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Newly Discovered II: Guitar Scale Magnets

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Wow! Two days in a row, and yet another e-mail received from a reader, and yet another pretty cool idea. This time, it’s from Guitar Scale Magnets located in Houston, TX. These help players learn scales by attaching a magnetic strip to the bass side of the fretboard. The premise is that learning guitar is a visual as well as tactile and aural experience, and having a visual cue as to where you should place your fingers in relationship to a particular scale will help you learn faster. Interesting indeed. Here’s a picture of the pentatonic scale strips:

There are 12 strips representing each note in an octave, so you can learn the five pentatonic box shapes in any key! Cool! Each strip is attached to the guitar via a “base” strip of magnetically receptive material (not metal) tape. The tape has a weak adhesive, to stick enough to stay in place, but not damage your finish. In any case,  very ingenious idea!

At this point, only 25 1/2″ scale length strips are available, but according to the manufacturer, slight variations won’t throw the strip off much.

Personally, I wish I had these strips for when I was learning guitar. I just memorized the box shapes, then learned how to connect them through osmosis. But if I had to do it all over again, I would’ve invested in stuff like this to help get me started! For you teachers out there, you might consider getting a few sets of these – you can pass the cost of them to your students. But then again, that might shorten the time it takes to teach your students to play the guitar. 🙂 Seriously though, if my teacher provided me with stuff like this, it would make learning a helluva lot easier!

For more information, go to the Guitar Scale Magnets web site!

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Newly Discovered…

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 18, 2010| 4 Comments »

As GuitarGear.org has gotten more of following, from time to time, I get random e-mails from folks who share gear and what-not. It’s cool. If it’s interesting stuff, I share it here, and like in the case of Jeff Aragaki of Aracom Amps, their contact initiates a close friendship.

Anyway, I got a notification from YouTube that someone sent me a private message – I’ve gotten those before and they’ve been from users with names like “PoleRider69” or something to that effect, telling me to go to their adult porn site – but this one was different because the person who sent it was sharing a video about a glass guitar pick. Ah-ha! Gear! Now, you know me, gear slut that I am, I just can’t resist checking out stuff related to gear; especially picks!

So without further ado, I’ll share the video. It’s very short, but how this pick was used really compelled me to share it and find out more about the pick.

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Gear Review: Sennheiser e609 Silver Instrument Microphone

Posted in accessories, buying gear, GarageBand, GAS, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar accessories, guitar gear, guitar gear reviews, guitar tone, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

Sennheiser e609 Silver Instrument Microphone

Summary: Need a great mic to close-mic your amp? Look no further! The e609 delivers on all fronts, able to withstand high SPL’s, and still accurately reproduce your tone.

Pros: Flat-face design makes placing the mic a breeze, but more importantly, placed correctly (as you should with any mic), it’ll capture your tone beautifully!

Cons: None

Features (from the web site):

  • Hum compensating coil reduces electrical interference (I can attest to this – it’s super quiet)
  • Neodynum ferrous magnet with boron keeps mic stable regardless of climate
  • Metal construction—rugged and reliable
  • Super-cardioid pick-up pattern provides isolation from other on-stage signals

Price: ~$95 streetTone Bone Score: 5.0 ~ Going back to my “using the right tool for the job,” I don’t know why I didn’t pick up one of these earlier. I have some good mics, but now that I’ve got the e609 that was made explicitly for micking instruments, I kicking myself a bit. Lesson learned yet again!

I told myself that all I would get was a speaker cable for my cab when I walked into my local Guitar Center today. Unfortunately for me, the cables were located in the Pro Audio area where GC has a big case of very nice mics. And, gear slut that I am, I couldn’t resist a look. Granted, most of those mics were completely out of the ballpark for me, costing several hundreds of dollars. But it did get me thinking that I really should be using a dedicated instrument mic for my home studio when recording my clips and songs.

Fortunately, they didn’t have any instrument mics in the case, but silly me, I just had to ask the guy behind the counter if he had an e609 (I had researched this and other instrument mics several months ago). “Oh yeah,” said another sales clerk, “We got those. They rock, and they’re cheap.” Damn! Words that a gear slut should never hear in one sentence: ROCK and CHEAP! That will instantly elicit a fidgety, twitchy response as the pragmatic half of the psyche wrestles with the GAS half. And usually the GAS half wins, as it did today.

