new gear

visit http://www.dtguitar.com/, Denis's website

Kahler Tremolo

My Schecter/Ibanez guitar that I had played for over 20 years finally gaveout. In particular, the Kahler guitar tremolo was no longer working. I though I could order a new one. how wrong I was !! Turns out they went out of business for several years and I could not find a tremolo anywhere. Well!! I am pleased to announce that Kahler tremolo's are back in business!! I just bought a brand new Kahler black tremolo from http://www.kahlerusa.com/ , http://www.kahlerparts.com/ & http://www.wammiworld.com/ .Amazing quality and quick shipping. Recommended. Kahler is back and there tremolo's are awesome!! Much nicer than the standard floyd rose. As a result my schecter guitar is back in business too!!

Behringer v-amp 2 guitar amp modeler

I recently bought a guitar amp and they threw in a behringer v-amp 2 modeler. you can get these for very cheap (under $100) from american musical, amazon.com and musiciansfriend. I tried it out direct first andwas blown away by the guitar sounds. In particular, the guitar "rythmn" sound. real Marshall sounds, fender amp sounds and more. Excellent. For direct leads it was lousy. I then tried it through a guitar amp and it was lousy again. bottom line, this thing has one purpose and that is rythmn guitar distorted when recording direct!! no other setup sounded good, but when used direct for recording rythmn guitar, it was amazing.

Denis's CD's at amazon.com

For a limited time only, purchase Denis's 2009 modern rock guitar Vol.133 "guitarglyphs" on CD at amazon.com. It's $20, but keep in mind that this is a rare independent CD release.Unlike a major label release which prints millions of CD's, there are very few of these made. Support Denis and allow him to create more Cd's.buy it here!!

new studio setup

coming soon a new studio look and new gear

update and new gear

visit Denis's official website at http://www.dtguitar.com



alesis sr-18 drum machine 9/10

I was a big user of the alesis sr-16 drum machine which hasn't changed in ten years or so until the release of the sr-18. street price around $259 though you can find it for $200 or so if you look hard enough. ok, the sr-18 has much better sounding drum sounds in all kinds of styles than the sr-16. they also added lots of percussion sounds and even a bass track. The bass track I found rather silly and useless,however guess to play along with its ok. Thank goodness you can mute the bass track. It syncs to midi very well and the drum sounds realistic. It also has a ton of drum kits so one pattern can sound like lots of different kits. It acts like an sr-16 in many ways. It has the magic fill button which gives you drum fills on command and drum variations.sweet!!! foot controllable via pedal. The drum pattern themselves are usually laid out by default in 4 measures which is kind of long and I prefer the old 2 measure patterns of the sr-16 then the fills come in real well. but no big deal, as you can copy and then change any pattern. Also, new is a roll button which allows you to do drum rolls. By itself it sounds great, but mix the sr-18 with drum samples or other drum machines and it is simply awesome!!!

Alesis sr-16 drum machine 9/10

The alesis sr-16 is a different beast than the new sr-18 which is just a great drum machine. the patterns are simpler but punchier and the fills are great and the drums sound not as good as the sr-18 especially the cymbals, but the core drum sounds are very good.They are different enough that the sr-16 is definitely worth while to use. In fact, After selling mine long ago, I was able to find a used one for about $60.00 or so. The fills are great as I mentioned but again when mixed with the sr-18 and/or session drummer, ez drummer or acid drum samples, it is just amazing,especially for recording.

Lexicon Jamman rackmount phrase sampler/ looper 10/10

This unit was discontinued in the 90's and are rather hard to find and go for some high prices .What is it? Well it is a rackmount phrase sampler looper. It comes stock with 8 seconds of looping time but can be expanded to 32 seconds. In one word these are simply AMAZING!!! I own 4 of these for the simple reason that they are for all practically the only looper that actually syncs to midi!!! Perfectly every time!! To this day,not one looper can sync to MIDI worth a dammn. I found out the hard way after getting burned on the roland rc-50 ultimate looper (pooper is more like it) and even the electroharmonix 2880 looper. weak these other units have midi jacks too but cant sync worth squat. the exception may be the gibson echoplex buts its pricey and not as simple as the jamman. For me they make playing and looping bass tracks on the fly effortless as well as phrases and backwards looping. but its main force is the way that it just takes anything you play into it and syncs to midi clock (no song pointer,mtc or smtpe crap). Just your basic midi clock like a drum machine. the morons over at digitech came out a few years later after acquiring lexicon with a digitech jamman pedal which is a piece of crap, as they removed the best part of the lexicon jamman, you got it, the midi sync capabilities. this is perhaps the biggest blunder in music gear history!!!!!!! fools. In any case, if run across one of these grab it as they are rare and getting rarer and are not made anymore and nobody has duplicated its midi sync capabilities. In fact there is a stinker engineering design among us which is a midi sync method employed by the roland rc-50 and the electroharmonix which requires sending starts and then independently trying to resize loops and it just doesn't work worth a damn.IT is downright embarrassing when I tried using these compared to my lexicon units. the lexicon kept a constant synced tempo while the rc50 and 2880 were losing sync and changing their tempos constantly.who is the brilliant doufus engineer who thought that one up and sadly these poor sap companies are using it and then wondering why their sales are lagging when they could have copied a super simple lexicon jamman rackmount unit that came and went sadly.

Mackie 1642-vlz3 4 bus mixer 10/10

this a 16 ch 4 bus mixer with ten mic pre ch's and the rest are stereo ch's. direct outs, insert, 2 auxes and 4 subgroups. Perfect fro the home recording studio. I know of no one who uses more than ten mic's at a time for a home studio. Even with drums you could do a sub mix. Well, I got this unit after missing the mackie 32x8 8bus I sold.sounds amazing on recordings and mic pre's are super.The sound quality of the mackie is just incredible!! highly recommended

revelations!!!! gear

Revelations

I am stunned to find in my experimentation with gear that sometimes the simple setup wins out over the complex setup. In this case, a fancy Emu sound card and Sony Sonar Daw VS. a Roland vs890 (stand alone 8 track 24 bit digital recorder with digital mixer). Ok, the DAW system costs about $1000.00 if you count the software and a cheap pc, mayb e more with a decent pc.t's modern and state of the art if you will in terms of recording. The roland vs890 is about 11 years old, yet boasts similar technical specs as the DAW (digital audio workstation on a pc hah). 24 bits in this case at 48k then converted down to 44.1 16buit for cd replication.

