So after ye many years of the Alesis products completely destroying my impedance chain (its not their fault... it's the fault of us low brow guitar rig apes trying to use studio equipment as all purpose multi effect units...) I have finally found it's purpose at my home... well, basically - as always I need to get a few custom cables but yes, it's in use right now.
On the Mackie Satellite I am plugging the laptop's headphone out into input set #1, a spare 1/8" (ipod usually) setup on inputs #2, high-z inputs (microphone preamps) are switched between the Line6 POD XT balanced outs (cool eh?) and my microphones (which I dont use much any more) and the instrument in is left idle. A few things to note - if the firewire integration was all square (have to install the mackie drivers or something) then I could use inputs #1 for something else (line6, maybe).
The outputs on the Satellite are very flexible and have (2) independent control room outputs as well as 2 headphone amps. I use the headphone amps to monitor but they can cause tinnitus sensations so I change it up to the Altec computer speakers often but in particular for when I am watching "TV" (the video out on the laptop is hooked up to the TV so I watch youtube, netflix streaming et al this way instead of paying outrageous amounts for cable).
"Ok, how does the Alesis play in?". Well, the issue is that due to no seeming demand to the manufacturers that EQing your output on a computer, ipod or otherwise is actually pretty well missing (I dont count the presets on the ipod - they dont have 'cut' settings). In essence for my studio apartment the Altecs have WAY too much bass, even after I stuffed a sock in the port!
Enter the Quadraverb 2 - I was about to send it off to the great graveyard in the sky (aka my friends basement where a lot of my other gear lives) but I found a use for it. I am using the parametric abilities to shape the output to the speakers inline. Oops! There we go shaping odd impedances with the Quadraverb again (headphone in)!!.
And that's why I said 'basically' - the Mackie Satellite in all it's genius (and super low price point!) has included an 'insert' per channel. It's more or less an effects loop for things like... well, I assume needs like mine. Lets hope its after all the mixing circuitry... of course, I need those cables now to try.
Happy gear hacking.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Summer updates and more
Well I rearranged my studio^2 (recording and apartment) and realized that the marshall isn't really half bad for playing in a small space. Sure, I bet a 100w JMP cranked with some overdrive in the front is better but in San Francisco who the hell can sort out when to take advantage of that except at a venue? I buy 50w amps for a reason - if I really get attached to how they sound, they are loud enough for most any venue and should keep up with the band well enough. You know, I say this and true - my 50w Marshall 2550 couldn't keep up with drums at all with a straight cab. But boy, my Dual Rectifier with cab could melt any band haha.
Off the digression - the TSL 60 pretty well rocks. Throw the TS-9 in front of it (I never tried it with that pedal...) and its very nice.. I also have it on top of my Boogie now which seems to sweeten it up too.
Overall - with the PRS tuned down to D# I can hang tone for tone (well nuff) with EVH. Of course, I saw a guy using a dual rec recording preamp to do the same - what can I say, nice pickups do it 80%. Get some.
Off the digression - the TSL 60 pretty well rocks. Throw the TS-9 in front of it (I never tried it with that pedal...) and its very nice.. I also have it on top of my Boogie now which seems to sweeten it up too.
Overall - with the PRS tuned down to D# I can hang tone for tone (well nuff) with EVH. Of course, I saw a guy using a dual rec recording preamp to do the same - what can I say, nice pickups do it 80%. Get some.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Daily Gear Player
* 2007 PRS McCarty Vintage Yellow - no birds, not a 10 top but a very very nice top nonetheless. When I picked it up at GuitarCenter I was really into it from the get-go. I was playing their SE series and decided to compare it to the McCarty in hopes that the SE would be 'almost as good' for less than 1/4 the price. I was wrong - the McCarty I chose and bought sort of chose me - it felt alive in my hands instantly and the contour / color / setup was ideal from the start.
* Mesa F50 - very very solid cleans, an 'orange' (Marshallish) tone, a very solid 'red' tone (modern heavy). For $550 for the combo it is almost certainly one of the best deals in guitar gear I have been party to. The new Mesa express series came out - they have a class A option switch and all the other options. Ultimately they dont compare with the F50 for flexibility and a bent towards rock / hard rock on the lead channels. The express series is more in the Mark series - brown, very midrange and meant to be turned up for the best tone. The F series seems to be meant for the audience looking for a nice compact amp that has some semblance of a Fender clean and a dual rectifier distortion. This amp might be as close as one can get in a single amp box (with the same transformer et al).
* Boss pedals: Lots of them. I have underestimated pedals.. with a great guitar and amp pedals are just as great.
