year end audio studio house keeping

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Housekeeping
Ok, the years about up, so, I had to tidy things up, first order of business was to get outstanding albums completed and sent off to be manufactured, so I had to design some guitar album covers and finish some unfinished albums up, ok I came up with the following album artwork. I got the cd's ready and sent them off. Very pleased with each album, I had to cut out a few mistakes here and there, but overall each album came as intended; very pleased.

I used the mackie 32x8x2 8 buss mixing console for these albums and it really did change my overall sound and gave each instrument its own tonal space which really gave each album a polished touch. I still have to put the finishing touches on vol.121,123 and vol.125.




Art SGX Express 2000 Guitar PReamp and x15 ultrafoot


Have not received this near vintage guitar tube preamp and f/x processor and footswitch, I am looking forward to testing out its 475 presets and then tweaking some sounds, we will see though. Price paid was $271.00 for the sgx2000 and the footswitch including shipping and handling. Bastards charged $50 to ship just the 2 space rack unit, it must be pretty heavy for that haha...oh well, too bad, I live in bloomington, IN where you have to pay an arm n a leg to get anything musically sweet shipped here from the east coast where they seem to have everything (the unit and footswitch would have been under $200)haa. Still a bargain when you consider how much the sgx2000 and x15 pedalboard were going for close to $1000.00 new for both units!!!!! (thats in 19990 dollars haha) The 2sp rack unit could be had mail order for about $645-800 and the pedalboard was about $200-300.Turns out the sgx only has 1 12ax7 tube in it,but there is no doubt this unit will become a classic and they are cheap to get now, but in a few years watch out!!! Very cool and thanks to some incredibly insightful faithful users, manuals and presets and software upgrades were easy to find and download no thanks to the company ART itself sadly. SO I am not complaining, I figure $270.00 for a $1000.00 setup new is a bargain and I cant wait to see what sounds I can coax out of the sgx2000. surely there must be some decent sounds out of it. It wont replace my current gear,but what a great system to get different sounds in the studio!! Using the same sounds int he studio gets old after a while, so this will be great variety, and for me this is true Vintage gear that is still usable without being stupid (like a 1/2wt 1942 wwII surplus tube amp with .5" speaker, wow real vintage but its sounds like pooop)!! hahah. The sgx came about 1990-1991 the near death of hair metal and grunge was taking over hahah...sweet!! So plenty of 80's metal guitar sounds to be sure!! but I also hear it has really good clean sounds as well...

Crate v33 tube amp and Digitech rp-50
Just for fun, I hooked up my trusty digitech rp-50 pedal ($59 new) which has 8 f/x and amp modeling and plugged it in to one of the crate V33 tube combo amps (all tube amp for $249 new) and recorded a track and it gave a just frightening guitar sound, super overdriven but musical, great sound like an out of control guitar sound but still clean and a quality sound good & fun for recording, but I would hate to think if it was your main sound hahah, but anyway it was such fun to just slam out overly distorted not quite metal not quite feedback guitar sound for a track and it really sounds pretty cool!!! It almost sounds as if you have a sustainer on your guitar, wow what a combination,defnitely a unique guitar sound, perfect first track for an album that will be mostly be the crate v33 tube amp with no f/x, man that amp is such a beast of an amp, really fun to play.Well, anyway, I highly recommend this little digitech rp-50, the default presets are amazing , modeling guitar preamp and 8f/x in a tiny pedal (its also a tuner, and drum machine?!) and the sounds are really great. its just a cool little pedal and for $59 new ,now they are abut $30-39 or so, its just a steal no joke,take any crap practice amp and get one of these rp-50's and it makes the amp sound great. I have seen this first hand. Digitech could make a boatload of money if they would put the rp-50 in a cheap small practice amp. I mean these are studio quality delays reverbs, cabinet simulations, distortions, chorus, pitch shifting and on and on,but stay away from the rp-100,rp-200 etc..those are total crap, maybe its the chip they use, anyway, I have played entire gigs with just a cheapo crate practice amp and an rp-50, your whole guitar setup its in your guitar case, very cool indeed!!! Anyway The combination of both is really a great guitar setup, run the rp-50 though the f/x loop for a quality sound ,run the rp-50 into the input of the v33 if you want to get that out of control sound using the peramp of the amp as well. but usually just running the rp-50in the f/x loop is really great for just the f/x on clean sounds such as chorus reveb or delay or for soem extra gain if needed for more modern metal tones or higain rock tones. Just a really fun cheap guitar setup that actually can yield pro sounds!!!