I recorded the exact same thing on both systems. First let's talk about setup time. It took a good hour or two to get the sonar all set up and ready to go with samples loaded. The roland stand alone daw took about 15 minutes. Now, amazingly, the results were almost identical. I could not tell the difference after recording or mastering for that matter!!! Hard to believe. The plus side for the sonar software was it sure looked cool to have the the meteres going and the graphic mixing console and all the plug ins. But for simplicity, the roland is jsut as easy as could be to record on , though I then had to transfer the mix to soundforge softare and master it that way. Took about the same amount of time as it did for the sonar software to mixdown.

Anyway, this is great news. I plan on using both. the sonar, does offer more features such as plugin's on individual tracks and all this amazing midi sequencer triggering samples (aka session drummer and other samples). I am also thrilled with the roland that actually sounded better on guitars than the sonar is still amazing with its pristine sound quality. Anyway, this was an eye opening experience.

tube vs solid state amp for guitar
I have always favored tube amps for guitar. they have a smoothness and feel about them. however, this was until I used a true amp modeler like the pod xt live (from line 6). all of a sudden, solid state sounds so much better with it than a tube amp. ?Now I am using some crate tube amps and it could be the speakers which aren't the best, but the solid state sound sounds better and it makes sense as the line 6 is modeling/emulating different kinds of tube amps and for recording it is just a perfect controllable sound. I am still torn between the two. I love just plugging in to a tube amp to get that really nice chimey glassy tube sound, but with the pod and tube amp it just not meant to work with that.

So, this is definite and it is hard to come to grips with. Everyone raves about tube amps,but usi ng the pod xt live into a tube amp is just not where its at as far as optimum tone. In fact, a cheapo solid state combo amp will sound ten times better. tighter and less noisy too. So, here I have learned a big lesson. Just because everyone says this is the best, it is not always the case. I have 3 of these crate tube combo's and they are extremely loud and that is great if your playing in a band with a drummer going nuts and so on, but in the studio it is not ideal at all. IT all comes down to the modeling. I suppose if you are using a tube amp direct with some pedals that works,but don't run a modeler through it. SO I will definitely sell two of my tube combo amps and keep one when I want to go direct into the amp.

netgear vs dlink router
By the way, I was using a dlink 614+ 2.4 ghz internet router in my studio to connect pc's and found that the connection was droppping out and to transfer audio files from one pc to another took ages!!! the company described the unit as reaching its end of life cycle, though I was comptia a+certified so surely I coul get it working....not!!! I did get it to sputter for a while but it would take ages to transfer files. Finally I went out and bought a netgear router (one of those white ones) and it did the trick. I highly recommedn the netgear wireless routers, thye are really great and fast too. D-link was a real dissapointment for me. Now my studio pc's are humming on a network and it works great.

Mixer
After having the luxury of having an 8 buss mixer which i sold the mackie 32x8, I do miss that ease whith which you route things together and audio signals to whatever you wanted. In particular, I enjoyed just being able to hit a swtich and route the signal from my studio monitors to my p.a. systtem for drums and bass. So I am looking into the purchase of a new mixer perhaps.

Other Gear
Other gear I am intersted in is 2 solid state combo amps, 2 avatar 2x12 cabs with celestions, an alesis sr-16 drum machine which is always fun especially with software to trigger drum samples, perhaps the new sr-18 they just came out with which is an upgrade of the sr-16. then I am intersted in a solid state power amp for guitar (maybe a rocktron velocity). Also, the digitech gsp-1101 looks and sounds very interesting or/and the pod xt3live. Anyway, these are things I am looking at, but it all depends on price and so on and next week it wil be something else hahaha. Anyway, I now know exactly the direction I need to go in music gear wise after a lot of expensive experimentation and that's 1/2 the battle.but the experimentation of new gear is a must to try to get a better sound and it may open musical doors for you as well. Howeve, I am glad I held on to my main setup which turns out to be the right thing for me and so I can expand on that.

Updates; good bye to old gear and hello tonew gear

Well, it has been a while, but believe me, I have been busy as ever working on my guitar playing, my guitar gear, my stuio geqar,mystudio room and gear ideas. so let's get to it!!:

Denis bids a farewell to the mackie 32x8x2 8 buss mixing console
Ok, here is the scoop on th Mackie 8 bus 32x8 mixing console. I sold it after having worked with it and have created about 4 or 5 albums with it.Why dod I sell it? well, for many reasons. One, it is a great sounding mixing console. It's analog, it's warm, the mic pre's sound great in that things fit well in the mix and have there own space and the EQ's are very good as well. Now for one person, 32 ch's is a bit of overkill and many ch's I didnt use. Also, the thing is huge and my recording room was small, sure it was cool to have a big board like that, but when you try to cram that ,pc's,pa and a wall guitar amops and so on, it does get crowded. Also, beaue it has so many routing options ,its also not a very direct sound. Also, this particular baord was getting old and would soon need ribbon cables replaced as I had to constantly turn up the gain for a ch to activate and things. But not uncommon for an older board such as this. Also, I was going into recording with sonar so I would not need it quite as much. In any case, I sold it and was glaed to have it when I did and glad to be able to use and experience recording with it.As an alternative, I am interested in just working with some outbaord mic pre's , so heading in that direction.

