Month: July 2005 (Page 1 of 4)

Serial# 288889

Ah, my trusty multi-effects unit. I can’t remember where or when I purchased this but it was my main guitar FX for years until I realized what the tube amp aficionados were on about. This has mediocre distortion and compression when compared to what’s available these days, but in my opinion the delay and reverb algorithms are outstanding. I now run the FX loop out to my POD for compression and amplifier modelling duties.

I have the floor-board for this, but I don’t use it since I accidentally unplugged it while the power was on and it reset the patch memory. Disaster.

Update November 2020: This unit has been refurbished and passed on to a new owner. Details here.

Amplifier modelling is the best thing to happen to recording guitarists since the invention of the Floyd locking nut. In my opinion.

I have been unable to get a decent bass patch out of this thing, though. I know it’s theoretically possible (albeit it is a guitar effect unit) and there are instructions on the Line 6 web site. I should try following them sometime.

This is one of the few pieces of equipment that made me scrap my existing recordings and rework them, this time with the lead and rhythm guitar using the POD. I didn’t know what I’d been missing.

Behringer gets a fairly bad rap for producing “cheap and nasty” products (although I’m not sure this holds true today, or was even fair to say back in the day), but let me tell you: These monitors produce a much better sound than that I was getting though a pair of little Boston Acoustics bookshelf speakers. Now I switch between the two speaker sets for comparison purposes.

Serial# 811067

Those “Glass Voices”… that “Guitarrrr”… there are many patches on this box that I used to think that I could not live without. If it broke down I would have to shop for a D-50 on E-Bay, I would say to myself.

Interestingly, as I re-work projects that featured this synthesizer, I find myself using alternative instrumentation in preference to the venerable D-50 tones. I don’t know why, exactly. Many synths of its era have disctinctive patches that were overused in commercial productions of the day, to the point where the patches now sound cheezy. The D-50/550 certainly has its share of these, but it is still capable of many unique and fresh-sounding sounds with depth that hold up today.

A lot of people have said that they have had problems with these M-Audio USB MIDI interfaces, but mine has worked flawlessly with Windows 2000, XP, and more recently, Windows 7 (although the drivers were only released in beta form very recently). I originally only used the IN/OUT-A because the Roland A-880 handled the rest of the devices. When I got the Roland VK-8 I’d run out of ports on the A-880 and so I plugged it into the In/Out-B ports. This works out really well because the VK-8 will actually respond on several MIDI channels as a multi-timbral device.

Serial# ZA98548

I live in fear of this device breaking down. Where the heck can you find MIDI patch bays these days? Apparently no-one makes them any more, but I don’t see why that should be. They are still a vital component of any comprehensive MIDI studio.

This one has been very reliable. But still I worry…