TapperMike

Good for you Jan. If you enjoy what you are doing then follow your bliss. The world needs more bass players. Bass was always fun for me, never work. But I always feared that if I played bass often enough in a live situation I'd be relegated to playing bass permanently. It happened once in my early years of playing in groups (or just with other guitarists) I like playing bass but I've always considered myself a guitar player first and foremost. I've known a lot of guys who had to pay their bills playing music for a living and they played many instruments but the ones that always got them more gigs was bass playing. Eventually they'd settle in and make a career out of playing bass even if their heart wasn't fully into it. I could never do that. Even now when playing bass on the ztar it's mostly about a fun alternative or a needed thing to complete a song. It's never about me striving to be a better bassist. I play well enough to make me happy and that's all that matters. And I can still put down the bass and pick up a guitar. This isn't intended as a slap in the face to bass players. I respect what they do and appreciate their efforts, it's just not something I want to go full conversion on myself.

The jagged edge of a broken heart - Bering Strait How's that I looped the title from one and the artist name from the one before that. Nice little country band from russia that should have gotten greater recognition then they did.

I love Chet Baker's stuff although it sounds like he had a cold when he sung that one Gerry Raferty -Baker{/b]Street

As we've seen many of these video's time and time again in this thread I figured I'd spice things up by reaching for the obscure but not too obscure.

Moon Zappa - Valley Girl

Chicago - Beginnings

As some of you know I've been singing praises over my Yamaha all in one THR10c. It's a practice amp with amazingly accurate amp simulations, it's a portable stereo amplifier for mp3 players, It's an external sound card for computers and it's got some great firmware to access features one can't get from the physical panel. I'm starting to believe it was a collaboration project from Yamaha and Line6. I only just recently found out about Yamaha aquiring line6. I'm guessing a few jobs will be lost in the process. While most of the time I have less then favorable opinions of aquisitions and mergers this may be a really good thing for Yamaha. Yamaha makes some amazing mixers for TV, Movie, radio and houses of worship. The problem has been. They are rather quirky pieces of machinery that are hard to get used to working with. They have been losing ground to presounus and other companies with easier to manage ui's and greater versatility. Having something like the Line6 StageScape technology could be a real feather in Yamaha's pocket and return some of ground they have been losing in the mixer realm. I really really hope they have a hands on approach to the Variax. Even though the Tylers have faster processors then previous verions Line6 hasn't broadened the number of guitar sims through the years. Yamaha not really been seen as a leader in the guitar world could really use Variaz to beef up it's under appreciated electric guitar field. As well Guitarists who prefer all in one guitars really need an all in one guitar that embodies more then the current fair which line6 provides. Would it be so bad if variax had a few ibanez, bc rich, parker, prs or other notable guitars taht have made their mark on the industry post 1980.

@Tom, Re Asleep at the wheel. I had a Ray Benson signature guitar for awhile. My cousin has a grunge band named ...Iron Plaid