2 Akai 42" LCD hdtv's as minotors
go one ande then another, these are jsut the best as pc monitors!!! 1080p ,great resolution ad they look great. I like these when recording with Sonar or doing video editing. anyway, the problem was getting a desk big enough for these. In the end, I lucked out and found three computer desks used that were the same and fit perfectly together to give me a 9ft desk area and it was the same size horixzontally and vertically, so perfect for the dual 42" lcd's. Sure I could have gone with puny 22 or24" lcd's, but I jsut love these, for audio I can see tracks horizontally and the virutally mixing console on seperate screens,etc...anyway, I got each one for about $400 which is a bargain but found a repair cetner in bloomington that refurbished thm for cheap. works great. however, just as I get them setup , my audio pc internet connection takes a dump, DAMN IT!!! No way to fix it. Tried for days, but lucky i had a laptop with internet access, so no big deal. but tim to replace these cp's which i had been thinking about for a while. now would be a good time.

XP internet access
ever sicne vista came out, xp seems to be getting crappier and crappier, coincidence? Probabkly not. Well, all of a sudden my audio pc interenet connection took a nove dive. No one can seem to fix it. No space for a new network card,maybe I can try a usb netork deal. anyway, it does slow me down. Well, isp has a tech coming out on thusday, but I doubt they can do anything for it. by then I hope to have ordered some new pc;s anyway,

Modern rock Guitar vol.136 is complete
YES!!!!! its done and lik many of my albums, it was done in the midst of chaos and experimentation in the studio room, this time it is changing the room aaround with new furniture and new monitors and chaning amps too. But ,littl by littl4 it took shape. turned out to b a prety cool album too!!! Also, have the intro track for vol.137 done. Lsitening to it now in fact. You know, I have to say, it is so hard to change your methods when you are use3d to doing things a certain way and it woudl be easy for me to continually jsut do what I did on the last album. but facing these challenges is the only way to progress musically!!! for example, I have been using my roland recorders forever, though after experimenting with sonar I see that I may be abl to get a better recoridjng sound out of it, but there is a big learning curve and adjustments that need to be made gear wise to accomadate it. But that is very difficult. anyway, it will be worth while!!!

TUbeOMANia Crate v33 tube amp
ok, here is the deal with these beasts!! The preamp tubes that come with them are total junk!?!! I mean the v33 was producing so much hiss in the clean ch and made the f/x loop totally useless and the reverb was jsut useles too.Solution: a $10 12ax7 preamp tube!!!! Hard to believe the difference. If you have one of these, replacfe the the last tube in the chassis and its like a miracle, all of a sudden the amp is crystal clear and no hiss, f/x loop works grat and is quiet and the spring reverb is actually in a useabkle range. So, I went out and bout 2 more. I used elextroc harmonix tubes and they worked grreat. I also have aq third amp and will try a JJ tube as they didnt have nay mroe electro harmonix. so we will seee. but the difference is night and day.Wonder if switiching out the remaing two preamp tubes might make a difference two. I also noticed that the speakers are set for a certian sound and they sound very good, but I am so used to a jensen tuype of sound and wonder about repalcing them for that. but may be not, as I noticed that some eq goes a long way. anyway, the difference of these crates and my utratwin amps is quite something. the crates are beasts and are clearere and louder yet somoother becasue of the power amo tubes. oh and grabbing the low end is something to experience!!! now will it trasnlate into recordings? We will see!!! note:I was very proud of doing the handy work of replacing the preamp tube myself which requires removing the chassie k, well really titlting it at 90 degrees.anyway i dont like doing that stuff or seeing the actual inner working s of the amp, especially when you have to play through it later, its asusperstitous guitar thing I guess haha. But the seocnd I plugged in, I was thrilled that it actually made the amps useable!!! they used to be hjsut way to noisy to do anything with other than annoy the neighbors.now they are clean enough to use on recordings!!!

BOSS 2 way footwitch
ok, I use alot fo a/b switches in my guitar rig.Its simple and eifficient. however, my morle a/b/y switches and my startouch stereo a/b pedals use these darn massive footswtiches, yes they are heavy duty and work great but one flaw: They CLICK loudly!!!! So when reocridng they are fine for loud passges but can be picked up during transients,drives me crazy!! Yes, I could move the footswitches to an other room ,etc...but for my home studio its not practical and I like playing by the amps.. Solution: Well iwas looking in a catalog and found this Boss a/b footswitch and isntead of the heavy duty clicker, they use a silent switch found on the boss rc-50 looper as well. well, when I was in a music store to pickup 2 12aqx7's preamp tubes they had a used boss switch. the exact same one I was looking at. so I bought it fo $29.00 used. As long as it works ok and is clean it should be a nice break from those dam loud clicker footswitches. we will see!!!

Expensive
music crap is so darn expensive, its horrible. locally after the 7 percent sales tax, I ended up spending $57 for one a/b swtich and 2 preamp tubes. Maybe its jsut me, but I thought it would be less. So much so, I had to leave the store when they told me the price and go smoke a cigarette hahaha!! I do recall a music store owner years ago who once told my friend about me "he just doesnt like to part with his money" hahaha after trying to get me to spend $1000 on a amp; how right he is. Not because i am cheap, but because I am trying to acocmplish something musci wise inclduing my cd recordings so I have to be very careful money wise. anyway, I spend the $57 bucks, but I dont know why it seems like quite a bit.But, those preamp tubes make those crate amps actually useable and sound vey very good. so it will work out well.

On the horizon
Amazon has gotten my latest cd's up for sale and are manufacturing them which is jsu awesome, rather than mp3 only albums. They have vol.119-135 so far. I think.so working on that. Also, am thinkging of getting an Alesis sr-18 drum machine, as i had an alesis sr-16 and I enjoy plying with drum machines more than samples because I play differrently with them. I hope to be able to use both. anyway just a thought.Also, looking at the digitech gsp1101-sounds nice!!! ALso looking into control surface for sonar, but i hate pc daws, so much can go worng, the roland standloanes jsut turn them on and they work everytime. not so with a PC dAW. anyway, we will see. I do know my next album will be very different as it will be reocrded with diferent amps and diferent hardware, should be interesting!!!

