Friends often come to me asking for advice on cool, unique, or useful music gear of all sorts. I’ll admit first of all that if you’re a drummer or a bass player than I probably don’t have much for you. However, if you’re recording or if you’re playing keyboards and guitar then I have a few neat treats for you. This time around I’ll fill you in on some of the better amps that I’ve played. These range between $20 to $5000, so there is something for everyone.
So here’s some gear that you may or may not know about, but you should! (I’m not paid by any of these companies)
Guitar Amps:
Orange- Tiny Terror: This is a freaking cool little amp. It’s inexpensive, great sounding, flexible and just overall a great deal! I can’t think of a downside to owning/playing one of these. Ok, probably not your main stage amp for death metal, but for other things it’s one of the best deals in town for a tube amp.
Epiphone- Valve Junior: It’s small. It’s cheap. It’s around $150. It’s easy to modify. Oh, and it’s a tube amp! Not all tube amps are great, but this one sure is a great deal and with a little work you can really make it sweet with some simple mods. There is no excuse for not being able to afford a tube amp with this little guy out. None. Ever wanted an easy way to have stereo on stage, but couldn’t afford it? This is the answer.
Gabriel Amps: Ok, these aren’t cheap and there’s no way around that. But they are rather sweet amps that can do a lot. Not many people know about these, but they are well worth looking into. I have gotten some of the literal best tones of my life out of them. Period.
Divided by 13: These are simply killer amps. Again, not cheap, but well worth it. Sir Paul McCartney is using these now for his band. Everyone else in the world is looking for 1963 AC30’s that Sir Paul has a closet full of, but yet chooses to use these as his main live amps these days (and often in the studio). If it’s good enough for the wealthiest musician ever, then it’s damn good enough for me.
Diezel- Herbert: I am not generally a fan of multi-channel uber amps with loads of gain that are made on PCBs. However once you hear these amps your jaw drops. I know certainly if I was going to play something “heavy” that I’d go for a Diezel first and foremost. They aren’t buzzy sounding, they are just huge. Billy Corigan of the Smashing Pumpkins is using these for the most part now, and damn the amp takes over the stage. Oh, and these also qualify as “not cheap”
Roland JC-120: A Jazz Chorus amp? Solid state? WTF? By Roland? YES! If you’ve ever wanted the cleanest clean on an amp (and on occasion you do need it) then this is the amp to grab for. Somewhat of a one-trick pony imho, but it does it very well. You can find them for $200-300USD on Craigslist quite often, although stores will often try to sell used ones for over twice that. It’s solid state and there’s not much to worry about being broken in there. If you’ve got more than 5 amps, you should have one of these laying around. They even made a head-only version, which is pretty cool but rare.
Smoky Amps: These are weird little cigarette box sized amps that run off a battery. They are about $20. Get two or three! As your main amp? Hell no. To keep with your tuner in your guitar case? Yes. As something to layer up in a track for something ‘different’? Yes. To run a drum machine through and mic? Yes! Plus you can gang them into another amp and use as a fuzz pedal, or drive another cab with them. Freaking cool. Stupidly cheap. If you’re a photographer, think of it like a Holga.
Selmer Amps: You aren’t going to find these in just about any music store. You’ll likely never see one live- ever. Yet if you should ever come across a Selmer Zodiac, you should really give it a shot. They were often used by the Beatles and other bands of the early 60’s. Between the glowing light on the front pulsing in sync with the tremelo to the insanely creamy tone these are jaw dropping. The prices have shot up in the past 5 years quite a bit. They are far more common in the UK than here in the States. Not something to tour with, but really an amazing amp to have in the studio.
When buying an amp, make sure to check it out at multiple volumes. Think about where you’ll play it. To be honest most guitar stores are pretty bad places to try out amps. Make sure they have a good return policy. Ask if you can test it out one night with your band. You need to make sure that the amp can ‘cut’ through in the mix of the band and stand out, but also you want a certan amount of blend and cohesion. A good amp with do both. Amps also generally sound far different recorded than they do in a room, so if its recording make sure to actually check it out by recording it!
Also for any amp tube or solid state, you should really consider having a backup or at least backup parts for quick repairs if you’re touring or playing live seriously. Extra tubes (complete sets) and fuses at least are must haves.
While very productive and an amazing tool; the internet helps me waste time in a way that not even TV was able to. So what are the sites that I end up wasting my time on? And as a better question, what do you waste your time on?
Digg: I hate this site. I really do. I use Reddit on occasion too, but for whatever reason Digg keeps pulling me back. Half of the stories are worthless crap, and the other half are inaccurate and sensationalized. I guess it’s like the internet version of a tabloid newspaper like the Boston Herald. It’s not quality, but you keep reading it when you want to kill a few minutes and some brain cells.
Why I don’t stop reading it: For me the internet isn’t actually information overload. Being a child of the 90’s has given me a massive thirst for data/information. Digg keeps this flow going for me. I love Slashdot, but there’s just not enough unless I’m drinking from the firehose. But more than anything, I feel that if I don’t read Digg/Reddit that I’m behind or miss something. I feel this horrid need to be 100% on top of every internet fad/trend and piece of news. Sigh.
Gearslutz: This is just a webboard about recording music and gear. It’s not the best out there, but at the same time offers so much. It’s full of some great people, and also full of morons and newbies with mBoxes and pirated versions of Fruity Loops.Why I don’t stop going there: I feel that I am a semi-respected community member and occasional troll on there. It’s fun. I like keeping on top of engineering even if I am no longer doing it professionally. Plus, they have a great classifieds section.
