jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

no stress... if you know what you're doingand get sued to your room modes after a few mixes that don't translate you'll figure your space out... the HS7s might be just the ticket. I find the 5" woofers to be grossly inaccurate with hyped lower mids, but 6+ is usually okay. Small is good if your room is a tight space, but the 5s just don't work,e ven with a sub. Also, monitor quietly so you're not exciting the room modes so much. That's a good practice anyway to minimize fatigue and reduce distortion from the amplification that makes stuff sound different and often better. Good rule of thumb is that if you can't hld a covneration over your playback volume without straining to ehar and raising your voice then you're too loud for extended lsitening. emember that amplifier distortion specs are emasured at 1 watt power at about a metter's distance. You'll be more like 2 feet or 2/3rds meters probably so if you monitor a little louder you will be eharing more than the rated distortion with les air absorption of the high frequency harmonics generated by that distortion. In a small untreated room I stay away from sub woofers and look at a spectrograph if I feel uncomfortable about my low-low-end. You'll get a sense of when your master bus looks hotter than what you're hearing ebcause inaudible deep abss is driving it ahrd and you'll throw the spectrograph (or fab fitler or whatever) up and look at it. This is the only time I advocate 'looking' at the music while mixing, when its inaudible through your playback setup.

I don't know about sonarworks, but I have experience with JBL's genelecs that do the impulse response and tune for room modes and the JBL software worked EXCEPTIONALLY well. When they were new I worked with a guy who ahd them and we even sued them in well treated commercial studios and tuned up and got ebtter fidelity (to our ears) than using the studio's near fields (although i would always keep going back to the NS-10s, but I'm like that). So if you have trouble, sonarworks is a thought, however the JBL software also knows those genelec speakers aso its super precise once it scans your room. I am not sure if a 3rd party software designed to work with ANY set of monitors will be as good as soemthing designed for a specific playback system and it COULD cause as many problems as it solves. Sometimes you just need to decide what you need to hear and get used to the rest. Train your ears to hear it right. One thing I do in my untreated rec room is position my kid's toy shelves behind my mix position and they act as diffusers, book shelves are actually used in lots of commercial studios based in converted houses with bare minimum treatment so you will want to put those bookshelves you mentioned behind the mix position or, if its a good spot, position your work area in front of where the book shelves already are ;-) Maybe position yourself slightly off-axis too so the walls aren't parallel to your speakers. Make sure that when you do decide to lsiten loud for a minute or two that its not making anything rattle, like a bed frame, that'll make it impossible to get a feel for how your mix is loud.

By the way, i have sworn by Yamaha and Tannoy as my main monitors for over 20 years. The powered yamahas are great, though i slightly prefer the older, non-ported passives due to familiarity. I flirted with JBL Genelecs (as mentioned) and I still own a pair of Events from when they were the hot shit and I still check on them sometimes, but Yamaha is where its at for low level monitoring and getting the mids and dynamics just right. You are making a good choice with the HS7s.

I hope that helps. I friended you on soundcloud, but I don't want to tlak about your music until I get a chance to lsiten on some of my monitors. I'll check out your mix later if you want, but regardless of how you're doing, the HS7s will probably be an improvement in any spaceif you don't currently mix on quality speakers.