Looping pedals and pedalboards & more

visit http://www.dtguitar.com,Denis's official website



Line 6 variax 300 update
I bought this guitar used and it models all kind s of guitars such as acoustic guitars and banjo (a must have if you want to rock) ,sitar, dobro, etc...(see a previous post on it). Well, this guitar needed a setup badly, the action was super low to the point where not all frets sounded. I fixed a lot of it by adjusting the truss rod a bit and got 5 of the 6 strings working perfectly. but the sixth needed an adjustment and I didn't have an Allen wrench. I took it to a local music store and they were very cool. The guy was really nice to take it to the back and he fixed it in a split second for n0 charge. That was really cool!!! Anyway, I dropped off an amp to be worked on there as well and bought a 12ax7 tube as I plan to attempt to change out one of the preamp tubes of the crate v332x12

Crate v33-212 update
WEll, I do like this tube amp but I get hiss on clean ch and f/x loop to the point of being useless and the reverb is too huge. I read that swapping out one of the preamp tubes makes a huge difference, so we will . I got an electro harmonix 12ax7 tube ironically,but it just has to be better than these cheapo preamp tubes in the crate right now. we will see. Also, i am starting to really like the ballsy sound of the crate more than my solid state amps for regular guitar in my setup, though so far it stinks for f/x sounds. Hmmm, well, we will see....I guess I have a lot of fun trying stuff out and trying to work it into my system which is setup for live & recording at the same time.

I once tried out a $1000+ tube amp, a Genz Ben as I recall, and it sounded good, but I could not for the life of me get it too sound right with my setup?! Go figure. I actually am having better luck with the crates. bottom line for gear for me is very simple, it either works great with my other gear or sounds great and can fulfill one specific purpose or else I just cant use it. I actually have found that certain combination of amps,f/x and other gear works and some just doesn't work at all though each item may be of super high quality/reputation. Also, some of the cheapest gear sometimes works and sounds better than more expensive gear.





Looping pedals and pedalboards
Ok, an update. The two music stores did indeed refund me the total price for both the electro harmonix 2880 and 2880 foot controller. A hefty $500 or so. I just had a bad experience with it as it would not sync to midi very well at all,but may have been a faulty pedal. In any case, I got a chance to try it and I will say that the sound quality is excellent and by itself it could be a decent looper though very sensitive and the foot controller stwitches are way too loud and it takes way too many clicks to loop stuff. anyway, it did work well as a standalone looper (but I have too many that do that already) .it's gone!!!

Boss Rc-50 looper recap
the other looper that claimed to sync to midi was the Boss Rc-50 looper. Funny that both the rc-50 and the electro harmonix both took similar approaches to syncing to midi and both failed miserably in my book. In fact, to date and after a thousand dollars spent and recouped, the only true looper that syncs to midi is the lexicon jamman (the discontinued rackmount unit, not the cheap digitech imitation). Now, I have been harsh on the boss-rc50 and I did keep mine because I did find that by itself it was able to loop in a way that reminds me of old tangerine dream stuff and the sound quality is great. So its not bad, just the sync part is not up to snuff.

Overall, both unit s are good units, but I just dont like the approach they tried to use to sync to midi and if you want a midi looper hat syncs to midi, avoid these two like the plague, but both are decent for stand lone looping.

Akai 42" LCD Flat Panel HDTV Monitor

Ok, what the heck does a 42" LCD flat panel have to with guitar and audio studio gear?! Well, not much really ,but its essential as are lava lamps to provide the rigth atmostphere hahaha. Ok, sriously though, I happen to live in Bloomington, In and most of the broken or discontinued lcd hdtv''s in the country get shipped here to be fixed or liquidated by PTS,corp. Well, lucky for me they have an utlet store in town and they have incredible prices. I have long wanted to replace my 21"crt monitors with an lcd.So, I tried the outlet store and they had tons of 720 p hdtv's but only one size of 1080p and it was the akai for $400.25 which is an amazing price for a full 1080p lcd. In fact, online I have seen them average for $699-1300 plus $199 shipping.

Ok, the ones they had are more of a monitor than a TV as they dont have a built in tuner, but I didnt mind at all. I was going to ue it for my studio PC monitor for audio and video editing. I had read online from do-gooder nerdy wimps that "oh my, you will have to sit ten feet away to use a 42" size TV". YEAH RIGHT!!! I got it home and just plugged in my VGA cable into it and put it right on my desk and the picture came up at 1280x1024 85hz and was jsut simply amazing!!! I mean , it made my 21" monitor look like a puny little monitor, I even got the resolution up to 1600x1200 at 60hz which is nice ,things were a bit smaller ,more on the screen but duller too. And that is without hooking up a true dvi to hdmi which I plan to do to get higher resolution. Anyway, the difference is startling.

In my audio editing plugin's, they have graphics of hardware rackmont equipment and on this tv it is as if they are lifesize!! Crystal clear image and the resolution is high enough that the icons and text dont look stupidly big like old crt monitors when you set them to 800x600 or 640x480 god forbid. I mean I am sitting back in my studio chair about 31/2-4ft away and the picture is great. running multiple apps all on one screen a the same time is just great.Anyway, I highly recommen that you run out and get a 42" lcd and replace your pc monitor!!! MAn, you wont ever go back to puny little monitors ever again!! guitar wise its like playing through a cranked 50wt marshall 1/2 stack for the first time after plucking away on a 15wt practice amp. I also cant imagine anyone complainging abut the resolution at all, nothing looks jagged and the text is crystal clear!!

For sudio applications its great as I often monitor audio levels and use plug in's while also being 1/2 way across the room clicking on pdealbaords etc...so no more sqinting for that. I tell you I thought a 32" would be overkill, how wrong I was, I could even see a 46", but really a 42" is just the perfect size!!! you know those little you tube windows that the video's play in by default well on a 42" they dont look so small anymore. anyway, for the price of $400, I am considering getting another- yeah , dual 42" lcd monitors,thats the ticket hahahahah!!! Thrilled with purchase!!! and healthier for you too as you dont get that crappy radiation from those crt monitors.

