This week is the annual China Music Fair, and today I went to check it out.
It’s a little dangerous for someone like myself who’s really interested in all kinds of musical instruments. I feel like a kid in a candy store.
This fair has pretty much everything, and it is HUGE! Just isles and booths of violins, saxophones, drums, keys, traditional instruments like the erhu and guzheng, and on and on. The great thing about this fair is that it's got all the international brands too. Yamaha, Roland, Fender ra ra ra…..
I had a bit of a mission which was to find a pickup or mic for my upright bass. I only had a couple of hours to find it too, as I had a rehearsal at 5pm. So I found out where the stringed instruments were and went straight over.
I walked down every isle, countless cellos and violins (less upright basses but that's usually the case), but no pickups or mics to be found. I would have thought pickups would be an accessory, like bows or bridges or cases.
Anyway, after an hour or so I realized I wasn’t going to find it there and I needed to try another section. So I wondered back towards the acoustic guitar area.
There’s one area specifically for drums…. It’s just consistent noise. Haha
I feel so sorry for the people working in that section. They had better have earplugs, imagine 8 hours of that??
Then there was the horn section, almost as annoying as the drum one…. Imagine 100 Kenny G’s all blowing different tunes, oblivious to the surrounding noise, they continue blowing….
vid
So I kept wondering around and lucky me, bumped into another Shanghai bass player Danny Zanker. And it just so happened that we were right in front of the Shadow electronics booth. I’ve never heard of the brand before, but the boss came over and started telling us about it. He gave me such a good price I ended up buying 2!
I’m happy taking the risk with any other pickup. At the moment I’m using a realist, which sounds nice ONLY for low volume gigs. I have a bit of a problem with the low gain, and lack of definition. Sometimes when you play with a drummer that hits hard, you just can't really hear yourself. If you turn it up too much it starts wolfing.
pickup
The one I’m really interested in is this rockabilly pickup. There is one attached to the neck, and one to the bridge. I’m actually thinking about attaching the neck one to the body….. I should probably run that by the talkbass community first though.
I’ll need to install it myself, since I was very disappointed with the job the local luther did on my bridge. Hope I don’t mess it up though…… I’ll get on it on Sunday. Tomorrow I have a busy day. A Hip Hop gig, then a concert in Suzhou.
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While I was riding my bike home I saw something unusual. Doesn't really fit the title but..... I thought I'd throw it in there too.