American Songwriter » Recording

Review: Fender Acoustasonic 150 Combo Amp

Steve Martin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:07:51 +0000

The Fender Acoustasonic 150 guitar amplifier is ideally suited to the gigging musician looking to maximize the sound of an acoustic-electric guitar while taking advantage of a variety of modern features and flexibility. The Acoustasonic delivers an incredibly clean, full, and powerful sound, provided by two 8” foam-surround low-frequency neodymium drivers and a high frequency tweeter that deliver 150 watts of pristine acoustic tone. Two inputs allow for amplification of 2 sources, with the option for a microphone input on the second channel via a combo jack capable of providing phantom power for use with condenser microphones or other active electronics. In addition to the two inputs, the Acoustasonic has multiple output options, including a USB output that can be used for recording directly into your computer, and doubles as a means for updating the firmware of the amp. As standard with most amps, a 3-band EQ is included on the instrument channel, but where the Acoustasonic really stands out is the effects and voicing section. The voicing control allows you to select between different acoustic tones and apply them to your performance. You can select between Parlor, Dreadnought, and Jumbo acoustic sounds as well as tweed, Blackface, and British amp settings for electric guitar tones that sound surprisingly authentic even when played with an acoustic guitar. You can also bypass this feature and use the direct sound from your instrument. This feature alone allows you to limit the amount of gear you need to bring to a gig, and it’s worth its weight in gold. With the Acoustasonic, one guitar, and one amp is all you need, and at just over 22 lbs, loading out after the gig will feel a whole lot easier. You can even scrap your pedal board because the Acoustasonic comes with an onboard FX section that allows you to apply reverb, delay, chorus, and vibratone. There’s plenty of combinations and variations of these effects to use, as well as a master FX level to control the amount blended into your sound (and keep in mind that those two 8-inch drivers mean that you’re getting those FX in stereo). Effects can truly add to your performance, but in some cases they actually change the way you play. Most likely, you bought your guitar because it felt good in your hands, and it sounded great, and more than anything, you felt like it helped you to play better. The Acoustasonic’s String Dynamics feature has the same effect. Essentially, it’s a compressor for those pesky high notes that sometimes peek out too harshly when you amplify your acoustic guitar. When applied, every note is smoothed out, but not suppressed so much as to be noticeable. Everything just sounds right. Once turned on, you’ll be hard pressed to find a reason to turn it off. It’s spectacular. Every nuance of your playing, and the tone of your guitar is enhanced, and your playing will respond to that.

Review: Fishman Loudbox Artist Amplifier

Steve Martin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:07:18 +0000

Sometimes, you can become so used to the sound of your own gear that you’re blind to the fact that it’s not the right piece of equipment for the task at hand. Plugging my acoustic guitar into my “go-to” amp had always been acceptable, but not great. It was a little noisy, and the controls never quite suited my acoustic guitar. Fishman’s Loudbox Artist amplifier reminded me of the importance of the right tool for the job. I’ll never be able to settle for the sound of my acoustic guitar run through a cheap D.I. box or even plugged into my favorite Fender amplifier. The Loudbox Artist amp is made specifically for acoustic instruments, and delivers a sound that I had forgotten was possible with acoustic amplification. I tested an acoustic guitar, semi-hollow body electric bass, and a ukulele through the Loudbox Artist, and all three sounded fantastic. 120watts give you a superbly clean and powerful sound that you can customize with onboard EQ and effects for each of the 2 input channels. Each input is a combo jack, so you can plug in 1/4 inch or XLR (microphone) cable, and supply phantom power to microphones if necessary. In a small venue, you could get by with just the Loudbox as your PA system by running an acoustic guitar and a microphone into it simultaneously. In a venue with its own PA, a direct output on the Loudbox allows you to send the pristine sound you’ve created directly to the house PA system. There are three direct outputs; one for each input channel, and one for a mix of the two. The onboard effects include reverb, delay, and echo on one FX channel, and chorus, flange, and slap-delay on another. You can blend the two effects as well as adjust the level or parametersto create vast hall reverb or seemingly endless delay. Fishman’s anti-feedback controls provide a bit of a safety net in situations where feedback may be a concern. In addition, an auxiliary input, useful when playing along with a pre-recorded track, or playing music from an mp3 player, is included in both 1/4 inch and 1/8 inch options. In addition to fantastic sound, the Loudbox Artist is lightweight, making it extremely portable, and the options available on just this one amp could drastically reduce the amount of gear you need to bring to your next gig.