Line6 variax 300 guitar

Line6 variax 300 guitar

The ultimate guitarists toy!! What is it? Its the line 6 variax 300 guitar. Its the closest thing to a midi guitar without being a midi guitar. It models/emulates 25 vintage guitars from the fender stratorcaster,les pauls, semi hollowbody guitars and acoustic guitars. Throw in a banjo and sitar for good measure. PRice paid $250 used +$40 s/h=$290.00 . About the price of a decent acoustic guitar. Now the fun of this guitar is that you can instantly switch to an acoustic guitar sound to a fender strat sound. Perfect for my live recordings andI have played this type of guitar before on my 97th album as I recall.


It has no pickups to speak of, instead the "pickups" for each string are under the saddles. My guitar came in good condition ,but the setup was complete crap. The frets wouldn't fret and so on. well, I adjusted the trussrod and voila, every fret sounded great and if I can remember where I put the tiny tool I need to adjust the top string it will be a good guitar setup.In any case, I am very pleased that it does work. the hex pikcups under the saddles are delicate and usually on used variax the pickups can be damaged. so only 5 strings work;here all 6 worked great.

Ok, now ,I would not trade this for my main guitar,but in addition to usual recordings this is a great instrument. $250 is a great price for it, as new they were about $500 and in fact even when closed out they were $399 or so. In fact, in a marketing ploy, line 6 discontinued the variax 300 and instead put the variax technology in higher end guitars like the variax 500,700 and so on, problem is they are $1000.00 or so?!!?!?! Now I am sorry but Its not worth that. No way!!! At $250.00 its good deal because it can emulate an acoustic guitar really well and much more and a cheap acoustic with pickup is abut 250 or less.

Interestingly, they have software where you can design your own guitar and do weird tunings too. In fact on mine, I have a preset where the 6th string is automatically tuned to a d and at a flick of a switch it can be changed to an open G tuning and so on. The possibilities are interesting. The banjo sound is must have;it seriously sounds like a banjo too the point of being silly. Oh, the semihollowbodies are great too. ok, the twelve string guitars stink, they sound stupid. overall, I am thrilled with this purchase and the price was right and they are a blast to play and I didn't have to spend $1000.00 for a variax 500,700 etc...very cool indeed!!! The variax 500,700 are more expensive because of the wood and components used but the variax technology is the same and if it were your main guitar I could justify the cost otherwise ,I just cant see the cost being worthwhile. .

I would hate to guess how much the guitars they modeled cost, I am sure its a fortune. Ar they exact? no, are they close to the real thing sound wise, definitely. One recommendation, if you get a variax ,spend the thrity bucks for the digital cable and it works great with the pdo xt live which allows the guitar amp preset and the guitar varia preset to both be switched at one time. Sweet!!! With a littl setup time, the variax 300 becomes much more than a toy and becomes a real useful addition to recording. no guitarist or studio should be without one . ok, well, at least its just very cool to be abel to have an acoutic guitar sound and then in a moment have a distorted fender strat sound.

Electro hamronix 2880 looper and foot controller review

demanding the most out of your gear

Perhaps I expect too much out of my gear. Especially consumer semi pro gear. not realizing that a true pro studio may pay a quarter of a million dollars or more for their gear and I expect the same audio quality out of gear costing a tiny fraction of that haha.Perhaps I have been spoiled by the sound quality of my Roland Digital recorders which are outstanding and can be had for a couple of hundred dollars these days. Maybe so, but any gear that is not performing well or does not do what it should , I have to dispose of.

Electro Harmonix 2880 Looping pedal and foot controller
Gone, sorry Charlie, while I hoped that this would be the holy grail of looping pedals that would actually sync to midi flawlessly.I was mistaken!! The pedal has been a nightmare since I foolishly handed over $500 bucks or so. Granted, The company thought i may have received a faulty unit as it would lock up after trying to sync to midi and would lose the midi sync for no apparent reason. I would have to pull the power adapter regularly for it to function. Also, it seemed very straight forward but not intuitive. In other words to get the right timing for the pedal without quantitzing, was very difficult and just not practical. Also, the foot controller pedal was the worst idiots delight i had ever witnessed.Each switch had to be pressed 2-3 times to engage the record function and each switch was loud as hell!!! I mean really loud and sure to ruin any recording I would try to make. It seems that the midi sync function was based on the infamous boss rc-50 in its approach to do midi sync, which , as the rc-50 has shown just doesn't work very well at all.

I do give the 2880 points for an excellent sound quality, not musical ,but just straight forward good sound quality. (Musical as in a boomerang pedalboard that just has a very intuitive musical sound). Also, the physical box and paint are really cheap and scratch super easy. I cold only recommend this pedal to someone who wants to fart around on it in the studio, but for any serious live looping forget it.

I finally decided enough is enough. I promptly arranged full refunds form the 2 companies I bought the pedal from and the foot controller from. Was I sent a bad unit out of the box? maybe,maybe not, maybe its a design flaw. The company itself wanted to send it in to be repaired?! Wait I just got this thing. Ok, so how long would I be without it?! Also, The pedal seemed fine of the most part except the sync issue and like the boss rc-50 it just failed int hat respect. I boxed both up and mad3 arrangements to return them for a full refund!! Note: it costs me $25 to send both units back. I wont mention the companies as they may be great companies and will give me back a 100% refund or they may be really shady companies who charge restocking fee's and take away shipping fee's etc....time will tell. If a company sends a defective unit and then wont take it back for a full refund that does reflect poorly on the company.

In any case, we will see what kind of companies I was dealing with and the end result. Anyway, nice to get the 2880 looper out of my studio and guitar setup for ever. It just didn't work for me at all. I really hope the company I bought the actual pedal from comes through an does issue a 100% refund and doesn't slap me with all kinds of restocking fee's shipping fee's,etc...as they seem to be a decent company and in fact got the pedal to me in two days and it seemed to be in good shape and midi sync is quite a specific function that not everyone uses; so its easy to not see a flaw or problem in that area. Ok well, I will post the results of my returns here!!

