erik_naumann's Reviews

My absolute favorite pair of headphones for monitoring

I'm a professional location sound mixer, and a hobbyist guitarist, and for both activities I have tried numerous pairs of headphones and have always come back to the good ol' 7506. They are one of the most popular pairs of headphones for monitoring for a reason - their sound is crisp, clear, and concise. A little light on bass, which is ideal for their primary use cases, with plenty of revealing detail that is essential for monitoring whatever it is you are recording. They sound great for guitar, and work extremely well for location sound recording - they are light and comfortable (though I do recommend a replacement pair of velour earpads) even after hours of use; 10-12 hour days on set are very common for my line of work.

I don't really prefer to use these for mixing, they don't provide the most "realistic" listening environment, but again, monitoring is their primary purpose anyway, so you shouldn't be using them for mixing anyway in my opinion.

My one gripe is that I wish the cable was removable, but it also isn't terribly difficult to mod them for that. Though they're lightweight, I'd still consider them pretty sturdy. I think their physical flexibility helps with that (not too rigid). The pair I use for location sound I've had for over 4 years, and over that period time with very regular (not necessarily gentle) use, they still work perfectly and are completely free of damage. For the $70-80 I paid for them, that's an incredible value.

It's a decent reverb pedal, but not as versatile as you'd expect

I'm a big fan of Behringer effects, most of them have been fantastic in my experience. Even the plastic construction that people sometimes complain about really seems to be a non-issue as long as you aren't constantly stomping on it with track spikes that have been forged with lead. The DR600 is generally a good, inexpensive reverb, but there are probably better options out there in similar price ranges, or if you already have a good multiFX unit. All the reverbs sound pretty clean and crisp, as is to be expected with any digital reverb, and the stereo outputs and inputs are a great feature, but my main gripe is the different modes sound "samey" to me. As in, they don't have much difference from each other in terms of how they sound. You can definitely get more substantial tails from using the Hall from the Plate or Room, and the Spring does have a subtle "shimmer" to it that is characteristic of the effect, but at medium-to-low settings, they all honestly sound almost identical. Also, I find that adding a very subtle reverb effect to a guitar, like you would for heavy guitar rhythm playing, is difficult. For that style I would usually use something like a Plate or a Room, but on the DR600 with the 'Time' knob turned all the way down, it is still not as short as I like. I have been able to get shorter tails on a variety of other digital reverb units. The "Tone" knob turned all the way down still has a bit too much high-end for my liking, and not enough low-end, so that all modes sound a bit "Platey" if that makes sense. I think the most powerful knob is the "Level," which allows you to adjust the mix of the reverb, and that's the main knob I end up using when trying to get very subtle reverb tones, but I do wish for more variability overall.

I think for clean or break-up tones, this reverb actually excels, and you might actually really enjoy it if you create those kinds of tones more. But for heavy guitar playing like I do, this has not been my favorite reverb pedal. THAT SAID, I actually am using it on my board for now, until I find something else that suits my purposes that's not just a large multiFX unit.

Cheap TS9 clone that works as expected

Sounds identical to a Ibanez TS9, and cost me less than $30 shipped. Also takes up less space than a genuine TubeScreamer. Nothing to complain about here, it's an awesome pedal that can produce a large variety of tones depending on what amp you are running it into.

Outstanding value

GuitarFetish describes this pickup as warmer and with a fatter low-end as compared to their premier "Crunchy Rails" humbucker pickups, but the Power Rails offer plenty of detail and crispiness to create sharp, articulate, yet saturated, high-gain metal tone. These are absolutely meant for high-gain tones and are extremely high-output - so much so they can easily overload (as in, likely to feedback or squeal) an amp that isn't properly set up for a pickup of this output. However, they do allow for pickup splitting, so if you're guitar allows for that, you have an additional variety of "tamer" tones to choose from. I found the split tones work quite well for cleans in my experience.

I'm also a huge fan of GuitarFetish's "Kwikplug" pickup system. Though it does tie you into using pretty much only GFS pickups for as long as you have it installed, I've been consistently impressed with all their offerings, and they have a large variety of styles in each pickup format.

It's hard to find any fault in these pickups for the price. I'm running these Power Rails in both the neck and bridge of my Harley Benton Fusion II HH, and I couldn't be happier.