CNN: Some days I think this is worse than Digg and less accurate. It’s near the level of Fox News. Yet, I check it at least once a day. It’s like not understanding why you wash your hands or pull out your hair compulsively. It really is a sickness that I wish would go away. Maybe I should block it from my router.Why I don’t stop going there: Occasionally, and I mean super-rarely they have something that’s worth reading. Also, unlike the NYT they have a ton of video daily that I can watch when my hair is drying from the shower.
Slashdot: The Original Time-waster. The firehose has made it that much worse since I don’t have to wait for them to actually approve articles prior to reading them.Why I don’t stop going there: The comments. Each news thread has generally at least 100 comments, and they are much better structured and generally more intelligent (or at least at a moderation of 3 and above) than Digg or elsewhere.
New York Times: This to me is real news. I wish I could afford to have it delivered every morning, but I’d also hate to kill that many trees. Maybe if I get a Kindle I’ll read it even more (that isn’t a good thing).Why I don’t stop going there: Because it’s actually decent reporting. I feel that some of the “lifestyle” articles get repetitive, but overall it’s also a great conversation piece. It seems that everyone I’ve been on a date with in the past few months reads it daily, so it’s something easy to reference. It doesn’t change fast enough for me (I mean it’s real writing though, so that’s to be expected since they actually edit their stuff unlike CNN).
Yes, I know that I could put many of these into an RSS reader and digest them that way, but there is some enjoyment I find to going to the actual websites.
Umm, pretty much just what the title says. It’s smooth, it’s good, it’s free, it’s beta. Run, go get it. Kick MSFT in the balls. Who needs their Office?
The first step towards getting past addiction is admitting you have a problem right?
“My name is David Fisher, and I am an analytics junkie.”
Ok, I admitted it. Let’s move on. With a Flickr Pro account you get to have a little Stats page about your photos. It’s pretty cool and useful, but it leaves me wanting so much more. What are the problems that I have with it? What more do I need? Honestly, much of the functionality of Google Analytics would be really appreciated
A longer history: The past 30 days only isn’t really sufficient for me. I haven’t been taking photos for only 30 days. I’d like to be able to compare the response that I’ve gotten between events. These events might be months, or even a year apart. As it stands now, it’s just a pretty picture of the last month of activity.
Variable time selection: I want to be able to select a timeframe of just a week or so. I appreciate that it shows it by “yesterday” and “all time” but I want to see things for a specific month or slice
Comparing vs others photos in a pool: I’d like to see how much traffic everyone else has gotten about a specific tag or event. I have a “hunch” that I had the most popular photos for ROFLCon, but it’s really hard to tell. That’s a really big thing for me.
More graphical trend information: I’m a visual person. I like to see everything that I can visually. Just the fact that I’m on flickr makes this apparent. Graphs, charts, diagrams. You can’t overload me.
In this vein of things, I want to see referral information over time.
I want to know some things about my viewers. Resolution, color depth, browser, time spend on page. I also want to know if they “bounced” or kept viewing more of my photos. How many unique viewers vs “hits” overall? What sizes are they viewing?
Tell me about what I’m doing: What cameras am I using, what size am I generally exporting, what lenses am I using? Graph my EXIF metadata for me. Some of us shoot with multiple formats, cameras, etc… and I’d love to know more about my own shooting/usage and compare it against traffic patterns.
Overlaying: I want to be able to overlay any of this data against each other. I want to see trends. Are all of my creative commons photos getting more traffic? Are the things that I shoot in portait getting no traffic? I want to know!
A simple/advanced mode: I don’t think that everyone wants all of these. Some people are overwhelmed by Google Analytics. I don’t want to scare people off, but some of us need more power!
I’d like to have export to CSV or XML. Sometimes I just need to export data and analyze it elsewhere.
A few things could happen here:
Flickr could allow the insertion of analytics Javascript into the pages on your account, and you could use some external service. I’d love to build a Flickr analytics engine/page or hell, just use Google Analytics and then hack a few extra things onto another page to deal with stuff
Expand their own! They have gotten some of the smoothest photo management software going and they can’t get decent analytics out there? WTF?
It kinda pisses me off that they are screwing around with Video services on flickr, when it’s clear that YouTube has that covered and it’s kinda pointless, when they should be improving the photo services. There is a reason that I still use a Smugmug account for my “professional” work.
Trent has done it again. He just released Ghosts a few months ago, and the ink is barely dry on the limited edition box sets. He’s just released two singles in the past month or so (Echoplex, Discipline) and today just released another entire album online. For free of course, and without a record label. The album is called the slip.
Go download it and check it out. I haven’t listened to it yet asides from the singles. Downloading now myself.
I am shocked at how fast he’s able to move and release things now (being free of heroin/drugs and record companies helps!)
My personal guess is that this upcoming tour will be the biggest and best that NIN has ever had. I’d say that they are mainstream music already, but what he is doing is really helping break down barrier even more and bring more people into his music. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Update: In downloading it I’m noticing that Trent is doing a few amazingly smart things. First he’s requiring your email address. He’s also allowing for lossless and higher than CD quality WAV downloads (24bit/96khz). And he has a simple sharing thing to email it to friends. Simple, but surely effective and smart.
He is also using bittorrent as a distribution method for all but the smallest downloads. This is a clear illustration that bittorrent is not always used for piracy, and that ISPs/Campuses should not block/filter/throttle such legitimate services.