Mackie 32x8 8bus mixing console
It's up for sale ($650+$150s/h with power supply email denis@dtguitar.com if you want to buy it). Ok,this is a love hate relationship. I love the mackie board's routing and the sound quality. However, for me, Ineed otbe able to record quickly, sometimes I only have an hour and getting board prepared eats way too much time and also for one person ,32 ch's is overkill. Also, if the board were brand new, that would help a lot too because with older boards some things are a little glitchy here and there. I mean it works, but the slightest touch of a cable ,etc...can create a drop out etc...also, and this is the big one, I need room in my studio room!~!@!!! I mean I am tripping over stuff and am lucky nothing has broken. It's just too big a board for my needs. though , I will misss its great sound and I recorded few albums with it.

What do you do if your sound is getting bad in the studio?

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rewire

Ok, after a couple of albums ,ok 4 albums, my studio sound was kind of dying on me. It was getting me way down.It really bothered me. maybe I just couldn't record anymore, maybe 135 albums was it. I was just not pleased with my recordings or sounds in the studio. so much so, I was going to sell my mackie 32x8. I still might ,but for different reasons such as going with different mic pre's,except its working so well. anyway, here is what I did and it was a cure all!!!

Ok, first I unplugged it all and that was a big job. Turns out, the cables I was using were cheapo test cables, some were ten years old. Ok, next I did some reading and experimenting to hook up the mackie board. Rather than going direct though, I actually utilized the 8 buses. This allows me to mix some guitar sounds together before going to the recorder. Ok, the I also set the levels to unity gain. Also, and this was the big culprit, I had to reset my emu emulatorx sound card!!!

Ok, it turns out that the emu was causing a loop causing feedback. It was driving me crazy and the sound just sucked big time. Finally, I wised up and it turns out that the software mixer of the card was "hiding" the wav out fader" so I could not mute it when using the digital i/o. Anyway, after that my sound was back. That great sound that seemed to be disappearing. I thought maybe it was my playing, yet I thought I was improving. Well, I am and it was this card problem and rehooking up the mackie that did the trick. I did a short recording and it was just a fantastic sound, warm,crystal clear and clean.

Lesson learned: when your sound seems to be degrading, take a 1/2 hour and go through your setup as it was initially. I discovered that after a album or so, it is surprising how many settings need to be reset to their initial values. I will sleep well tonight to be sure!! I had forgotten that I had never swapped out my test cables, as I was eager to get to recording. Anyway, I did a quick test recording to be sure I had it right.

ok, you can hear an mp3 of the test recording which is made up of sony drum samples, bass emulation on guitar looped from one of my rack units & synced to midi and then a stereo clean guitar loopped via one of my pedalboards .Now I can assign any of the 32 tracks to one of 8 buses. This allowed me to test bus 1-2 to my gtr rack unit and direct digitally to inputs 7-8 of my digital recorder.Then I used bus 3-4 for the mic's (the clean stereo guitar loop) which went to track 3-4 of my recorder. Then I used bus 7-8 to track 1 of my digital recorder for the looped bass emulation. Cool beans, that leaves me bus 5-6 free which I will assign to tracks 5-6 for vocals, samples, extra guits whatever. Also, I can use bus 8 if using bus 7 only to do mono bass which I often do. I only use an 8 rack recorder as All of my recordings are performed and recorded live with overdubs.

Hear the test sample here: http://www.dtguitar.com/rewiretest.mp3

Now the p3 will degrade the sound a bit as it is only 128k,but anyway, I hope you can hear that the sound is clear. Its not mixed well and the bass emulation was done 1/2 assed really as here is a glitch in the bass sound where I had not done a clean loop,but it ok for the test; it served my purposes. Anyway, this was a really big lesson as I was getting really down about my sound!!

electro harmonix 2880 !! AMAZING

electro harmonix 2880 !! AMAZING
Its simply amazing, it does everything it says it does, it syncs to midi and the sound is incredible!!!Through the boss rc-50 in the trash at this point, I just tried it for the fist time and it was very straight forward to operate and the sound is simply great!!! someone should send one of these to boss/roland so they can figure out how to do it right, if your looking for alooping pedal this is it!! It is so clean and what you put in you get out, not as musical as the boomerang pedalbaord which has a mind of its own, but this is just the pristine looping machine!!!

Modern Rock guitar vol 134 "Guitar Shrimp"

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Modern Rock guitar vol 134 "Guitar Shrimp"
Ok, I am pleased to announce that I completed and released my 134th modern rock guitar album. This was not my usual style, but rather was a traditionally recorded album that I was inspired after hearing some modern heavy metal albums or whatever you call 2000-2008 metal guitar, detuned 7 string, death metal, etc... I had a lot of fun with this album, and there were some tracks I really liked as they really hit the spot of what I had intended. This album is not fo the fint of heart though haha. Still very musical, but geez it is heavy!! Oh thats a hale shark on the cover and there are little guitars (guitarshrimp) swimming around it .....cool!!
Ok for the metal guitar sounds, I used the Crate v33 tube amp $xxx new and the digitech rp-50 multif/x pedal ($59 new at the time, now can be had for $30-40 if not less?!?!). The rp-50 is one of my favorite pedals!! Cheap and does so much and soudn is of really good quality. Ok, I came up with some crazy guitar sounds, some really are pretty unique and I think I did nail the typical modern metal guitar sounds, even down to detuning my guitar low e string to a B to imitate the seven string stuff on two tracks. My cat tiny even makes a vocal appearance as he meowed into the microphone. Anyway, I just did this album for fun and its not my normal style or gear at the moment

the crate v33 tube amp and rp-50 make a potent combination of guitar sounds..wow!! Though the crate is inherently noisy when on idle, so a noise gate or a rocktron hush unit would have been nice. Still that simple setup gave me the guitar sounds I was looking for. Granted a couple are over the top bordering on sheer controlled harmonic musical noise.