wanna talk EQ? (xaq, I'm ure I've mentioned this stuff before so sorry for rehashing my insane EQ methods and beliefs) this will sound insane and fucked up, but unless its ahrdware or an emulation of a specific hardware? I usually just use whatever crappy channel parametric, a baxandall or a tilt EQ, maybe even just hpf or lpf plugin. I print a lot of basic EQ off my little Eureka strip or symmetrix EQ while recording these days or I also use the filters from synths as EQ when i want some less than subtle hpf or lpf. I don't really do a ton of EQing. I seldom EQ my master bus unless its really subtle to add air, remove muck, etc. I'll use brainworx cleansweep on tehre, if that counts. I tend to use some kinda fake pultec plugin out of my collection on kick drum. Soemtimes Ill find a really characterful peaking filter to go beyond what the channel EQ can do for snare. I have a couple skronky stnadalone peaking plugins I like for adding snap at 6k rather than using a multiband EQ. If I need tog et surgical, yes I use fab filter usually unless my CPU is bogged down then I use the fruity loops parametrics which work fine. The only place I use a heavy EQ is in mid-side and then i have a bunch of stuff. But that's usually just one ffects sends to like stereo-ize and diffuse stuff. I do a lot of my in teh box 'EQin' with targeted saturation and compressor choices. Even when a comrpessor is abrely doing anything withthe dynamics it cane be a subtle way to change the timbre of an isntrument without all that hase shift. I usually reach for the channel EQ not only to take out some bottom or roll out a little top or lower mids really fast, but also to get that shitty EQ phase shift that moves sounds back. I mostly cut and seldom boost more than 3dB. If I want a lot of boost to bring something forward I usually use a fake plugin 1073 or 550. I just don't see the ened fr all this processor hungry stuff when I am doing pretty subtle things and my channels have a simple parametric built in. I'm mor likely to re-record soemthing and get the timbre right going in than I am to open soemthing surgial like fab fitler and try to fix it. I'll at elast try to redo it first and then I'll start screwing with fab filter if I can't beat the original take. I actually have a real hatred of heavy EQ. I feel like I can ehar it. its soemthing that was prevelant in certain 80s music and then it came into every genre in a big way bit by bit through the 90s where guys would have EQs set up before theye ven lsitened to the takes! Now its like everyone EQs the shit out of everything during mix down and even with DI synthesizers and drum machines it often jumps out at me in a bad way. I find ymself lsitening to the mix decisions and not the song. With microphones I just move the mic and maybe high pass if I have to. For DI stuff EQ going in is definitely the 'mic placement' to me. But going in. For soem reason it soudns different going in. Even when you're mixing with all hardware, EQ going into the recorder soudns different. Its like if the EQ happens before any A/D cvnersion or any tape artifacts if you use tape? It like, works better? Those weird phase things between the flat bands and the EQed bands sorta smooth on out in the recording and playback process... but once something is recorded and then EQed later its a real decision to do that because that shit is gonna sound EQed. it becomes less about getting the sound and more an effect... so the broader a brush i can paint with while mixing the happier I am. If I don't go broad I make my narrow cuts to remove soem weird resonance I missed while tracking absolutely minimal, the least dB I can get away with. I'll start really extreme and just back off bit by bit until the annoying frequencies are noticeable, then cut a little and be happy... like a lot of people do shit I guess, but I really don't wanna hear the EQ qorking and if there's a little bit of that annoying frequency left, so be it. Reducing it some will do.

or that's how I hear things. I've really changed my EQ aesthetic over the eyars. Even just the last 5 years. I sued to be unafraid. There was a time where I woudla reached for fab filter on multiple channels, every mix because soemthing's bothering my and Iw as going tog et extremely surgical. I can no longer get into that. I feel like for all the creative, fabulous plguins out there that help with sound design and stuff there are a ton of plugins thata re extremely surgical in the EQ and dynamics realm that, even in skilled hands, are destroying music for me. I mean, tehre are less new songs than ever that I like, but a lot of songs I would like are murdered by all this technology. I know I like the tune, but I ahte the mix, the amster or the whole production. I struggle with that joan as Policewoman record because of the mx and amstering decisions and its a case of the tools overpowering the music. But what do I know? No one is buying any of my music (although I'm not trying to sell it, but virtually no one bought it when I did sell it). Maybe I'm crazy. What I do know is what I like and what I don't like. I actually haven't opened an Izotope plug in months and months and I can't remember the last mix I used fab fitler on... or even any kinda parametric other than MS EQs and the FL studio 3 band channel EQ. I shit you not. Lately I have this one free bax EQ that i think is called basiQ and I like that a lot LOL.

