For my 2nd article at The Apple Blog I’ve tested out the iMic by Griffin Technology. This is a neat little USB audio interface that is real cheap for the quality you are getting.
CLICK HERE to check out my article
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Mediaguru’s latest digs and gigs
My posts here have slowed slightly as you may have noticed. Don’t worry. PSB will be going as long as I have stupid clients and experience the strange things that go hand in hand with being in the music business. That means I have a never ending stream of material.
I’ve been working hard on my golf blog: Hooked On Golf Blog and some other web ventures so my geek time has been split amongst a few different venues.
A new gig for me right now is as a contributor to a big blog which deals with Apple and Mac related items: The Apple Blog I’ll be posting regular articles there on Mac and audio related software and hardware. I won’t be able to post the same articles here that I do there (unlike my JamPod review), but I will be linking to them from here.
I’ve spent the last day or so changing the look of this blog and the forums. No more “standard” blue on either one.
This one is a little more “rock and roll”
There’s an armpit of a town about an hour north of here we play gigs in. This town is like the freaking twilight zone. It’s a combination of dumbass rednecks who love Lynard Skynard and mullet wearing city slickers who listen to Metallica. My band plays neither of those.
Strange thing about this town (among many) is that the clubs cycle crowds. One month a certain club is the hot place and sells out constantly. Next month it’s a ghost town.
Fortunately (I guess) we were at the hopping place and played a fairly successful gig. The stage is in the back of the club. There’s a back patio about 12 feet deep and then the parking lot. The load out is easy: off the stage, 12 feet of patio into trunk of car.
I have to pack my gear in a certain order for it to fight right. I loaded out my hardware case, ran back inside to grab a couple of drums, and when I got back outside my hardware case was gone. This had to be no more than 30-45 seconds.
Inside my hardware case are all the stands and pedals for my kit, drum sticks and about 300 pairs of ear plugs. What a haul for this asshole eh? For his efforts he gets a hi hat stand with no hi hats, a bass drum pedal with no bass drum, bass drum legs with no bass drum, a tom mount with no tom, a snare stand with no snare, a drum stool with no top and 300 pairs of ear plugs. How much crack can he buy after he pawns that useless shit at the pawn shop?
Much of that hardware had to be special ordered to be replaced…. Ever order a drum stool without the stool?
So to the asshole who stole my hardware case: I hope you got a great hit of crack. Maybe you got lucky, overdosed and choked to death on your own vomit.
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iJam on my iPod: JamPod Review
A Marshall guitar rig can cost you upwards of $3000. What about a Marshall rig that mixes your guitar with thousands of your favorite tunes, runs off of a battery, weighs in at only a few ounces and fits in your shirt pocket?
For a mere 1% of the dough you’d spend on a Marshall ($29.99), you can pick up a JamPod from DVForge (www.dvforge.com).
Most musicians are gear freaks. As a Mac user I love cool gadgets that not only serve a useful purpose but look cool as well. The JamPod fits the “cool looking but useful” toy category a musician and Mac user would want.
The JamPod is a tiny guitar amplifier that plugs into the top of any Apple music player that has the 3.3 volt DC power plug. Since it gets it’s power from the iPod, there is no power cable. The JamPod lets you play your guitar, bass or other electronic instrument along with the music from your iPod, through your iPod’s headphones. You can also do what I did, which is plug the JamPod’s output into a stereo or sound system for monitoring.
The 2 foot cable included with the JamPod converts a standard 1/4″ guitar output to the 1/8″ mini needed. I would recommend a longer cable. With the included 2 foot cable, it’s easy to move and pull your iPod off the table onto the floor (like I did). The iPod and JamPod survived the fall just fine.
I jammed along with AC/DC’s “Back In Black” for starters. I adjusted guitar’s balance with the music by tweaking the iPod’s volume level. I was able to give my Stratocaster some distortion by turning it’s volume up high. Next was some old Who. I went for a little cleaner sound by backing my Strat’s volume down.
A regular guitar amp will have a “gain” knob which adjusts the level of signal going to the pre-amp. A low signal going to the pre-amp results in a “clean” guitar sound. Driving a high signal into the pre-amp results in a “distorted” signal. With the JamPod the volume knob on your guitar serves the same purpose as the regular amp’s gain knob. Adjusting the volume level from your guitar low creates a more “clean” sound. Cranking up your guitar’s output will drive the JamPod’s pre-amp harder, creating a distortion sound.
The JamPod’s distortion tone is good enough for a practice amp yes, but not suitable for studio or live applications. I don’t think Pete Townsend or Eric Clapton will be using it on their next albums.
The portability and convenience of the JamPod is great. I love having an iTunes library practice amp in my pocket or my laptop bag.
I’d love to see a guitar tuner built into the JamPod which uses the iPod’s display. I’d also love to see a future version of the JamPod that has some internal processing such as delay, reverb, chorus etc. Perhaps an even more fancy future JamPod could record to the iPod!
For $29.99 you can’t go wrong with a JamPod. To quote DVForge’s web site:
“If that’s not worth thirty-bucks, we don’t know what is.”
I agree.