Tone. At Home.
The things we can use to bottle up our tone and put it on display for all to marvel at!
#TweedTalk is my occasional Tuesday column, where I talk about all things related to tweed amps and tweed-tone pedals.
In the recent Black Friday sales, I finally picked up Universal Audio’s Fender 55 Tweed Deluxe amp plugin to add to my collection of tweed tone options.
Is it going to get much use, or am I going straight back to the real amp? Here are my First Impressions.
Continue reading “#TweedTalk 2: First Impressions: Universal Audio Fender 55 Tweed Deluxe Amplifier Plugin”Rather than do a ‘best of’ style post, every year I’m going to do a rundown of what home studio gear I’ve used this year, and why.
Previous posts in the series: [2019][2020]
Continue reading “2021 Review: Home Studio Gear”You know the old joke about how you wait ages for a bus, and then three turn up at once? It’s been a bit like that with second-hand gear.
Five of my bucket-list items turned up on the second-hand market this month. I could only snag one of them. The three guitars and the amplifier were well outside my budget atm, and the only sensible thing to do was to hope that they bring joy to the people who have bought them. It just isn’t worth going into debt for a hobby, not to me anyway.
What was the one bucket-list item that I did get this month? And what else found its way to the Hermit’s Cave? Read on to find out 🙂
Continue reading “New Arrivals: November 2021”I needed to move one of my Focal monitors off of my desk, so I ordered myself a dedicated speaker stand. Here are my First Impressions.
Continue reading “First Impressions: Gravity Vari-Tilt Studio Monitor Speaker Stand”I recently bought a new floor-standing speaker stand for my home studio. How did I get on with it? Here are my first impressions.
Continue reading “First Impressions: Gravity Vari-Tilt Studio Monitor Speaker Stand”I want to listen to music while I work, without having to physically plug a cable into my laptop. Will Apple’s HomePod mini do the job? Read on for my First Impressions.
Continue reading “First Impressions: Apple HomePod mini Stereo Pair”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”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”The big news this month (here in the UK) is that non-essential retail has been allowed to re-open. We’re coming out of lockdown, and guitar shops can open their doors to visitors once again. It’s too soon to travel the length and breadth of the country to hunt for hidden gems gathering dust on a wall somewhere, but we’re getting closer to that day.
In the meantime … this month, I’ve managed to pick up a couple of curious pieces to try. They’re a bit left-field, and (he says, having not tried them at the time of writing) probably not for everyone.
Continue reading “New Arrivals: April 2021”MIDI drums and drum samples. Love ’em or hate ’em, they’re a fact of life for just about everyone who records music at home. And, just as most of us can’t accommodate the noise of a real drum kit in the house, most of us have nowhere to keep a digital drum kit either. We’re left with using much smaller percussion pads, or we compromise and use something we can sort-of play like Roland’s SPD-SX.
But how do you get them into Universal Audio’s LUNA DAW in the first place? When I googled, I couldn’t find any instructions anywhere on how to do this.
So I wrote my own.
Continue reading “Studio Diary #25: The Roland SPD-SX and Universal Audio Luna”