Every effect manufacturer, from tiny boutique companies to huge multinational conglomerates, makes at least one distortion pedal. So when Fulltone announced the GT500, my first question was: “why?” Why are they competing with their own product line–which already contains some great distortions, overdrives, and fuzzes–in a market that could already be described as saturated?
I did a little research and decided try it out. Essentially, the GT500 is two effects combined in one sturdy steel enclosure: an overdrive/boost and a distortion. The unit’s controls are simply laid out, and even a novice user should be able to plug it in and start without even glancing at the manual. The really ingenious feature of the GT500 is a tiny toggle switch that allows you to decide the signal path—whether it goes from overdrive to distortion, or vice-versa.
But enough about design. What does it sound like? The overdrive section is fairly transparent; it can give you everything from a gentle push for your preamp tubes to an absolutely alarming amount of volume, without drastically changing your tone. The EQ controls are effective, without being extreme. I was able to find a setting that I liked pretty quickly. The distortion side does exactly what it should – provide a ton of gain and volume with some radical EQ options. The real magic with GT500 comes when you turn on both sections and start experimenting with the signal path toggle switch. With the distortion first, adding in the overdrive/boost gives a great lift for soloing or from transitioning from verse to chorus. Alternatively, with the overdrive section feeding into the distortion, this pedal becomes a totally different animal. The signal becomes super-compressed and fuzzed out.
With a little experimentation, the GT500 goes from mild-mannered bus driver to evil scientist. There are two things that the GT500 will not do for you. One: It will not make you metal. Even at its most distorted, the GT500 has a fuzzy, indie-rock feel. Think Big Muff, not Metal Zone. Two: It will not make a bad amp sound good. This unit works with your amp, not in spite of it. If your amp sounds bad, the GT500 will not fix it. Unless you’re the kind of player that spends your evenings shredding Anthrax riffs through your Crate amp, I recommend giving this box a try. - Matt Kane
A dynamic microphone designed for live performance use, the Electro-Voice PL80a is a fantastic sounding mic that delivers world-class performance at a price that every musician can afford. We began testing the mic before we had any idea of its price, and almost everyone who spent time using it thought it was a much pricier microphone.
The PL80a has a bright top end that let vocals cut through mixes beautifully, and its output is extremely hot, making it easy to get strong signal levels without pushing your PA system to the edge of feedback. This is mostly due to the fact that its super-cardioid polar pattern creates a narrower “sweet spot” for the mic, and because of this the PL80a does a great job of rejecting off-axis sound.
The frequency response of the PL80a is quite a bit different than the familiar SM-58, and this contributes greatly to the sonic difference. Low-end response ends 30 dB higher in the PL80a (at 80 Hz), and our vocalists in the baritone range appreciated that there was slightly less boominess or lack of clarity in the low end of their vocals.
On the high end of the frequency response, the PL80a had more “air” and overall brilliance to the tone.
The Electro-Voice PL80a is one of the best sounding dynamic vocal mics we’ve had the pleasure of singing through, and it is well suited to a wide range of vocalists in any genre that calls for crystal clear vocals. In particular, soft voiced singers, who need an extra push in volume in a live situation, should definitely try it – at little more than $100 street price (MSRP $247.50), this is a small investment that could make a big difference. - Read the full review here.
You won’t find Talk Normal’s songs on the set list come karaoke night, but neither Sonic Youth or Ut, obvious Talk Normal influences. The band’s choice of rough, atonal sound over a central melody gives them a decidedly No Wave sound. Add to that repetitive and short lyrics concentrated on themes of human contradiction, isolation, and darkness, and this “noise” truly hits upon a primal nerve. The minimal, pulsating drumming of Andrya Ambro and the scratchy chords and simple riffs of Sarah Register often create a violent build-up of tension, while the controlled whining of the near-monotone vocals provide an almost tangible sense of eerie release. Though this audio style alone is powerful, at its heart, the performance aspect of the genre remains central. I appreciated “In a Strangeland” (from their recent “Sugarland” release) infinitely more while watching thevideo – Andrya and Sarah displaying shadowy and possessed facial expressions as they attacked their instruments and pleaded, isolated within a black void – it really sums them up. Vecchio’s interviewed the band about their recording process here.