Logic was at one time a product designed for windows till apple bought it out and made it mac only. They could have made it for both but opted against that. Sad truely sad as Microsoft goes out of it's way to make Office available for mac users. Of course this would have meant that the pc verision would have been able to run vst's (unless apple disabled it) and the mac version wouldn't. Logic has been dummied down to look more like Garage band and features that were once available in Logic no longer are available do to dummying down for those upgrading from garage band. Apple isn't the only one who did that. When Sony aqured Acid from Vegas they too dummied down the interface and stripped several features out. I was a Acid Vegas user at the time and was actually making some side money doing mixdown work with it. When Sony came along and bought Acid they jacked up the price and stripped the features making it "Daw for Dummies" Eventually they recanted and jacked the price up again then released the "Acid Pro" version, But by then I'd had enough of anything Sony to bite. I love my vst's and to be honest once I moved from freeware to payware I found neither need nor desire to go back. I'm not inclined to use software that doesn't support vst's fully like......Abelton Live. I had terrible latency when using external vst's with live and couldn't figure out why. Others I know had no latency issues. It turned out they never used external sounds/effects instead they relied on the internal sounds only. Ableton has an issue I think it's called PDC. Each time you add an external vst/vsti the latency doubles. If you've got four external vst's or vsti's it quickly becomes unusable. This has been bugged for several years now but Abelton refuses to do anything about it because they want you to buy more sounds / effects from them rather then buying from third parties. So it's not all apple is evil with me, there is plenty of evil to go around. It seems like every daw except maybe reaper is including sounds and effects these days as a selling point of the daw. Which begs the question how much better is the new installment of the daw over the last one. Which each successive build of software the bloat adds up for minor features which don't really enhance the program but do add to processor and ram abuse. Studio One was hailed as the product that shook the industry up because they had a lean mean fighting machine. A lot of serious Cakewalk / Cubase / Live and other bigger name daw users switched to S1 overnight and didn't look back. It still had more features then ...Reaper but it was just as fast if not faster due to code optimization. Most of all S1 is stable even on pokey systems like my Vista desktop. Still in my Daw shoot out Studio One lost out to mixcraft. Affordable. upgradeable, strong feature sets. Easy for those new to daw's yet plenty of features to keep seasoned players like me happy and most of all stability/speed. .

That was some great playing. Here is one of my favorites

Love lift us up where we belong - Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFYtpTot7hQ#aid=P-G3iD2Z6JY

Well It's here and.... I'm really liking it. I'm having a hard time beliieving this thing is only ten watts but more on that later. To save myself a lot of typing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE6V3QqGppA After it arrived I pulled it out of the box and got familar with it away from the computer without reading the manual becase that's the type of real guy I am. Everything they say in the video is true. For the first 5 minutes of playing it I kept on saying to myself "Wow this is really ten watts" It's a very full sound due to the nearfield amp / speaker design. The guitar amp hits you in a full spatial stereo sound. It sounds like a amp from across the room as opposed to one that's a few feet away. So I went through all my guitars and all the inbox sounds. My Strat hasn't sounded as good in ten years not since I sold my traynor. It's so much more a tube amp type of sound then my Roland Cube. Just like the video explains the tone controls react like they would on the original amps it's not like the generic low/mid/hi eq settings on a solid state amp. So after a few hours of playing I was curious about the other goodies. It's got a usb and aside from having a separate stereio in it not only sends and returns audio from your computer like an external soundcard (which it is) but there is an editor which allows access to features which can't be gotten to across the top of the amp. This is where things get interesting. Per instructions on a little card I go to yamaha for the usb driver and cubase asio before connecting the amp to my computer. Naturally they have both 64 and 32 bit versions and.....my computer is 64bit but I still use a lot of 32bit daws and plugins. I want it to run with everything I've got. I download both the most current drivers for windows and.... My computer freaks out. the installer pushes up a little prompt that states "My processor has insufficent power. Damn you yamaha I'm not too old err my computer isn't that old it's still got plenty of power. So I did that with the 64bit driver set first. Okay maybe if I install the 32bit driver yammy software will play nice with processor/computer. So after a few attempts I get the non functioning drivers uninstalled dig down and find an older driver that does install and works with my computer. It was already fun just having really really good amp sims and playing around trying to figure out classic rock tones by going thru the amp models and adjusting the volume/gain/eq. All without fear or neighbor reprisal. It has not two but three volume controls for guitar on the amp. Which means you can get the tube saturation (emulation) from both the pre tubes and the power tubes. But I digress what I wanted at that point was to open up the computer editor and get the other features that one can't access from the box itself. I also wanted the external soundcard amp and speakers so I could mix the "guitar" sound with sounds from my computer. So finally with the joy of the drivers and THR editor installed I moved foreward to playing around with the internal tools like compressor, changing the speaker sims getting different reverbs (not just spring) out of it. Thank goodness it's not IKM guitar rig. I didn't want to dig through every amp sim known to man and some that aint. This thing has no latency whatsoever and has no aliasing (pod) and no noise (pandora) I've been enjoying the presets included in the THR 10C editor / librarian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukorEPls-lU#aid=P-JYWPb_IBc Not a single one is "What Steve Vai had for breakfast. It's all bread and butter classic rock tones that are extremely convincing. It has Five amp sims and then a flat which is like sending a signal direct out an acoustic and a bass preset model. The bass preset sounds like.... playing through a fender bassman to my ears (And I've owned one) Which is great for deep bodied warm clean tones from a guitar that sound...natural. The Acoustic is a bit of a misnomer. It's not an acoustic guitar simulator or one of those super bright sounds to pull up brash harmonics. It is infact more of a mic sim which is slightly darker distant tone but not "bassy" The deluxe, Bass and Acoustic sounds are all quite wonderful for pulling out jazz, .clean 60's/70's soft rock/pop/soul tones. There are "patch' sites where users have created unique patchs and you can create your own in the editor and store the patch/preset in the editor. If you haven't filled up your 5 memory slots on the THR you can store it directy to the thr disconnect it from the computer and carry the tone with you everywhere by the press of a button. That aint going to happen with me. My THR has replaced my M-Audio fast track pro. Real ASIO not ASIO4All. 24/48 in and out not 16/44.1 and the THR has separate amplification and speakers for the computer which sound great so I'm ditching my powered speakers for my computer as well. Did I mention this thing sounds awesome for an mp3 player/ computer amp? and it has a separate volume for the usb in/ audio in so I can mix the sounds in one box for listening to.

