Tone. At Home.
The magical beast that turns potential into sheer tone!
I’m supposed to be rehearsing the four (possibly five) songs for acoustic guitar that I’m aiming to record by the end of the year. However, for the last few weeks, I’ve been lured away by the seductive purr of my guitar amps.
Here are three short narratives on the sirens that have waylaid my acoustic adventures …
Continue reading “Studio Diary #27: A New Lease Of Life To My Old Amps”This month has been a very special month. A couple of purchases I’ve been working towards unexpectedly all came together at the same time. And then I learned that you really do need to be careful what you wish for!
The second-hand market remains pretty flat. I did miss out on one of my bucket-list pedals though. It’s going to take me a while before I stop kicking myself over that one. I managed to pickup another great BJFe-designed pedal instead, so it wasn’t all bad 🙂
Continue reading “New Arrivals: July 2021”My new Tweed Deluxe amp is a bit of a dream come true. Being a vintage amp circuit, it’s also a bit too loud for regular use at home. If I’m going to enjoy it, I need a way to turn it down.
My tool of choice for the job? Fryette’s Power Station PS-100. Why did I pick this over the considerable competition? And does it actually do the job? Read on for my research notes and First Impressions.
Continue reading “First Impressions: Fryette Power Station PS-100”I’ve finally done it. I’ve gone and bought an actual 5e3 circuit tweed amp. I wasn’t planning on getting one, but when a different planned purchase didn’t happen, I went for it. And then, by an amazing stroke of luck, the amp arrived months earlier than expected – right when I’ve got a short break from work between jobs.
This is going to be one of the longer First Impression posts. I’ve got a lot of notes to share with you, even though I’ve only had the amp a couple of days.
Continue reading “First Impressions: Fender 57 Custom Deluxe Amp”Rather than do a ‘best of’ style post, every year I’m going to do a rundown of what amps I’m using for pedal platforms, and why.
Previous articles: [2019]
Continue reading “2020 Review: Pedal Platform Amps”Recently, I picked up a BMan preamp for my Synergy rig. How did I get on with it? Read on for my First Impressions.
Continue reading “First Impressions: Synergy BMan”It’s been the second full month of lockdown. eBay remains quiet, partly because sensible folks are reluctant to head out to post parcels, and partly because eBay has been limiting their discount sales fees to once a month.
The blog’s been quiet too. I’ve had some other things in life to deal with. So many basic, run-of-the-mill things are difficult-to-impossible to resolve when most of society has shut down. It’s one thing to know it, it’s quite another thing to experience it first hand.
Here’s what’s arrived this month. Spoiler alert: it’s all really good stuff, and there’ll be full First Impressions blog posts for each of them soon.
Continue reading “New Arrivals For May 2020”The Two Notes Torpedo CAB M is a little computer in a pedal. The whole point of it is that you don’t need to mic up an actual guitar cabinet to get a great guitar tone. Instead, it uses impulse responses to emulate what a cab & mic does to the signal from your amp.
I recently bought one to add to my home studio setup. I’m going to be using it to help me record electric guitar. I spent an evening after work getting it setup and dialled in, and then returned to it the following day for several hours.
How did it go?
NB: I’ve updated this article with some corrections. You’ll find the corrections in [square brackets].
Continue reading “First Impressions: Two Notes Torpedo CAB M”Almost no new gear for me, this month. The gear budget had to go on some urgent car maintenance instead. I can’t complain; the car’s been almost completely trouble-free until now. It’s just one of those things as it gets older (120,000 miles and counting!)
I don’t feel that I missed out, though. Volumes on eBay are definitely up, but not back to the levels of a year ago. If anything, there’s been more interesting guitars than interesting (to me!) pedals … and plenty of people piling on and bidding hard on those pedals.
A couple of items I’d ordered last year did arrive this month. Here’s what I got.
Continue reading “New Arrivals For January 2020”Winter NAMM is almost here. It’s one of the most high-profile guitars & gear trade shows in the world, and traditionally, many manufacturers use it to announce or launch their major new products of the year.
YouTube is going to be dominated by NAMM show floor coverage for the next few weeks. If you want to see everything that will be displayed at the show, subscribe to one of the YouTube channels I recently recommended.
From a #HomeTone perspective, what are the gaps in the market that I’m hoping to see filled by new products?
Continue reading “#HomeTone Thoughts Before Winter NAMM 2020”