Category: Home Studio Gear

The things we can use to bottle up our tone and put it on display for all to marvel at!

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New Arrivals: January 2021

It feels weird to write ‘2021’. While it always takes a bit of time to get used to writing down the new year each time around, this year it just feels plain weird. 2020 was one of the hardest years many of us have had to face, and it seemed to go on forever. [So far, 2021 is shaping up to simply be Season 2 of 2020 – Ed]

This month, I’ve been focusing on things that will help me hit my 2021 New Year Resolutions. Oh, and I found another tweed-tone pedal too.

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New Arrivals: December 2020

I had a plan for December: keep an eye out for outright bargains or ultra-rare pedals on the second-hand market, and spend more time enjoying what arrived last month.

Then, when writing up my Annual Review blog posts, that all changed. Looking back over the last 12 months made me realise that there was an obvious problem, and I needed to sort it out. So, I have.

I hope you had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year. We filled our house with music, and it’s what gets us through these historic times.

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Studio Diary #21: Homemade Shelving For My Amps

In February, I decided to change the layout of the room at home that doubles as my home office and home studio. It was a good decision. Now I just have to work through the consequences.

There isn’t the same amount of space for my amps as there was before. I needed new furniture to put them on. In a world of metric measurements and largely imported furniture, amps and their dinosaur imperial measurements are a very awkward fit. I wasn’t able to find anything in the shops that would suit.

I had to make my own. And, partway through, the pandemic lockdown started.

This one’s a bit of a long read, as much about the story as step-by-step instructions. If you’re interested in making your own, I hope you find it useful!

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First Impressions: Universal Audio’s LUNA DAW

The thing I hate most about digital recording? Latency. Even though I’m about as far away from a technically-accomplished player as you can get, I really struggle with coping with latency when I’m recording with Reaper. It’s the main reason that I bought my first UAD Apollo interface back in 2016.

So when Universal Audio announced LUNA, and made a huge song-and-dance about how it enables recording with virtually zero latency, I had to try it.

That was at the end of April 2020. I’ve been using it on-and-off throughout May, and scribbling down notes as I went along.

When you read this, please remember that it’s perfectly possible that some of these points may have been addressed in more recent releases of LUNA. UAD seem to be doing a great job of getting regular updates out for users.

That kinda hints that I ran into a lot of pain points with LUNA …

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Studio Diary #20: How Am I Going To Hear All Of This?

With the home studio revamp,

  • I’ve addressed my lack of preamps
  • My Synergy rig is now back up and running
  • I can easily patch in any of my affordable pedal platform amps
  • I’ve got a way to play (rather than just program) drums
  • The signal chain’s now in a sensible order
  • I’ve bought so, so many cables

… and I’ve revamped the layout of the space, as part of improving the vibe. It feels like the end is in sight, at last.

I’m not quite finished yet though. I need to add a set of studio monitors to my setup.

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New Arrivals: April 2020

I wasn’t planning on making any purchases this month.

With the UK firmly in pandemic lockdown, the second-hand market has massively shrunk. There’s not a lot of gear on sale right now, and some sellers are going to find it difficult to ship gear out to buyers.

The plan was to concentrate on actually putting my gear to use. When I tried, it was clear that a couple of things needed sorting. That, and conversations about gear helped convince me to pickup a very special indeed.

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