There are Beatles fans and there are Beatles fans, but there’s a particular kind of Beatles fan that is unique – that is, the recording engineer geek Beatles fan. Many people (almost everybody) loves the songs, but few of us actually worship the way the songs sound. And even fewer of us really dig into how those songs were recorded and why the results come across as so special even today. Fewer still are moved to spend their time, indeed their lives, trying to create those special kinds of sonic footprints for themselves.
But as big of a recording engineer geek Beatles fan as you may have thought you were, Kevin Ryan and Bryan Kehew have completely outdone you. They have spent years of their lives compiling an AMAZINGLY detailed book, appropriately titled “Recording The Beatles.”
I absolutely love this book. It starts off with the background stories of Abbey Road Studios itself, the staff, the culture, the gear (piece by piece, mic by mic), the instruments, etc. Basically every detail you could want to know. You might imagine that such details could come across as dry, but Ryan and Kehew make this book read like a narrative. This book even drew me into the more technical stuff, and I am not very technical.
After all of the background info the book goes into specifics about the process behind every record and breaks it up year by year. The authors were actually granted permission to sift through Abbey Road’s archives, even reading the original take sheets from the sessions, to share details about what instruments were recorded to which tracks and how they were bounced. Interviews with the original staff provided details about mic choice, and mic and instrument placement in the room. Whenever possible they even provide diagrams of the sessions. It’s crazy! I love it!
This book not only answered many lingering questions I’ve had for a long time about those records, but it also peeled away a layer and brought me closer to the music. It gave me fresh ears on this material that has been with me for as long as I can remember. It’s really fun to read about a session, even see a diagram of how the room was laid out and then immerse yourself in the recording. It’s quite transportive.
“Recording The Beatles” is available only at www.recordingthebeatles.com. Visit the website for previews, reviews and more.
I’ve been getting a lot of pressure from the singer in my band to hook him up with effects for his vocals lately. I’ve been reluctant to put together a vocal effects system for him because of the usually kludgey nature of adding effects to live vocals: running a mic straight into a guitar stomp box, then into a mic preamp. This tends to translate into anemic sound, noisy signal and angry live sound engineers.
The VE-20 is typical Boss, and I say that in a complimentary way: Boss effects tend to do what their box says they’re going to do, and are built solidly. The VE-20 is no exception: sturdy metal construction in a twin pedal housing (the left pedal controls global bypass and loop recording, the right pedal controls harmony bypass and patch selection, or can be assigned to several other functions as well. On the back panel, the input is a combo jack accepting either an XLR (with a full +48vdc phantom available) or 1/4” input. Outputs are a stereo pair of XLRs running at mic level, and a 1/4” stereo line / headphone jack.
The VE-20 is sort of a “greatest hits” vocal processor: it has the majority of effects one would expect in a vocal stomp box: pitch correction, harmonization, compression, modulation, delay, and reverb. It also has looping capabilities.
Sound-wise, it’s a very clean unit. I tested it with a few microphones, including an EV BK-1 condenser, Shure sm57, sm58 and Beta 58 dynamic mics, as well as pre-recorded tracks reamped via a Radial J48 DI. I never felt the VE-20 was robbing the input signal of any high or low frequency content, and did not notice any sonic ugliness like RF or digital clocking noise piggybacking on the audio.
The slate of effects range from bread-and-butter to special effects. The factory presets are surprisingly good right out of the box, and offer a good tour of the unit’s capabilities. I really liked the tin-can sounding Radio effect, which would allow my singer to leave his megaphone at home. The chorus has a good, rich tone to it, and the distortion is usable, if not anything to write home about. Strobe is a square wave tremolo effect, and I can see getting some good use out of that. The delays and reverbs are no-frills, but solid sounding.
The VE-20’s pitch correction comes in 4 flavors: soft, hard, electronic and robot. Soft is very clean, almost not noticeable. Hard begins to show some of the artificial edges of the pitch correction, and electronic brings these edges intentionally into clear focus. Robot shifts all input audio into a single, metallic, user-defined note.
Harmonization and Doubling: Two harmony voices can be assigned, panned, and mixed to taste. They also can be gender dialed to be sort of more masculine or feminine. While you’re not going to convince any one you’ve gone through reassignment surgery, it is fun and useful nonetheless. The doubling setting does a decent quick ‘n’ dirty ’80s group vocals in a box. Setting the key signature (done on a patch-by-patch basis), is essential to this process, and once done, the VE-20 does a good job of tracking the harmony parts.
