The MONOLOG: April 2011

Gear Tuesday on Friday

I missed gear Tuesday yo! Sorry about that, we had a meeting with the folks at ThudRumble...Q-Bert in the house! Exciting stuff.

So on Monday I was checking out this new speaker from Eminence and it had this dial and I was like...oh hell naw! It's called the Reignmaker and apparently the dial on the back actually brings the magnet or coil closer to the further away from each other for natural attenuation or something like that. Blah blah blah, this new technology actually provides up to 9db's of attenuation without affecting the signal path. From the videos I watched it seems there was a little bit of loss in high end clarity as you attenuated, but dang...sounded good to me.

Labels: Eminence, gear tuesday, Reignmaker, speakers

Lawrence Hightower

It's been a little over a month since Lawrence passed, he was with us back in 2007 at our first NAMM and immediately we all became friends. Every year we looked forward to seeing Hightower and 2012 just isn't going to be the same. When I heard the news I was deeply saddened by the fact that a great bass player just left us, but even more a great man of integrity and charm. Lawrence you will be missed, and always remembered.

Please read Greg Roth's article on Lawrence here.

Labels: Lawrence Hightower

Boss Loop Contest!

I've been really digging these Boss Loop Contest entries. Some of these are pretty sweet. Definitely some talented folks out there!

Labels: Boss, Looping

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2

Somehow the clean version of this album was leaked. Beastie Boys got pissed, and as a means to "stop all the downloadin', I'm a computa!" they leaked it back on their website...this time it's dirty.

Hot Sauce Committee Part Two by Beastie Boys

Labels: Beastie Boys, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two

Twitter Pedalboards!!!

Some of you were so kind enough to share your boards with us on Twitter. We now have an even bigger platform to show them off on. We hear there are a ton of artists who frequent our blog, so for those of you who want to know what's out there and what people are using...here we go:

robbylattimore Robby Lattimore

@monocase Korg Pitchblack - Aguilar Tone Hammer - Markbass Compressore - MB Distorsore - A Designs REDDI.http://twitpic.com/4o3ixl

2 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

dkrichards dkrichards

@monocase http://plixi.com/p/94852323

3 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

jeffreyjoel Jeff Smith

@monocase check it! http://twitpic.com/4o2e2m

4 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

danpmusic Dan Phelps

@monocase A previous incarnation: yfrog.com/h7amvmb

4 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

Jordan_Bledsoe Jordan Bledsoe

@monocase http://twitpic.com/4o1qdm

4 hours ago Favorite Reply

Labels: pedalboard, pedals, twitter

A Thousand Laughs

Is it me, or does this never get old.

Labels: Creed Shreds

Flávio Silva

We first met Flávio Silva at NAMM 2011, he was busting chops right behind us and every time there was a break in our booth I could hear this man on his guitar shredding with the best of them. His playing was so musical and complex that I had to peek my head in to see who was playing. Flávio, originally from São Paulo is now a transplant in Belgium where he now pursues a Bachelor degree in Jazz guitar at The Royal Conservatory in Antwerp.

During his time in Brazil he played around at various renowned festivals and jazz clubs where he honed his chops. Studying at The Royal Conservatory is only to refine those skills and broaden his musical scope. We're excited that Flávio is representing us and loves our products. He says that our cases are perfect for his everyday travel in and out of the city. Welcome aboard!

Labels: Flávio Silva

Gear Tuesday: Switchers and Loopers

Anyone who has a pedalboard is obviously under the risk of the dreaded tone suck. It is just that, suckage of tonal qualities...why must this happen! There are a few solutions to this age old problem, switchers and loopers! You basically want the shortest signal to your amp, basically plugging in a chord from guitar to amp is the best tone you will get. What if you run 100 million pedals? Get yourself a switcher. These devices will allow you to bring in pedals that you don't need on all the time. Basically your signal passes through effects pedals and we all know that sometimes they are only on for a part of a song. Your pedal gets routed in the switcher and this becomes it's on/off point. When turned off, the pedal is now completely out of your chain.

