Pro Sound Blog

There’s an armpit of a town about an hour north of here we play gigs in. This town is like the freaking twilight zone. It’s a combination of dumbass rednecks who love Lynard Skynard and mullet wearing city slickers who listen to Metallica. My band plays neither of those.

Strange thing about this town (among many) is that the clubs cycle crowds. One month a certain club is the hot place and sells out constantly. Next month it’s a ghost town.

Fortunately (I guess) we were at the hopping place and played a fairly successful gig. The stage is in the back of the club. There’s a back patio about 12 feet deep and then the parking lot. The load out is easy: off the stage, 12 feet of patio into trunk of car.

I have to pack my gear in a certain order for it to fight right. I loaded out my hardware case, ran back inside to grab a couple of drums, and when I got back outside my hardware case was gone. This had to be no more than 30-45 seconds.

Inside my hardware case are all the stands and pedals for my kit, drum sticks and about 300 pairs of ear plugs. What a haul for this asshole eh? For his efforts he gets a hi hat stand with no hi hats, a bass drum pedal with no bass drum, bass drum legs with no bass drum, a tom mount with no tom, a snare stand with no snare, a drum stool with no top and 300 pairs of ear plugs. How much crack can he buy after he pawns that useless shit at the pawn shop?

Much of that hardware had to be special ordered to be replaced…. Ever order a drum stool without the stool?

So to the asshole who stole my hardware case: I hope you got a great hit of crack. Maybe you got lucky, overdosed and choked to death on your own vomit.

mediaguru Gear, Gigs, Rants

A Marshall guitar rig can cost you upwards of $3000. What about a Marshall rig that mixes your guitar with thousands of your favorite tunes, runs off of a battery, weighs in at only a few ounces and fits in your shirt pocket?

For a mere 1% of the dough you’d spend on a Marshall ($29.99), you can pick up a JamPod from DVForge (www.dvforge.com).

Most musicians are gear freaks. As a Mac user I love cool gadgets that not only serve a useful purpose but look cool as well. The JamPod fits the “cool looking but useful” toy category a musician and Mac user would want.

The JamPod is a tiny guitar amplifier that plugs into the top of any Apple music player that has the 3.3 volt DC power plug. Since it gets it’s power from the iPod, there is no power cable. The JamPod lets you play your guitar, bass or other electronic instrument along with the music from your iPod, through your iPod’s headphones. You can also do what I did, which is plug the JamPod’s output into a stereo or sound system for monitoring.

The 2 foot cable included with the JamPod converts a standard 1/4″ guitar output to the 1/8″ mini needed. I would recommend a longer cable. With the included 2 foot cable, it’s easy to move and pull your iPod off the table onto the floor (like I did). The iPod and JamPod survived the fall just fine.

I jammed along with AC/DC’s “Back In Black” for starters. I adjusted guitar’s balance with the music by tweaking the iPod’s volume level. I was able to give my Stratocaster some distortion by turning it’s volume up high. Next was some old Who. I went for a little cleaner sound by backing my Strat’s volume down.

A regular guitar amp will have a “gain” knob which adjusts the level of signal going to the pre-amp. A low signal going to the pre-amp results in a “clean” guitar sound. Driving a high signal into the pre-amp results in a “distorted” signal. With the JamPod the volume knob on your guitar serves the same purpose as the regular amp’s gain knob. Adjusting the volume level from your guitar low creates a more “clean” sound. Cranking up your guitar’s output will drive the JamPod’s pre-amp harder, creating a distortion sound.

The JamPod’s distortion tone is good enough for a practice amp yes, but not suitable for studio or live applications. I don’t think Pete Townsend or Eric Clapton will be using it on their next albums.

The portability and convenience of the JamPod is great. I love having an iTunes library practice amp in my pocket or my laptop bag.

I’d love to see a guitar tuner built into the JamPod which uses the iPod’s display. I’d also love to see a future version of the JamPod that has some internal processing such as delay, reverb, chorus etc. Perhaps an even more fancy future JamPod could record to the iPod!

For $29.99 you can’t go wrong with a JamPod. To quote DVForge’s web site:
“If that’s not worth thirty-bucks, we don’t know what is.”

I agree.

mediaguru Gear

There’s a strip club in town that used to be one of the best spots for local music. When local music died, they turned to strippers. You have to pay the bills somehow.

One time my band was playing a gig with one other band at this club. We were having a terrible time with the sound man and the PA sounded awful. I finally decided to invade the soundman’s territory and see if I could make the PA sound any better.