So now I am the very proud owner of a Sennheiser e609. And I do have to say that it does rock, and it costs far less than what one would normally expect to pay for a great mic. At less than $100, how can you argue with that?

How It Sounds

I recorded a little blues solo over a standard GarageBand backing track to demonstrate. Give it a listen:

For the solo, I used “Blondie” my Squier Classic Vibe Tele, the insane-sounding Aracom VRX18 amp (it’s customized with an EZ81 rectifier), and my custom Aracom 1 X 12 cab with a Jensen P12N speaker. The e609 was placed about halfway between the dome and the speaker edge about an inch away from the grille cloth.

I added a touch of reverb to the dry clip in GarageBand, but that’s it. No EQ (I don’t like to EQ my guitar parts anyway). What you hear on the clip is what I heard in my studio. Freakin’ amazing! Like I mentioned above, after recording this clip, I should’ve gotten one of these a long time ago. It’s a great mic!

Mixed Reviews

I re-read some reviews today, and interestingly enough, they come back mixed. Harmony Central user reviews rate it at about 7.5 on average. People other love it or hate it. But in reply to the negative experiences, I have to call into question mic placement. If it’s one thing I’ve learned from years of home studio recording, placing your mic correctly is critical to getting a good tone. Maybe they weren’t experimenting enough with mic placement. Who knows?

With the e609, I first went with the recommended placement in the user manual (yes, I am one of those anal people who do indeed RTFM), then moved it maybe half an inch more towards the speaker edge to reduce the highs just a tad. That made all the difference in the world because my amp is pretty bright micked up close, and I didn’t want that to dominate the recording, especially since the mic was only an inch away from the grille cloth.

Overall Impressions

The Tone Bones score says it all. I’m hooked! Frankly, it didn’t take me long at all to dial this puppy in. It’s a truly great mic!

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Builder Profile: Neal Moser

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2010| 4 Comments »

The other day, I was surfing around the web to find some pricing on Solid Cables, and stumbled upon Moser Custom Shop, a dealer for Solid Cables. Of course, as the name implies, cables aren’t their primary business. So, curious, I poked around the site to see Neal’s wares, then I gave him a call to talk to him about his guitars and his build process.

Such a BICH

If you’re at all familiar with BC Rich guitars, then you may know that Neal Moser is the designer of BC Rich’s Rich Bich guitar; an eclectic 10-string that looks like a Vulcan lute from Star Trek – or at least something Spock might play. I’m not really into pointy guitars myself, but I actually dig the look of that guitar. There’s something about it that – at least to me – oozes a cool mojo.

And based upon the Bich, you have an idea of the style of guitars Neal designs. Most are pointy, very aggressive-looking guitars. Even his more traditionally-styled guitars have a decidedly edgy look to them. But that’s not a bad thing at all. In fact, Neal’s guitars have a very pleasing vibe about them. I look at Neal’s guitars, and the first thing I think of is that these guitars are meant to be played through a fully cranked amp. You’d be doing a disservice to the guitar if you didn’t let it breathe fire. 🙂

As the name implies, Moser Custom Shop specializes in custom-made guitars, and one thing I dig about his process is that everything is done by hand. Neal uses custom jigs and templates, and hand-shapes everything. No wonder I like these guitars. Just like Saint Guitars, which are made in the same fashion, each custom guitar Neal builds has its own character. There’s nothing production line about these guitars!

Here’s an interesting factoid: BC Rich and Moser Custom Shop have an agreement that allows him to  to continue to build Bich’s, though he has to call them his 10/6 model. Unlike the production line stuff from BC Rich, if you want a custom Bich, you can specify everything on a 10/6! How cool is that?!!!

Moser Custom Shop also has a line of Korean imports, much along the same vein as PRS, contracting out the manufacturing to a Korean builder. I think that’s totally cool because if a buyer really wants a Moser design but can’t afford the cost of a fully custom guitar, the imports cost a fraction of the price. For instance, the Korean MMI-T, which is based upon the MCS Scimitar model, costs $649 and comes with a case. That’s a steal! You don’t get all the electronic bells and whistles of the Scimitar, but you get a nice design and a capable guitar at a great price!

