Karl

This guitar has a five star tone with distortion, but clean, it's more like a two star guitar. A vintage Fender Stratocaster has a much better clean tone. For Nirvana fans this sounds the closest to the tone on Incesticide, with the Mustang with the Seymour Duncan humbucker being closer to the tone on Nevermind. The best tone I've found out of it so far is with the humbucker adjusted from the factory settings, so it is farther away from the strings for more dynamics. This is easy to do, you just spin the screws to adjust it. It is hard to record because it has such a wide range of sound. It has tons of treble and bass. Even filtered through a wah, it still sounds fatter than a Fender Mustang. Super fatty tone. It sounds amazing live, but on any speaker smaller than a 12 inch speaker, it sounds abrasive and it's not quite right, like watching a movie on an iPhone. You can do it, but I wouldn't, even though I did for years through my monitors when recording with this thing. Recently I've started playing this through a 15 inch speaker and it's by far the best tone, if you play in half step down or drop d tuning. It has a smoother attack and seems to sustain more than the typical 12 inch guitar speakers. If you use something like amplitude or guitar rig, the 15 inch speaker sim doesn't sound better unless you have a subwoofer, because smaller speakers can't replicate those tones physically. I updated this to give it a more neutral rating, because I realized something about guitars since I last reviewed it. Almost all the tone of a guitar comes from the strings, tuners, and the humbuckers. Out of the amp, that might be where all of the tone comes from. You can put DiMarzio Super Distortion Humbuckers in a super cheap guitar, and get the same amp tone for a fraction of the cost of this Jaguar. Also, I never mentioned that I never had much fun playing this guitar... it can get some great rock tones, but you have to work for it. It's not practically effortless to get a good distortion tone, like with the Kurt Cobain Mustang, which I've always found to be more fun to play.

This guitar has the best distorted tone in the world to my ears. The Mustang records amazingly, but isn't so good for live sound. In combo with the small clone and DS-1 or DS-2 (I have the keeley DS-1 right now) it sounds just like the tone on Nevermind. The clean tone is duck like, if that makes any sense, it's one of the worst I've heard, but the distorted tone is so good that it doesn't even matter. It's also worth noting that it sounds good through smaller speakers, and because of this. However, for a live show, when people are listening to a sound system or guitar cab rather than their car or computer speakers, I would steer clear of this guitar. Once you get up to a 12 inch speaker or larger, this guitar sounds really thin and lacking compared to other guitars like the Jaguar. The aesthetics of this guitar were greatly improved when Kurt Cobain invented the Jagstang.

A key element in the Nevermind tone. Sounds even better on Fender Rhodes than on guitar. It would be cool if Electro-Harmonix made some of their best pedals like this and the big muff into a single rack unit with multiple effects. If you save up your money, a Yamaha SPX90 (about $250 in 2022), has a better sounding chorus IMO and more chorus options, plus reverb, panning and other effects.

I only got this because Tallest Man on Earth uses it and because I liked the design. That said, it seems to actually tune my guitar faster and better than my Korg and Snarks, so I'm happy. My only gripe with it is that you can't tune to 432 HZ, the frequency of the universe, with this thing.

Sounds excellent. It seems to add a slight amount of brightness, but in a good way. Glad they make it in Lefty too.

I really like the kind of crunchy EQ tone this adds to guitar solos.

The best tone, the worst shelf life. If you're looking for jazz or r&b sounding strings, do not choose these. They have a little bit of a rock n' roll edge to them.

Kyser capos are the best ones, don't waste your time getting the other ones. Didn't think I've ever review a capo, but they save so much time compared to the screw on ones some of my friends have. Time is valuable, don't waste it!

I purchased this because it came with a Fender Rhodes. It sounds awesome on that and on electric acoustic guitars. This goes against what so many people seem to think, since it's one of the most coveted amps of all time... but I hate the way it sounds with electric guitars, especially clean. It has a sharp harsh tone with most Fender guitars. Being so old, it also buzzes pretty loudly. I'm not a fan of the way it looks as well, and would definitely opt for the '57 version over this model. Although they cost more, I'd say for electric guitar Mesa Boogie power amps with 4x12 cabs blow these out of the water. For a clean guitar tone at the same price point, I'd choose the Vox AC-30 over this.

Perfect for what it does, music notation. Plus, they have music theory on their blog for free... https://blog.flat.io/tag/music-theory/ As another bonus, it notates both tab and sheet music!