Eekk I wrote out about ten paragraphs, went looking for a link and lost it all. I really don't like adding too much effects to an acoustic guitar. Usually no compression and a little eq to none if I can help it. The first thing you have to get comfortable with is.... You and your acoustic instrument being a reflection of you. Sounds weird right? I've got a godin freeway sitting right next to me and I am not comfortable with the clean tones I'm getting out of it. It's simply not "me" I love the neck on this thing. It's extremely comfortable sitting or standing to play everything that I play. John McLaughlin has the exact same model and he's comfortable with it. Walter Becker who is a hero of mine (steely dan) has one and he'll occassionally pull his out during a live show and he's comforable with the sound. But I'm not. Recently I put a set of Dunlop "Wylde" strings on it and my god it doesn't sound anything like it did with plain old D'addarios or Fender nickel chromes. I'm not comfortable with the basic tone. Stop hold the presses. If you aren't comfortable with the essense of your tone adding effects on top of that is like "Chocolate Covered Sh!it" it still takes like/sounds like "sh!t" and that can't be covered up by processing. Me wanting for it to sound different isn't going to change a thing untill I go out and buy new more familar strings. So lets talk just about strings. going to a slightly thicker gauge string will give your tone a lot more body. But it also can work against you if you are fighting the strings too hard to hold down the strings. The harder one clamps down with the left often the harder one will attack the strings on the right. If you strive for a fluid picking style like I do it's going to go out the window for a bit. On the opposite side if you go to too light a gauge after playing with a thicker one you may still maintain the same type of attack as before. If you want a slightly brighter tone try backing off of the flatpick a bit before you consider going to a lighter gauge string. Be comfortable with your sound before recording. This is "who you are" you are not just going through the motions you are feeling it. Compression is used as a leveling device.bring up the quieter notes bring down the louder ones. If you are happy with the you that you are getting with your guitar and you are focusing first on your guitar playing then you won't have those extremes. You'll figure out just soft enough or just hard enough on your own so the dynamic range isn't so irregular. If you are distracted say... Trying to sing and play and putting all your focus on your singing well.... your guitar playing will suffer. Or distracted by other things like feelings of insecurity checking the levels etc. You want to be in your happy place when you record not in your distracted place. A lot of eq and compression happens before the mix. Tonewoods, strings, technique all shape the sound. Compression and EQ can suppress more then enhance the character of the song and the instrument. Next move on to the room and mic'ing. If you are mic'ing with a camera you are in essence mic'ing the room not the instrument. The further away the camera is from the guitar the more prevalent the room becomes You might want to prep the room but honestly a lavalier michropone cliped to the sound board will remove most if not all the room attibutes and give you a better signal to work with. Room you can always add later and better with any generic room reverb. But you may find you don't want to or need to. A good engineers motto is do no harm. You don't want to take away something from the sound by trying to add something else to it. This is a great practical article on mic'ing. http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/kb/reader.aspx/2007013311