I also used a fender mexican strat with a crazy humbucking pickup seymour duncan sh-8 invader pickup which has a super high output and makes notes feedback and easy to get that zakk wylde harmonics. The guitar I had bought used for $xxx which was a good deal as the invader pickup is $80 by itself. If you look in the picture, you can see the invader pickup (the other pikups are white, the invader is black). I have no regrets buying this guitar and when I need a rock guitar sound or a feedbacking guitar, this is it!! The mexican strat has a fender type neck rather than a fast ibanez type neck and in fact this one has a weird setup for now, where the bridge comes forward against the body of the guitar to make it almost like a guitar with a locking nut. I plan on changing it back to a standard setup eventually.

Overall, I like this album, however, I found it tedious, to record track by track, I am so used to improvising and looping that this was a bit like pulling teeth, I am pleased with the results but it is no where near as fun as how I normally record. Less stressful because you can go back and fix mistakes, but geez. especially the bass. My hats off to all those bassists out there who have the patience to play bass. It is quite a repetitive task. Anyway I am really pleased with this album and it made me really appreciate my normal approach to recording which I took for granted after all these years.

ART x-15 ultrafoot & Electro Harmonix 2880

ART x-15 ultrafoot Pedalboard

ok, it took a lot longer than it should have to arrive , but i finally received my ART x-15 ultrafoot pedal board. This is the companion pedalboard to the ART SGX express 2000 guitar preamp and f/x unit. Ok, initial impressions was that well-packed, this thing was filthy dirty, with a layer of crust dirt on it, no power supply (how do i turn it on?!) and the red led cover seemed broken off. Ok, fearing the worst, I took the pedal board and with my fingers I moved the red led cover back in place and it tuns out that it is a piece of red plastic that covers the actual led lights on the circuit board. Ok, cobwebs under one of the pedals was pretty weak as well. Now, I paid $59.99 + $35.00 s/h=$94.99.

Ok so, initially I was a bit worried, but lucky for me, I use a one spot which has a bunch of connectors to power pedals. So I hooked up th x-15 and it came right up and the led lights were intact and it seemed to function well. So I needed to just clean this pedalboard and suddenly it went from pawn shop quality to a really nice pedalboard. Ok, this pedalboard is huge with a big wah pedal and a volume pedal as well. All metal construction. The 80's,early 90's paint really makes it look a little flimsier than it really is. I also cleaned under the 2 pedals. This thing is a monster, each pedal has 2 large bolts (mine have a tiny tinge of rust,not bad). Also I found Little circuit boards right under the pedals which seems a little strange but they are bolted down as well. Ok, the pedal connectors are simple though 3 midi jacks, a pedal bypass jack for an optional footswitch and a power jack .

Ok cleaned up and powered up, I tried the actual buttons on the x-15 and they ware working properly. I like large pedalboards and this one does not disappoint, in fact, it is the largest individual board I have seen other than perhaps a custom bradshaw board. Ok, well, it seems fine, I wonder when it was made, I would guess pretty early on, maybe 1990 or 1992,I say that because I recognize some of the numbers on the serial number. Anyway, its an oldy but goody. all in all it has 14 footswitches and 2 pedals. I download instructions for it and also a firmware upgrade which i may attempt and also a factory reset.This will get this "vintage" pedalboard in shape.

Ok, so overall, the art sgx express 2000 and the matching x-15 ultrafoot make quite a semi "vintage setup". Now I need to hooked it all up and get the sgx 2space rack unit in my rack and gett he pedalboard upgraded and hooked up; then before recording is choosing some preset sounds to use and then record!!!! that would be great!!! The art sgx 2000 was in truly excellent condition like new, while the x-15 was in good shape (not very good or excellent), on the other hand it is old and was really cheap and it works and a pedalboard gets stomped on, so I guess year after year it does take a beating, but I have to say the art x-15 seems to be built like a tank.

Electro Harmonix 2880 Looping unit
Ok, so I was checking out some youtube gear video reviews and run across a review for a not so well known looping unit, I almost lost control of my bowels and frantically searched the internet to see if I could find one. Bellame music in Georgia had an electro harmonix looping unit ready to send me for $408.00 with free shipping. I noticed that I could not fidn this unit at zzounds or american musical supply. Ok, this was a big purchase, but after getting burned on the BOSS RC-50 looping pedalboard that is full of glitches and doesn't sync to midi at all, I had to take a chance. So I ordered it and it was here in 2 days!!! Ok, its about the size of a big electro harmonix pedal and is like a 4 track multitrack recorder and each track loops and it claims to sync to midi. They call it a desktop unit and you have to order the optional pedal to control it.

So I ordered the optional foot pedal from another vendor, big mistake so far, instead of getting it in two days, I get an email saying sorry but the last unit we had isn't working , so we will be getting one in a couple of days to ship to you..I am sorry but that really sucks. there are plenty of vendors who have that pedal in stock and you should know this when you order ,not after they have your money,but stuff happens as they say. Anyway the price for the pedal to control the 2880 is about $111.00 which is inexpensive compared to the 2880. So, I said fine jut get it tome as quick as you can. However, if it has not at least shipped by Friday I will cancel my order and order elsewhere. In any case, the only way this vendor can redeem himself is he gets me the pedal by Friday. Won't happen though I suspect. But we will see. If anything it gives me time to work with the 2880 itself and go though the manual. If it does what it says it does, it would be perfect, everything that the boss rc-50 claimed to be but wasn't. I mean the 2880 seems straight forward, has an octave and reverse function, 4 tracks and can be mixed down to do 4 more tracks and with the footswitch live!!! It also claims to have midi clock sync capabilities and if it does then this could be the holy grail of loopers.

The rc-50 was a dud and I got taken for $500.00 only to discover that the midi jacks were for looks only for one and the software glitches are unforgivable. I guess I have kept it because it can function nicely on its own/by itself, but not incorporated into my usual system. This gave some nice tracks for my albums;a break form my usual setup. but Roland really screwed the pooch on the rc-50. I don't recommend that turd to anyone. I saw the you tube video demo of the 2880 and have read the manual and it really seems like a dream come true. But if the 2880 really functions as advertised, then the rc-50 will go on the auction block and join the shitheap of useless gear. I have only run into a couple of shitheap units, the rc-50 is one, most of the cheapo dod pedals, and many of the practice amp distortion ch's come to mind and other crap I ordered and then returned the same day because it was so weak.

