Bought any new music related toys lately?

gtaus · March 2010

Just got myself a Tascam DR-07 from Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002VIVU7G/ref=oss_product. Nice little portable stereo wav/mp3 recorder and player. Added feature of pitch bending and time stretching of file playback, so I can slow down a song, change the key of the song, or both.

Does a great job of recording loud music at live venues. The DR-07 has a recording level jog wheel that you can turn down and avoid the clipping issue that so many other handheld recorders in this price range suffer from while recording loud music.

Anyway, I'm really impressed at the quality of this little unit. Also, it's the only toy I've bought in a long time. Well, I'm a gigging musician, so it's not really a toy because I use it for my music, but it's sure alot more fun than buying new speaker wire and mic cables.....

philflood · March 2010

Buying music-realted toys is always an on-going saga for me. For Christmas, I bought the family a new 27 inch iMac quad core. This is an awesome machine, and all of us, me, wife, son, enjoy it. But. my alterior motive, was to get the older iMac G5 into my studio. I was hoping to set up a dual system with both a Mac and a PC. I upgraded the Mac's memory, bought a bigger hard drive, and replaced the DVD drive which was making odd noises. Well, about a week after getting the old iMac tricked out, I started having problems at start up. To make a long story short, it was not the power supply, but the motherboard. Not wanting to spend about $500 more to wind up with a non-Intel Mac that still might have more issues, I decided to part it out, hoping to get enough funds to eventually buy another Mac. Around this time, someone posted a question aksing what guitars we played. I realized I had a few guitars that were not getting played and made an effort to get rid of some gear. Unfortunately for the computer purchase, this always makes me want more gear. I sold a Fender Roland Ready start, a Gibson Les Paul studio, an Ovation acoustic electric and several pedals. But, around this time, my son was starting up a metal band and wanted some gear. He liked the pedal rig that the guitar player from The Fall of Troy has. After going through my gear, it seemed all we would need might be one more delay, a tremolo and a vibrato pedal. So, we got those. Then he asked if I had any cheap guitars around the house, as he wanted to remove the regular low E string and replace it with a much lower string, effectively the 7th string of a 7 string. I did not have a cheap piece lying around, so we hit the pawnshops, not expecting to find much. To our surprise, we actually came across a Schecter Damien 7 string in pristine condition. We talked a deal for it, and got it for $269. He was also wanting to use my old Kustom tuck and roll amp. I told him that was cool, but it has an old 2 prong cord, and before he took that thing out, we needed to get a grounded cord put on it. We took it to the local used gear and repair place, and had the new grounded cord put on. While there, I found a Dean Vendetta 7 string hanging on the wall. I told my son, hey, if you are going to play a 7 string, you are going to need a back up. The Dean was going for $150. We picked it up. Now for my gear - I was itching to get back into some finger style playing, but I wanted a nylon guitar to practice on. While I wanted a Godin ACS, I resisted and got an Epiphone SST classical. I replaced the strings with Savarez high tensions, and I love it. Its a great nylon stage guitar for under $300. And, at a craft show, I found a guy who makes 4 string slide cigar box guitars. www.texasboxguitars.com I could not resist, so I now have one of his cigar box pieces. So that's it. We got a couple new pedals to play around with, and 4 new guitars in the house, but I still don't have a Mac for my studio. At this point, I'll probably hold off until next Christmas for that.

rawfish · March 2010

i just got a couple of used sm-57's so I can record my Gilmore Jr. amp and other instruments/amps that don't pug into the DAW. My buddy had a bunch of mics lying around and sold me two, cheap.

-Rf.

shredd · March 2010

\"I got a rock\". :P

GNX Jammer · March 2010

Quite a few, but the most notable would probably have to be...

Line 6 HD100 Spider Valve Bogner head (this thing is CRUNCHY!)
Roland FantomG-7 synth/workstation w/ARX01 Drum Card

Been considering biting the bullet and slapping down the $$ for a Gibson LP Custom, but waiting to get my Epi LP Custom back from my luthier who installed a TonePro bridge with Graphtec saddles and a Gibson TP-6 tailpiece with fine tuners. Those combined with the EMG's I slapped in it a couple of years ago...I may not need to spend the big bucks on a real Gibby. The only thing I may still need to upgrade would be the stock tuners to some good locking Gotoh's, and maybe a graphite nut. We'll see.[/list]

On the NON-musical toy front....

