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All in Reviews
Reverb is one of those effects that works well both subtle and extreme. Sometimes you might want to just add a little space to your guitar signal, and sometimes you might want to play “surf” music or create ambient washes. So you might wonder if a mini reverb pedal can accomplish both subtle and extreme effects well...
Looping (recording repeating backing tracks to play over) is great for practice and solo live work. There are a multitude of looper pedals now, varying in complexity, but sometimes simple is best. TC Electronic’s Ditto Looper falls in the simple category...
Electric guitar players typically have a lot of gear. Guitars, amps, pedals, pedalboards, stands, etc. Which is great when you are playing at home. But it less than great when have to move a lot of it. If you play in a band or with friends, you know what a hassle it can be to haul everything around...
I am a musician and guitar teacher, and have been using Spider IV 15 amps for teaching guitar for seven years. They are good teaching/practice amps. They are easy to use, have four good sounding amp models, built in effects, and a low price. All good things for a musician/teacher teaching a wide variety of musical styles. So I was naturally interested when the Spider V 30 was released. Here is my review.
One thing is fairly certain for many gigging guitar players. There is never enough room on stage. I have intentionally made my rig as compact as possible for just this reason. I use a...
Over the years, Capos have seen dramatic improvements. Gone are the days of loose-fitting elastic bands and the screw-on plastic monsters that we used back in the 70’s. Most capos are now both quick and easy to use. One of the first “new generation” capos was the...
Picks come in lots of shapes, thicknesses, and materials. It can be difficult to find just the right one for your playing style and music. While conventional thought says flexible picks are better for strumming and rigid picks are better for fast single note picking and riffs, there are no rules. It is really a matter of preference.
George Benson is simply one of the greatest jazz guitar players of all time. And like many famous guitar players he has his own signature model guitars. The Ibanez GB300 and the GB10. The GB300 is a full size hollowbody and GB10 is smaller body hollowbody designed to be more comfortable to play and fight feedback. The problem for many working musicians or part time jazz players, however, is the price. At $5000 and $3500 they are out of reach for many players.
As the use of effect pedals in music has grown increasingly popular, so has the popularity of pedalboards. Huge pedalboards with thousands of dollars worth of effects can be found in use by even occasional players. Collecting effects pedals seems to be a hobby unto itself. And there are YouTube channels devoted completely to setting up and using pedalboards and effects. But sometimes you only need a few effects to get the job done. This is the idea behind the Pedaltrain Nano+ pedalboard.
A little over a year ago I did of review of the Dragon's Heart premium picks. You can read that review here. Dragon's Heart premium picks offer a unique shape that provides three different picking edges and tones. They are also quite thick and don’t flex. Some players like the added thickness and rigidness of the premium picks, but other players prefer the more traditional flex and thickness of a standard pick. Realizing this, the folks at Dragon's Heart have recently released a new series of picks called the Wyvern Series.
If you play guitar you should record yourself. It is a great way to judge your performances, write songs, learn recording, and improve as a player. If you own a computer or laptop it can become the basis of a home studio. But one additional item you will need is a good audio interface. I chose the Native Instruments KOMPLETE AUDIO 6 interface for my home studio.
I play guitar in a cover band playing music spanning the 1960s through today. I also play at church. So I need tonal versatility in my gear. I have always preferred to get my main clean and overdriven tones from my amp, not pedals, so I need an amp with both great clean tones and great overdriven tones. For me, that means a tube amp.
The Nova System is a studio-quality digital multi-effects unit with analog distortion/overdrive. It seems designed for those seeking high-quality digital effects in a convenient, compact, road-worthy unit.
When the guys at Dragon Heart’s Picks approached me about reviewing their picks I warned them that I was a 40+ year Fender Medium pick user and that I had tried and used dozens of other picks over the years including the newer synthetic material premium picks, even stone picks! But I always returned to Fender Medium picks. So I would be a tough sell. They weren’t deterred and sent me one of each Dragon’s Heart pick models.
I have owned a few wah-wah pedals over the years. My first was a Morley Wah/Volume. It was huge monster that actually had a built-in power supply with a heavy duty power chord coming out of the unit. It also had a “feature” (at least that’s what Morley called it) that allowed it to be used with keyboards. So when you rocked it back all the way, it was out of the tonal range of the guitar and the volume dropped off. Some feature! Next up was a DOD FX-17 wah/volume pedal. It served me well for a number of years until the switch that turned the wah on and off went bad. Every time I rocked the pedal it would switch from wah to volume. It was time for a new pedal. I did a lot of research and decided on the Dunlop Crybaby 95Q.
For me nothing beats using a real amp when playing live. But for recording, software amp simulators are great. You can’t beat the convenience and affordability of having numerous amps available in software. I have been using software amp simulators for many years for recording. I have IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube 3, AmpliTube Jimi Hendrix, AmpliTube Fender, and AmpliTube Orange. I also have Native Instruments Guitar Rig, Garage Band, MOTU Digital Performer. So when I got an iPad Mini I was eager to test out AmpliTube for iPad.
Mobile devices have become part of everyday life for most people, just as computers did for previous generations. And since smart phones and tablets are really just small computers it is only natural that musicians, who have long utilized computers for making music, would also want to use mobile devices for the same purpose.
Drive pedals are generally divided into three basic categories: fuzz, overdrive, and distortion. Each category has numerous flavors, and their uses are many, which is why many players have more than one on their pedalboard. Empress has taken the three most popular drive categories and combined them all in one compact pedal with the three effects wired parallel.
As its name implies, the Martin Backpacker guitar was designed as a travel guitar small enough to take with you on a backpacking trip or to fit in an airline overhead compartment. It succeeds at both these tasks, being both small and lightweight.
Modeling software has matured to the point where it is very convincing at capturing the tone of guitar amps, cabinets, and effects. IK Multimedia was one of the first companies to produce modeling software and it continues to be one of the best. And while very few guitar players have replaced their live rigs with laptops and software, modeling software excels for recording, allowing almost any guitar player the chance to play through dream rigs and capture the tone in a recording for a very reasonable price.
