Gear Reviews

I don't recall exactly how I came to find Tim Prebble's Hiss and a Roar website, but I do remember what I heard first - sounds of an old broken-down piano being taken apart. Odd, unique and violent enough to be mistaken for American, but Prebble hails from New Zealand. Still...

Anyone who pays attention to music industry trade shows can tell you how some company is always introducing a new gizmo designed to make the electric guitar better. Aside from the work from a few legitimate firms, most of these devices are bird-brained, non-production-ready, untested heaps of crud....

As PAs get better and more people record at home, classic, lower wattage amps are gaining in popularity - and thus becoming more expensive. Anyone who has priced even a Silverface Champ lately knows the days of getting a deal are gone.

To meet this demand, companies as diverse as Orange, Vox...

My relationship with lap steel guitars has been long and rewarding. I first bought a 1956 Fender lap steel on eBay years ago, when I was working on video-scoring project, and I was looking for an option for generating material in various tunings with nice sounding glissandi and swells. After a week...

In the '90s, Allen Sides created a CD-ROM featuring his extensive Ocean Way Recording mic collection. Jump to this year, and guitarist extraordinaire Steve Vai went back and produced an app based on Allen's CD-ROM (seriously, did anyone ever use or buy those things back then?). What is...

Have you ever read a review in which the writer goes into all the details of a really versatile and esoteric piece of gear, only to find yourself entirely lost? Because the Warmenfat is such a unique Swiss Army Knife-like tool, we are on the verge of writing such a review, so rather than bog...

Dave Raphael is one of the smartest guys I know. He's a terrific recording engineer, a great photographer, a technically-knowledgeable individual, and he has absolutely astounding ears, so when he told me several years ago that he and Jens Jungkurth were working on building an equalizer, I was...

When last we spoke, I told y'all how I overcame my bias against PreSonus the manufacturer (based on my experience with their old M-80 preamp [Tape Op #26]) and digital the medium to find that the PreSonus StudioLive digital mixer [#80], while sounding only a little euphonic, does a great job...

One day, while listening to Roxy Music's Manifesto, I noticed that it was recorded at Ridge Farm Studio in England, and I did a bit of Internet research. While the studio no longer operates, I learned that its chief tech, Pierre-Olivier Margerand (known as POM), now manufactures gear as Ridge...

This is perfect. A simple and effective way to adjust the toe- in or angle of your speakers for perfect symmetry. How did we do this before? With protractors? I was pretty much guessing with a tape measure last time I set up my control room. First you set up your stereo or surround speakers so they...

There's a huge variety of outboard gear out there to choose from. We live in a time where sophisticated audio tools are available at almost every price point. So why does some gear command a higher price than others? The details. Often it comes from a passionate commitment from the equipment...

airball Audio is the Seattle Company responsible for bringing us key elements for the DIY version of the 1176 Blue Stripe [Tape Op #84]. This is their first product designed from scratch. Named Lola, after the founder's dog, Hairball offers various kit and assembled forms of the 500-series...

Mike Castoro at Wunder Audio released his take on the Neumann U 67 early this year with the Wunder CM67, a multi- patterned tube condenser mic optimized for capturing vocals. The first thing I noticed when I opened the cardboard shipping box was the fine tweed case designed with safety in mind. No...

Mixerman [Tape Op #34], the authorly alter ego of producer/engineer/mixer Eric Sarafin, first gained notice with a crazy online diary that eventually saw form as a book, The Daily Adventures of Mixerman. He followed that up with Zen and the Art of Mixing [#83], an excellent guide for comprehending...