Features 92
Get the Tone: Tony Iommi
Unofficially recognized as the “Godfather of Heavy Metal,” Tony Iommi’s influence on the evolution of distorted electric guitar tone over the past 40+ years cannot be overstated. Iommi, a pioneer of the detuned guitar technique, used immense amounts of gain to convey to the audience the sounds he heard in his head. These tricks and […]
Three Metal Snares To Check Out
Metal snare drums are alive and well. Lately they’ve been popping up more and more, with custom companies like Q Drums building some beautiful examples. So, what’s the reason for this revival? It’s all in the versatility. If you’re like most drummers and you long for a crunchy, high-pitched crack from your snare, then a metal […]
Nine Things You Might Not Know About Shure
This post is part of a “Shure Week” (August 6-13) series celebrating the release of the new MOTIV line of USB and iOS microphones and interfaces. Check with us through the week to learn more about Shure! It’s hard to believe that a company over 90 years old still has some surprises, yet dig into […]
Get the Tone: Post-Rock
Employing electric guitars to build minimalist, single-note movements into towering walls of sound, post-rock musicians are no strangers to using their instruments and effects as a focal point in a genre often devoid of vocals. Pioneered by bands such as Tortoise and Slint, post-rock has been thrust into the mainstream in recent years by acts […]
Body Shop: Grand Auditorium
In my last post I gave some love to the mighty Dreadnought style of acoustic guitar, but this time we’re going to be scaling the size down to talk about the Grand Auditorium. This style is an incredibly popular choice for many good reasons, most of which I’ll be covering here. After all, Taylor Guitars refers […]
Ask zZounds: Active and Passive Basses
Active vs. Passive Basses: What’s the Difference? Bass pickups fall into one of two categories: active and passive. This distinction in pickups is such a fundamental part of electric bass construction that most bass amps have separate inputs for active and passive basses. Of course, electric basses can be broken up by a number of criteria, like number […]
Get the Tone: Doom Metal
A haze of gloom and fuzzy feedback emanates from stacks of amplifiers. The buzzing drone builds into a wall of slow, churning riffs that rise and swell, inspiring a feeling of ominous dread that wells up inside of you -— the sound of doom metal. Like so much of modern metal music, the doom sub-genre […]
Neat BumbleBee & BeeCaster: Gear for a “Podcast Revolution?”
It seems like for the past decade, news organizations have been saying we’re on the verge of a podcast revolution. And while news headlines are of course exaggerating things out of proportion, the truth is podcasts have been continuously gaining momentum and widespread acceptance over time. In just a few short years we’ve seen powerful […]
Body Shop: The Dreadnought
Invented by necessity The dreadnought, perhaps the defining shape of acoustic guitar as we know it, has quite the storied past. Back in the early 20th century, most of the acoustic guitars at the time were of smaller-bodied design, with a more treble-focused sound that required the use of a bass instrument in the band to […]
