Connections
Blog Archive

blog search

Entries in gear (2)

Friday
Feb122010

The Mermaid Guitar

I couldn't pass up sending this one on. Before you size up the builder as a "pure-bred loony" --  and he may very well be, I never met him -- have a look around his site for all the incredible instruments he has built. Nice guitars, mandolins and mandocellos for John Paul Jones, Josh Homme and others.

Click to read more ...

Saturday
Jan302010

Gear I can't seem to live without

While I'm really not much of a gear fetishist -- musical instruments, and the tools that go with them, have come and gone a lot in my  life -- I am discovering that some gear is just too sweet to move on from.

I'm in the process of selling off most of my musical gear. A lot of stuff I have had purely for the rigors of long-term, old school, professional touring. Since I am now fully new school, I just don't need this stuff anymore. For example, speakers. I don't need them anymore. I am using in-ear monitors and I go direct to the house board. And if you don't need speakers, then you don't need power amps either.

And since I am presently processing my live instrument entirely through the laptop, then I don't need stomp boxes or effects racks either.

The process of selling off my stuff is quite slow and laborous. And it turns out, there are few things that I just can't let go. Some boxes do something so unique that I can't send them off. Other things (a compressor and preamp, for example) I had planned on selling, but when I pulled them out to check that they were in good enough condition, I just couldn't... They had something about them that just made me hold on. There was some extra life that they added to the instrument that I could feel and sense in the articulation of my hands.

Here are those items. Those ones that I just couldn't let go and be replaced by their digital counterparts. I haven't included any of my Warr Guitars -- my main tapping instrument -- as it goes without saying that I can't play without them.

 

Click to read more ...