LBx wrote: Fri Dec 12, 2025 8:44 pm Always trying to cop that SKWM slow jam, low gain OD thing minus - The Bean, The Ampeg, The Volume

In comes the V1 Barbershop clone @ 18v.

Review = Excellent

Not bang on but satisfying...

All fairfield pedals are 10s!

mdc wrote: Sat Dec 13, 2025 3:13 pm All fairfield pedals are 10s!

Ya the slight airy, low key grind to it without imparting a ton of anything onto what's already there is wonderful. Nicer sound with it into one clean(ish) channel than jumpering the inputs without which seems a bit backwards but here we are...

Met up with a guy earlier this week to trade for this Danelectro 3011. Early impressions are pretty good - it feels like a 'real' guitar in a way that other import/department store/oddballs really haven't. The neck is great, and the whole thing feels pretty solid despite the light weight. The lipstick sounds good! It looks cool as hell!

Best guess is that is that's a 1959, based on the clear pickguard and the knob style, but it's really hard to tell.

mdc wrote: Thu Dec 18, 2025 5:45 pm Met up with a guy earlier this week to trade for this Danelectro 3011.

it's a beaut, Clark!

Tech 21 Liverpool V2.

The Good: Gets me the sound I’ve been looking for in a controllable package. The Victory Copper clone I have sounded amazing but even at a high tone cut/treble cut setting there was still so much goddamn high-end that that was likely causing the feedback issues I had two band practices ago. Here I get enough of it but not offensively so. Low end felt hefty and present, not like the Vox Mystic Edge where it just sounded kinda mushy. It sounded great and commanding at band practice last night and I’m looking forward to putting it through its paces further. Definitely an idealized version of the Vox sound but thanks to the speaker emulation defeat switch sounds good in front of a Fender-style amp.

The Bad: Fuckin’ thing’s huge.

Audient Oria Mini

I bought this thinking it would be a simple room correction box, like the IK Multimedia Arc. I was wrong in some ways. Like the Arc, the Oria can house room correction frequencies for your monitors. The difference starts here. The Arc comes with software to calibrate your speakers. The Oria does not, you either manually input frequency correction values or integrate it with Sonarworks SoundID, which costs about as much as the unit. The Arc holds one profile, the Oria holds 4.

I decided to get SoundID, feeling a bit duped about it. But, the software comes with some profiles of different speakers that you can calibrate to yours, mimicking them. There's not a ton of profiles. You can also calibrate your headphones with the software, which I'm not sure the reason why, but hey I'm not going to guffaw at having another listening profile.

Back to the Oria. I set up the calibration, it was easy and sounds good, I can hear the reason why my mixes can sound a little muddy with the room correction. You can bypass it, which is a cool option. I set up 3 more profiles, a set of mixing cubes, an NS10 and a set of old high end speakers. I was considering getting mixing cubes, but I don't see why now.

The software for the Oria is easy to use and the hardware has a profile switch on it. You can use the analog inputs or SPDIF, which is a nice option. I'm using SPDIF out from my Audient ID24.

I've expanded my speakers from 1 to 5, which is cool. Wasn't expecting the extra cost of the software, but it's nice to get some listening options. Its still up for debate if this was worth it, but so far I am appreciating having a variety of frequency curves to switch to in the mix, rather than the hassle of exporting renders to listen on other speakers (not that I still wouldn't do that, but probably not as much).

Presonus Faderport v2

I've been so disappointed in surface controllers, having tried a few different ones. I was using a cheap one that was kinda useless other than the transport control, which was kinda spotty. I decided to give one last try for a single fader unit, the only one left to try was the Faderport. There's a plug-in for Reaper called Reasonus, built specifically for the Faderport. It was kind of a mess to set up, but the Faderport works perfectly in Reaper.

At first, I was a little frustrated with the controls. But having spent time using it, I can say without a doubt that this thing is the shit and exactly what I was looking for.

Beyer M58 - omni dynamic, sort of like a nicer EV 635a. It sounded pretty good for guitar or vocals, particularly doubling a part recorded with another mic (I almost never do this), but it worked great for spiky percussion.

Can’t remember how I heard about them - was it someone here? They are usually a little too expensive but if you find one for $100-$150 its a brainer. It’s worth it just to have a tambourine mic that doesn’t make me want to kill myself. Someone on Reverb is comparing one to a M201 and that’s pretty fuckin’ far fetched. You can use 201s on everything.

Not sure if I’ll get another to make a pair but I’ll try it as a mono overhead. They are meant for speech so they start to roll off at 200 hz and below. Natural sound though, not trashy.

Zoom AM7 Mid-Side Mic




Fucking awesome product. This is the "android" version, aka it connects via USB-c instead of Lightning. I've owned a few of the Zoom handy recorders and they always work great for capturing quick recordings of band practices. My first one or two were probably even before the era of just recording with your smartphone. The new band i'm playing in is a little more religious about recording practices and a band mate was always doing this just with his phone mic and of course it sucks balls. So I figured i'd try one of these and holy shit does it make a vast improvement. We're in a shared practice space so having a more permanent setup of mics is impossible, and with this I can just record and quickly send everything to a shared drive for the whole band. Great.

My only sticking point is that the app is kinda crap. You can use any app for recording, but the Zoom one has some "mastering" features (limiting) which are helpful for a loud band. But I wish it had a feature to leave the screen on during use, and some other features for file data and sharing. Still for $100 i'd buy one again in a heartbeat.

mdc wrote: Thu Dec 18, 2025 5:45 pm
Best guess is that is that's a 1959, based on the clear pickguard and the knob style, but it's really hard to tell.

Just wanted to note how beautiful this thing is. I’ve owned a Jerry Jones and have a knockoff baritone made by this eccentric Houston luthier that Major might know, and I’ve always had a softspot for these things.