touring racks or lighting and sound design then they’re worth a shout. The company was established fifteen years ago and they service many of the major clubs in the North, as well as many young bands.
According to John Willis the company is particularly aware of the needs and requirements of young inexperienced bands with limited budgets. “We know the pressures they’re under and if we know a young band that wants to buy equipment then we’ll give them a flexible payment”
As well as 32-channel Crest desks for the bigger gigs, Stage Services North have numerous 8-channel desks both for sale and for hire. The company offers complete packages for young bands providing amps, mikes and desks. John finds that the 4k rigout is very popular with many of the young Belfast bands. It’s quite compact and fits nicely into a small trailer.
John Willis sees Stage Services North as far more than a company. He says that it’s become a meeting place of sorts for many bands and lot of musicians just hang out there. As a meeting place it’s also quite good for making contacts and for picking up cheap instruments. “We know who’s buying and who’s selling and we can put people in contact," he says. A sound rig-out can be hired out there for about £20 or £30 for a small Jazz gig and bigger rigs can be anything from £200 upwards. Depending on the time scale, Stage Services North also offer free delivery in Belfast.
Nolan Amplification is a company operating out of Westmeath that services the whole country, as well as the UK. They provide a full tour service with transport, crew, lighting, sound and equipment up to 40k.
According to Pat Nolan, they do everything from major tours to supplying the singer in a local pub. They’ve done tours for bands like The Pale and Smokie to singers like Joe Dolan, Sally O’ Brien and John Hogan. Pat reckons that the sound business is not one for slackers. "Nothing’s harder than the sound business, not even working a jackhammer - which I’ve worked in my time," he observes. Pat was particularly pleased with the show he did in Millstreet last New Year’s Eve for Daniel O’ Donnell and RTE. He supplied all the crew and equipment for the concert.
Nolan Amplification also does frequent work for concerts at The Point and has the necessary expertise for worldwide festivals. In conjunction with Jim Doherty of D.M.E. Ltd, they supply the equipment for the Cork Jazz Festival every year.
So once a band has become popular enough to tour on their own merits, the time has come to go into the studio. Many bands initially do a three-track demo tape as soon as they stop doing covers and start writing their own songs. These can be made very cheaply, although the only airplay a demo is likely to receive is on Dave Fanning’s 2FM radio show.
One of the main reasons for producing a demo at this early stage in a band’s career is to have something to send to record companies. With record company backing, a band can then afford to put out a good quality cassette or record. Starc Recording Studios has anything you might want to make that oh so perfect record and any extra special equipment can be hired to order. Based in Ranelagh, they have a full range of facilities: Multitracks, monitors, stereo effects processors as well as Apple Macintosh and Performer software for sequencers. They have a full range of instruments available, including Fender Strats, Charvette, Guild acoustic guitars, and Roland RED-1000 keyboards.
Incidentally, Starc now have their own label and have been involved in releasing some superb albums recently, not least Thom Moore’s superb Gorgeous And Bright (see review this issue). It’s an example of the synergy that’s blossoming in Ireland right now and making the industry have a much more viable one to work in.
Apex Tape Duplication Ltd. do short runs of cassettes for demos and sales at gigs. Most of their work, though, is with independent record companies in Ireland. For tape duplication, they use a high quality loop in system Gauss which according to Joe O’Reilly of Apex is the Rolls Royce of cassette manufacture. The company is planning to go into c.d. replication with a CD service available sometime in the New Year.
John Denton of the Nimbus CD Manufacturing Company agrees that CDs are becoming increasingly important. John thinks that bands have a better chance of being listened to if they record on CDs rather than tape, because of the high quality of CD sound. Nimbus manufacture for all record companies, from major corporations to independents like Mute, Beggars Banquet, Zomba and Creation. John Denton says it’s not expensive to have even a run of five hundred CDs made and a digital tape recording can be easily transferred onto CD. He says it’s not unusual for young bands do get a short run of about five hundred or a thousand CDs and every week the company gets phonecalls from individuals and bands.
If you don’t have a record deal and you want to get a couple of CDs pressed, then the man to talk to at the Nimbus English CD Manufacturing Company is Graham Cooper, who looks after new customers.
If you decide that you want to record at home then Studio Sound Store can provide you with everything from tape, cable and connectors to digital multitrack, from a portastudio to a fully commissioned radio station. For sales, hire and services everyone from the beginner to the seasoned professional can afford to go to the Studio Sound Store.
So whether you record in the studio or at home, on a digital cassette or compact disc, if you or your band have got this far then chances are you’re well on the way to if not stardom then at least some form of success or critical recognition.
The A&R folks are jostling and the record companies are hustling. and maybe there’s a record deal in sight. If there is, then one of the first sweet tastes of hard earned success is to be able to buy new instruments and new gear and, hey, maybe a van. Who knows?
Up until this a new guitar strap, strings or even drumsticks would bite into your budget, with pitbull ferocity. Now you can bite the fucker back, chew him up and spit him out. So now equipment, like a previously unimagined radio guitar system, beckons you to the promised land. Trantec Systems are a British company that manufacture and design radio mics and radio guitar systems.
They tend not to seek endorsements with the ultra-famous because if someone in a bar sees Mick Jagger on the TV using a radio microphone they’re not that likely to go out and buy one. In cotrast, a musician’s musician like Gordon Giltrap tends to demonstrate the product more effectively. The radio guitar system puts paid to that old wearisome problem of getting entangled in your cables and gives a musician greater freedom to move about on stage. Incidentally, Motorhead’s Phil Cambell uses the radio guitar system.
So sin e folks. Now you’re a well on your way to becoming a rockstar. Yessir daddio you can start counting your blessings as the coins come a rollin’ in. For further information on the music industry you should consult a copy of the Hot Press 1995 Yearbook. It will comprise the most complete Irish Music Industry Directory ever. All you ever wanted to know about the ins and outs of the music industry but were afraid to ask and much more besides!

Now cheer up. You’re a star!