The Z Files

After all, they just got a big chunk of my money. My “2008 Studio Improvement Plan” is in full swing, with the acquisition of Logic Studio and a new iMac (20″, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM (soon to be maxed out to 4 GB) and 500 GB disk). This thing absolutely flies. I ran a quick speed test by doing bounces of a Logic demo project, and the iMac came in at better than 4.5x faster than my old G4…and that was with Logic only using one core! (Hopefully they’ll improve multi-core awareness in a future point update.) Here it is in all its beauty… (full unboxing series @ flickr)

Next up in the studio overhaul: a FireWire audio interface. Right now the likely option appears to be the Focusrite Saffire.

(One note about the pic: you may notice a photo sitting in front of the KRK speaker. That photo means a lot to me. You see, it’s me and my girl. Yep, that’s right, this ol’ dog finally got it right! I’ve been friends with Kari for nearly three years now and it only recently evolved into something more. It’s been almost two months now and I couldn’t be happier!)

(One more thing: no, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. I really did paint my room bright green. )

Waking up is often the toughest part of my day. I’ve thought long and hard about how to kick myself out of bed in the morning. For a time, I considered bringing a Clocky home. (I still may!) Today, I was thrilled to find Alarm Clock. It’s an OS X alarm clock (really!?) app that tucks away in the menu bar and plays whatever you want from your iTunes library. I’m not entirely optimistic about its chances at getting me up in the morning, but I’ll give it a shot.

So I’ve been entertaining thoughts lately about a couple small Soldano amps, the Astroverb and Atomic, which are basically pint-size 20-watt SLOs. The only difference between the two is that the Astroverb has reverb. This was sparked when a guy from cyberjammin picked up an Astroverb mini-stack for something like $650. I didn’t know anything about those amps and was surprised that one could have a Soldano, albeit used, for well under a grand. That got me thinking right away. With my plans to upgrade my studio gear and get more serious about writing and recording, I’d be very open to getting a recording amp such as an Atomic or Astroverb to compliment my Mesa rig and fill out my recorded sound a bit.

As I was pursuing teh intarwebs last night, I came across an interesting piece of kit announced at NAMM a couple months back: the Krank Rev Jr. mini-stack. (pictured) It’s actually quite similar in concept to the Atomic and Astroverb: a 20w version of the flagship Revolution 100w head. The best part is the price: the halfstack (head and one 1×12 cab) will have a street price of $699, which is about what the Soldanos go for used. I’ve been impressed by the recordings I’ve heard of Krank gear, but there are no Krank dealers anywhere near here. Maybe, when the time comes, I’ll just take a chance and order one. That won’t be for quite a while yet, but still…the GAS fires are burning!

New toys: Sony MDR-7506 headphones on top of Canon MP600 printer/scanner…

…both of which are things I’ve been wanting for a while: I’m sick of using other printers/scanner in the house; having my own is so much more convenient; and it’s about time I got a good pair of reference headphones.

New projects: I’m going through all my old guitar mags and scanning everything worth keeping: any lessons, features or song transcriptions that draw my interest. When I’m finished, I’ll probably try to sell off the mags and seed the GAS fund a little bit (relates to new ambitions, below). Also, I’ve begun reconfiguring my room with plans to finally do the repainting, etc. that I’ve been wanting to do for months.

New ambitions: it’s time to get serious about this recording stuff. I’m looking into buying a couple beginner-level recording books, and once the room is finished, I’m going to invest in a bunch of upgraded recording gear…a FireWire mixer, a large-diaphragm condensor mic, monitors, (eventually) a 2-channel outboard mic preamp and 2-channel compressor, and maybe even a bass guitar. Long-term GAS, stoked by Nate from cyberjammin: a Soldano Astroverb amp. That would be a mighty fine recording/practice amp, and they can be had used for $700-800. I wouldn’t have imagined that one could have a Soldano for under a grand until Nate scored one and I looked into it a little bit.

As evidenced in my last couple posts, I’ve had a tinge of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) lately. Well, it hasn’t gone away. In the mail today was a Tremol-No, a device that replaces the spring claw in a standard Fender- or Floyd Rose-style tremolo setup and allows the player to use the trem normally, turn a floating trem into a down-only trem, or completely secure the trem, effectively turning the guitar into a hardtail.

Installation was a breeze (or, as much of a breeze as these things get for me). I spent more time tweaking the guitar’s setup afterward than I spent actually installing the thing.

A quick play test before work showed that the Tremol-No does work quite well. I didn’t notice any increased sustain when locked, although the locked state did seem to bring out more of the low frequencies. It did take a little getting used to, as I went for the trem bar a couple times with the T-No locked and threw it out of whack. I was already being more careful of that by the end of my quick test. I think I’m gonna have some fun with this thing.

Yep, I’m happy.

My old Moto V551 just wasn’t cutting it anymore. It was giving me way too many problems. With neither the patience nor the money to get an iPhone when it comes out, I had to do something. Last night, I went out and got myself a Moto KRZR. I like it.

That Griffin Elevator that I wrote about last week arrived on Monday. I dig it…it’s a marked improvement over the ugly 3-ring binder that I was using as a stand. The presents-for-myself spree continues with a new order from CD Universe that I’m hoping to receive next week sometime:

• Kamelot One Cold Winter’s Night The new live DVD.
• Kamelot Karma One step closer to filling my Kam collection.
• After Forever Invisible Circles My first disc from a band I’ve been meaning to check out for quite a while.
• Threshold Hypothetical See above.
• Sonata Arctica Winterheart’s Guild This finishes my Sonata catalog.

…a pleasant surprise in my inbox! To elaborate: a couple days ago, I ordered a Griffin Elevator to replace the binder that I’m using as a laptop stand. I was surprised to get an email right away saying that it was backordered. I was prepared to wait a few weeks for the thing to ship. Instead, I got an email earlier today saying it’s en route and should arrive on Monday. Happy time!

Things that have been happening in the last while…My grandmother died a couple weeks ago. Yeah, that sucks. We were fairly close. She lived her last couple years in pretty rough shape, with emphysema and such…at least she’s not suffering anymore.

I got New Stuff! a new L-shaped desk, one of the metal-frame-with-glass-top deals. I dig it. Then I ordered a 20″ widescreen LCD from (gasp!) Dell, which came on Friday. I really dig that.

Musically:I picked up a guitar last week and actually played for the first time in a month or so. My get-up-and-go factor was a backing that was posted by one of the guys on Cyberjammin…here’s what came out of it: “Jammin’ With Jose” I added guitars and keyboards.

I’ve been invited to contribute a guitar solo to a song for the annual CJ holiday collection. I worked extensively on that on Monday. Unfortunately, that month of not playing softened my fingers enough to the point that I shredded a fingertip, so there won’t be any playing until that heals.

SGNR posted another interesting backing on CJ the other day and I felt compelled to do something with it. Based on the tone of the backing and my injured state, I decided to lay down some synth lead. It’s a bit sloppy in places and there’s one really sour pitch bend (should have bent a semitone up, but I bent a whole tone) but I think it came out alright: SGNR’s “Ode To No One In Particular”

I guess that’s all for now.