I think I need to get Line 6 T-shirts… My studio is getting full of Line 6 gear. I just got a Line 6 Spider III 75 guitar amp. I have an old Marshall JCM900 50W combo (that I’m trying to sell just now), as I wanted a light-weight guitar amp for session work.)

The nice thing with Spider III amps is that they have 12 amp simulation models, each sounding different. Yes, it does not sound exactly as a Marshall, and a trained ear could hear some issues with the mid-range levels, especially when pushing through a 12″ Celestion speaker.

Anyway, for a majority of the audience they would not notice anything. But for me as a guitar player I could have fun with all kinds of interesting settings, all built into the amp, including many basic effects.This one is also a 33 pound unit, so it’s easy to transport around.

Plus, it’s fun having so much flexibility as a guitar player on stage.

Recently when I visited the library I found a catalogue listing Ibanez Guitars, especially pricing information about old guitars, what the street value is today. That was interesting reading. My first Ibanez was a Flying V (clone of the famous Gibson version), it actually had a good sound but the tuning was hard to keep in place. And of course you could not really use it easily in studio sessions — but for stage presence it had it’s plus moments. I sold it long time ago. The catalogue told me that the current price is between $1500 and $1800. Ouch. 

My next Ibanez was a RoadStar II. Those were clones of the Stratocaster model. They were nice, light, but the tone was somewhat thin, but that’s what you get with Stratocasters, anyway. I still have it around. But I don’t think it’s a special guitar, exactly. The catalogue price was $500-800. Huh. 

My current Ibanez is an RG-750. I still think this is one of the best ever Ibanez models made, a high end system back in 1990-92. Custom made in Japan. Has the best tone and playability I’ve ever had. Still using it today. Catalogue price: $400-600. What?

Anyway, in case you have old Ibanez guitars in your attic, now is the time to sell them. As for current guitars, I do think that a large selection of today’s guitars, in the $400-800 range, are really good. You have to pay a lot of money to get the extra quality or tonality, and with effects and other parts it’s doubtful you could invest in that, unless you really know what you want. They are not vintage guitars — but frankly speaking I do think a lot of contemporary guitars today are really well made, compared with the old produces.

The reason is that a lot of today’s guitars are made with CNC manufacturing. The robots could cut out parts from wood that few craftsmen could do, 24 hours a day. The only bonus humans could achieve is in the really high end — think of the ’samurai swords’ of guitars. Super-good, but you pay a lot for that. I would actually recommend to watch the factory tour video from Carvin that shows how guitars are carved out with CNC systems — quite fascinating. You could also get the videos via the free DVD. Anyway, I think it will open up your eyes why you could get really good quality guitars and other equipment from countries like Indonesia today. An sell your old vintage guitar, now is the time!

This is about chemicals. I had this somewhat old (10+ year old) Marshal JCM900 guitar combo amp that has been collecting dust in my studio. Not just literally, really.

And of course after such a long time of no usage, the potentiometers had squeaky sounds when I booted up the amplifier. I had a spray can of WD-40 back home, assumed that this miracle chemical would fix anything, but especially one of the volume knobs still didn’t work properly.

So today I stopped by one of the local Frys and looked at other solutions, I found Puretronics contact cleaner, it was a cheap can, $6, so I took one home. I sprayed the pots, and yes, now they work fine.

The local Starving Musician also sold me an old Marshall channel switcher, for $10, and of course this one didn’t work. So I sprayed it with Puretronics, and yes, now it works fine.

Lessons learned, keep a bottle of this around, there’s a lot of stuff in your studio that could get dust and dirt inside the volume potentiometers, sliders, contacts and so on. There could be many cases where you think your equipment is broken, while all it would take would be to fix bad connections with something like this.

The other lesson learned was that WD-40 is not that universal; use something dedicated for electrical contacts. No, Puretronics has not sponsored me. That bottle I purchased today should be enough for the next five years or more.

Phew, my mind was expanded when looking at Steve Vai’s guitar collection over at his site. That’s quite a big of a collection, and most of them are custom made. He has even more gear, see the rest over at his site.

I have an Ibanez RG series guitar, owned that one since 1992 I think. I’ve actually been an Ibanez only electrical guitar owner since my first Ibanez back in 1978, purchased a Flying V copy model. It was a fun guitar, but unpractical for studio work, of known reasons.

Anyway, makes me go and check out other Ibanez models this weekend…

Speaking of Steve Vai, he’s one of the few guitar players whose solos I actually like (Eric Clapton being another player). You could get a free DVD from the Carvin site, check out the really funny solo Steve Vai does on that DVD — even my wife who is bored of guitar music was impressed. What makes Vai’s playing interesting is that he is interesting, unique. Something to strive for. There’s no need to be a technocrat player, speed is not everything. Don’t be a copycat, invent your own style, in whatever musical genre. One Daft Punk is enough.