I feellike we've ahd the Izotope discussion before. I am NOT a fan. All their stuff feels like I'm using a sledgehammer to hang a picture on my wall. A regular hammer would be more than enough for the job. or screw the nail and use a fucking thumbtack. If my sounds ae working so poorly that I need something like Neutron then I need to rethink my earlier decisions and maybe retrack soem parts so they work with the rest of the music instead of beating on them with all these over the top gadgets...

poor chowning, stanford and yamaha ganged up to screw him royally for his work!

did you say 'flavorsome'?

https://youtu.be/g8huXkSaL7o

I'm sure it kills, gibson doesn't make any mediocre jazz boxes... these guitars are not marked up for name recognition, they really are very well crafted factory guitars and a ton of hand work and attention to detail goes into them on a level you're not getting from a run of the mill LP, SG or even a 335. I've played a lot of these various ES jazz guitars and I've always been way into them. Personally I'm more of a straight ahead ES-175 guy... or the double-cutaway Barney Kessel (or the rarer still Trini Lopex Deluxe that's a Kessel with the trini diamond cutouts and the firebird headstock.... HOT)... but the 275 is a beast too. But I do like the L5 too and this new 275 is very L5ish. Kinda thinner like a 330 and its plywood, pressed top, not carved I guess. That's msot ES models though. Nothing wrong with that despite what the purists say about plywood jazz boxes.

I expect a full report on the 12AY7 versus the stock AX7, man... it might really do ya, or it might sound anemic to your ears. Lower gain and a different impedance to the cathode follower

welcome.... we know instruments, stomp boxes, effects processors and amps here so ask questions!

the POD HD sounds great apart fromthe amp which are a bit sketchy and the overdrive/distortion.fuzz which is hit or miss depending on how heavy handed you wanna be (they sound right at extreme settings)

problem being that if there was a scary udnerground music scene now we would be afraid of it very soon or it wouldn't be doing its job

that's what I wanted to ehar! thanks.... so there's low gain into the jack so depending on what II'm doing I might want to put a line driver between my other device and the input. Good call with the TB03.

I'm pretty well endowed with old-school monos, but no, you can enver have too much gear. Especially sources of bass tones.

Margaret Thatcher’s Briefing on Punk for a 1987 Interview:

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/zm3jz4/margaret-thatcher-briefing-punk-pop-smash-hits-1987-interview

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-smash-hits-interview

you know, the 4 points aren't entirely off-base... if it was for any politician but Thatcher, Regan, Bush or the current idiots in the USA and UK? I would just shrug that shit off. I really like the erroneous spelling of synthesizer too. SynthesizOR is kinda cooler in print. Maybe if the "I" were a "1" and the "O" were a "0"??? Synthes1z0r.

when I was a kid I was really into Akira? but yeah, I'm with blake, my free time is music-centric when I'm not being a dad

welcome again... your name sounded really familiar and I think I remember that essential mix from 2001 back when I occassionally DJed and went out dancing more often. I'll have to rmmage through my old stuff later.

Nerd talk? you have a minitaur. I'm a big Moog bass guy. Usually a sub phatty or my SE1. But I've been eyeing the minitaur because it has that audio input with the fatter taurus lows compared with the model D. But there's no level control for the external audio in? Does that audio in replace an oscilator and the mixer control for that socilator takes over as level for the audio input? or does the minitaur just expect you'll set gains tructure via the output of the other synth/sampler? I kidna saw myself running a DX7 in there to add a complex 3rd oscilator for my basses (something I do with my SE1 a lot for a 4 oscilator bass layering effect). If its just another 2 oscilator mono synth I'm not sure I want to pay the buy in. Sure it has the mood filter and deep lows, but I have a lot of classic monos. I want the deeper bass and the layering ability.

Welcome! I've seen some of your reviews. We actually have a stickied thread in the General section for introductions:

http://equipboard.com/forums/general/topics/the-hello-thread-please-allow-me-to-introduce-myself-wave

You have the same name as my son. Cheers! Nice studio, by the way. But yeah, go say hi in the official thread.

I just hit you on soundcloud, will check your music out when i have a sec today. Hit me back!

I'm not trying to be mean to you (if i were you would have no doubt, I have a mouth like a sailor), I'm just asking you, like I ask everyone to read over the ITEM carefully before hitting submit because, while its easy for the original poster or an editor to correct typos in the text or to change the source to a better one? its a pain to fix incorrect items right now short of admins deleting them so you can start over. I didn't mean to be a dick to you. Apologies if you msitook my tone.

