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 [...]

Jack Kelly’s “bench test” series walks us through installing the Taylor ES-Go pickup system.

The summer is here and it’s the perfect time to take the travel-friendly Taylor GS Mini on the road. Taylor officially launched the GS Mini last summer, and, according to the guitar-making giant, they’ve had to ramp up production to keep pace with demand. Back in January, American Songwriter‘s Jake Kelly reviewed GS Mini, writing [...]

Focusrite VRM Box List Price: $99.00 www.focusrite.com Mixing is all about perspective: how well you hear and understand what a song needs and how that song will translate once it leaves your mix environment. The Virtual Reference Monitoring Box from Focusrite is designed to help those who are headphone-bound to get an idea of what [...]

Blue Mics Spark Cardioid Condenser Microphone List Price: $199.00 www.bluemic.com Blue Microphones has become famous for their quirky mic names, quality construction and chic design. (An interesting side note about the company: Blue is an acronym for Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics, though original founders Skipper Wise and Latvian engineer Martins Saulespurens sold the company in [...]

Boutique pedals with custom psychedelic paint jobs and wacky graphics have taken a grip with many guitar players. ModKitsDIY.com’s Thunderdrive is an overdrive pedal with boutique features (point-to-point wiring, pure analog circuitry, true bypass switch) sans the nutty paint job and stratospheric boutique price. But there’s a catch: it’s a kit. Supplying my own cheap [...]

Propellerhead Software Reason and Record Duo List Price: $449.00 (bundle) www.propellerheads.se The end of this summer dropped a left-right combo on music makers with Reason 5 and Record 1.5. For those unfamiliar with Reason, it can be explained as audio and MIDI software that looks and works like real hardware. Virtual racks of synthesizers, samplers, [...]

Fishman Loudbox Mini List Price: $459.00 www.fishman.com The quest for the perfect amplified acoustic guitar tone has been on for almost a century now, and few manufacturers have been as active in the search as Fishman. Famous for their preamps and pickups, the company debuted the Loudbox acoustic guitar amp in 2003. A hit, it [...]

L.R. Baggs Anthem Pickup List Price: $429.00 Anthem SL, List Price: $289.00 www.lrbaggs.com Acoustic guitarists who play live typically had to make a choice between plugging in using a pickup that “sounded acoustic” or working within the confines of using a microphone. The L. R. Baggs Anthem provides a new option that combines both the [...]

iKey Audio Monitors M-606 V2, List Price: $239.99 (per single unit) www.ikey-audio.com Just as you have to see clearly to get where you’re going, you need true audio representation of what you hear to create the results you desire. iKey Audio ups the ante for audio clarity in the performance-to-price ratio competition with the second [...]

Jensen Speakers P-12Q, List Price: $173.00 C-12/70 Electric Lightning, List Price: $153.70 www.jensentone.com The guitarist’s quest for tone is never ending. And it’s well documented that he’ll spend hours trying to match up guitars with amps, pickups with guitars, and even strings with pickups…but tonal gratification may be as simple as swapping out the speaker [...]

Sanyo Xacti Digital Recorder List Price: $149.00 When inspiration strikes, it’s best not to trust that hook or lyric to memory, but to record it some way. Sanyo’s Xacti digital recorder allows you to capture the magic as either an MP3 or a high quality WAVE file that can be directly transferred into your computer [...]