* Mesa F50 - very very solid cleans, an 'orange' (Marshallish) tone, a very solid 'red' tone (modern heavy). For $550 for the combo it is almost certainly one of the best deals in guitar gear I have been party to. The new Mesa express series came out - they have a class A option switch and all the other options. Ultimately they dont compare with the F50 for flexibility and a bent towards rock / hard rock on the lead channels. The express series is more in the Mark series - brown, very midrange and meant to be turned up for the best tone. The F series seems to be meant for the audience looking for a nice compact amp that has some semblance of a Fender clean and a dual rectifier distortion. This amp might be as close as one can get in a single amp box (with the same transformer et al).
* Boss pedals: Lots of them. I have underestimated pedals.. with a great guitar and amp pedals are just as great.
Gear
Well, some of the collection has slid out of my daily playing and I wanted to perhaps throw it out to auction. I am being 'optimistic' right now, in that, possibly things would start selling for decent prices on ebay and then I would be inspired to clear out more stuff. That said, here we go:
* 2002ish Gibson Les Paul Plus AA Flame top with 50s neck. Price: $1300ish (paid $2000).
* Mesa Original Dual Rectifier with 'triple rectifier' cab vintage: $1400 should be fair.
* Marshall TSL 60 combo / 1x12": bought it and never really used it. It's used and yet it came with all it's stuff (cover, etc.). I think I got it for $650 and since they are $1500 new I would want about what I paid 3 months ago.
* Ibanez JS1000 : If someone wants this item I would part with it for a slight loss. It's nearly new (just a single hairline 1" scratch on the back from a zipper). Paid $1000 out the door 4 months ago, best offer.
* Alesis Quadraverb2: Best offer - $50? I paid $400 7 years ago before modeling and stuff took off. It's still pretty high fidelity, though.
Or, will consider trade on PRS McCarty Hollowbody with piezo system. :D it's pretty specific but I really sort of think I have everything else.. that blog entry is next in fact.
Cheers,
zed
* 2002ish Gibson Les Paul Plus AA Flame top with 50s neck. Price: $1300ish (paid $2000).
* Mesa Original Dual Rectifier with 'triple rectifier' cab vintage: $1400 should be fair.
* Marshall TSL 60 combo / 1x12": bought it and never really used it. It's used and yet it came with all it's stuff (cover, etc.). I think I got it for $650 and since they are $1500 new I would want about what I paid 3 months ago.
* Ibanez JS1000 : If someone wants this item I would part with it for a slight loss. It's nearly new (just a single hairline 1" scratch on the back from a zipper). Paid $1000 out the door 4 months ago, best offer.
* Alesis Quadraverb2: Best offer - $50? I paid $400 7 years ago before modeling and stuff took off. It's still pretty high fidelity, though.
Or, will consider trade on PRS McCarty Hollowbody with piezo system. :D it's pretty specific but I really sort of think I have everything else.. that blog entry is next in fact.
Cheers,
zed
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Collective Soul Concert: I went!
I went to Collective Soul on Saturday... man it was _awesome_. I had 5th row center.. when the guy walked me up to my seats I was like 'wow... I just got them today!' haha.
Big head Todd was the opener which I appreciated musically but I was there to party CS style... when they came out I was stoked. They did 'new vibration' for their first... as far as I remember their set went (not in order): new vibration, listen, run, heavy, i don't need any more friends (Joel rocked it), december, world I know, gel, why part 2, better now and encore was 'shine' - their original hit.
Big head Todd was the opener which I appreciated musically but I was there to party CS style... when they came out I was stoked. They did 'new vibration' for their first... as far as I remember their set went (not in order): new vibration, listen, run, heavy, i don't need any more friends (Joel rocked it), december, world I know, gel, why part 2, better now and encore was 'shine' - their original hit.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Song update
Working the hardest on December recently... always been a great song. One thing to note is just how much style they have by putting a nice melodic bridge where the outro solo would be... Classic and just awesome.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Recording gear
Recently tried to construct a nice entry level studio system to try some recording. Here's what I ended up with:
Audio Technica 3035 condensor - nice airy quality, really transparent. It's level is pretty solid but it didn't seem to do my voice or acoustic with a 'near field' effect. In my studio environment (well, uhm, I live in my studio... really! on a few different levels...) it's qualities make it tough to use in lower SPL recordings like voice and acoustic because of its 360 degree sensitivity. However, in higher SPL recording, like with my amps, it works out really well. It shines on both chunk and clean guitar amp micing so I think for now it's going to be the workhorse guitar mic. It does seem to catch the 'sweetness' and 'snap' of my amps so until I move to the next tier of mics I bet i will use this one for recording electric guitar for quite some time...