While the quality of the effects is good, parameter control could be deeper.
The looping functionality is a nice bonus, but should be thought of as just that: a bonus. It gives you 38 seconds of loop time with sound-on-sound dubbing. It sounds very good, appearing to be full-frequency, but unfortunately, the loop is not stored in non-volatile memory. As soon as you stop loop playback, the loop is lost forever. I would actually have preferred to have some kind of a feedback-destroyer feature in lieu of looping: this unit is capable of creating violent jumps in tone and volume patch to patch, and it would be nice to have some kind of safety net to minimize feedback problems.
Operationally, the VE-20 is much more of a rack processor than it is a stompbox. To clarify, this box is menu driven, designed to be used on a patch-by-patch basis, not for quick, on-the-fly changes. Success with this unit requires spending time crafting patches, not twisting knobs in real time.
Patch changes are done in one of two ways, either with the data entry knob on the top, or via the foot pedals. Spinning the data knob instantly changes the loaded patch – great for auditioning new sounds quickly. Holding the right pedal down for more than 2 seconds allows the pedals scroll through the patches. This should be printed on the VE-20 itself (it’s only mentioned in the manual).
Overall, the VE-20 is a good offering for the price (street, just shy of $250). It lacks some features I would want in a dedicated live vocal processor: feedback suppression, deeper parameter control, tap tempo, static memory for loops, support for A=something-other-than-440Hz, but shines in other areas: clean sound, usable pitch correction, good harmonization.
Ron Guensche is an audio engineer and bassist in the San Francisco bay area.
A couple months ago I mentioned a new amp maker, At Mars Amplification. ( http://atmarsamps.com)
At Mars is a boutique guitar amp maker out of Minnesota. Their flagship product is the “Filmosound” amp. “Filmosound” was the branding on the audio amplifiers from vintage Bell & Howell film projectors. At Mars takes the chassis from these units and builds a point to point circuit from scratch. Point to point means no circuit boards, which means a cleaner signal path.
The most common model of Filmosound is “The Specialist”. The amp is loosely based on the circuit in the original Fender Deluxe Amps (the tweed deluxe 5E3). It’s a 15 watt head, with one volume and one tone knob. That’s one major difference from the original tweeds, which had a normal and a bright channel. I usually translated those two channels as single coil (normal) and humbucker (bright).
I got my hands on one during a trip to Minneapolis for a gig. I got to play the amp on stage, and then brought it home to New York to test in the studio. You’ve heard people say “this amp packs a lot of punch into a small package” a million times. But seriously, I put this little guy on top of a Marshall 4×12 cabinet, and played in a 500 person venue (without adding anything to the monitors) and it rocked! Then, I brought it home on the plane, and was able to carry it on! It fit in the overhead bin more comfortably than anyone else’s baggage!!
I played a nice custom shop Strat for the live show, and I’ve never heard single coils sound so good. The signature “bite” was there, but with a meaty, low-mid punch rarely heard from a stock Fender. The amp displays an amazing sensitivity to picking and strumming dynamics, typical of “Class A” type amps. The volume increases quickly from 0 to 3 on the dial, and from there you are gradually adding more gain (overdrive) than volume. When you hit 8 to 10, something really cool happens. The volume actually decreases a bit, as you get this highly compressed, spongy, saturated distortion. Think Neil Young “Hey Hey, My My” or countless other Crazy Horse recordings.
If you’re looking for a loud, clean tone on stage you might want to stick with your Fender Twin. But the beauty of this little guy is the way you’re able to get to the “sweet spot” of tube distortion at a reasonable volume. Compare this to a Marshall or a Mesa Boogie where you’re hard pressed to get the master volume past 1.5 in most situations. You’re not “pushing” the amp hard enough to put any strain on the power tubes and hear the amplifier’s optimal operating range.
This is what makes the specialist sing in the studio. I put the volume at high noon, where a light touch gave me a bitey clean tone, and a hard strum started a growl! I ran it through a 4×10” cabinet where it was extremely “full range” frequency wise, and through a single 12” Celestian it had amazing clarity and focus, that just cut through a mix with almost no EQ.
To understand what’s going on inside the amp, I’ll quote the At Mars website: “This amp is driven by a pair of 6V6 power tubes with the power supply rectified by the 5Y3 rectifier tube. The front end normally uses a 12AT7 and 12AX7 for the preamp and driver/phase inverter. However both of these tubes can be substituted with any tube from the 12AU7 family to provide a variety of gain structures based on your preferences.”
