NGD - New Gear Day!

I struggled with the SD P-Rails until I installed them with the Tripleshot rings in a 1989 Hohner Professional SE-35 ES335 copy, great pickups for a semi-hollow body. Great guitar by the way, I own a L90 Hohner '56 Goldtop Les Paul P90 copy that I rebuilt after buying the body only on FleaBay. They are sleeper quality guitars that I paid no more than $300 US for.

Just ordered an E-Bow. Should be fun.

Harley Benton GPA400 power amp + Harley Benton G112V V30 loaded guitar cab for my unpowered Kemper

I will test it against Yamaha DXR10.

Been picking up some MIDI drum libraries for SD3's user search database (Loop Loft had sales and then when I put something in the shopping basket, then took it out, they sent me a 70% of their sale price. Not shabby)

Didn't go for GrooveMonkey (sorry monkey ppl) I did try a package of the PROSONIC midi library but they are simplistic bleh stuff auto generated crap from the 90's sounding.
GrooveMonkey sounds maybe a decade forward from that.

Toontracks has great wares, but they are small libraries. Loop Loft has good ones, but some of their better ones are tied to the Audio drummers (not all, just 2 of their artists who are fantastic players, Matt Chamberlain and Omar Hakim)

Also upgraded to iZotopes O8N2 for some reason. Bored I guess.

Oh, I got a double bass pedal for the kick drum on my Roland TD15-KV for shits n giggles to try out some Bonham stuff. No, I'm not That good. I'm not even Rolling Stones drumming "good" but, come on, Double Pedals? It's a toy made for the 2 year old in me.

Quote from fredrikn

Just ordered an E-Bow. Should be fun.

Oh, it is. Aside of U2, I think Billy Corgan used it on his work. I fancied using it in similar fashion but never got around to it and sold it. Lazy I guess.

But it's a pretty cool tool to add an etherial detachment to a song if that's what you want. Or it can be eery if you want that too, haha.

I just got a used Darkglass Vintage Deluxe pedal for a good price. I'll try to do some profiles of it.

i got a lot of gear last year and the final kemper acquisition broke my finances

Early on in January I bought a Blackarts Toneworks Pharaoh Supreme. I've had a standard Pharaoh for a while and love it, but the supreme is next level. Sounds great into the Kemper too, but I probably won't use both together live.

bought a Gibson SG 61 reissue from 1999
and a pair of OX4 Pad Pickups

You can always spot a Pro, he has a Kemper onstage and drives home in a shitty car.
It's the "Vow of Poverty" I tell ya.

Quote from MuddySludge

You can always spot a Pro, he has a Kemper onstage and drives home in a shitty car.
It's the "Vow of Poverty" I tell ya.

Man, you said it all !

as soon as i recover my bank account, my GAS (gear acquisition syndrom) may return ; )

Quote from 808illest

Haha, if you've got G.A.S. it inevitably leads to having S.H.I.T. (Stockpiling Hella Instrument Technologies)

Amen, AAAAAAmen, Amen , Amen!

I have the VMS but I'm looking for an alternate/backup mic chain.

I'd love to sell my car and get a U87, but might wait a bit further for that (kid in college) so I put down on used:
- Warm Audio WA-87 (for versatility, vocal, acoustic) Clone of a Neumann U87
- BAE 1073 DMP (I'd prefer rack, but this has the Jenson "bootsy" mod for Bass DI, seemed like a cool thing to try) Clone of a Neve 1073 w/o EQ and added DI mod.
- Warm Audio WA2A (I had the LA610's compressor and liked Optical for my voice/bass. Ppl say this 2A is better/closer to the real LA2A, but not an exact replica.) Clone of Universal Audio LA2A

In general, it's the Neve clone I am after. I found from the UA's plugin that is that missing ingredient in my chain I was looking for in a Mic (since mic->preamps are pairings, I missed the "pairing" part of the equation)

I think in the future, the Warm Audio's will be "upgraded", starting with the Mic, but for now, this will give me an analog chain as a backup, but more importantly, as a long term investment in gear. Since I bed the VMS isn't even supported in 5 years with OSX upgrades and all.

Another thing, the hardware does sound better than the plugins still. They aren't "Kemper" good, yet. But even when they are, I'm a bit sick of dropping thousands into the pit of software that has very little or no equity.

On the other hand, hardware is just more fun to twiddle with.

Last thing: VMS. I got sent a WA-47 by mistake by the supplier. So I recorded with it before sending it back. It's not for me, but it did have a noticeably characteristic on my vocal take that was NOT there in the VMS w/o emulation, but was when the VMS emulation was engages. So Kudo's to Slate for that. I also had the SM7B which was spot on. That is 2 microphones I've had (well, a clone, not the real U47, but the "essence" of the 47 which was similar in Slates emulation)

I had an issue with Slate's emulations not working right, but it's been fixed with a recent update and the different mics all DO sound different, even when the INTENSITY lever is halfway. So I DO think the VMS is a fantastic home studio microphone setup, delivering pro results, with superb after-take but in-the-mix fixability. That said, I just can't keep going down this software road. I'll use the hardware at home, software "on the road" for when I'm mixing on my laptop.

Do strings count?

Quote from MonkeyPeanutButter

Do strings count?

Probably it's like 6 purchases of single strings

Quote from skoczy

Probably it's like 6 purchases of single strings

I actually bought some single strings and normal packs. Just to fill up on the strings that sometimes break on stage.
If a string breaks at home I usually change the whole set but if it is on stage then nobody got time for that.