jimmarchi1's Reviews

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is it an OD or a distortion? and what color is it?

yellow? orange? neither? I lost it for a while and then found it recently... I should run it through a big EL34 amp at 11. I remember liking it in the late 90s but not loving it. It appears to power up.

this was my second 'synth' in the 1980s

got this after the casio when i was just a little boy backing the synth pop era... not programmable, uses some simple FM synthesis to generate its preset sounds... very staticy and noisy digital synth sounds that are hghly amusing. Comical drum pads, better keys than the SK10 I started with. Not enarly as usable as a grown up instrument as the Casio though. I regularly lose this in closets but every time I find it I power it up and screw around putting it into procesors and stuff, fucking with the cheeseball presets. Every once in a while it makes it into a recording, but tis no SK10... in the 80s it seemed to sound vastly superior and was more playable to learn some basic piano stuff, but I was like 5 or 6! neither 'synth' I had sounded like Depeche Mode so I started looking at the guitar more, especially when the hair metal scene and synth pop started dissolving as those first mainstream 'grunge' records came out. All of the sudden my dad's guitar was potentially cool... and not hair metal, macho chauvinist cool, thinking man's cool like the british bands Iw as into but with the instrumentation of early bowie rather than Kraftwerk. I totally missed the boat on the earliest phase of House and Techno thanks to this crappy keyboard and its lack of programmability.

don't get rid of WOW fitler 1

WOW filter 2 is not much like WOW filter 1. Its great in its own way but if you liked 1's modulation and stuff then don't delete 1 because 2 doesn't do the same stuff. WOW 2 definitely has some great sounding filter models. It can be subtle or extreme without a bunch of aliasing or delay.... anyway, definitely a good one but don't ditch WOW filter 1 if you have it. this doesn't sueprcede the old version, tis really like a different effect in the same camp.

bazinga!

this is one of the best damn free plugin bundles out there.... the comb filter and limiter are stand-outs to me. I particularly like how you can complete tailor the harmonic content of the limiter's saturation engine. I also like that all the pitch effects like the comb fitler have a little piano built into the interface so I don't have to get out my hertz to western musical notes chart LOL Melda, great job guys! I woulda paid for this bundle.

great analog saturation simulator

this plugin sounds great but it has a lot of options for something so subtle... I tend to use the simpler transformer-only version, TeslaSE more often. They're both free so worth having.

the all time classic in PC techno

I give this 5 stars out of affection and nostalgia.... this little piece of software takes me back.

Surprisingly good ine verything but build quality.

When iw as big into Cubase SX I tried this guy and was blown away by how decent the Yamaha mic preamps are for this price point and its Cubase integration was excellent. I ahd to stop using it because the firewire jack stopped making contact making it worthless. Warranty was up, the PCB looked ahrd to sodler on, I stopped using Cubase in favor of FL Studio or Protools only and firewire is a dead format anyway so I went back to relying on my Emu stereo card and outboard preamps and DIs. I miss having this though if only because I could sue it with my laptop for location recordings or to turn my HP into a synth module via the MIDI port for performance or analog sequencing, I don't actually have a laptop MIDI solution I like right now, the MIDI on the Steinburg is solid as a rock. Maybe I'll but another one and treat the firewire connection more gingerly. I wouldn't mid having a couple of these for location work.

This was my only experiment with a firewire interface and one of only 2 non PCI card solutions I've tried and I gotta say I much prefer the dinosaur method.... though I am seriously debating going thunderbolt. Don't even get me started on multitracking over USB, total shit. USB can handle one track at a time, firewire definitely handled 8 on a fast system but it took real dialing in to avoid glitches compared with a PCI solution and the jack, which always seemed finicky to me compared to USB, turned out to be the achiles heel. All in all this was an effective firewire solution that's expandable but don't buy one even though they are probably cheap now. In fact, I still gotta recommend classic, old school PCI based solutions to conversion for your home/project studio -- as long as you avoid fly by night companies (made that mistake once) you won't have driver issues and they have NO other drawbacks other than being glued to the one system you bolted them into. If you must be able to switch around computers look at the new thunderbolt standard, its the coming thing.

I just got her and I love her.

This an 80s pre-custom-shop 59 copy, pretty early ttempt at recreating a golden age 335. It has Tim Shaw humbuckers that are thick and syrupy with a complex tone. The neck is medium fat as it should be, very similar to the shape of my Yamaha 335, but the Yamaha has a mid-60s thin nut and this has the wide 50s nut that encourages bends but is a bit less fast on flatpicked jazz runs. Mine is black, not my preferred color but it was a great deal for a 335 having been re-fretted at least once. Obviously there is n fret edge binding left after the refret. Great rosewood fingerboard with a wide, streaky grain you don't see on a lot of modern guitars due to old growth woods being virtually non-existent now. Its also on the light side for a 335 and has a brightness on the bridge pickup that's almost gretschy. Its even louder unplugged than any of the other semis I've owned right up there with the starfire I used to play in highschool jazz band which was fully hollow but thing. This guitar sounds and plays great. Didn't even need to tweak the setup from the store. If you can get an 80s dot go for it, they are far better than most 80s les pauls if my 335 and the 88 LP I used to own are any indication. Love it. So stoked to finally have a Gibson 335, my favorite guitar ever.