That sounded like an invitation, so I had to start swapping tubes. I was wondering if I could get a bit more clean headroom before the amp started getting chunky, especially when using it live with any of my Gibsons. I swapped the 12AT7 preamp tube for the less powerful 12AU7, and stepped the phase inverter down from 12AX7 to 12AT7. For me that was the sweet spot. The volume increased more gradually from 0 to 3, and I was able to get up to 4 or 5 before the amp started breaking up. There was definitely no loss of volume or power with this change. Going more extreme, putting two 12AX7s together turned the specialist into a searing hot rod, and two 12AU7s made a very clean and clear latter day Fender tone. This may seem more like a comparison of preamp tubes here, but the point is that the Specialist is such a great implementation of a very simple design, that you’re really able to make some significant changes to the tone with a single tube swap. I’ve tried similar experiments on Mesa Boogie and Ampeg amps at my studio with intangible results, due to the six preamp tubes in these amps!
At Mars amps are currently made in very small batches and customized to your specs without too much extra turnaround time or an exorbitant cost increase. (These amps are amazingly affordable for what you get, especially compared to the originals they duplicate, or other boutique amps) That being said, I might request one of their optional gain cut or half power switches. The gain cut would be nice if you’re not as nerdy or adventurous as me about swapping tubes for different gigs or sessions. The half power will let you get the tone you want without overpowering your rehearsal mates with an amp thats about the size of a lunchbox! Pair it with one of their matched cabinets in basically any tolex finish you can find, and you’ll have a great little rig that looks as cool as it sounds. Four Stars for AtMars!
The latest addition to the Abbey Road Plugins lineup is the RS124 compressor. The RS124 was a compressor that Abbey Road was known to make great use of throughout the 60’s, and it was considered to be an integral part of their drum sound on many famous recordings.
Many of the custom pieces of gear from Abbey Road were actually modified versions of existing units. For example, the preamps in their famous REDD consoles, also used throughout the 60’s, were in-house modified Telefunken pres. In the case of the RS124, the EMI engineering team at Abbey Road took the American-made Altec 436B tube compressor and made it their own. Mainly, they took steps to make it work more efficiently with their gear and added a few important features – an output level knob and a “recovery” knob, which controls the release time.
So, the RS124 units are basically pieces of gear to die for. Although I haven’t used the real units myself, I can safely say that this is a really great sounding compressor with its own unique sonic footprint: very smooth and slightly punchy with a lot of character. I found it very usable on everything, but for me this compressor really wowed on bass. I have a penchant for 60’s hollow body basses with flat wound strings, and the RS124 really brought out that quirky thumpiness that I live for without over-woofing the low end.
To make the software version, Abbey Road modeled the three best units that they had in their collection, so you actually get three different RS124’s! It’s awesome to be able to pick from the slightly different units – it gives you that added flexibility and that added analog feel. Amazingly, it goes for only $335 for the RTAS/VST/AU version and $560 for the TDM version. Check out www.abbeyroadplugins.com for more info.
There are many iconic synths from the 80’s whose sounds were the hallmark of the era. But of the many great synths of that decade, probably the most iconic was the Jupiter 8 by Roland. It was the primary synth used throughout Duran Duran’s “Rio” album, and Howard Jones practically made his career playing a Jupiter 8.
The Jupiter 8 was very flexible and you could sculpt an incredible range of usable sounds with it – anything from drum sounds to organ or choir-type sounds to chirpy arpeggiated sounds a la “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Can you tell I worship that album? So great, let’s go buy one! Woops… an original vintage Jupiter 8 goes for about $7,000. :(
Fortunately Arturia has created a soft synth version for us called the Jupiter-8V that has fully won people over. In fact, it’s so amazing that Mr. Jupiter 8 himself, Howard Jones, has given it his endorsement. It sports all of the same modules as the original (LFO, two VCO’s, filters and envelopes, of course the famous arpeggiator, etc.), plus the folks at Arturia have added some new things – various LFO types, a step sequencer, a suite of built-in effects and more.
I downloaded the demo and I had a blast flipping through the presets and making my own sounds. That’s a great headspace to be in when you’re making music. After all, the most important thing about a piece of gear is whether it inspires you to create.