The mains just sounded strange. I looked at the console and it looked OK. I found my way to the graphic EQ that controlled the mains and I found the problem. The EQ didn’t look anything like it should have. Many of the 31 frequencies were boosted that I’d never dream of boosting. Many were cut that obviously from the sound of it needed to be boosted. The EQ did look very “pretty” though. The knobs were neatly arranged in kind of an ocean wave line. When I went to set all the sliders to a better sounding setting, the soundman threw a fit and wouldn’t let me touch it.

It was at that point that I looked down at the magazine this bonehead sound man was reading. The mag was a typical audio or guitar player magazine type. It was opened to an advertisement for the exact EQ this sound man had installed! I then figured it all out. The advertisement had a really neat picture of this EQ and they had arranged all the 31 sliders in a very attractive line that looked like….an ocean wave.

So rather than knowing anything about sound and how to adjust it. This moron of a sound man put the sliders on his new EQ just like the ad in the magazine.

mediaguru Boneheads, Gear, Gigs, Musicians

I stood next to this Solid State Logic console yesterday. Unfortunately the console was in a crate and may be in a crate for the next 2 years.

I met an interesting guy who is just like me. He is the owner of this beautiful SSL console. He owns a studio and does CD/DVD duplication just like me. The only difference between me and him is his studio and duplication setup is about 100x bigger than mine. Right now his duplication business is going so crazy that he doesn’t have time to set up his SSL…What a rough problem to have.

mediaguru Gear, Recording

On my last post I talked about my guitar player’s problem with his tubes falling out of his amp at the gig two nights ago.

At last night’s gig he solved the problem by setting his amp up on stage upside down…

mediaguru Boneheads, Gear, Gigs

Just an FYI for those of you who are new here. PSB has an entire FORUM section for you to use and enjoy! Please join up and join in!

mediaguru Boneheads, Gear, Gigs, Musicians, Random, Rants, Recording

Remember that band I wrote about whose bass player fell asleep in the mix? This is the companion story.

That same band had a cocky guitar player who thought he was hot shit…. Wait a minute. Most guitar players think that. Anyway, this guy’s amp was awesome. It had more tubes than any other I have seen. It practically lit up the room.

When I looked closer I realized the tubes were not tubes at all. They were blue lights setup to look like tubes. This thing was solid state all the way.

mediaguru Boneheads, Gear, Musicians, Recording

OH MAN ARE THESE COOL! AND CHEAP!!! The computer would will never be the same.

A 1.25ghz G4 with hard drive, combo cd-r/dvd, 256 megs of ram for 499? Unbelievable. I want 5 of them. Oh and it’s like 2″ tall and about 5×6″ in size???!!! wow.

Face reality Dell, Gateway, Compaq: Your engineers have NOTHING on Apple’s engineers….nothing.

mediaguru Gear

I listen to my iPod when I mow the lawn. With this new feature I may never finish the lawn..

“Portable MP3 players and other handheld media toys are this year’s must-have geek gadgets. The latest thing is Apple’s new-generation iPod — the iPod Photo — which does for pictures what the original iPod did for music. Now you can view individual images or entire slide shows in the palm of your hand at the tap of a button to beautify your dull commute or just to pass the time in the lecture hall.

Playboy has harnessed this latest digital innovation so some of our sexiest girls next door can be added right to your portable player. Simply download this free image gallery to your desktop from Playboy.com and upload it to your iPod Photo handheld device. If iPod Photo is “a feast for the eyes” on its own, it’s a veritable ocular orgy now that Playboy.com has dialed up the heat a few notches.”

Click here for more info.

mediaguru Gear, Random

The story you are about to read is fiction.

Some fans of my band had a problem with a jerk of a club owner one night. The club was a dive and was about ready to go out of business. These fans were so mad they wanted to get back and the owner for being such an ahole.

So they decided that they were going to “acquire” the club’s PA. The PA had a pair of high speakers with 15″ cones and horns. The subs were 18″. These were of a brand to be unnamed at this time but I understand they were from Lansing. There were also a few wedge monitors, cables and more.

Ok their plan is in place except for one problem: They are too drunk to drive. So they call a cab. When the cab arrives they inform the cabbie that they’re stealing the PA from this club. The cabbie then volunteers to help them because he too has been wronged by the ahole club owner. The cabbie even helps them load the speakers out of the club.

Only about 1/2 of the PA fits into the cab. So they actually load the first half, take it home and return for the other half!

mediaguru Gear, Gigs, Random