21.11.2004 21:17 - Return To Wigan
I\'m back at my parents after the Wigan UKMG meetup. This year was a lot better for me on a personal basis. Last year I was under a lot of pressure from various sources which contributed to me not enjoying it very much. This year was considerably different.
The journey up was fairly unpleasant. This was due to a combination of the weather and the traffic, but once at the Mabs I found that the place had changed yet again. It seems like some sort of a bad dream, that every time we get to the Mabs Cross, it\'s the same, but different.
Friday night, after the traditional curry, I got talking to \"Herbie\", who runs a little record company that has its offices and studio above the Mabs. This lead to a quick tour of the studio and a listen (and watch) of some track by their band, Quecia. The singer turned out to be one of the barmaids, who has an excellent voice, and is a big Fleetwood Mac fan. This lead to an introduction to Mike Whitaker, UKMG\'s Mac expert.
Saturday was a long day, starting with setting up the kit and plugging the Encore strat into a big amp to try it out. I have to say I\'m satisfied with the initial results of the pickup swap, however the pots have to go as they\'re clearly on their last legs, sounding crackly and nackered. I shall probably go for the alternate wiring diagram supplied by Rockinger, which uses one of the tone controls as a blend for the middle pickup. Anyway, once the strat was sorted, I had a little look-round at all the others kit.
Top priority were Tipton amps, from Trevor Ridney. I\'d had a little demo of the Viper head earlier in the day as Trev was next door to me in the hotel, and was tweaking the bias in the amp when I offered to help carry stuff downstairs. However I wanted to see if plugging into such a good amp would expose any weakness in the Encore. It didn\'t. It was immense fun to play through. The Viper head is built specially for Vinny Burns, who requested the Van Halen \"Brown Sound\" - something which puts a very heavy load on a standard amp, and so this one features considerable design improvements to prevent the associated problems. I also had a good blast through Jim Nugents Carvin amp, and though Jim\'s son James\'s scratch-built Bassman 57 copy amp.
Being left-handed can make the National irritating, as some times I\'ve been the only lefty there. This time, however, there were other lefties, and so I got to try a good range of guitars. Of particular interest was a fender japanese bound tele with a humbucker in the neck, belonging to Andrew Stelmasiak. I was very impressed with it and I\'m going to start looking for one seriously. I borrowed it for the evening gig, where I performed a couple of Kinks and Beatles songs, with Paul Creedy, Ross Edwards, Jim and James Nugent, and that bloke from Guitarist Adrian Clark.
And I wore that tie again, and it was louder than the Tipton amps.
Pictures here, courtesy of \"Brassbuttons\".
Mark McGuigan\'s photos available here.
Pete Spaldin\'s photos Here
Steve White (drummer extraordinaire)\'s pictures here.
My own pictures are available here.