I don't have a bass sansamp...

I don't have a bass sansamp, or a bass anymore LOL so sometimes when faking bass I use this plugin tog et the sans amp sound going. Sometimes this is really cool on bass synths too. Its stripped down like the epdal versus the official tech21 plugin that seems to be more like the racks (and then some). I like the lack of options on this little guy, its just like tweaking one of those little bass sansamp stompboxes. FAST

a decent sansamp aimed at guitar only

I found this in a box of junk.... I don't remember buying one so someone must have given it to me years ago. I started using it recently for nasty DI guitar sounds and I really like it. You have to embrace the fact that its not replacing an amp but it has a sound of its own that's pure trash.

this only works with 2 or 3 TC gadgets but works SUPER well

I got this guy with a B-stock G-Sharp processor many years ago when iw anted something specifically guitar oriented for my wet/dry/wet rig on the road..... my studio processors weren't doing it for me for some reason, I dunno. I was dodging MIDI back then so I got the G switch and it worked great for me tapping tempo and turning my delay and reverb on and off. I sold the G-Sharp many years ago and somehow still had the switch when I got a Nova System recently. Worked great with that for expanding preset access etc. But I didn't like the Nova as much as standalone TC pedals for the 3 rolls I employed Nova in so out she went and I STILL HAVE THIS SWITCH! HAHAHAHA But its works great with TC's gear... just nothing else.

I've had this and the little blue metronome since.... ALWAYS

She doesn't tune very well but only costs 5 to 10 bucks new and I've had the same little CA-1 since always. I think I got it in like 1992 or something. The plastic case isn't even exactly the same as the current ones. I also have the little blue metronome and it served me well in the 90s for locking my time in and also as an impromptu click track for years when I was recording analog and he band found the DR55 too intrusive. The metronome is way more precise than the tuner, but I'll give the tuner 2 stars because I still have it and it still works as well (or as poorly) as the day I got it. When all else fails this guy always turns on and never seems to eat battieries....

Hard not to like this virtual semi-modular!

I just broke down and got this thing and I am just blown away. Its fun and the sound quality hangs with legit analog hardware. It really reminds me of an Arp2600, but without limits. Compares favorably with Moog hardware for bass and the Korg Odyssey RI for leads and such. I am usually hesitant to BUY a virtual analog synth, but since this is semi modular and cheaper than the moog mother 32 I've been eyeballing I figured what the heck. You might as well score this, its a big CPU hit like all the U-He plugins, but how many instances will you actually use? Ace sounds so powerful that its a once-a-song gadget.

All in all I can see myself using this in place of Reaktor for a lot of simple modular jobs and just use Reaktor for its more off the wall capabilities. Being closer to a fixed architecture synth its really quick to work in.

so fun

I just started fooling with this and its a blast. I really like the glide control and the sound of the dry blend, there's something so homogenous and pleasant about the MuRF style filter sequences I blend in versus other filters with a blend control/. Everything on the is plugin is intuitive and the sound blends together nicely. I think it was free.

my 1st line mixer, seeing the picture gets me all tingley

I got one of these in jr high to attempt to mix 4 mic signals down to a power amp (I didn't know the difference between mic pres and line amps LOL) and to try mixing DI isntruments to my stereo tape deck. It was the very early 90s. That's what we did untilwe could afford that tascan portastudio! I have fond memories of this guy and wish I knew where it got to. I probably gave it to someone. It was a bit noisey but warm and inviting and I used it to sum electronic instruments and computer stuff from fruity loops into a 4 and later 8 track (to save tracks, okay?! DAWs and multi channel soundcards were brand new as was USB) right up into the year 2000.

you see these being held by singers in old 70s TV performance clips...

I got mine from a friend because I remembered seeing Bowie holding one when he sang 'little drummer boy' with Bing Crosby....

a passable little handheld dynamic suitable for lots of applications where you don't need or want wide bandwidth and dynamics... but not spectacular on guitar speakers.

if you can't stand your 57es anymore

"like a 57 if a 57 was a microphone"

-steve albini

I am with albini 100%.

about 90% of the tastiness of the classic units

I owned an Alex for years and years and while the PCM units always did it for me more I was never really let down by the Alex.... I am at a loss as to why I sold this unit. It really served me well and was a workhorse like the SPX90s I owned. All in all a great sounding processor. One of these, a Yamaha, some TC stuff and you are well covered for mixing in analog or hybrid. Great for live sound too. I should buy another one.

edit: I bought another one.

just a great budget 2x12

I have a sealed back avatar with fender blackface cosmetics (and silver piping to match my HC30). Got it used and empty for very cheap locally. Currently loaded with a chinese m25 greenback and an 80s Fane both about 98dB sensitivity for a medium loud cab. Wired up with one of those stereo plates so I can do 4 ohms parallel, 16 ohms series (vox style) or dual 8 ohm single speakers but since they're mismatched I don't do stereo with it. But series and parallel sound different, especially the top and bottom end.