Tone. At Home.
“The Hermit’s Cave” is my little home recording studio. This is a general catch-all tag for anything about me and my gear.
Last year (like an idiot) I posted a bunch of music-related New Year resolutions. Did I do any better than the year before? Let’s find out.
Here are my musical resolutions for 2021:
Yeah, about that …
Continue reading “2021 Review: Resolutions From Last Year.”There were two pieces of second hand gear that I really wanted to try this month. Both are in stores some distance away. One is a (tweed!) amp that’s only available for collection, and the other is a guitar that I’ve no experience with (so I’d need to try a couple of other examples first to help me understand whether it’s a good example or not).
Unfortunately, the pandemic is back with a vengeance here on Plague Island, and we decided that it wasn’t worth the risk of infection just for a couple of pieces of guitar gear – no matter how nice they might be.
That left the private sales second hand market, where popular and interesting pieces are currently going for quite high prices. Too many buyers chasing too few items, I guess.
I did manage to pick up something though, and I had a blast with it.
Continue reading “New Arrivals: December 2021”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”Rather than do a ‘best of’ style post, every year I’m going to do a rundown of what gear we started with and what gear we ended up with – along with a discussion of why.
Previous posts in this series: [2019][2020]
Continue reading “2021 Review: Gigging Gear”Rather than do a ‘best of’ style post, every year I’m going to do a rundown of what guitars I’ve had my hands on, and what I’ve learned from the experience.
This post covers guitars I play at home for fun. I’ll cover the guitars that I gig with tomorrow.
Previous articles: [2019][2020]
Continue reading “2021 Review: Guitars For Home Playing”Rather than do a ‘best of’ style post, every year I’m going to do a rundown of what pedals I’m using, and why.
Previous posts in the series: [2019][2020]
Continue reading “2021 Review: Pedals”It’s Christmas, and Santa (in the form of my lovely wife Kristi) brought me a new pedal.
Is this a case of a gift that’ll live up to my expectations, or a piece of cheap tat that’ll find its way onto eBay before Easter arrives? Here are my First Impressions.
Continue reading “First Impressions: Hotone SoulPress II 3-in-1 Wah / Volume / Expression Pedal”A couple of months ago, I ordered a set of new pickups for my Fender Player HSS Stratocaster. It took a bit of time for them to arrive, and then a bit longer to get them installed.
Now that they’re in the guitar, what are my First Impressions? Read on to find out.
Continue reading “First Impressions: Bare Knuckle Apache & Stormy Monday Pickups In A HSS Strat”Just before Christmas, I was able to pick up a Lovepedal Superlead distortion pedal. Is this going to be a great little present to myself? Read on to find out.
Continue reading “First Impressions: Lovepedal Superlead Distortion Pedal”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”