I've watched this video where someone goes through the included software presets which you can send/store on it. And it looks like someone has made a patch library resource online. http://guitarpatches.com/patches.php?unit=THR10C This is going to be my soundcard replacement as well. It has a separate clean stereo line in and comes with cubase ai The signal sent to the computer over usb is both clean and amped separately. So I can either use the amp tones or reamp in my daw. I've got several vst amp modelers/effects racks including ik media's guitar rig.

I just bought a Yamaha THR 10C on ebay. Expect delivery sometime next week. My pignose (after having it for well over 30 years is giving off some hum. My Roland Cube is kind of a pain because it's next to impossible to dial in realistic tones untill it's at least at 6 and the cops come knocking at 4. The 10 c is the perfect version for me. I'd read some bad reports about earlier thr10's having bad circuitry and that the deluxe sound broke up to early. The 10x is the metal variety of the amp and not really what I want. The 10c on the otherhand has classic jazz, blues, and rock tones. The software that comes with the unit allows access to even more sounds not available by just twisting knobs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukorEPls-lU It should be lots of fun.

Cowgirl in the Sand - Neil Young http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zphUt_tp898

edit, yikes replied to the wrong post. Only A Fool Would Say That - Steely Dan

I used to be a very good saver. When ever there was something that I couldn't afford in a months time. I'd get a game plan together and put away X amount of dollars for that something special. Then I fell into the credit pit following bad advice. And it was killing me to cover the minimum let alone trying to pay down the debt. Now. I operate on my free money principle which isn't free. I take care of all my financial obligations and what's left over is free money that I'll usually spend on something of lesser value (like my newer guitars) I wish I could get back to being a good saver. Sock away X amount for a big ticket item. Something always gets in the way and I lose focus on the prize.

Don Henley - Heart of the Matter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xezg3z5IE8I&feature=kp

I recently trialed Studio One and... chose mixcraft. They both are lean smart built daws. Mixcraft doesn't make one pay extra to use third party plugins. If you pay extra you actually get extra. I had some problems with studio one producer where ... even though it was a trial and they said it would accept third party plugins I couldn't get them to load. Mixcraft vs Abelton. If your main concern is edm. The choice is simple ... Abelton live I've got Live Lite which comes packaged with many soundcards. It's only limitation is the amount of tracks you can use per scene. Abelton has always had latency issues in regards to midi input for me. It's extremely noticiable. I've learned to compensate but I'd rather not. Sometimes I think they add all those time correction/quantizing stuff in to make up for the fact it's so hard to get things right the first time. Granted I don't have the worlds fastest computer but... Mixcraft is great for midi input it's also successively better (though not perfect) for audio. If you have money to spend and have not as of yet. I'd advise a good soundcard first. Usually soundcards (especially Avid / m-audio) have "limited edition" daws included like Live Lite or cubasis. Because they are free they have a little less features but.... you don't have to worry about the trial expiring so you can get a really good run for your time / money efforts.

