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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Studio Diary #18: Recreating The Sound Of My Speaker Cabs Using Celestion Impulse Responses

Now that I’ve added the Two Notes Torpedo CAB M to my setup, the next challenge is to set it up to sound like my actual speaker cabs do.

One day, I want to make my own impulse responses of my speaker cabs. I want to be able to share them with you, so that you can recreate the signal chain I use for yourself. That’s something I can’t do with any impulse responses that I buy.

I’m going to be using Celestion’s official impulse responses on the CAB M, until I can replace them with my own impulse responses.

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Studio Diary #17: Getting A Better Recorded Guitar Tone By Using Impulse Responses In The Right Place

The whole point of last autumn’s home studio revamp was to get things to the point where I could start recording music again. However, as I mentioned in my 2019 review of the home studio gear, I wasn’t sure I’d got my signal chain order sorted out.

It was a good call.

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Studio Diary #15: Revisiting Old Gear

I’m currently getting my home studio more organised, and along the way I’m sharing my thought process, decisions, discoveries and regrets.

One of the benefits of this autumn’s home studio mini-revamp is that it’s now pretty easy to use any piece of gear that I’ve currently got. I’ve been taking advantage of that, by revisiting old pieces of gear that didn’t get much use in the past.

Thanks to the cleaner cabling, I’m finally able to hear this gear at its very best. And – spoiler alert! – I’m rapidly falling in love with a couple of items that I never got on with first time around.

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CoffeeAndKlon #22: Who Needs Pedals When You’ve Got A Great Amp?

This conversation was originally posted to my Twitter feed.

Good afternoon! I’m a bit late with this week’s #CoffeeAndKlon. There’s a couple of reasons why. And one of them does involve the Klon.

I’ve been a bit flat for most of this past week. Delivered a couple of workshops and a talk on the Saturday and Wednesday, and didn’t have much left in the tank after that.

So Thursday and Friday, I’ve mostly been finishing off the home studio revamp. A bit of upgraded gear, and mainly about getting the gear I already have back into use.

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