I’m a touring musician who daylights as a Product Merchandiser and Copywriter for all things guitar at zZounds. When I’m not working in Chicago or riding around in a van, you can find me tinkering with gear, hanging out with my dog, or retreating to the woods of my native Michigan.
Compressor Pedals and You
While it sounds pretty simple and is widely used by guitarists and bassists alike, compression is an effect that is easily misunderstood. Most people know or think they need it, but don’t always know why. Being primarily a utility effect — used to keep signal dynamics under control — compression isn’t really perceived as an […]
Road-Friendly Recording
Build Your Tour Studio As much as you’d like it to be, sometimes a recording studio isn’t always conventional. When you’re on the road for weeks on end and still need to keep track of your ideas, a recording studio can often be a hotel room, green room, laundromat, or the bench seat of a […]
EarthQuaker Devices Swiss Things
As you grow your pedalboard, keeping things tight and orderly can become a challenge. Maintaining your signal’s integrity as it passes through a chain of effects — some true-bypass, some not — is a whole other story. Add a tone-sucking volume pedal and a stereo amp rig to the mix and things certainly don’t get […]
zZounds Mark Knopfler Instagram Giveaway
Since the disbanding of his the genre-defying group Dire Straits in 1995, Mark Knopfler has had a prolific solo career accompanied by countless collaborations with the likes of Eric Clapton, Chet Atkins, Elton John and more. In celebration of the release of his new record, “Down The Road Wherever,” we’ve teamed up with his iconic […]
Orange Releases New Terror Bass Head and OBC112
The redesigned Orange Terror Bass has arrived — and it sounds better than ever. With a tube preamp and 500-watt solid-state power amp, the Terror Bass mimics the tone of Orange’s flagship AD200 bass head in an affordable, gig-friendly package. The front panel of the Orange Terror Bass remains virtually the same as the original, […]
D’Angelico Solidbody Series
We traveled out to New York City to visit the D’Angelico showroom and got the inside scoop on the solidbody series from our pal Jimmy Lovinggood (yes, that’s his real name). Check out our exclusive video and see for yourself why the D’Angelico Bedford, Atlantic and Ludlow are some of the most interesting and refreshing […]
Origins of Fuzz with Mike Matthews of Electro-Harmonix
Founded in 1968 when the now legendary Mike Matthews quit his day job as an electrical engineer at IBM to build fuzz pedals, Electro-Harmonix has since become one of the most influential brands in effects pedals — and music in general. Their flagship pedal, the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, has seen countless iterations — and has […]
The Trials and Tribulations of DIY Sound Treatment
My band and I have been rehearsing in the same building since 2014. It’s one of those “warehouse-turned-band-practice-space-compound” type of deals that you come across in big cities like Chicago — except it never turned fully “practice space.” In its original form, our building was a cold storage facility in the Stockyards industrial district of […]
Line 6 PowerCab 112 & 112 Plus
The rise of guitar amp and effects modeling in recent years has been hard to deny. Modeling systems have found their way into the touring rigs of countless progressive bands like Animals As Leaders and Periphery — and have even infiltrated bands long associated with the raw power of tube amps, like Deftones. Line 6 […]