A little about Neal

Neal has been around quite awhile. He started working with guitars in 1964, first as a guitar repairman, and over the course of his career, has worked on guitars of some very famous cats, including Jimi Hendrix, Stephen Stills, and David Crosby. He formed Moser Custom Shop after a long stint with GMW Guitar Works, coming out of retirement to start the company with his wife Earlleen.

Neal is one of those personable guys that you just love to talk to. In fact, he’s one of the nicest people I’ve met in a long time. He’s got a very friendly and inviting demeanor, and he speaks his mind. Even after almost 50 years working with guitars, you can tell he has a passion for what he does, and that comes through in how he talks about how he makes them. Passion is what it’s all about to last this long in ANY industry, and Neal’s got tons of it!

For more information about Moser Custom Shop, visit their site! While there, give Neal a call.

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Gear Review: Dunlop Ultex Sharp 2.0mm

Posted in accessories, buying gear, GAS, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar accessories, guitar gear, guitar gear reviews, guitar picks, Guitars, Music, musicians, Red Bear Trading, Tone, Tuff-Tone, V-Picks, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2010| 4 Comments »

Dunlop Ultex Sharp 2.0 mm

Summary: It’s sharp alright; nice and pointy, and it feels great in your hand!

Pros: Like any sharp pick, this pick is accurate. It’s super lightweight, and made of a material takes a lot of pressure to even slightly bend. The pointy end makes pick harmonics a breeze!

Cons: It’s a small nit, but I wish the butt-end were just a bit wider.

Features (from the web site):

Based off of a coveted vintage tortoiseshell pick in our collection, the Ultex Sharp delivers a pick with a rigid body tapering into a thinner and sculpted tip for intense control and speed. The seamless contoured edge surrounds the pick for more playing surfaces and tones. Engineered of Ultex—the Ultex Sharp is virtually indestructible and delivers a crisp tone and quick release attack. Available in .73, .90, 1.0, 1.14, 1.40, and 2.0mm gauges.Price: 50 cents street

Tone Bone Score: 4.75 – Real nice-sounding and nice-playing pick. If you want to step up to a thicker, more rigid pick, but don’t want to shell out for high-end picks, this is a winner!

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m a bit of pick snob. Ever since I started playing with V-Picks and Red Bear picks, I’ve mildly eschewed mainstream picks in favor of the insanely awesome picks those two companies produce. But I have to tell you that I was taken by complete surprise by the Dunlop Ultex Sharp pick! I wasn’t really looking to explore new picks, but a buddy of mine was looking for some Ultex picks at a local store, and offered to buy me a couple. Hell! They were only 50 cents apiece! I carried them around for a couple of days before I actually got to try them; not because I was dubious of them, I just couldn’t find time until this evening to sit down with an axe. Life happens, you know?

Anyway, I slung “Blondie” my trusty Squier Classic Vibe Tele, dug an Ultex out of my pocket, and started to play. Admittedly, I had a bit of trouble playing with the pick at first. Even though it’s slightly thicker than the thinnest pick I play – a Red Bear Tuff-Tone – it’s decidedly narrower in shape; something to which I’m no longer accustomed. But being the hard-headed type, and because I wanted to give the pick a fair shake, as it were, I kept at it, playing scales and riffs to get used to it.

I have to say that I’m really impressed by this pick! First of all, the material feels great in your hand, and like any real good pick, you forget about it. I love the rigidity of the material as well. Contrary to what you might think, a rigid pick actually makes you relax your hand. I know, it’s counterinuitive, but any player that plays a rigid pick will attest to this.

I spent quite a bit of time playing with this pick, and it’s a fast pick, though what I really missed was how my high-end picks really glide over the strings, like they’re lubricated. The Ultex material is pretty smooth, but there is a difference. Mind you, I’m not saying it’s bad in the slightest; it just has a different feel on the strings.

Most importantly though, the Ultex Sharp produces a nice, bright tone. That’s what I really dig about this pick! Part of it is due to it being rigid, but the other part is because of the pointy end. It really makes the strings snap in a very nice way!