Incidentally, apart from what I said about everyone ebing quite busy outside of EB, manys taff members are wearing a lot of hats around here. Apart from being a mod I write the detailed gear reviews for the site. This is an extreme labor of love, although soemtimes I get to keep the demo units ;-) I am a single dad and financial consultant in the healthcare field which soemtiems means working 2+ day jobs and other times means being essentially unemployed. So I''m overworked or worried about ym budget alternately. Didn't mean to take that out on you. I also try to make time to write my own music, collaborate and help other people with recording and mixing. If I seem short its because I feel rushed lately but also feel obligated to stay involved in EB. For isntance, iw as planing tot ake a break from doing any more gear reviews until January, but Novation is sending me a new synth to try out and write up now. I didn't have the heart to say no, though with the holidays approaching I am not sure when i will fit in all the demoing and writing. and if you think I'm busy you can only iamgine how busy Gchiaren anf Michael are. Please don't elt my snippiness turn you off to the site. And don't be turned off by Terry (tel_nobody). he's Australian. If that doesn't cause you to just chuckle and blow off his comment? It should. Just like Australian football has its own rules so does Australian messagebaord posting. At elast ia ssume that's the case. I'm an american and we're rpetty oblivious to good people's manners. Terry's actually a great guy.

as for dozens of dildos submitted as guitars? we've seen that... that's why we HAVE moderators... if it weren't for those people we might not be needed. So again, sorry. no offense meant. But please read everything voer a few times with one eye even if you're multitasking at your day job or something... typos are no biggie, I make ltos of them. Its those pesky incorrect items that create the backlog of work and make the site look sloppy until they get corrected. That said, no harm done. Its not a big deal. I just mentioned it because you're bringing up a lot of corrections here. No need tot alk your ball and go home.

1. Spinal Tap is a real band. They still tour today along with their other character band, "The Folksmen."

agreed, I've gone to see spinal tap... its a fun show and Guest and Shearer are pretty decent musicians. Guest is actually very accomplished and has quite a guitar/amp collection that rivals a lot of rock stars'.

1. Youtube reviewers and the like are not my favorite people to have on the site, especially seeing that they don't own the gear you see them with. However, this issue came up before and out temporary solution for the time being was to put #ProductDemo in the notes of all these submissions. This way, Michael and Gchar can go back eventually, find all the items tagged with #ProductDemo, and decide what to do with them.

agreed again

ps: it is pretty obvious you have a problem with me, no idea why though...

maybe Boom doesn't like the smell of bacon?

seriously though, you're reading into this.... many of the mods and admins are middle aged people with day jobs and/or kids so we're a bit grumpy. I believe Boom mae himself clear in his reply pointing out that its not personal and he also has 2 jobs and is going back to college full time. Think your submissions through. If I recall you're the guy who posted a Marshall 1965B 4x10 to John 5 even though your notes and source were talking about a run of the mill 1960B 4x12 cab. this slipped by Boom, but not me. Read it over before you hit post, please. It'll save everyone here some time. I can't even keep up with all the submissions every day. I am too busy and I don't really know who most of the artists are to feel comfortable saying its an accurate sighting even if I recognize the gear and I don't have tiem to google search all these people most days. SO yeah, we're busy, but we really need to look everything over,e ven stuff that's already been approved by a member or a nother mod or admin.

ages ago I used a Belkin and it was very reliable... if you check the internet for USB 3.0 hubs Belkin's new 7x1 hub is on many lists but Anker seems to be everyone's favorite. If you want to spend a little more look at the Elektron Overhub, its designed for soemthing called 'overbridge' so damned if I know if your laptop and peripherals can take advantage of that... but if they can its probably better than a Belkin or Anker generic hub.

the 'reissue' SF or an original 70s one?

the new ones have less headroom than most blackfaced examples from the 60s, the old ones have a smidge more headroom in general. All VERY similar. A princeton reverb is more like a tweed tremolux than a deluxe reverb... an ac15 is cathode biased and its closer to a tweed deluxe in feel, but more refined and less greasy. they are about the same overall volume as an ac15. Very close. The vox might be a smidge louder and projects better with a 1x12 or 2x12 standard, kinda sits between a PR and DR.

