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Archive for April 10th, 2008

Guitar Dad: What Makes It All Worth It

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, inspiration, Music, musicians, tagged on April 10, 2008| 5 Comments »

My son Owen As a guitar player and singer/songwriter, nothing brings me more joy than to see my kids enjoying my music. But what really makes it all worth the effort is a conversation I just had with my son Owen a few minutes ago. I was in my home studio, mixing a song, and my son (he’ll be 3 at the end of July) walked in, had me pick him up, and said (in his slightly slurred two-year-old voice), “Daddy, I wanna play guitar?”

I replied, “Really? You want to play guitar?”

“Yeah, Daddy, just like you.”

Okay, I admit, I got real teary-eyed when he said that, and just held him and hugged and kissed him for his sweetness, and I thought to myself that even though I experience lots of joy recording and performing, and make a decent amount of money doing it, none of that comes close to bringing me the joy I just experienced with those simple words.

I knew he liked my music, because he sings my songs to himself all the time. More often than not, he’s sitting down in my studio while I record songs – he loves the process – and loves to be around music! But to hear him say something like that was really overwhelming for me; not only as a parent, but as a musician.

Just thought I’d share that. Any of you axe-slingers have similar experiences? I’d love to hear ’em!

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Review: Sennheiser e835 Microphone

Posted in gear, gear reviews, guitar, Guitars, Music, recording on April 10, 2008| 1 Comment »

5 Tone Bones - Gear has stellar performance, value, and quality. This is definitely top of the class, best of breed, and it’s a no-brainer to add this to your gear lineup! Sennheiser e835 Dynamic Microphone

Summary: A fantastic and versatile, and super-affordable mic with a wide field that is equally at home with vocals, and instrument/amp sound reinforcement.

Pros: Nice, flat response, with built-in presence boost produces very clear sound.

Cons: None

Price: $99 Street

Sennheiser e835

One of the underlying themes in the reviews I write here at GuitarGear.org is that cheap doesn’t necessarily equate to low quality, and as a gear freak, saving money where I can means I have more money to get more gear. I totally dig on finding excellent gear that doesn’t break the bank, and the Sennheiser e835 falls squarely into that camp.

I discovered this mic a few years ago when my trusty, but tired SM-58 stopped working. By chance, Guitar Center was having one of its blowout sales, and the e835 happened to be on sale for $79.00. So I decided to try it out, and am kicking myself for not buy 4 or 5 of these at the sale price. Oh well…

One thing that I couldn’t stand about the SM-58 was its boomy lows. I’m the type of singer that has the mic close to or touching my lips so that I’m right in the capsule. But with the SM-58, I couldn’t do that because the over-abundance of lows would muddy my vocal tone – and forget about using it to mic a cab!

On the other hand, I found that the e835 has a much flatter tonal response, and close-mic’ing anything is pretty easy, with very little EQ tweaking. It has a built-in presence boost that flattens out the EQ compared to the more scooped EQ of the SM-58. With that kind of flat response, the e835 becomes a very versatile tool that’s usable on-stage, in the studio, and can even be great for mic’ing guitar cabs! At $99 street price, you just can’t go wrong with this mic!

To prove how nice the e835 sounds, let me point you to a song I just recorded using e835. In this song, I used the e835 for both guitars and vocals. With the guitars, I wanted to add a little spacial depth to the guitar tone (I was using a Fender Champ 600 amp with only a 6″ speaker, so I needed a bit of depth), so I close-mic’d the amp with the e835, and used a Nady RM-200 ribbon mic placed off-axis about 10″ away. The Nady only adds a bit of depth, as the e835 does the bulk of the tonal work. But regardless of guitar or vocal, from the song, you can tell that the e835 really shines as a super-versatile mic.

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