A Million Stars! I wanted a monome real bad, but they were like $1000, so I thought, I'll save my money for now, even though monomes look and sound awesome. Then my roommate shows me this. It offers a free great sounding monome and a recording system all in one for free. Can't beat it my friend, can't beat it. You can even record your own samples into this thing. Paradise!

Extremely versatile! Sounds good, but different than recording a tube amp, which gives a more open sound. Great for trying out what real amps you might like and all the endless options. I tried the next version of this with Mesa Boogie's Mark III and it sounded amazing. By the time Amplitube 5 comes out, it might be better than the real thing, who knows? Amplitube should maybe get more credit for being close to as good as a $30,000 recording studio for $300. But at the same time, professional musicians shouldn't substitute it for a real studio anytime soon.

They basically used world class musicians in a million dollar studio and made one of the best plug ins ever made, then gave it away for free. You can't go wrong. Sigur Rós fans will love this.

This is probably the best looking microphone on the market, but it only sounds good on certain things. I've always had some trouble capturing the sound of nylon strings, with my guitar and ukulele, everything pretty much seems to fall short. Not this thing. It's a perfect ukulele microphone. Basically, if you put your ear somewhere in the room and then put this microphone where your ear was, it will sound the same, maybe with a pinch of treble or air sound. If you look at videos of it you'll see it's a bad vocal mic and great at drum overheads. I've lowered the rating on this after having it awhile more because it has a fatal flaw, which is that the signal clips before the the waveform does in my DAW, which is so confusing. I like to be able to just eye my levels, to see if they're good and with this you can't because it clips before it appears to clip.

Out of the six or so microphones I've tried in my life, this one sounds the closest to what I hear in my head, besides the Rode Go Wireless Lavalier, and it's far cheaper than my Soyuz and AKG. I think for capturing low bass frequencies, other microphones have this beat, but as a room mic, or if you just have one microphone to use, this is the way to go. I actually always do videos of my recording now, not because I want to, but specifically to use this as a room mic, that's how good it is. UPDATE: The Rode Go Wireless Lav microphones sound even better, although they cost more. This was unexpected for me, because all the other wireless music equipment I've heard, has always been worse than the wired stuff. Another unexpectedly good microphone is the one inside the OP-1.

Ukulele = constant vacation. This is the best purchase I've made in years, no joke. Ukuleles are so much happier sounding and easier to play than guitars. Plus they can be a serious instrument, in the same the way traveling can be serious if you're a tour guide. If you're ever thinking about getting a travel guitar, don't. They're too big, so you'll get extra airline fees. Get a soprano ukulele and a songbook for it instead, you won't regret it. In terms of the actual instrument, it's solid mahogany for under $60. You can't go wrong. This instrument actually made me obsessed with ukulele for an entire year and during that time, I got more than I should because they're so cheap, and I wanted to own one of each size and make a songs out of the all ukulele sizes layered into a super ukulele. Naturally, I still haven't done this yet, but I will someday. My advice about ukuleles to to try them out in the store. My favorite ukulele is a little black Makai I got in San Francisco for $50. Makai makes more expensive ukuleles that actually sound worse, (even though they sound awesome in this YouTube clip... https://www.instagram.com/p/B7xoILEHFZT/ ) ...so be careful with that rabbit hole. In my opinion, soprano ukuleles are the most fun to play and tenors and concerts are the most boring sounding.

These are the best ukulele strings I've tried, by a wide margin. They have a happy, fun tone. The reds by Aquila cost more and have more of a tin pan alley sound, they make your ukulele sound like you found it in an antique shop. Earnie Ball makes some black nylon strings that sound similar and are easier to put on, but they don't sound as lively as these Aquila. The Martin and Worth fluorocarbon strings give maybe a more traditional Hawaiian sound, but I definitely prefer the fun, warm tones of the nylongut Aquila.

First of all, I'm huge fan of the pyramid logo, which is just great design work, props to whoever did that. I got these out of curiosity because they're like $20 to 25 instead of $5. They do stay in tune way longer than ordinary strings, (like 2-3 days at a time, instead of 2-3 hours) but I'm so used to cheap strings, that I just end up trying to retune more than I have to, so it doesn't really save time. Other than that, they seem to have the same tone as normal strings.