I've owned and used Princetons and Princeton reverbs from the brown, black and silver eras. The biggest difference is teh change from brown to black, after that they're pretty consistent. The silverfaces with the push/pull gain boost are even very similar as long as you ignore the gain boost (which sucks). The amp really didn't change much over the years. All of the old tube charts call for a 5U4 rectifier but msot blackfaces left the factory with a 5AR4 (GZ34) baised up to go with that tube whereas the silverfaces mostly had 5U4s stock as indicated on the charts and the bias always tended to be hot from the factory to make them cleaner. The only other notable difference in non boost versions was in pats layout, some caps were moved around to try to reduce ghost notes and squealing at high volume, although i have no diea why because I've enver encountered a well-maintained vintage princeton that oscilated or produced ghost notes... princetons are great amps with or without reverb,. I actually liek teh overall sound and feel of non-reverb princetons a little better. The reverb models tend to feel a little hotter but also sound a little blurry next to a non-reverb of the same vintage. Although i grew up on a 64 PR so I have a lot of affection for that particular reverb and bias vary trem sound that they do. Nothing else does that in the fender line. All the other bias vary trem amps lack reverb and all the otehr reverb amps use the LDR circuit like on the super and twin. Neither of the reissues sound the same to me. They're just kidna off. Out of the 2 options the recent silver one soudns better. Neither is BAD though. Its just that the old oens used to eb cheap in the 90s before they caught on and I played so many and owned a bunch and Ic an tell you they sound better across the baord, any year.

I'm sorry if I came off so negative. I am just a total cable sceptic for anything but low impedance mic or line level signals, and even in that recording domain I find that its not always critical, especially for something like electric guitar mics that will likely need quite a bit of high and low apss in a complicated mix to remove musically ennescasarry info that might pull it to far forward and also obscure cymbaks and vocal details. Do I care if I lose a smidge of high end details and transient data to capcitance? not in that isntance, its actually making my job easier to use a cheap XLR on the microphone in front of the speaker. Its the reason a lofi mic like the sm57 remains the go-to electric guitar microphone for so many people. But I digress.

On the custom/small company front? Sure, I have had great experiences with all these little builders, I've had endorsements back when iw as a pro (fat lotta good my endorsement did those guys, but free stuff is free stuff) and I lvoe the little guys. I DO enjoy the personalized service. But a roundup sounds difficult with soemthing like strings becausewith older, more advanced players the reasons to go custom are SO varied. When iw as doing a custom small string co endorsement Iw anted free strings as well as soemthing SUPER reinforced. I'm not a hard player but with van touring in the witner the strigns are more prone to uenxpected breakage even when new because they're in and out of different temperatures and humidities all the time. Before going custom i was soldering my ball ends to secure that critical juncture on my ernies. I wound up getting a small company that's not around anymore to basically do that for me. they were sturdy but i went back toe rnies in the studio, no joke. They intonated more consistently pack to pack. On the other hand, you want a crazy mixed set to suit your tension needs as a player (been there with a gretsch, it played and sounded best with a hybrid gauge flatwound set, basically 11 gauge flat EAD, 10 gauge plain G and B and an 11 gauge plain E)... another guy wants a different core shape on his wound strings or wants soemthing between a flat and round wound but doesn't like GHS burnished nickels.... I'm not sure how I would rate the different options for soemthing like this. I'm really not, but if you can suggest some criteria I would certainly consider doing an in-depth article in 2018 as long as I'm not asked to evaluate more than 4 or 5 small string makers at a time.

