The Musician's Room: What's New in the Studio?
12/23/2019 As promised, here is the 2019 RSPE Christmas graphic!!!
12/22/2019 The lights are off at the studio and I am taking time off to rest, recuperate, and get ready for the new year. Most of the gifts are home and ready to be wrapped and the Christmas baked goods have started emerging from the oven. The break has been really beneficial to my guitar playing and my writing for the site, so there are a couple of articles all ready to go in the new year. Once again we find ourselves waiting for the yearly RSPE Solutions Christmas graphic. But it isn't too early to wish you all Merry Christmas and a peaceful holiday season!!!
12/05/2019 I've done it again: I wrote an article elsewhere and forgot to post it here. So, I've rectified that. Go HERE to read the story of a group of exhausted, dispirited soldiers who brought back Christmas to a beaten-down town in Luxembourg in the winter of 1944 and the long-lasting impact they had.
12/03/2019 It's that time of year... I've noticed on the guitar forums that men typically struggle, mightily, with Christmas gift shopping for their wives. After years of this I've arrive at a system that changes Christmas shopping from stress to one of the happiest activities of the year. It occured to me that I've posted it everywhere but HERE on my very own website. To correct that oversight, you can now read all about it, HERE .
11/27/2019 While wrangling a vintage amp, I came across a way to quite literally foil rust on stainless steel items. You can read all about it, HERE .
11/14/2019 Watch out for those tangles of cord in your playing areas, and read about my little practical safety lesson at the hands of my own cords, HERE .
11/02/2019 Have you ever fought to make an electric guitar play nice with the rest of your rig? I recently fought this same fight again and finally remembered the lessons I'd learned before. You can read about it over HERE .
09/28/2019 As I embark on my third generation of guitar modeling I've been watching friends struggle to make sense of modelers at all. The complexities of the process can bring them to a full stop in frustration. I've written up a discussion of how to more easily get started in modeling. You can find it over HERE .
08/26/2019 I've had further thoughts and experiences on The Art of the Deal, Guitar Style, so I've added a second article, HERE .
08/01/2019 You know how it is with a complicated new piece of gear: for a while you are "playing with it" rather than "playing it" as you either are learning how to use it or are simply overcome with the novelty. With the new Helix I wanted to get the basics down quickly and get back to playing. Last night I finally got there - playing rather than tweaking. Bravo!
07/19/2019 From the sublime to the ridiculous? After checking out a fifty-three-year-old tube amplifier a month ago I'm doing the same for a state-of-the-art Line6 Helix Floor modeler this month. And compare my pedal board from forty-two years ago in the post below. It is quite the contrast!
06/20/2019 Throwback Thursday: Here is my pedalboard from 1977. It featured AC power for the pedals and remote control for an Exchoplex. It still works! Click for larger pic.
06/18/2019 Recently, in a fit of nostalgia, I did a simply Internet search and an unexpected guitar amplifier popped up. You can find out what amp it was, HERE .
Image courtesy Jimmy Schultz, who also enjoyed the show
05/05/2019 Road trip!!! I've put together a review of the great Wishbone Ash show I traveled to see last Tuesday. You can take your own little digital road trip to read my review, right HERE .
05/02/2019 Two days ago I caught up with old favorite guitar band, Wishbone Ash, in Richmond, VA. It was a blast!
04/27/2019 At diverse times and under diverse circumstances I have been known to think. The product of those thoughts can be both alarming and hilarious. Nevertheless, in that vein, I give you a meditation: Lessons From the Handle of the Lawnmower.
04/11/2019 I recently had to do a string change and encountered a tool I'd never really considered all that important that made all the difference in the world. Want to find out what that tool was? Go HERE .
03/28/2019 At the beginning of my guitar career I struggled to figure out how to negotiate a deal at the guitar store. Years later, I've come up with a system that really works quite well. Find out more, HERE .
03/11/2019 On March 11, 1972, Neil Young's fourth solo album went to number one on the Billboard album charts.
03/11/2019 On March 19, 1918, the Calder Act was passed. It was good for golf and not much else.
03/01/2019 Is THIS the biggest recording coup in history? You decide. Who says you can't have a little fun in the studio?
02/11/2019 When I was in college, I met an man who really knew how to listen to music. Meet the man and learn from him, HERE.
01/15/2019 Clydie King has died. If you haven't heard her name you probably haven't read an album jacket from the 1960s to the 1980s. With Merry Clayton, Venetta Fields, and Shirley Matthews, she did thousands of sessions as a background vocalist on the music we loved. RIP Clydie.
01/14/2019 As promised, I've had plenty of time to grok the new ElectroHarmonix Triangle Big Muff Pi Reissue fuzz pedal so I'm offering my perspective on whether this pedal is able to deliver the goods for someone who has always wanted a mellow, smooth fuzz. You can se what I think of it, HERE
01/01/2019 Happy New Year from the Musician's Room International Headquarters!!!
01/01/2019 What's new in the studio? A great little historic fuzz, courtesy of my lovely wife. More to come.
In order to expedite loading of the news page it has been broken up into multiple, yearly pages. Previous news posts can be accessed HERE.
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