The Taxman Cometh ...

I got my income tax return this week, so I picked up the acoustic/electric Guitar I had set aside at my guitar shop. It's an Ovation CK047 FKOA. The top is made of koa wood. It's looks real rich and darkish. I friggin' love it!!! It cost $580, which was real decent.

I tried a bunch of acoustics and this one totally stood out for me, sound wise. The look of it is super hot too. What I like is I can really noodle on it like an electric guitar, since the neck is pretty slim and the action is a lot lower than the crap acoustic I borrowed from my mom ... shhhhhh . You can hear legatos really clear on it. The onboard tuner is the sh1t too; real smooth to operate.

I recorded with it a bit through my POD X3 but I'll have to twiddle with it to get a clean amp + I can't be sitting in front of my computer and studio monitors like I do with my electrics, since the sound from the speakers goes in the guitar, through the pick up, feedback. Anyhoo ... check it out:

I got my son a Gibson!!!

My son (Samuel, 4 years old) got a Gibson guitar for Easter!

I bought him a Gibson Power Tour electric guitar. We went checking out the ladies in the mall while my wife and daughter did the groceries. We ended up going to Toy R Us. He comes running to me " Dad dad dad! A guitar like you!". I told him maybe the Easter Bunny could bring him one. On Sunday morning the Easter bunny brought him one!

They go for about $70, which I never would have paid. I didn't even look at what it did on the box. I thought it was one of those toy guitars that plays tunes and does sound effects. I just found it too cool to resist at the sale price of $19.99. I have a white Les Paul. This is the SG model; close enough.

When we got it I realized that you can actually play guitar with it. You have 12 frets. Open is A, First fret A#, etc. You can play cool stuff like Iron Man and Breaking the Law. My son just likes to shred on it. On him, it looks like a full sized guitar on an adult. It has Heavy Metal, Punk, Indie and Rock settings.

Maybe I'll try to post a video later of him shredding it out!

Check out Youtube for some videos of people playing with it.

Mixing man

Holy smokes, time flies! I just realized I didn't blog anything during the month of February!

What's new? Well, I got a cool little mixer on Ebay ... the Behringer BCF2000 :




It works great with Tracktion 3. It has motorized faders, so when I open my project in Tracktion, it immediately sets the faders to where I had left them the last time I mixed. I can also mute and pan tracks with it.

I only use it at the end of the project to really fine tune my mixes. I try to keep the mixing process at the very end so I don't end up fiddling around for hours instead of recording and working on the track.

It has 8 faders, but I read somewhere where some guy bought two so he could mix 16 tracks. That would be sweet, but for the time being, I rarely use more than 8 tracks ... 2 drums, 2 guitar, 2 bass and 2 solo guitars.

I've been keeping busy playing guitar pretty much every day. I recorded 7 tracks in February and one today. I store them at Sloppystrings.com

Back to playing. Cheers.