I don't know if Mason would be interested in udnertaking soemthing like this.... to do it right we would need to choose the top field of bespoke string makers, settle on strings that are similar from each manufacturer, decide evaluation criteria, settle on a nice, universal test rig and then maybe allow extra credit points for how custom you can get with these companies... there's gonna be some recording and spectrographing/scoping involved and I would probably have one of my guitar playing friends come in as a control to support or contradict my impressions of each set... I would probably also do some research on tehse companies and their manufacturing. I know for a fact that a lot of upscale companies just rent manufacturing space from the big boys who produce their strings to spec under contract. I would be curious who is actually making strings in their home shop and who is developing specs and contracting out...

why do we have a page for a store owner?

welcome, there's a stickied thread in General for this:

http://equipboard.com/forums/general/topics/the-hello-thread-please-allow-me-to-introduce-myself-wave

hi, welcome, no you can't link to your own pro page at this time as far as I am aware... I guess you could copy the address and use it as a link in your user profile though

was your pro page already in existence when you joined Equipboard or did you create it yourself?

as far as it was explained to me by Michael the 'formal' research in the equipboard roundups isn't hands on, Raucus, its a lot of statistical data and trawling oppinions on other forums usually.

I've been doing the item-by-item reviews (Elixir Nanowebs, EQD Transmisser and Novation Peak synthesizer so far). These are hands on and in-depth, but its time consuming and I cannot imagine how long it would take me to write a good, hands-on roundup ranking soemthign as simple as 9 different boutque cables and a cheapo store brand oen as a control. In my experience every cable soudns different based on its specs and neither is better or worse. Whats best is different for everyone absed on their ears and their gear. There's also a lot of hooha and snake oil involved in the fancy cable industry. Few of these guys manufacture their own cable apart from like Mosnter and Mogami. Mogami you can buy in open spools. you can also go in any electronics catalog and find cheaper coax, shielded raw cable with the same specs as Mogami silver or gold for less than the same amount of actual Mogami with no jack ends. Buying something like George L? The cable is nothing special, trust me. There's coax AV cable thats equally thin, flexible and well endowed in teh capacitance department. You're just paying for his sodlerless jacks (which I distrust for electronic reasons).

With strings I feel similarly, although there's soemthing to be said for the nanowebs I reviewed. They have more of everything sonically and its always easeir to take away sonically than to add. Unless you are a pure nickle devotee or you like dying strings? Elixir has a string for your electric these days.They also last FOREVER. Even better than the coated EB slinkies. I can't wear them out. And I DESTROY strings. I can't see any point in doing a custom string roundup. Unless they have a special core or some unique materials I can't imagine enough difference an audince member will hear it. Or even a band member. This is bedroom player stuff and these guys are marketing a lot of very similar products that offer little sonic benefit out of teh cotnext of your bedroom in an attempt to get your money. Like the guys who sell magic speaker cable to Hifi guys. I have enver once done a blind taste test with a hifi snob between their fancy, magic cables and some fucking cut up wire cat hangers and ahd them figure out whichw as which without getting red faced and guessing. I have done this... you ehar what you THINK you hear based on what you're looking at with stuff like this.

That said, if you want to try a TRUE hifi cable, try evidence audio cables. They are solid core, not rbaided. That's copletely unique. They sound completely different then traditional rbaided cables ebcause they don't rely on the skine ffect. They aren't as flexible as a normal cable but the forumulation these guys came up with flexes enough to satisfy Dave Gilmour. They're toos tiff for me, but they sound different. Totally snappy transients like you've never ehard... if thats your thing. They truly behave differently and are a ground up design.

I would skip it. It'll actually devalue the guitar to most people. It will also change the tension of the guitar and drastically change the sound.

the tele has a lot of widely spaced holes to drill precisely for the whole bigsby unit with the special bridge. I've seen seasoned pros mess it up a little. It'll still function if you're only a smidge off though but it won't look right when you scrutinize it. My experience with a bigsby tele was pretty underwhelming. I thought it sapped a lot of the tele spank and I didn't do bearly as much vibrato-ing as I expected to. Its also a pain to get the enck shimmed right to compensate for the new strign angle the Bigsby demands. For some reason its magic on a Gretsch or the right Gibson model. If you want a flat top guitar with a bigby try modding a Jr/special or SG. they already have the neck pitch for it. Others may disagree though.

soldering is much easier than installing a bigsby perfectly on a flat-top... Archies aren't as hard since hinge over and really just require 4 precise measurements around the strap button. Harder to screw up. If you pay someone, find someone who does lots of flat top bigby installs all year round. He'll have great templates for a tele and it should come out just right. That said, promise your tele will NOT sound the same.

those links don't work....