Audix OM5 - a dynamic mic used primarily for vocals. It's fun to use and seems to have a mid-cut kind of thing going on. I continue to be amazed at how mic manufacturers are more like amp manufacturers - 'realism' is relative. Sounding good is a little easier to achieve with some amount of modest EQing which if you ask me this mic has. Either that or it happens to have a response curve with a mid-cut builtin. They have a graph on the box, I guess I could look at that. Bottom line is that it probably makes my voice sound a lot more interesting than it is, so I have to give it a good mark too.
Mogami XLR cables - I have 2 of these, 1 for each mic. They seem nice made of high quality stuff like rubber or something.. probably some metal in there. Plus, I have the joy of knowing I have brand name cables. w00t.
Mackie Satellite Interface - it has 'Onyx' preamps, an insert (loop), (2) line-ins, XLR, instrument high Z for each channel on the base station, all with phantom too. They are preparing (or already have) discontinue this thing so for now its $200 - about the price of a decent CPU for your computer. It's all firewire, though, and it can indeed do low latency (I monitor through DAW when recording) but this causes major issues on most PCs. In the end I moved to a Macbook Pro and that works fine with garage band. Perhaps with an 'awesome' computer the need to buy CEntrance drivers would be gone. Until then, for me, it's here.
Sennheiser 'cans' - when doing recording it's fairly important to use monitors that work well. I initially got a pair of senn 280s which are 'sealed' headphones. In the end, my ears would start sweating terribly after 20 minutes so I got a set of senn 555s. These are 'open' but still arent .. "heat free". Maybe no full size headphones are. I also use some decent computer speakers to verify what I recorded is listenable.... they work well too.
To get list:
Palmer speaker simulator - I would dig one of these but at $500 its hard to not buy something much more expressive like a new combo, preamp, or even a new axe like I dont have (hollow body, plastic pickguard, or something).
Millenia - recording preamp that I guess Satch uses... I like his recording clarity so maybe I can find one of these on ebay... even then, its a 'ultra pro' piece of gear... maybe for xmas?
Audio Technica 3035 condensor - nice airy quality, really transparent. It's level is pretty solid but it didn't seem to do my voice or acoustic with a 'near field' effect. In my studio environment (well, uhm, I live in my studio... really! on a few different levels...) it's qualities make it tough to use in lower SPL recordings like voice and acoustic because of its 360 degree sensitivity. However, in higher SPL recording, like with my amps, it works out really well. It shines on both chunk and clean guitar amp micing so I think for now it's going to be the workhorse guitar mic. It does seem to catch the 'sweetness' and 'snap' of my amps so until I move to the next tier of mics I bet i will use this one for recording electric guitar for quite some time...
Audix OM5 - a dynamic mic used primarily for vocals. It's fun to use and seems to have a mid-cut kind of thing going on. I continue to be amazed at how mic manufacturers are more like amp manufacturers - 'realism' is relative. Sounding good is a little easier to achieve with some amount of modest EQing which if you ask me this mic has. Either that or it happens to have a response curve with a mid-cut builtin. They have a graph on the box, I guess I could look at that. Bottom line is that it probably makes my voice sound a lot more interesting than it is, so I have to give it a good mark too.
Mogami XLR cables - I have 2 of these, 1 for each mic. They seem nice made of high quality stuff like rubber or something.. probably some metal in there. Plus, I have the joy of knowing I have brand name cables. w00t.
Mackie Satellite Interface - it has 'Onyx' preamps, an insert (loop), (2) line-ins, XLR, instrument high Z for each channel on the base station, all with phantom too. They are preparing (or already have) discontinue this thing so for now its $200 - about the price of a decent CPU for your computer. It's all firewire, though, and it can indeed do low latency (I monitor through DAW when recording) but this causes major issues on most PCs. In the end I moved to a Macbook Pro and that works fine with garage band. Perhaps with an 'awesome' computer the need to buy CEntrance drivers would be gone. Until then, for me, it's here.
Sennheiser 'cans' - when doing recording it's fairly important to use monitors that work well. I initially got a pair of senn 280s which are 'sealed' headphones. In the end, my ears would start sweating terribly after 20 minutes so I got a set of senn 555s. These are 'open' but still arent .. "heat free". Maybe no full size headphones are. I also use some decent computer speakers to verify what I recorded is listenable.... they work well too.
To get list:
Palmer speaker simulator - I would dig one of these but at $500 its hard to not buy something much more expressive like a new combo, preamp, or even a new axe like I dont have (hollow body, plastic pickguard, or something).
Millenia - recording preamp that I guess Satch uses... I like his recording clarity so maybe I can find one of these on ebay... even then, its a 'ultra pro' piece of gear... maybe for xmas?
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