The Holiday Gear Guide with The Apache Relay

American Songwriter — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:32:08 +0000

(Photos by Brett Warren) The holidays came early for The Apache Relay, who found themselves on the receiving end of a great bounty of amazing gear. We give you the skinny on a dazzling array of instruments and amps, so you can fine-tune your own wish list this Yuletide season. Click on the links to read in-depth reviews. Fender Classic Player Jazzmaster List Price: $1,099 For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a huge fan of Fender’s off-set guitar models. The Mustang, Jazzmaster, and Jaguar (to name just a few) have always held a unique, and in my humble opinion, frequently under-appreciated position in the Fender family for most guitar players. So when I was given the chance to review this guitar out on the road for a string of shows, I jumped on it. Over a three week tour of the Southeast, this guitar was used nightly, facing the perils of the road and the stage, making for a truly hands-on demo experience. Right out of the case, I was surprised by the build quality of this Mexican-made Classic Player Jazzmaster. Not unlike its older brother, the American-made Fender 62’ Jazzmaster, this guitar sports an alder body paired with a Maple neck, making for a solid and reliable construction. The sunburst finish was done very well, delivering a very natural three tone dark to light finish. The good folks at Fender made some key changes to this Classic Player model for the modern player, which I personally loved. The upgrade to a more modern and more structured bridge was of noticeable improvement right off the bat. It allows for a more structured string spacing. The medium jumbo frets are another modern touch to a classic model that allow for better sustain and defined navigating along the fret board for the left hand. The Special Design Hot Jazzmaster pickups were very versatile. When clean they provided nice round warm tones, but with just a touch of overdrive, this thing was prepared to replicate some full-fledged Sonic Youth at their most primal. After dialing in the rhythm and lead circuits (which just takes a little fun experimenting on the part of the player) and dropping in the trem bar, I was thoroughly impressed with the performance of this guitar. For my needs, I really liked the rhythm circuit with the pickup selector set to both bridge and neck pickups. It made for full body chords while maintaining clarity and note definition. Cutting through the mix while maintaining you’re desired tone can be tricky (especially in a 6-piece like Apache) but this Classic Player delivered. If I’m honest, I embarrassingly had somewhat meager expectations for this guitar, being that it was Mexican made (the inner gear snob coming out in me). Much to my surprise, I got served some serious and much needed humble pie and found this Jazzmaster to be an all around great guitar – not just for a mexi-made guitar – just a great instrument period. It held up great on the road and far surpassed my expectations. The Classic Player Jazzmaster comes with a deluxe gig back, but do the right thing and buy a hard case for this guy. It’s well worth it. – BEN FORD (guitarist, The Apache Relay) Gibson 50^th Anniversary 1960 Hummingbird LIST PRICE: $5,007 Gibson’s Hummingbird acoustic guitar doesn’t seem to get the props it should, given the historic recordings that it’s been used on over the past half-century. Like the first three Led Zeppelin albums, the Stones’ Exile On Main Street, and the first Tony Williams Lifetime album, where John McLaughlin put a pickup on one and introduced the Woodstock generation to 32nd notes. And while the Hummingbird has been a rock mainstay in Britain, it’s also been used for more traditional American music by the likes of the late Gram Parsons, his protégée Emmylou Harris, and Sheryl Crow. To celebrate the Hummingbird’s creation in 1960, Gibson has issued a limited number of Gibson 50^th Anniversary 1960 Hummingbirds. Like the first Hummingbirds, this anniversary model is made with a Sitka spruce top and mahogany back and sides that give good sustain and decay that would serve a player well in the studio as well as live. The action is set low enough to enable fast lead playing as well as quick chord-grabbing all the way to where the body attaches at the 14th fret, and the tone is good and ringy for open strummed chords and sweet for fingerpicking. Intonation is perfect. Tone is very well-balanced, with good highs and a low E string that produces just the right amount of bite. It sounds good for slide playing, too, though raising the action for this is advised. This is a great-playing and great-sounding guitar that’s going to attract the attention of players as well as collectors. – RICK MOORE

Holiday Gear Guide: Stocking Stuffers For The Recording Nut

Davis Inman — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:04:36 +0000

Avid MBox and Pro Tools 9 List Price: $899.00 Avid took a hard look at how people are creating music and have unleashed new versions of Pro Tools and the MBox that are completely in step with the future of music making. Standalone mode, automatic delay compensation, ‘70 effects and virtual instruments, and Sibellius’ score editor are a few of Pro Tools’ new features, while the MBox has new pre-amps and converters. The future rocks! Shure SRH550DJ Headphones List Price: $99.99 Don’t let the “DJ” in the name of these headphones from Shure fool you – they work great in home recording studios too. The big cushy earpieces swivel 90 degrees for a compact fold-up, making them also perfectly suited to toss in your bag when you hop off the train or get to the office. Digitech JamMan Delay Looper List Price: $499.95 Digitech’s JamMan Delay Looper is a modern update to one of their legendary ‘80s pedals: the PDS-8000. It’s a two-in-one pedal that loops on the left and delays on the right, with a versatile range of delay effects like analog, tape, digital, and reverse delay. Audio-Technica AT2022 X/Y Stereo Microphone List Price: $439.00 Audio-Technica’s 2022 is a battery-powered stereo recording mic that makes beautiful stereo recordings on the fly. Plug it into a digital recorder, video camera, or use it for computer recording. There’s a world of sound out there, and the 2022 makes capturing it a breeze.