Wow, the brown one just might be a club and country. No one likes the club and country or artiste, they're anemic amps for guitar, although both make fabulous keybaord amps and I was once tempted by a very reasonable artiste back when i owned a mk1 Rhodes. Dont see a lot of these anymore. If I recall the CnC is supposed to be an answer to the twin and has the topology of Leo's Music Man amps with solid state preamps and hefty tube power amps. Basically a really clean transister preamp stapled to a superlead power amp.

The JMP 2104 is the aforementioned 50 watt 2x12 MV amp, Julian. As I said, it will look virtually identical to every other 2x12 combo made between about '72 and '79/80. That amp in the picture could be all manner of amps, although if the grillecloth is original it narrows a few models out, because I don't think brownish grille cloth came in until the late 70s and it went out by the late 80s. They briefly had a tan grillecloth in the 60s too, but that amp doesn't have a valance, so its not one of those... also, staring at the hazy picture I am not sure if that's a yellowed salt and peper grille or the brown weave I thought it was at first. If its Hiwatt-style salt n pepper then it culd be almost any 2x12 model of the 70s. You see those salt n pepper grilles on everything the whole decade. It could even be a late period Artiste.

I am still questioning the provenance of ownership though. Whatever you wanna do though. I'm not a big enough Zappa fan to care. And are you saying Lady Gaga bought Zappa's personal studio? That's odd.

if you look on the left there's a rare (and kinda shitty in my humble oppinion) super-trem (1959T)... the rest of the heads are JTM45s, JTM50s JMP50s, superleads or superbasses... but those trem ehad are real oddballs and very rare.

I'm not sure those are actually franks amps and guitars, the whole picture looks photoshopped together from this shot of just the amps thatI think appeared in an issue of Vintage Guitar and belong to a writer or reader if I am not mistaken. I found a few shots without Zapa, some with and some without the SGs, but none of them link right. Just look around the web, you'll find that the guitars, amps and frank are all different pictures and this is a collage.

but the combo amps pictured are a great question that deserves an answer:

in the middle the brown one is a 90s acoustic model, the one next to that with the brown cloth could be 6 or 7 different models. I think its a late JMP based on the top-load, but the grille when coupled to the plastic corner protectors scream 800 series, which is weird. Its most likely a late 70s master volume combo of some kind. So it could be a 100 watt mk1 master volume with the 2 channels and split cathodes but a global master (like the ones Neil Giraldo uses), or it could be the proto-800 with cascaded stages in either 50 or 100. THose came in combos. If the brownish grille is original it is most certainly a 50 or 100 watt proto-JCM combo. If its replaced? then it could be a 1st gen, 2 channel amster amp. It might even be an Artiste keyboard amp, although I've never seen one with that grille and those corner protectors. The combos on the sides are some sort of early solid state amp probably. At first I thought they were the marshall mercury 5 watt amp from the early 70s, but a quick google search reminded me of how dumb they looked and these little guys are rather attractive... most of the 1st gen solid state amps have fender-slanty faceplates like the Mercury and these don't look like that. Nor are they 800 cosmetic! They have non-slanted front panels with early JMP cosmetics. Very peculiar amps. My guess is that they're very, very early Master Lead solid state amps. The master lead stuck around a long time, basically 'til valve state showed up. This might be the earliest version. We don't see a lot of 70s marshall solid state amps surviving so maybe I've just enver seen this one.

That said, these probably aren't Zappa's amps.

I had a quad 6L6 univox 'bass' amp. It didn't really hold up against an old dual showman for that fender sounding bass with real lows... it was like ahigh power tweed twin ind esign though, which was cool for guitar. I wish i knew what i did with that thing. I paid way less than 300.