So what’s the downside? Well, my experience using analog synths versus virtual synths is that the virtual instruments generally lack a certain “grit.” I don’t know how else to say it other than that the real thing creates subtle anomalies that are pleasing, whereas the virtual examples seem just a tad cleaner. But you might consider that a good thing, depending on your point of view. Let’s weigh all of the factors and name the winner:
Price: Arturia Jupiter-8V.
Convenience (physical storage space and setting recallability): Arturia Jupiter-8V.
Features beyond the original design: Arturia Jupiter-8V.
Subtle je ne sais quoi that will mostly get lost in your mix anyway: Roland Jupiter 8.
For me, having an actual vintage Jupiter 8 is cost prohibitive, but if it weren’t the advantages over Arturia’s Jupter-8V are slim-to-none. This software really is something that you have to check out. Visit www.arturia.com and demo the Jupiter-8V for yourself. – Michael Vecchio
Many pedals work just fine with only one setting at a time for their sound – just twist a few knobs to taste and you’ve got your sound. But when it comes to analog or digital delay, there are so many variations on the sonic result that one setting can’t begin to cover all the sounds a delay lover will need: simple eighth note patterns that repeat hundreds of times, dotted quarter note patterns that groove to syncopated rhythms, slap-back echoes, and so on.
For many of us, flexibility related to setting our delays has required investment in rack-mounted signal processors and MIDI foot controllers, but with the choice of delay units currently available, many players can seriously rethink their dependency on rack-mounted delay units.
The three pedals we looked at this month – the Boss DD-20 Giga Delay, Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler, and Rocktron Cyborg Digital Delay – all have internal memory that enables them to store numerous delay settings, many of which are immediately available at the stomp of a button. – Full article here.
First things first: This is a keyboard controller intended only for use with a computer. There is a USB port but no MIDI ports - you won’t be using this as a gigging controller for any rack mounted synths or samplers you might have. However, this is a very valuable tool for the home-studio musician.
The 61 key “synth weighted” keyboard comes with a whole lot of functionality, including 9 faders, 9 buttons, 8 rotary knobs, and basic transport and function controls. The big sell with this controller is how easily it integrates into a number of third-party DAWs, including Live, Reason, Record, GargageBand, Logic, Cubase, and even Pro Tools!
I started there and tried to plug and play my way through a few popular programs. The installer’s interface was a bit confusing, but after that, getting started was as simple as the 2 page quick start guide. Thanks to the installed “Direct Link” drivers for Pro Tools, I could easily choose the Oxygen as a peripheral in Pro Tools (as you would with a pro control, motor mix, etc) and then select the “Direct Link” preset on the Oxygen 61.
Sure enough, the eight sliders were controlling the first 8 tracks of volume, the buttons below the slider activated the mutes, and the eight knobs the pan (read the manual to find out how to solo tracks as well). The transport controls also worked like a charm.
If you can make it to the appendix of the manual, you will find a few more “hidden functions” for the Pro Tools transport, like the invaluable “undo” keystroke. All this allows for a significant amount of recording and tweaking without touching your computer keyboard – which we like a lot.
Next came the promise of adjusting plug in parameters with the Oxygen’s 8 rotary knobs. This functionality had always been reserved for high-end Digidesign or Mackie control surfaces. But M-Audio, being a subsidiary of Digidesign (recently rebranded as Avid), is leveraging the power of the new PT 8 “plug-in mapping” feature. The 8 rotary knobs can serve as the first 8 controls on whatever plug-in is open at the time. Thanks to plug-in mapping, you can decide which 8 virtual knobs deserve your tactile control, and in what order. Amazingly, the software relinquishes control of the pan knobs to plug in controls seamlessly when a plug in window is open. It was very satisfying to adjust all my favorite plug-ins with ease in Pro Tools.
The control surface functions are definitely handy. Just being able to start and stop playback at the keyboard makes recording so much easier. The knobs and sliders are much more valuable when used on synths and plug-ins though.
All in all, for under $200, you’d be hard pressed to find a more valuable multi-purpose studio tool. The 49 key and 25 key models offer similar functionality. For those more interested in the control functions, the 25 key on your desktop would be a space saving way to go. But if Avid’s slow take over of other audio companies leads to even more innovation and co-operation between my gear and my Pro Tools system, I say keep it up!
A dynamic microphone designed for live performance use, the 