I'm a huge fan of bands that were famous in the late 80's and early 90's like Nirvana, Van Halen, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, etc. This power amp along with the Mesa Boogie studio preamp and my chorus pedal and modded boss ds-1 nails the tone for all of them. That's something I can't say for any Marshall, Fender of Vox brand amplifier that I've tried so far. I run it through the cabinet of my Fender Twin Reverb because I don't have a proper cabinet, and the main difference between the two amp sections is that the Mesa Boogie is much darker and smoother than the Twin. The bright lead channel on the Boogie is very similar to the dark channel on the Twin (with a boss ds-1 added), but the Boogie is still slightly darker, even then. The Twin has a sharp attack on notes, which gives it the illusion of having almost no sustain, whereas the Mesa Boogie sustains for a very long time. Plugging my Fender Rhodes straight into this, even without a preamp, with a chorus pedal gives a heavenly tone with the Twin cab. Basically, I feel like this would be the perfect guitar amp if they gave some consideration to the aesthetics and if it wasn't for the fan noise.

Let most good plug ins, it's great for D.I. sounds, meh for everything else.

This has to be by far the best distortion pedal you can get for $20 used. I had an ibanez distortion pedal before this, and it was no good. The DS-1 one sounds amazing running through a tube amp, when the battery is just about dead. Just lots of fun to play.

The Apollo is just like Apogees Duet but with more plug-ins. The Universal Audio plug-ins are some of the best, but they can also turn into annoying notifications if you don't buy them. My advice in retrospect would be to get the Duet and if you really want the UA plug-ins to just get the PCIe card they sell. Remember that with the Duet there is no shortage of plug-ins anyway, from Amplitube, to Softube, to Kush to Sound Toys. All of which sound just as or nearly as good as the top notch plug-ins from Universal Audio. So, save $350 and go with the Duet, that's my two cents.

I'm a huge fan of Jack White, but this pedal simply isn't very good. The feature of how it becomes an fuzz octave pedal around the 12 fret is cool, but it has no sustain at all. It actually gives your setup even less sustain. The design is really good and it comes in a really nice box too, but considering the high cost, don't waste your money on this pedal.

Save up your money and get a JCM800. This is the first amp I ever had. It wasn't that bad for the price, but nowadays you might as well get a million amps through software like Ampltube or Softube. It's the same quality and way more variety. The Marshall MG series has to be one of the worst lines of amps ever made. They are riding off of the Marshall name, but the true Marshall sound lies in their tube amps like the Plexi and JCM series.

Compared to the Apollo, they deliver the almost the exact same sound and this one is a little bit cheaper. Actually, this might even be better than the Apollo if you want to use it for driving monitors. Overall, the design of the duet looks better to me too. The advantage of the Apollo is that you can buy the Marshall and Neve plug ins, that sound better than the ones by Waves. If you do go with the duet, you can get the plug-ins from Softube and Kush to get the same quality sound. Now for the cons, my duet did not last long at all, after two years the lights burnt out, but the recording functions still worked fine on the computer. I regret not just buying another one, because after hearing some of the others, I believe this is the best recording unit you can get for under $1000. It was good enough for Leonard Cohen, so, it's good enough for me.

Thought it would somehow improve my sound because Electric Lady Studios uses it. It actually seems to do about the same job as any other A/D converter. I compared it to the Focusrite Scarlett, and could hear maybe a 1% difference. It's impressive how long it lasts though. These seem to work for 15+ years no problem. It's main advantage is that it has lots of headroom, so if you want to crank a pre-amp you can. But that's also a disadvantage in a way, because if you don't want to, you have to anyway to get a decent signal level. My recommendation would be the Burl B2 Bomber, if you have the money and have lots of clients coming in, because it has a tape emulator built into it, so that makes it sound better than the other A/D converters out there.

I think for this price range, you'd be much better off going with a stereo Rode NT-4 as used by PPF or their VideoGo microphone for half the price. I would give it a lower rating, but Butch Vig used the 414, which is the same with more polar patterns on a lot of my favorite albums, so maybe I'm just not using it right. However, he might've modded his 414 with a better capsule, which is apparently something lots of top engineers do, because to me this microphone has a boring sound straight out of the box.