Gear Review: Samson Studio GT Monitors With USB Interface

Jake Kelly — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:26:34 +0000

Samson Studio GT Monitors With USB Interface
List Price: $199.00
www.samsontech.com

It’s a novel idea. The Samson Studio GT Monitors with its USB interface handles both ends of converting your signal into the digital realm for recording and back again into the audio signal you listen to. With the included Cakewalk Sonar LE software, the Studio GT makes your computer a complete Digital Audio Workstation or DAW.

As monitors, the Studio GT’s 18 watts-per-side power amp pumps a considerable amount of volume, more than sufficient for most singer-songwriters. The 4” woofer and 1” tweeter produce a well-balanced signal with a surprising tight low-end thanks to the ports on the rear of the enclosures. In addition to the unit's digital USB input, the Studio GT also accepts analog audio signals via standard RCA jacks and 1/8” inch stereo aux inputs. Nice.

As an input interface for computer recording, the Studio GT has two XLR - ¼” phone combination jacks, each with their own gain control (and undefeatable phantom power). The inputs can be monitored through the Studio GTs at the same time as listening to previously recorded tracks, eliminating many of the latency problems that sometimes plague DAW recording. A front panel mix control gives the user easy access to getting the right blend between the input and recorded signal.

The Studio GT also includes two 1/8” headphone jacks with a separate level control and an input only stereo/mono switch (which is cool when recording guitar/vocal demos).

Sampson’s Studio GT is an over-achiever in the bang for the buck competition and eliminates the guesswork when setting up a home computer studio.

AmpliTube Adds Seymour Duncan And Orange

Davis Inman — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:37:57 +0000

IK Multimedia makes the guitar modeling software, AmpliTube, which has previously released a Fender-branded version as well as iOS versions. AmpliTube is famous for creating pitch-perfect models of famous analog sounds and effects and now the software is adding two new critical pieces to their Custom Shop: a pair of stompboxes from legendary effects and pickups guru Seymour Duncan, and three amps from British amp icon, Orange. AmpliTube users can now check out Duncan's Power Grid distortion and the Shape Shifter tremolo pedal, as well as Orange's Tiny Terror Combo amp (pictured left), Thunderverb 200 amp head and the PPC212OB amp cabinet. AmpliTube 3 costs $349 and comes with 160 pieces of gear. Luckily, IK Multimedia also offers users the option to download a free version of the software that comes with a starter kit of 24 pieces. Once the software is installed, you'll have access to 200 items in the Custom Shop and can purchase gear (like the Duncan effects and Orange amps) a la carte.

What Apple’s New Version Of Final Cut Might Mean For Musicians

Davis Inman — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:15:16 +0000

While a new version of Apple's audio editing software Logic may be more immediately interesting to musicians, we've written at length about why and how musicians are using video editing skills to promote their music on the Internet. On Tuesday this week, Apple re-launched their market leading Final Cut video editing software in a move that seems to favor consumer and aspiring creators over professional video editors. Conan O'Brien and his video team took some pot shots at the new version of Final Cut Pro, dubbed "X" (i.e., "ten" in Apple lingo). In a segment on Conan, the editors made fun of what they perceived to be downgraded features of Final Cut Pro X in a "video statement" featuring out-of-sync audio, mistimed text fly-ins, and shoddy jump cuts. It's a great bit of humor at Apple's expense, well worth checking out below. While Apple would surely deny that the new version of Final Cut is a downgrade from the previous version, Final Cut Pro 7, it certainly is a downgrade in terms of price. X will go for the consumer-friendly price of $299, available as a download (no DVDs) in Mac's App Store, while previous versions of Final Cut weighed in at three times that. In a company press release, Apple's touts the software's new key feature, the Magnetic Timeline, which they describe as "a trackless approach to editing your footage that lets you add and arrange clips wherever you want them." The New York Times technology editor David Pogue has some good things to say about Final Cut Pro X, admitting that while certain features are noticeably absent and the software "looks and works" like the beginner-level iMovie, the "greatest annoyances" of previous versions of Final Cut have also been left out. Why Apple chose to completely reinvent Final Cut is a secret that only the Cupertino initiated will ever fully understand. But perhaps a clue lies in the other decisions Apple has made to make creative tools easier for beginners to use. In 2004, Apple launched the beginner music production software Garageband, which shares many of the same building blocks as the professional version of Logic. Garageband has gone on to enable and inspire many amateur music makers and earlier this year, Apple, clearly seeing the future in terms of iOS and mobile, launched a robust iPad app for Garageband. In the future, it might not surprise us if Logic goes down the same road as Final Cut.

