A New Toy!
WARNING: Guitarist Nonsense ahead, skip if you don't care or have no idea what I'm on about. :)
The timing of going east this weekend worked out nicely because I'd found a guitar-related toy I wanted to buy from a guy off Craigslist, and he happened to be in that area.
See, for years now I've said I want to get back into playing guitar more, and more importantly writing and recording music. And I decided maybe my sound was holding me back. I usually just grab an electric guitar and play without plugging in, which is probably better for the folks I live with, but worse for my playing, and not at all helpful for inspiration, you know? There's something about a great guitar tone that makes me want to play, and to keep playing. But again, plugging into an amp usually isn't an option since the whole house doesn't need to hear me noodling around. And while I've had and have a collection of guitar processors, I've never been happy enough with their sound to really want to use them. Plus they're last-generation stuff from the 80s and 90s with limited processing power and lacking any newfangled features like a USB interface for tweaking settings and direct recording. So I decided to move into the 21st century with a modern rackmount unit. The Line 6 stuff looked good, but they've always seemed more geared to people who play heavy stuff, and that's not me. The top-of-the-line is the Fractal Axe-Fx II.. but it retails for around $2k, and that's a big no. So in between was a unit I'd heard of and was impressed by, Avid's Eleven Rack. They're still being sold new, and retail for $700--I found a guy selling one with an expression pedal for $300, and that sounded good to me, especially since I can hopefully unload some of my older gear for at least that much to make it a budget-neutral acquisition.
Isn't it purty?
But more importantly, this thing sounds absolutely incredible. And it FEELS good, which is hard to explain. The early digital devices like the one this replaces for me, maybe it was a slight signal-processing delay thing, but they never felt natural to me, not the same as just plugging straight into a good amp. This one finally seems to correct that, at least to my ears and hands. Avid claims it has technology (True-Z Impedance Matching!) that matches the signal modeling to the impedance of the individual guitar and pickup configuration, and maybe that's marketing hooey, but so far I'm buying it. Regardless, it's dead easy--plug in guitar and headphones, fire it up and play. And whatever preset I dial in is almost certainly going to be useful. Usually units like this have presets that are designed more to show off the variety of sounds the thing can produce rather than actually be useful. But I went through all 104 of the factory presets, and was extremely impressed by how few gimmick-y ones there were. Mostly just a load of tones, all different and convincing. And with the PC interface and new standalone app for the PC, it's easy to tweak them, and to download and transfer new ones over. So yes, much playtime will be had with that alone. But my goal is really to just find a handful of signature tones, and mainly work with those. Hell, I don't even really know exactly what sort of music I hope to produce, but maybe narrowing down the tones that really sound good to my ears will help with that. I hope so, anyway.
So I guess I'll call that a step towards this year's goals. Make more music, check. Improve photography is next, what can I buy to make that happen too? :)
The timing of going east this weekend worked out nicely because I'd found a guitar-related toy I wanted to buy from a guy off Craigslist, and he happened to be in that area.
See, for years now I've said I want to get back into playing guitar more, and more importantly writing and recording music. And I decided maybe my sound was holding me back. I usually just grab an electric guitar and play without plugging in, which is probably better for the folks I live with, but worse for my playing, and not at all helpful for inspiration, you know? There's something about a great guitar tone that makes me want to play, and to keep playing. But again, plugging into an amp usually isn't an option since the whole house doesn't need to hear me noodling around. And while I've had and have a collection of guitar processors, I've never been happy enough with their sound to really want to use them. Plus they're last-generation stuff from the 80s and 90s with limited processing power and lacking any newfangled features like a USB interface for tweaking settings and direct recording. So I decided to move into the 21st century with a modern rackmount unit. The Line 6 stuff looked good, but they've always seemed more geared to people who play heavy stuff, and that's not me. The top-of-the-line is the Fractal Axe-Fx II.. but it retails for around $2k, and that's a big no. So in between was a unit I'd heard of and was impressed by, Avid's Eleven Rack. They're still being sold new, and retail for $700--I found a guy selling one with an expression pedal for $300, and that sounded good to me, especially since I can hopefully unload some of my older gear for at least that much to make it a budget-neutral acquisition.
Isn't it purty?
But more importantly, this thing sounds absolutely incredible. And it FEELS good, which is hard to explain. The early digital devices like the one this replaces for me, maybe it was a slight signal-processing delay thing, but they never felt natural to me, not the same as just plugging straight into a good amp. This one finally seems to correct that, at least to my ears and hands. Avid claims it has technology (True-Z Impedance Matching!) that matches the signal modeling to the impedance of the individual guitar and pickup configuration, and maybe that's marketing hooey, but so far I'm buying it. Regardless, it's dead easy--plug in guitar and headphones, fire it up and play. And whatever preset I dial in is almost certainly going to be useful. Usually units like this have presets that are designed more to show off the variety of sounds the thing can produce rather than actually be useful. But I went through all 104 of the factory presets, and was extremely impressed by how few gimmick-y ones there were. Mostly just a load of tones, all different and convincing. And with the PC interface and new standalone app for the PC, it's easy to tweak them, and to download and transfer new ones over. So yes, much playtime will be had with that alone. But my goal is really to just find a handful of signature tones, and mainly work with those. Hell, I don't even really know exactly what sort of music I hope to produce, but maybe narrowing down the tones that really sound good to my ears will help with that. I hope so, anyway.
So I guess I'll call that a step towards this year's goals. Make more music, check. Improve photography is next, what can I buy to make that happen too? :)