Tone. At Home.
All of the recurring features – #CoffeeAndKlon, First Impressions, #LongTermReview, New Arrivals – all in one place.
#CoffeeAndKlon is my (irregular!) Sunday morning magazine series, where I talk about whatever’s on my mind right now. There’s always coffee, and there’s normally chat about the Klon and its many competitors.
Today, I want to talk klones, and specifically the most important klone pedal ever released: Electro-Harmonix’s Soul Food. Make yourself your favourite morning drink first. This one is going to be a #longread … with audio demos.
Continue reading “#CoffeeAndKlon 33: The EHX Soul Food”When I listen to any demos involving the Axe FX 3 on YouTube, there’s no noise to be heard. But here, at home, and in my own demos that I’ve posted, there’s a background hiss whenever I let notes sustain.
I thought it was because I’m using the Axe FX 3 with my pedalboard, and it is. But it’s not the pedals causing the noise. And, thankfully, it’s incredibly easy to sort out.
Continue reading “Studio Diary #35: Reducing Noise With The Axe-FX III And The 4 Cable Method”Making Music is where I share the process as I write, arrange, record and release my music. You’ll get to read it all: what went well, what really didn’t, the decisions I had to make along the way, and why I made them. I hope you find it useful!
When making music isn’t a habit, distractions are a real problem. For years, my distraction has mostly been playing with gear. But it’s not the only one that I need to recognise and avoid.
Continue reading “Making Music Interlude: Gravity Still Kills”Making Music is where I share the process as I write, arrange, record and release my music. You’ll get to read it all: what went well, what really didn’t, the decisions I had to make along the way, and why I made them. I hope you find it useful!
This week, conditions are against me, so I need to come up with a new plan.
Continue reading “Making Music #3: We’re In Another Heat Wave”#CoffeeAndKlon is my occasional Sunday magazine-style series, where I talk about whatever’s on my mind about guitars, gear, music and yes, sometimes my love of both coffee and the Klon pedal.
Fractal Audio recently released a digital Klon klone pedal for the Axe FX 3. Knowing Fractal’s reputation, it will have been meticulously modelled against a real Klon Centaur pedal – either one they own, or one they were able to borrow from the community.
Can a digital klone be a stand-in for the real thing? Let’s find out together.
Continue reading “#CoffeeAndKlon 32: A Digital Klone In The Axe-FX 3?”Making Music is where I share the process as I write, arrange, record and release my music. You’ll get to read it all: what went well, what really didn’t, the decisions I had to make along the way, and why I made them. I hope you find it useful!
I’m finally sitting down to record my music. The starting point? Deciding whether I’m going to use Reaper, Universal Audio’s LUNA – or a mixture of both.
Continue reading “Making Music #1: Choosing A DAW”I didn’t pick up any new (to me) gear last month, and just the one item this month.
The Axe FX 3 has definitely been a big factor in this. I’ve promised on Twitter that I’ll do a separate blog about this soon. The short version is that it’s been much better than I hoped for, and I’ve been putting so much time into exploring what it can do that I haven’t really had time to be curious about other gear.
So what did I find, and how was it interesting enough to wrench me away from the Axe FX 3 for a little bit?
Continue reading “New Arrivals: July 2022”#TweedTalk is my occasional Tuesday column, where I talk about all things related to tweed amps and tweed-tone pedals.
This time around, I share my notes on how I’m capturing the sound of my Tweed Deluxe amplifier, and my thoughts on the experience.
Continue reading “#TweedTalk 4: Recording A Real Tweed Deluxe Amplifier”#CoffeeAndKlon is my occasional Sunday magazine-style series, where I talk about whatever’s on my mind about guitars, gear, music and yes, sometimes my love of both coffee and the Klon pedal.
How can I put this? It feels like it’s become a bit of a pastime for some folks on the Internet to mock the idea of using a Klon as a clean boost. So this time around, let me give you a concrete example of why I love using my Klon as a clean boost pedal – with audio clips.
Continue reading “#CoffeeAndKlon 31: In Praise Of A Clean Boost Klon Into Overdrive”I recently rewired my home studio rack to replace unreliable home-made cables with professionally-made ones that would be noise-free.
Unexpectedly, the rewiring also revealed that I’d been losing some of the treble from my guitar without realising it. While testing all of the different signal paths that I have, I discovered problems with two of the signal chains that I use the most:
In this blog post, I’m going to explain the problem I found, and what I’m doing about it. I’ll also include audio samples, so that you can hear the problem for yourself.
Continue reading “Studio Diary #34: Gigrig G2 Goes For A Service”