Will the Ultex supplant my V-Picks and Red Bear picks? Probably not, but I will be using it for sure. It’s not even a small wonder why these picks are so popular among guitarists. They’re great playing and sounding picks at an insanely cheap price. I’m sold! Buy a few, and you’ll see for yourself!

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So just how much would you pay for a cable?

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2010| 3 Comments »

I was perusing Solid Cables site this morning, and couldn’t find any pricing, so I surfed their dealer list to see how much I could get a 10′-12′ cord for. I found this site that had one of their Dynamic Arc Ultra cables listed for $135.95! OMG! I think the most I’ve ever paid for a cable was $80, and I still have that cable – it’s great; well-made with solid construction. People have raved about real high-end cables in the past, and I’m wondering how big of a difference they make. In any case, I put together a poll to see what people would pay for a cable. Here it is:

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Moving Up in the World…

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 26, 2009| 3 Comments »

I’ve been an avid GarageBand user for quite some time, having shied away from moving to a more sophisticated recording solution because of how easy GarageBand makes it to record the demo songs and sound clips I produce. Geez! How easy could it get? To create a sound clip, it’s as easy as opening the app, setting the song’s tempo, choosing a drum loop to play to, creating a new track to capture my guitar, and recording.

Of course, GarageBand comes with its own shortcoming, not the least of which is the ability to change tempo mid-song, editing the timing and tempo of an audio region, and doing more sophisticated fader automation. For years, these shortcomings were okay for me. I was able to produce an entire album with GarageBand – even with its shortcomings. But admittedly, a lot of my best songs didn’t make it to the album because GarageBand couldn’t do things I needed for those songs; especially varying the tempo mid-song, which I’ve written into several of my pieces for dramatic effect.

My wife has been bugging me for a long time to record some of her favorite pieces that I’ve written for church service. One in particular is based upon the second movement in Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. While that song is not structurally complex, it requires three different tempo changes. Moving from 52 bps for the intro (the original tempo), to 58 bps for the verses, then 62 bps for the refrain, back down to 58 bps, then back down to 52 for the outro. I tried recording the song in GarageBand several times, but just couldn’t get it down.

Enter Logic Express 9. With its tempo and wave editing features, I can now record my songs the way they were meant to be recorded. I can’t even begin to tell you how incredible that is to me! I’ve the application less than 24 hours – and only used it for a couple of hours – but I can already tell that it’s going to be a HUGE boon to my music production. I’m really excited. I’ve already played around with the tempo changing features, but there is just so much to this application that I have yet to discover; not the least of which is the mix-down capability and throwing tracks onto different busses to apply different effects.

No, it’s not a full-blown recording solution like ProTools or it’s bigger sibling Logic Pro. But for the home studio recording enthusiast like myself, it has everything I need to create great recordings. At $199, it’s a real bargain. Besides that, if I ever need to upgrade to the Pro version, it’s a $99 upgrade. Not bad. Not bad at all.

If you’re currently using GarageBand, and want to expand your recording capabilities, I highly recommend Logic Express! I will say this: it’s not a simple slam-dunk to move from GarageBand to Logic Express. Yes, there are similarities, but the mix-down and mastering stuff that GarageBand does for you by default you now have to do yourself. However, one thing I tried was creating a project in GarageBand, applying mastering, then importing the song into Logic Express. Lo and behold, the Master got imported with all the buss settings – which you then can edit. Nice.

For more information on the feature set, please visit the Logic Express site!

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Just for fun… Tell us how much gear you have

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 23, 2009| 3 Comments » 

I'm running a poll to find out how much gear GuitarGear.org visitors have.
I'll keep this post up for awhile so we can get some stats.

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Quirks are good… Quirks make you better…

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Like many gear sluts, I’ve got several guitars and each guitar, no matter how much I’ve spent on it, has its own little quirk or quirks. One might not have much natural sustain, another might have tiny frets, yet another may have wide neck profile. But no matter the quirk, in the end, if I can work through a guitar’s particular quirk or quirks, it’s the sound that comes out of my amp that counts. But the cool thing that I’ve found is that these very quirks have also served to help me become a better guitar player. Mind you, these aren’t flaws in the gear. They’re simply, well, quirks that make either consciously or sub-consciously make me compensate for a particular quirk in some way.