Lehle makes something called the D.Loop SGoS which is a fully programmable switcher that has 2 true-bypass loops and also includes a buffer where you can control the gain up to +12 dB. They look sweet too:

Carl Martin makes one called the Octa-Switch which allows the user to hook up 8 pedals that allows each bank to choose variations of pedals with DIP switches. This is sweet for setting up 2 or more pedals to go on simultaneously during a song. No more tap dancing, just pure control over your pedals.

Labels: Carl Martin, Gear. Lehle, Loopers, Switchers

Phantogram @ the Indy

Big things for these guys, they are fantastic! We had a blast.

Labels: Phantogram, The Independent SF

Outside Lands Festival. Lineup is STRONG!

The lineup is fierce. I mean just look at the mixture of awesome bands:

Muse
Phish
Arcade Fire
The Black Keys
The Roots
Girl Talk
The Shins
etc.

Insane! To celebrate let's try to include as many of the lineup in one sentence.

Charles Bradley said to his Shins, "Let's take the Limousines and head out to the Best Coast where we'll make Grouplove under the Sunbirds and catch an Arcade Fire from the breath of Little Dragon, then we'll have a Pajama Party and tell MGMT that they need to freeze those Arctic Monkeys in Decemberists so that when Big Audio Dynamite explodes Major Lazers won't blow up when I press the Black Keys on my Meters, Ok Go!!!"

Labels: Outside Lands Festival, San Francisco

The Roots, Rig Rundown.

Captain Kirk and Owen Biddle of the Roots Crew joins Premier Guitar to show them their touring rig. Amps are definitely back-lined, but everything else is owned. Awesome Owen shoutout to us at the very end...Thanks O!

Labels: Captain Kirk, Kirk Douglas, Owen Biddle, Premier Guitar, The Roots

Porter Pickups

Pickups are part of your sound. Plain and simple, you could have a master crafted instrument and have it sound whack if you don't have the pickups to match it. You'll find a ton of new boutique builders out there that are focusing in on pickups because the market is booming right now. Folks are constantly upgrading their instruments and the one way to do this is pickups. Handwound, just like they did it way back when.

Porter pickups offer a nice variety of pickups, you'll find all the standards with humbuckers, Strat, Tele, and P90's. Brian's even doing a Jazzmaster pickup that a lot of loyalists will be really happy about.

Labels: pickups, Porter Pickups

Sweet Tuesday - Kodak zi8

Why didn't this type of technology exist let's say 40 some years ago when Hendrix was burning guitars and Led Zeppelin was giving us a Whole Lotta Love? Hipsters now have it made. Cameras are now capturing 1080p video from devices smaller than a pack of Marlboro Lights. Imagine what you would have had to put up with back in the 60's for video...film??? What the hell is that? I bet you kids these days look at film and have no idea what to do with it.

But seriously, now that technology has come to this point we all deserve to capture our concerts in a way that can only get better. The Kodak zi8 is incredibly flexible. I already mentioned the 1080p video, but this thing also boasts an external mic input. Everyone knows that the internal microphone on almost everyone of these types of units are totally bogus for anything louder than the human voice. Come on people...condensor microphones please! But the external mic input allows for you to choose what mic you want.

You can also use it to film subway breakdancing.

Labels: 1080p, flip, kodak, Kodak zi8, zi8

Frankfurt

photos by daniel kushner

Labels: Frankfurt

Tweets n' Pedals

Here at MONO, we are pedal junkies. You can never have enough, I am not kidding. I think every other conversation with one another is about pedals. "Hey, what compressor are you using..." or "I'm thinking about getting another delay..." You could easily sink a few grand into some needed pedals. We heard a few really good ones from our Twitter mentions. Here were some highlight tweets...shout outs YO!!!