Software Review: Toontrack Chuck Ainlay EZMix Pack

Steve Martin — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:55:27 +0000

A great mix engineer is one with tools. He knows them back to front. Every little control, sweet spot, and parameter. That magic point where it’s just about to catch on fire; he knows how to tweak his gear to get the perfect mix. This process is never easy, though over time, it gets smoother. So for a product like Toontrack's EZmix to come along and proclaim, with its name alone, that it’s “easy” certainly raises some eyebrows. Sure, it’s easy to throw a plug-in on your channel strip, pick a preset, and sit back, but that’s hardly a craft. But what happens when those presets are designed by engineering icon Chuck Ainlay? What if the same force behind so many hits by the likes of Willie Nelson, Travis Tritt, and the Dixie Chicks, was the man whose hours and hours of woodshedding in the studio you were taking advantage of? With the Chuck Ainlay EZmix expansion pack, you’ve got just that. In Chuck’s own words, he “decided to craft something that everybody needs, like a great vocal reverb with delay, a way of making a bass drum really punch through a track or a mix bus preset to optimum gain on your mix.” All of these capabilities (16 effects in all, wrapped up in a generous amount of customizable presets) are yours for the taking. The Chuck Ainlay EZmix expansion pack brings a boatload of expertise to your fingertips, at a price that’s extremely enticing. The catch is that in order to get the most out of these presets, you need to have a working knowledge of what each effect does. “What’s a compressor? What’s the threshold control? What’s pre-delay?” If you can answer these questions, then you’ll be able to really harness the power inherent in this pack. If not, then hit the woodshed yourself and try again tomorrow. Toontrack Chuck Ainlay EZMix Pack List Price: $29.00 www.toontrack.com

Avid Introduces Scorch App For iPad

Davis Inman — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:03:48 +0000

Avid, the company behind Pro Tools and M-Audio, has announced Scorch, their first app for Apple's iPad device. We've seen how the iPad and iPhone's operating system (iOS) and functionality have affected both the new version of Mac's OS, Lion, as well as the way musicians are recording music. Scorch is essentially an app version of Avid's popular music scoring software, Sibelius. (Check out our past reviews of both Sibelius 5 and Sibelius First - a product aimed at beginning amateur composers.) The Scorch app contains a sheet music store for buying new scores in-app - much like one would buy a book in the iBookstore or song in iTunes - as well as a library of all the scores a user owns. The iPad's touch screen and easy user interface seem like an ideal way to explore the different sections of a score. Scorch even has a mode for Music Stand, and one can only imagine how nice it must be to flip through a score's pages on the iPad while playing an instrument. Scorch is being offered for an introductory price of $4.99 and is available in the App Store now, though the price will increase to $7.99 on July 31.

Software Review: Peavey ReValver MK III.V

Jason Bullock — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 17:55:26 +0000

Peavey ReValver MK III.V List Price: $299.00 www.peavey.com For any guitar player, a new tube amp is something to celebrate. So imagine the celebrating you’ll do when you unleash the arsenal of amps and effects the Peavey ReValver Mark III.V has to offer. Not your average amp simulator, the software allows near infinite tweaking options of effects, amps, and even the inner-workings of what makes those amps have their signature sound. Designed to work as a standalone program or as a plug-in, just strap on a guitar and start deciding which of the 20 amps, 12 preamps and 9 power amps you want to play through. On top of the basic amp modeling, Peavey has thrown in 21 stomp boxes like wahs, gates, chorus and tap delays as well as some additional effects like their VC/L2 tube compressor/limiter, stereo widening or stereo reverb. The amps and effects are easily tweaked to get a desired sound. Many of the presets are crammed with these effects but it’s more fun to start from scratch and build up your rack and experiment along the way. For those who really want to micromanage, a right-click on any amp allows you to manipulate or change everything from power amp rectifiers to output transformers, and every tube can be swapped out for any one of the provided 17 tubes. The amps have plenty of character and shouldn’t have any problem pinch hitting in a recording session. The Peavey ReValver works great as a simple amp simulator and the ability to take so much farther is just a bonus.