Synthesaurus?

if you're on mac and making electronic music exclusively Logic and Ableton are pretty much the top 2. Logic has more of a pro-tools audio handling that's great for when you want to perform life over the entire song.Ableton is great with loops and samples and allows real time manipulation. Logic has an old epdigree having begun as the simple MIDI sequencer Notator when Mac and the Atari ST (running the early version of cubase) were going toe to toe to be the MIDI computer of choice (and there was cakewalk for old PCs). I go back with Logic to when the PC version came out and its always been solid at handling MIDI. I switched back to Steinberg in the early 00s because Cubase SX had more of the features I wanted like rewire for slaving Fruity Loops when it was pretty much a virtual sampler with a drum machine step sequencer interface. Logic is a great alla rounder now like its cousin Cubase. Ableton is very object oriented and seems to be a great choice for eople with limited formal musical background. There's a lot of overlap though. You will probably want a trial version of ABleton first tos ee if you can wrap your head around the interface and features. For 80s synth pop I feel like Logic might make more sense.

the Volcas are really small and portable so if you're working onthe road you'll have a peice of ahrdware. You probably stillw ant 1 more peice of ahrdware, soemthing for basslines. Don't expect a 4 operator FM synth to make super deep, thick basses though. That's really analog turf. You might want to just get the volca bass, its more than just an acid machine and does some relatively thick 80s Korg sounds. Its not going to be a minimoog, but I have one and it holds up well to the small bass synths from arturia, novation and others. Korg's ARP odyssey mini is another great 2 oscilator mono and it comes in a dinky tabletop version that will travel well. Notas small as a volca but it will fit in carry on with room to spare for your clothes and stuff. The Moog Minitaur is really small and people lvoe it for bass. I keep thinking about getting one. That's the only moog besides the mother32 that's really small enough for travel. Pretty much the 80s bass sound is Moog/Arp (the odyssey is not the arp for it, tis not great at bass on its own), a stacked voice polysynth run in mono like a Jupiter 8 or Mono/Poly, soemthing sample based off an Emu Emulator or an early AKAI and occassionally a DX7 (your Korg FM might get there). If you lsiten to stuff really hard you'll be able to discern these camps. Although be careful referencing depeche mod records because when they really got into full swing in the 80s they were layering multiple synths for everything, including bass. The great thing about mono synths that are aimed at abss is the do lots of other stuff well too as long as you don't wanna play 2 notes at once ;-) So you're likely to use the hell out of whatever machine you buy for bass to make single note pads, little stabs, fitler-tweakin' 'acid' sequences or to play guitar-like 'lead' riffs.

I don't think that's not YOU, they have the site down (or parts of it) to retool the features based on user requests... it'll be back to normal when they're done

http://newsthump.com/2017/10/17/bicycle-that-broke-ed-sheerans-arm-given-award-for-services-to-music/

that was REALLY interesting

if you aren't profiting you technically still need to clear samples but its rarely enforced when there's no money changing hands... the elgal fees involved in even sending a cease and desist are a pointless expenditure if you can't recoup them from the perp

I know all about phase distortion in PRACTICE, i have a CZ1000 too LOL. But, like you, I am not entirely clear on how it differs from Yamaha's FM (which is really Phase Modualtion, not actual Frequency Modulation but in prractice at audio range they are esentially the same sonically and only differ when used for non-audio applications). But yeah, what the fuck is Phase Distortion then. Its similar but different enough that I keep a Casio around just inc ase. I shoulda paid closer attention in trig and calc as a kid.

Heh, my fist programmable synthw as a Yamha DX7mkIIFD, as if a basic DX7 isn't ahrd enough to create original aptches on, the IIFD packs an extra engine in for layers and splits so you can get extra confused. It wasn't even up to me. That FX belonged to ym dad and uncle so it was there when iw as interested. And it seemed like a 'standard' peice sicne I ahd seen everybody and their brother behind one in the 80s. Before the itnernet I thought I was just a synthesis idiot for a while and I didn't realize right away that some of the sounds I ehrd my dad and uncle record with were from expansion rpeset cartridges that my uncle misplaced!

as I said to you on facebook, i am glad SOMEONE is this brave.... synth restorations ain't easy. or cheap!

new star wars trailer? badass?