Even though this is a tube preamp really for vinyl or streaming music off your computer, it also sounds fantastic as a lower volume guitar amp if you get an adaptor cable. (As a warning: if you do this, make sure to have both speakers hooked up, even though the guitar is mono and will only play through one of them, so you don't fry out the tubes the side without a current load. Also, don't play through tweeters because you will probably blow them out.) After playing music on a digital amp, this thing will blow them away in terms of sheer sound quality. On top of that, it's self biasing, so you can swap out the tubes and try different ones, until you find a pair you really like the sound of. This is a good learning tool for guitarists, because usually Marshall has an EL34 tone, while Fender has the 6L6 tone. This thing can do both, plus it takes KT88s as well, like a modded Marshall would have. Since it's really intended for records, it has a warm but less coloured tone than a Fender, Marshall or Mesa Boogie. Since it's not a traditional amp, it's also very easy to change the speakers, whereas with a traditional combo amp, you're pretty much stuck with whatever size speakers it came with in the factory. I've played my tube preamps through a cheap 12 inch Magnavox speaker and they've all sounded amazing. Then you can switch to it up to studio monitors to see how it would sound to someone listening with a car or computer setup. All in all, if you're on a budget and don't want to sacrifice quality, this is the thing to get.

Lifelike sound, but on the thin side compared to vintage Neve. I have both the 511 and the Heritage Audio 73 Jr 500 series. Basically, the 511 vs the Heritage Audio 73 is a comparison of Rupert Neve’s old work versus his newer work. Rupert Neve himself will tell you that his new work is better, the result of years of engineering expertise, whereas his early work was him not really knowing what he was doing. In my opinion his work has improved, but the imperfections in his old work made it better. The 511 and 73 sound nearly identical, but the 511 has slightly a thinner, more precise sound than the Heritage Audio 73. Bass notes through the Heritage Audio sound smoother and fatter, but not very precise, in a pleasant way. The 511 has a quicker attack and faster decay, so the notes jump out more and sound very precise, almost like a slapped bass. The treble of the 511 is very lifelike, while the Heritage Audio is slightly less open and more muted. In a way, this is also good though, because it covers up the picking sound of an instrument better than the 511 which really captures every little detail. When you engage the silk and high pass filter on the 511 is sounds almost indistinguishable from the Heritage Audio 73 to my ears. The only difference is the slightly fatter sustained bass tones on the 73. In my opinion, it is on the expensive side for what you get, as is the Heritage Audio 73 Jr compared to all in one interfaces. You can check out a comparison I made between the two here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLAkVJB0xb4&t=230s

It sounds great, but it's very expensive and not much better than the built in pre-amps in an Apogee Duet or UA Apollo. You getting maybe a 10-15% improvement in sound quality over that, but for four times the price. If you layer tracks and vocals though it starts to add up. For the D.I. it's not as good as my Mesa Boogie studio preamp which smokes everything made, if you want a sweet, rocking guitar tone. Comparing apples to apples, it sounds slightly better and more buttery or smooth than the current Rupert Neve Designs products. That said, it doesn't sound any better than the preamps in my SSL2 and this is way more expensive. However, this solid metal beast seems like it's built to last and the plastic SSL will probably fry out in a few years.

Great on vocals, has a really clear sibilant sound. Other mics I've tried before this, like the SM57 and AKG 214 sound a little bit dull to me, and this is slightly better sounding than those two. It really shines on layering vocals. On your first take it might only sound 5% better than any other mic, but once you double your vocals, it sounds really professional and great. For the sibilant sound I'm talking about, check out Christian Henson Music of Spitfire audio on youtube, he uses this microphone all the time in his videos, and you'll get a really good feel for it right away through his videos. My only gripe with this is that if you are too close to it, it starts to sound muddy, and if you're too far from it the volume drops off quickly. It also has a really weak signal, so you need lots of gain. As an instrument mic, you kind of need a 2nd microphone to balance out or add in the top end.

Someone said you can play the entire history of rock n'roll but heavier with this pedal and it's true. It's a huge improvement over the DS-1, but I'd argue that the stock DS-2 is better in some ways. The DS-1 mod has more bite than a DS-2, but the DS-2 kind of has a more fun sounding distortion tone to me, because it has less edge to it. These are the best distortion pedals you can buy, in my option.

I've tried a fair share of audio recording stuff through my life (M-box, UA Apollo Twin, Apogee Duet, Apogee Rosetta and Symphony) and this thing is 98% the same and it's just $200 bucks. Plus, it comes with free plug ins.