Today’s offering comes to us from the company that was given a new lease on life by Jim Dunlop Electronics after being defunct for several years. The company of note is Way Huge Electronics, founded and run by mister Jeorge Tripps in the 90’s. The line was extremely popular in the boutique pedal circuit and today’s pedal, the Green Rhino MkII, is a reissue of one of the original pedal designs. The Green Rhino Overdrive II was highly sought after for many years following Way Huge closing its doors and commanded several hundred dollars used. The reissue comes back with a vengeance and with a few key improvements while maintaining the tone that everyone loves. - Read Green Gus’s full review here.

Fans of Massey Plugins will be happy to see some additional features added to the DRT: Drum Replacement Tool. The original plugin detected drum hits and exported MIDI notes, allowing you to choose your preferred third-party plugin to trigger the audio. The new DRT v2.0 ($96) includes a feature-rich sample player, which allows you to use your favorite drum samples to replace or mix in with your existing drum tracks, while using the same friendly interface and precise hit detection algorithm as the original.

When the DRT was first introduced last year, it took a different approach than most drum replacement plugins. Instead of housing a library of audio drum samples, DRT was designed to quickly analyze your drum tracks and spit out a MIDI track of the hits you wanted to replace – allowing you to use your favorite third-party MIDI instrument plugin, synthesizer, or sample-player to blend with or replace your drum sounds.

The beauty of DRT is its simple and intuitive interface, which makes it easy to detect and filter out false triggers. Click here for my blog post on the detection algorithm and user interface from the original version, or take a look at the quick start guide that gives you an overview of all the features of the newest version.

Now, for those of us with MIDI-phobia, or who simply want to detect and replace our drum hits all in one plugin, there is DRT v2.0. The most significant change in this version is the inclusion of an audio sample player that can print the replaced or enhanced audio files right to your drum tracks.

The ‘Samples’ window in the plugin lets you import your audio samples (supported file types include .Wav, .Aiff, SDII and others). You can also preview them, arrange their playback order, and adjust their velocity (along with a number of other settings). There are six ‘Stacks’ that hold multiple audio samples. At each detected trigger, a sample of similar velocity to the trigger will play from one of the stacks. You can arrange or randomize the playback order of the stacks, allowing you to remove any ‘machine gun effect’ and replace drum hits without taking away the performance of the recorded drummer. You can also blend recorded samples or tones with your existing tracks using the provided wet/dry ratio.

As far as the hit detection settings go, there’s a pair of new settings in this version of DRT to help you filter out the drum hits you don’t want. The Gate slider puts a noise gate on the audio before running the detection algorithm, which helps get rid of bleed from unwanted sources on your tracks. The Minimum Trigger Separation setting allows you to adjust the minimum distance in milliseconds between detected triggers, reducing the occurrence of false double triggers.

Adding the beat detection abilities of the original DRT with an audio sample player makes this version doubly powerful when it comes to enhancing your drum sounds. Even with a number of new features and settings, the plugin is still easy to get comfortable with and start using. You can download the demo of DRT v2.0 here (PT 7.2 and higher recommended). With the demo version you can still export MIDI tracks and audition the audio sample replacement – but you’ll have to purchase the full version to print the triggered audio to a track, manually edit triggers, and unlock all other features. -Mike Bauer

The Palmer Root Effects line of guitar and bass stomp boxes are manufactured by Palmer Musical Instruments. Palmer is a German company, also well known for their line of heavy duty pro audio tools, including DI’s, components and stage gear.

From Native Instruments to Neumann, Steinberger to eMagic (before Apple bought them), I’ve got a pretty good track record with German made audio equipment. – Read Matt Rocker full review here.

Our staff bassist Ron Guensche received a Diamond Pedals Bass Compressors a few days ago and it sounds like he had fun testing it. This is a pedal that brings to bass players the high-grade optical compression previously only available to guitarists in their Compressor pedal. Read the full review here.

It’s rare to see a band mature as fast as Lucius did. Started as a mellow and rather ordinary duo of female singer songwriters, this project in the last 2 years or so has expanded and grown in unexpected, abnormal yet wonderful ways. Their impressive performance at our Deli NYC B.E.A.F. 2011 event showcased a band that, with a little imagination in the arrangement and performance departments, can take traditional songwriting to an entirely new level. Music fans (and industry) seem to be noticing, since they have started to sell out shows in NYC and Austin during SXSW. These two ladies can write good songs and sing beautifully, and with the help of the two boys in the band, put on a show at once emotional and powerful. One of the guys, drummer Dan Molad, is also in charge of recording the band, which mostly happens in the Brooklyn apartment he shares with singer Jess Wolfe. We asked him a few question related to that department. – Read the full interview here.

The T-Rex HOBO DRIVE is one of the best sounding, most flexible distortion pedals I’ve ever come across. That said, calling this pedal a distortion pedal is a little misleading; it’s less a distortion pedal, and more of a preamp.

Manufactured in Denmark and assembled in Taiwan, the HOBO DRIVE (yes, their website capitalizes both words entirely), is a solidly built, dual-function “overdrive amplifier simulator”. The enclosure is cleanly finished, the controls have a very smooth, professional feel, and the layout is spacious and intuitive. – Read Ron Guensche’s full review here.