Recently my studio has turned into a hardware centric place with two guitar amps, Line 6 Pod XT, cables, pedals, guitars, bass guitar, lots of stuff around the place.

As part of ramping up the traditional instrument side I’ve been purchasing stuff from online stores and other places. Here are some notes in case you want to save money.

One place that I like is Musicians Advocate.  They don’t have all the brands, but a nice wide selection of instruments, amps, effects, MIDI interfaces, even software. The cheap prices are the ones you need to click for generating an email response. I suspect that those are B-stock units. B-Stock is where something has a flaw, either as part of shipping or being in a store for weeks, resulting in something that can’t be sold as brand-new. But hey, if a little bit paint is gone in a corner, that’s not a big deal, especially as musical instruments in use will become tarnished over time, anyway.

Another interesting link that I check from time to time is Musician’s Friend Stupid Deal of the Day. They have different kinds of things there, a couple of days’ ago they sold bass softcover bags for $9.95 plus shipping. But if you suddenly wants something they announce, it’s a quick way to get something cheaply.

Another place I check is DealNews,  but this is mostly to catch any interesting coupons for online stores. Speaking of coupons, do a net search in case the brand of the product purchased has a special deal for sending in a coupon (usually a PDF file to be filled in) and you get something extra or money cash-back.

I’m also using Google’s Shopping service to quickly get a rough idea what the street price is for various products. Also, using Amazon I have found even lower prices for the same music online sites that sell via Amazon compared with their online prices at their site. One of those mysteries of this universe.

There’s the obvious eBay and CraigsList. I prefer Craigslist as I could locally meet the seller and check out the product before taking it home. eBay purchases are more risky in my opinion, the picture looks nice but it might be broken, or the shipment might cause damage to the product — as shipping electronics is a delicate matter.

Many music stores also have a special swap shop section. Here in the San Francisco Bay area the Guitar Showcase swap shop and Starving Musician are good places, they even have their listings online so you don’t need to visit the places unless you see something you want to purchase. The Guitar Showcase has some kind of deal with Ibanez USA about B-Stock, I’ve seen a lot of really good Ibanez electric and bass guitars for ridiculously low prices over there every week.

Finally, if you purchased something that you are not really using, just re-sell it. No idea wasting studio space for unused gear.

Maybe by now you have noticed that I’m on a small quest to bring musicianship back to electronic music. That means that there’s an attempt and it takes time to learn an instrument, but then you have far more nuances compared with copy/pasting loops or using fixed MIDI sequences.

For example, the state of art concerning electronic drum kits are far beyond the early days of the Simmons sets. Check out the Roland TD-3S kit, a very reasonable price, you could usually get them for below $1000 or even lower. The videos at the link also shows what could be done, provided you do your homework and learn to play the instrument.

Now, compare using something like this for recordings or live sessions versus using a drum machine or drum loops. There’s something special about humans that play, the nuances will pop out. Yes, I know, many of us try to put them back with shuffle modes and all kinds of tricks, so that’s another way to do it. But then again you could do it in one take — assuming you want to learn to play drums.

Those electronic drum kits are also easy to transport, for example for jam sessions. Not to speak of the clarity of the drum sounds when running them through a PA. And we have not even touched the options to trigger and play all kinds of percussive and non-percussive sounds during a live set. The other bonus is that the audience loves people playing instruments.

I was looking around, once again, for any used Roland AX-7 keytars, but the eBay prices are just horrible, too high. To recap, Roland stopped selling these units last year, just when everyone discovered them, from Beyonce’s band to Justin Timberlake and many others.

The Create Digital Music blog had a new entry about this also today.Roland is a great company, and I’ve been a Roland customer since Jupiter-6 days — owned one of the first ever Jupiter-6 keyboards back in 1983 as it had the first MIDI implementation (I still think it was earlier than Prophet-5.) However, they have a reputation of introducing cool things and then just abandon the concept and go on with something new, instead of refining a good product.

If someone knows of an email address where to send feedback to Roland, please let us know. Also if you are involved with any other bigger keyboard company, Yamaha et rest, let them know that there’s a nice market to be taken over in case Roland is not re-introducing new keytar models.

As for me, it would be fun going to jam sessions as a bass player, but using a keytar instead of a bass. I could also figure out tons of other similar ideas using a portable keyboard controller for various projects….

It is really important that we have good controllers in this new age of electronics. We don’t want to sit behind a pile of equipment, thanks. I don’t want to climb inside a pyramid, either :-).