Features 71
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 […]
7 One-Knob Pedals That Transform Your Tone
Sometimes, all you need is just one. From full-blown loopers to tone enhancers, each of these pedals color your sound with the turn of one single knob. Add one to your chain for a simple path to all-new sound.
Mic Shootout: Neat King Bee & Worker Bee, Blue Spark & Baby Bottle
Neat Microphones are brand new this year, and everyone’s curious to see how they stack up against other mics. To help you weigh your options, we’ve made recordings comparing Neat’s new King Bee and Worker Bee with two zZounds customer favorite microphones in the same price range — the Blue Baby Bottle and Blue Spark. […]