Meet \"Dark Side\", my new ride... Pic1, Pic2, Pic3

shredd · March 2010

\GNX Jammer\ wrote:

Meet \"Dark Side\", my new ride... Pic1, Pic2, Pic3

Niiiice. And here I wuz, thinking chix dug git'r players. :roll:

GNX Jammer · March 2010

\shredd\ wrote:

\GNX Jammer\ wrote:

Meet \"Dark Side\", my new ride... Pic1, Pic2, Pic3

Niiiice. And here I wuz, thinking chix dug git'r players. :roll:

Oh, they do. The bike is to get away from them when I need a rest.

LOL...Just kidding.

The guitar definitely caught the attention of more women \"back in the day\" than my bikes ever have.

Music and motorcycles are both passions I couldn't live without. One expresses the soul while the other sets it free, which can be said about one, or the other, or both.

lexkam · March 2010

Waiting to get home! today my new bought toy should be delivered, a TC-Helicon Harmony G-XT.
First thought of buying the \"old\" G (its on sale) without the USB port and safe myself some money, but the TC people came with a new firmware update for the unit with extra functionality (that never happened with my GNX3000) and then the USB comes in very handy.
Very anxious to try it out, but i guess I will stink like a singer as before... but i keep trying! ;-)

shredd · March 2010

\lexkam\ wrote:

Waiting to get home! today my new bought toy should be delivered, a TC-Helicon Harmony G-XT.

Very anxious to try it out, but i guess I will stink like a singer as before... but i keep trying! ;-)

Ah feel yo payne brutha...I picked up a DT Vocalist Live 2, which I haven't used yet, but am pretty certain all it'll do is make TWO of my voice sound bad, instead of one... :oops:

iliace · March 2010

Actually it might make it sound better. If you're off-pitch slightly, having a harmony will help, since the MusIQ adjusts them to the chord.

You can actually make settings on the Vocalist units to make harmonies waiver slightly, for various stylistic effects.

shredd · March 2010

\iliace\ wrote:

Actually it might make it sound better. If you're off-pitch slightly, having a harmony will help, since the MusIQ adjusts them to the chord.

You can actually make settings on the Vocalist units to make harmonies waiver slightly, for various stylistic effects.

Well...that's good news. Besides being deaf as dirt (makes it hard to sing on pitch), my voice has a timbre reminiscent of cat murder. :shock:
Once I have a home and get my studio set up again, I'll get into the Vocalist settings...might browse the manual in the meantime...thanks!!

iliace · March 2010

Yeah, I've heard you singing - as for some constructive criticism, your pitches are all over the place. FWIW, the VL4 and higher models have pitch correction options, too.

gtaus · March 2010

I was interested in the VL4. It sounds really cool. But I play bass so I don't know if the MusicIQ would do all those neat things like pitch correct and harmonize correctly with a bass guitar input. The sales ads claim it works by recognizing your guitar chords, but my bass is pretty much one note at a time, and many times not the root of the chord. Does anyone know if the VL4 would work with a bass input instead of a 6 string rhythm guitar input? I would imagine that playing lead guitar might have the same problem if they are playing single note leads/fills.

lexkam · April 2010

Wow... had to spend about 2 hours with the box and must say I'm amazed how they can put so much fun into such a tiny box! I didn't took the time to update the firmware to the newest one (with the pitch correction) cause i wanted to play with it and not be bothered with computers. It's so much fun, it's difficult to use it not too much, before it becomes too much.

For me its perfect, a decent sound right out of the box and not too many settings to get lost. I'm feeling already more a tap-dancer with all the switches under my feet (GNX3000, GR-20(guitar synth) and my new Harmony G-XT). The more buttons and switches the more mistakes to make...

gtaus · April 2010

\lexkam\ wrote:

...The more buttons and switches the more mistakes to make...

Everybody loves a good train wreck. If you mess up, might as well go out tap dancing all the way....

Bought any new music related toys lately?

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