Just to add in Robert Conti - the man and the guitar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcKkNZc4goU

It was one of those... too good to be true, turning out to be exactly that. I've had a Birdland and I've had a es 175 and I've had a 335. But try to buy one now and well that's just too much money. I went to a few stores last year. I tried some washburn archtops and they were priced thru the roof with action higher then I've got this thing set. I couldn't play the damn things and they started about 1.2k I checked out Godins (and I have three godins already) and the 5th ave's also had the action set stupid high with 15's on it I also looked at the LaSalle big bos Samicks. Well guess what. I had a 605 (long before bennet or valley arts) I played them and at least they were coming down in price but... I was afraid of what would happen in a few years. My previous samick deep jazz box took a crap on me after about 5 years. I also checked out the Royale's but.... My Raven West sounds better for a small semi hollow body and has better action. The junk boxes are all junk. I've read and seen so many issues with Epi's and Loar's it isn't even funny. The new standard high end archtops are all around 4k or more. The midline high quality playable ones start around 1500 in store at least. Less online but.... when you buy online say...sweetwater, music123/musician's friend or even GC. They don't touch the thing except to ship it. They don't know what's in the box and they aren't going to do extra's like..see if it needs to be returned or setup. Only a very very few brick and mortar's will even do a basic setup anymore. And the ones that I went to didn't have anything that truely impressed me. The only thing that really catches my eye and ear for under 4k right now are ...Conti's and Eastman's I tried bidding on a eastman AR371 but I couldn't hold my ground. It finally sold used right around 1K. The things that impress me most about Conti guitars. 1. They are made in the same factory as my Raven West. 2. Like Raven West.... The guitar gets a full inspection and setup before it ships 3. It's a solid 17 inch spruce top, not a laminate. 4. It's a slimmer neck then reguiar jazz boxes with an ebony fretboard and 24 frets. 5. It delivers amazingly even response across the neck 6. It just sounds amazing. I think I should just leave the Conti in the Dream guitars realm.

It's going back. I asked the seller specifically about the neck in regards to straightness, truss rod. condition of the frets his reply was that it was perfect and that he had a local tech do a setup before he shipped. The action was stupid high when it arrived. The neck is warped and the truss rod is useless. The tone is great but It's impossible to play in tune. I spent 6 hours with it yesterday trying to get a reasonable action out of it. Lowering the bridge trying to adjust the truss rod which spins rather freely. It's just heartbreaking.. It's a beautiful body with a beautiful tone that is just stunning. But even when all is said and done it still is off by more then a few cents and I can't get it to stay in tune because of the crappy tuning pegs.

I'm a jazz player but I don't currently have a jazz box. I've had more then a few in the past and always thought about getting another one. Last year I went out looking at washburn's, godin's, samicks and outrageously priced gibsons. The current cheapo's (loar) sound like crap acoustically and electrically. The thing is in the current market you go from $400USD to 1200 USD in a heartbeat. and you really don't hit the mark untill you are near 2k. All way to deep for my pockets. If I had my druthers and money was no object I'd go for a Robert Conti Guitar. Well I have no druthers and money is an object. So I'm getting what I think is the next closest thing. An original Michael Kelly Vibe These are more like Howard Roberts Fusion guitars in appearance and I'm assuming the tone isn't far from it either. There has been some work done to the instrument as it has the same fault gibson headstocks have So it's not new by a long shot I may have to give it a day or two to acclimate. It's coming from AZ (hot, dry) to MI (cold moist)

I used to change all my guitar strings every two weeks. And that was crazy because I had a lot of guitars. If you are looking for cheap strings on the net (US) Then I'd suggest ... http://juststrings.com or http://stringsandbeyond.com I used to experiment with lots of different strings. Then when I went to performing 5 nights a week I locked it down to D'addario XL's 09's Some of my guitars haven't seen a string change in years. A little fastfret does wonders for cleaning the sound, brightening the tone and reducing the squeak. Not to mention your finges will glide / slide slippy. I rarely change my strings these days. Some have gone years. Next month I'm going to restring all of them. I'm trying to build up my callouses. I just ordered a serious jazz box I'd love to put flatwound 13's on it but my fingers can't handle it right now. When it arrives I'll play the heck out of it and then in a month I'll decide on the flatwound gauged I'll move up to. It might be 12's