Gear 5
New Gear Report: PreSonus Studio 192 & Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2
PreSonus Studio 192 USB Audio Interface I see the Studio 192 as PreSonus’ answer to the other hot rackmount audio interfaces coming out this year (see Universal Audio Apollo series; Focusrite Clarett series). Unlike those Thunderbolt interfaces, the Studio 192 is USB 3.0. And man, this thing shoves a LOT of I/O through a USB […]
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 […]
PRS 30th Anniversary Celebration
30 years is a long time for anything, but especially long in the musical gear industry — a realm where players (cough, guitarists, cough) tend to be quite wary of new brands or products. The fact that Paul Reed Smith Guitars has not only survived, but has actually become known as one of the top guitar manufacturers […]
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 […]
Tracking History: Bill Putnam
Obviously a lot has changed since the days when this photo was taken — heck, I can download a multitrack recording app for free onto my phone and use the phone’s on-board mic to record, layer, and mix sounds for a production that wouldn’t be the best, but would be easily more intelligible and of […]
zZounds & QSC Present Battle of the Bands!
Know a sweet band you want to tell us about? Is that band your own? Together with our partners at QSC, we’re hosting a Battle of the Bands this summer! We’ll be taking submissions from across the country to find our next favorite band, and if yours is chosen, you’ll earn a gargantuan prize package — […]
Happy 100th Birthday, Les!
Today, Les Paul (born Lester William Polsfuss in 1915) would have turned 100 years old — but that’s certainly not to say that he didn’t leave a momentous legacy behind after his 94 years. Guitarists (and many non-guitarists) surely are familiar with his namesake guitar, first produced by Gibson in 1952. From those early “Goldtop” […]