For instance, my Squier Classic Vibe Tele has pretty little frets, making vibrato a challenge; especially the violin type of rolling vibrato. But what it has taught me is to get much better at bending vibrato to coax sustaining tones out of that guitar. The net result is if I take the time to make a note sing, I’m rewarded with this beautiful bloom as the string vibrations resonate through its pine body. The reward of that is priceless, and what I’ve found while playing that guitar is that I actually try to play slower and express whatever idea I’ve got in as few notes as possible. That has affected my entire playing style.

Building on that, the other night I played guitar in the band at my kids’ school’s Christmas pageant. This is a cool production in that unlike most pageants, it’s presented as a theatrical production, replete with story line. The various classes then sing a song as part of a scene of the play. For the first time, the show was done with a simple rock combo in addition to the standard keyboard to fill up the music. And even cooler was the fact that this particular production had very rock and roll flavor. I originally rehearsed the play with my Tele, but I wasn’t satisfied with the overall drive sound, so I switched to my LP copy, a Prestige Guitars Heritage Elite.

Remember I mentioned my Tele forcing me to get better at bending vibrato, well, from repeatedly practicing that on my Tele, once I picked up my Heritage Elite, it was game over! I really felt my expressiveness go through the roof! Now that guitar just sustains forever, but add some technique, and I couldn’t believe how good that guitar sounded! It was as if I was playing a completely different guitar.

The same kind of thing goes for Goldie. Now she has jumbo frets that are both wide and tall, so that it takes a minimal amount of pressure to articulate a note. What that guitar has taught me is to relax my left hand. The net result is that I’m much quicker over the strings. But that lightness of touch has extended to my other guitars as well.

So the net of all this is that quirks in your gear aren’t necessarily bad, and oftentimes can help you improve your playing.

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Considering buying an attenuator? Don’t just look at the absolute price…

Posted in amps, aracom amps, attenuator, GAS, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, guitar gear reviews, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 18, 2009| 12 Comments »

There’s an unspoken battle raging on The Gear Page forum about which is the best “popular” attenuator on the market. Yeah, everyone claims theirs is the most transparent, and frankly, that’s true for very low levels of attenuation. But for really cranking down on the volume, my money, of course, is on the Aracom PRX150-Pro. To me, not only is it the most transparent attenuator based upon head-to-head comparisons of some of the popular attenuators done by me and others, and also being the safest with its input AND output impedance matching, it is also the most cost-effective attenuator out there. Don’t believe it? Well, the numbers don’t lie. When you consider the versatility of input/output impedance selections vs. cost of the unit that the PRX150-Pro offers, it’s simply no contest.

Let’s have a look at the numbers shall we?

Cost Per Impedance Selection Combination
Attenuator Price # Impedance Combos. Cost/Imp. Combo
THD HotPlate $329.00 1 $329.00
Alex’s Attenuator $350.00 1 $350.00
Faustine Phantom $799.00 3 $266.33
Aracom PRX150-Pro $650.00 16 $40.56

Clearly, based upon the number of impedance matching selections, the PRX150-Pro is the clear winner in terms of value. Even if the Aracom unit only had three impedance matching selections, it still will have 9 different available input/output impedance selection combinations, and each combination would only cost $72.11; still far below the competition!

Furthermore, let’s say the PRX150-Pro didn’t have output impedance matching, reducing its impedance matching combinations to 4. It still outperforms the competition in terms of value at $162.25 per selection!

Let’s compare the PRX150-Pro with the Alex’s attenuator for example. People love the Alex’s attenuator, and I understand it works great. But you have to get 4 of those units to match the impedance matching capabilities of the PRX150-Pro. In absolute cost terms, yes, the PRX150-Pro costs more. But with respect to value, well, you can’t hide from the numbers. The same thing applies to the THD HotPlate (though I have other reasons not to like this product). As for the Faustine Phantom, it has more versatility than the Alex’s by far, but it’s also very expensive, and it is unclear whether or not you’ll get one in a timely fashion. Some people have been waiting for theirs for several months.

Sometimes you have to spend more to get much more, and in the case of the Aracom PRX150-Pro, you’re getting A LOT more!

Disclaimer: I will say this again that I am not an employee of Aracom – I’m a faithful customer because of the superior product Jeff produces.

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