Guitar Gear

When I first saw the announcement about the BOSS Waza Tube Amp Expander (“TAE”) I got excited because I was just starting to explore the absolutely wonderful world of Impulse Responses. I was working on re-doing the old guitar tracks on a few songs for my new album in and was using IR’s to silently record them.

My setup for using IR’s was pretty basic: Amp into my Aracom DRX attenuator; attenuator line out into a DI; DI into the balanced input on my audio interface. From there, I used an IR plugin in GarageBand (yes, I recorded the entire album in GarageBand) and voila! I had a full, natural guitar sound that I could record silently.

But in the process, I was wondering if there was some magical box where I could house the IR’s I needed. Then I saw the BOSS announcement. But that lead me to another box, the Universal Audio Ox. Then I saw the price for both. It’s doable, but definitely not in the realm of super-affordable.

And then the pragmatic part of me asked, “Well…. what do you really need?”

Both the TAE and the Ox were rife with incredible features. I actually started leaning a bit more towards the Ox because it’s really set up for studio use. The TAE’s convenient knobs make it easy for on-the-fly tweaking, which made it great as a live performance unit. But I’d really only use a unit like this in the studio, so the Ox made a bit more sense.

I was just about to start making it happen when I looked at the Suhr Reactive Load IR. At a little more than half the price of either the TAE and Ox, it didn’t have all the different features those other units offer. But it did have the main thing I was after: The ability to load and save different IR’s! It’s simple. It’s straight forward. It doesn’t have anything more than what I need. Perfect!

I’ve gotten to the point in my gear purchasing where simplicity is the key. In fact, I’m taking this barebones approach even with my musical arrangements. This has been informed and inspired by listening to artists like Bruno Major who gets so much out of trio; or even the Police. If I need more, I add it, but for the most part, I’ve gone the route of less is more.

So I’ll probably start saving my pennies for a Suhr Reactive Load IR unit. And who knows? Maybe I’ll find one used.