Ok, the electro harmonix unit is metal and the buttons feel ok, not terribly sturdy but not flimsy, it hard to believe they got a looping unit and 4 track recorder and everything in this little unit. amazing. I have yet to try it out, but I will shortly and am hoping for the best. After my rc-50 fiasco, it is hard to believe that this little known looping unit can do what the big corporate mass market boss/roland could not accomplish with the rc-50. we will see....If so, then I am sold!!!! I would even get another one as a back up as these kinds of pedals seem to go out production quickly.

ART SGX 2000 Express arrives!!!

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ART SGX 2000 Express arrives!!!
Ok, As I was driving home from work, I looked and sure enough there was a box waiting for me!! Allright!! on a friday too , that leaves me a little time to check it out!! Ok, I get the box and open it up (I still dont see how this cost $50 to ship, but I digress......) SO it was $127.00 for the sgx2000 express 2 raqckspace rack unit plus $50s/h=$177.00 . By the way, I am still waiting on the x-15 ultrafot pedalboard which I understand is on its way.

First impressions
upon opening the box was that I did get the expresss version (not the non express version which is not as good,noiser and less presets and missing some f/x's). Ok, mine actually looks like the one in the picture. I was immediately taken by how it was all metal consturcion,not cheap plastic, all the knob were tight and it looked like new!! Mine was the latest ver 1.10 of the software and was built in 1994, the year they discontinued the art sgx 2000 express. Also, The pink versions really looked like a toy and this has a little pink lettering but th face is black and it looks very professional, so no scratches, its jsut a great looking unit, even for being 15 years old.

I also noticed that on the back of the unit were 2 f/x loops, line and isntrument level outs, midi inout and thru and 2 XLR outs as well. WOw, this was no toy!! My fear was that I didnt get a unit with the 475 presets and extra features (art claims they improved it 400% compared to the older sgx's)). Yet I did have the latest firmware. Also, the front of the unit was well laid out and upon plugging it in, I was overcome by the number of red led's, geez, at least 20 or so, flashing and so on. Wow!! So I tried some knobs and hooked up some headphones to the headphone out jsut to try it out. WEll, some of the pots were scratchy which concerned me. But, after giving thm a few twsits they cleaned right up. This is common among old gear that hasnt been used in a while,I would guess this is one of those units.

Art turns to a F art.....?
So I plug in my guitar and get this squealing into the headphones and hardly any sound. I try the pots and I get this scratchy sound. TERRIBLE, this was no ART it was a F ART!!! I suddenly had buyers remorse. I fiddled with the knobs and suddenly there came this tone, that sounded pretty good. I then tried another preset, memories of the 80's and early 90's filled my headphones.Still , where are the 475 presets? Instead I get about 16 presets from some schmo user who preferred the sound I dislike, its the distortion after the delay and reverb type sound, man, every preset, yuk!!! I was becoming discouraged, now I was thinking they should have called it the the F ART 2000 express, like a bad joke, add an F and that's what it sounds like.

F art clears the air and the ART surfaces
So I went to the internet and decided to do a reset back to factory specs!! Voila!!!!! AWESOME!! The F ART was gone and now only the ART remained. suddenly , I had all 475 presets, 4 banks->classic, performance,production and contribution. AMAZING SOUNDS!!! I had presets emulating amps ,fantastic f/x and great sound quality. The ART had surfaced. I was really taken a back. The presets were really fun to play with , it had 20 or so fender twin simulations, marshall amps, VOX and so on and it had artist presets as well. Some were really fun and telling of the times, zztop presets, SRV,nirvana, pink floyd ,eagles, eric johnson and 1 joe satriani patch haha some metal patches. Loved em all!!

Ok the sounds thus far, amazing for just presets, I mean the clean sounds were really nice, and the distortions ranged from classic rock to 80 n 90's rock /metal. IT just has that old tone even on f/x, I just dont hear that older tone from my modern f/x units at all. IT had black sabbath patches and they really do sound authentic haha. Anyway, just a lot of fun tones and they sound great. I would not recommend this to a beginner as far as editing patches as there is just too much there to really make a mushy sound, but if you tweak the presets a bit it certainly shines and gives this sound that you just cant get with modern pre's and f/x.

I had a blast with some of the jimi hendrix patches, they sounded just right, not crazily distorted and with that hendrix type sound. Anyway, it is easy to overdo the f/x such as reverb in particular as it has reverb and also an acoustic environment simulator. It even has a sampler which I tried. It seemed kind of short. Bu th e ping pond delays and panning effects were great and the pitch shifter/octaver was fun to.Also, it has Extensive EQ I mean bass lowmid etc...and presence.Anyway, I just scratched the surface but after the reset I immediately heard quality sounds worthy of using this unit to record tracks for an album.

OVERALL
This is great piece of semi-vintage gear and will certainly eventually be true vintage gear. It has truly old "80's " sounding f/x and preamp as well. so much so, I had forgotten what I liked and disliked about that sound. I mean it also had the Van Halen presets. Ok, dont try to find 7 string death metal sounds here but the distortion can really deliver a good metal sound. The f/x can be overdone on the presets,but with some tweaking they can be just right too. It also has a production patches which can be used for vocals and drum machines, bass and so on. When I compare it to the line 6 pod xt live, it actually holds its own, though the line 6 pod xt can get a ton of hi gain which the at cant, but they have diffrerent sounds, I think the line 6 would have a tough time recreating that old 80's soundf/x wise especially. So, the art is not a replacement for the line 6 but is a breath of fresh air with its retro sounds. It is everything I hoped it to be. Ok, will posts some tracks and some mp3's of some sounds I get with it. VERY COOl and worth every penny of the $177.00 I paid for it, maybe even cooler with the $94 x-15 pedalboard, we will when it arrives.....