Mixdown Magazine #321

#321 – 2022

FOALS BACK IN THE SADDLE ZACHARY VEX ANDREW BARTA CHRIS CHENEY FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL

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REVIEWED: FENDER HAMMERTONE SEQUENTIAL TAKE 5 ROLAND TD-17KVX RIPX: DEEPAUDIO + MORE

JUNO The Artist

MEET YOUR OTHER HALF

Hand Made Effects Pedals | Akron, Ohio

Special Cranker

An Overdrive You Can Trust An all-discrete analogue distortion enhancement device designed to give your signal some extra grit and boost without drastically altering your tone and retaining all of the natural nuances and character of your amp. Think of it as sticking an extra preamp tube in your amplifier for more saturation. Single notes will blossom and bloom with rich harmonics and singing sustain with responsive, tube-like sag. Power chords will sound thicker and crunchier, a little more ragged around the edges. Complex chords will remain distinct and complex, as the Special Cranker is designed to preserve your tone’s integrity without muddying up the low-end or smearing the midrange.

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Yamaha Music Australia proudly distributes EarthQuaker Devices

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YOUR AUDIENCE AWAITS We live in an age where anyone can be a streamer.

The second generation of AG series offers a lineup of versatile streaming products designed to adapt to the ever-expanding streaming landscape.

Connect to a new world of infinite possibilities with the AG series.

ZG series designed specifically for game voice chat and streaming also available.

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SCAN ME

Enter for your chance to WIN WIN a KRK Home Studio valued at over $6,000 or 1 of 100 KRK prize packs worth up to $250, including a quality pair of KRK KNS 6402 headphones! Simply purchase an eligible KRK Studio Monitor this June and enter the draw at jands.com.au/promotions.

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Promotional period is from 12:01am 1/06/2022 to 11:59pm 30/06/2022. For T&C’s and Permits: Visit jands.com.au

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CONTENTS

8 10 14 16 18 20 26

Giveaways

40 42 43 44 66

Monitoring 101

PUBLISHER Furst Media A1 1-5 Weston St Brunswick VIC 3056 (03) 9428 3600

Product News Foals Squidgenini

PRINT EDITOR Paul French paul@furstmedia.com.au

Tama Artist Jam Audio-Technica 60th FX & Processing Special

Foals PG .14

Bass Column

ADVERTISING MANAGER Paul French paul@furstmedia.com.au

Reviews My Rig: Chris Cheney

For breaking news, new content and more giveaways visit our website.

GRAPHIC DESIGNER Erica May EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Sam McNiece

Guitar Column

/MIXDOWNMAGAZINE @MIXDOWNMAGAZINE @MIXDOWNMAGAZINE MIXDOWNMAG.COM.AU

ONLINE EDITOR Eli Duxson eli@furstmedia.com.au

PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Patrick Carr patrick@furstmedia.com.au

Squidgenini PG. 16

Zachary Vex PG. 30

CONTRIBUTORS Al Belling, Andy Lloyd-Russell, Adrian Violi, Nick Brown, Erika Fedele, Liam Mcshane, Lewis Noke-Edwards, Rob Gee, Rowena Wise, Luke Shields, Peter Hodgson, Cambell Courtney, Pablo Francois, Dan Nicholls, Will Brewster FOUNDER Rob Furst

SPACE-AGE SPACE-AGECOLORWAYS. COLORWAYS. OTHERWORLDLY OTHERWORLDLY SHAPE. SHAPE.

HH ININ SILVERBURST BASS OPAL SPARK

FENDER (standard and in stylized form), METEORA, and the distinctive headstock shapes commonly found on the FENDER® instruments FENDER (standard and in stylized form),Instruments METEORA, and the distinctive headstock shapesregistered commonlyin found on the FENDER® instruments are trademarks of Fender Musical Corporation and/or its affiliates, the U.S. and other countries. are trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation and/or its affiliates, registered in the U.S. and other countries.

GIVEAWAYS

Wharfedale Pro Diamond Studio 7-BT monitors Win a pair of Wharfedale Pro Diamond Studio 7-BT monitors thanks to the legends at LSW Imports and Distribution. The new Wharfedale Diamond Studio BT monitors are high quality active studio monitors, also stacked with Bluetooth (with stereo pairing) which makes these pro monitors simple to connect using a mobile device, for checking mixes or just for entertainment.

LR Baggs Voiceprint DI Ever wanted to translate your studio-sounding acoustic guitar to the stage without the need for onstage miking or feedback worries?

Now you can with the LR Baggs Voiceprint DI impulse response pedal that corrects the raw pickup sound from your acoustic guitar jack output to match the body of sound your acoustic actually makes.

Andrew Barta-signed Tech 21 SansAmp PSA 2.0

Sennheiser XS Wireless IEM

Get your hands on a slice of history with an Andrew Barta-signed Tech 21 SansAmp PSA 2.0! The PSA 2.0 is a fantastic programmable analog tube amplifier and cabinet simulator that sounds the real deal in a small and portable enclosure.

Originally a rack mounted unit, this new model is a compact pedal that can fit in your pocket.

Thanks to our friends at Sennheiser, one lucky Mixdown reader will be able to add a level of precision and control to their live sets with the XS Wireless IEM set. It features an XSW IEM SR stereo transmitter, XSW IEM EK stereo receiver, IE 4 in-ear headphones, and everything you need to get going!

For your chance to win any of these prizes, head to our giveaways page at mixdownmag.com.au/giveaway and follow the instructions. *These giveaways are for Australian residents only and one entry per person. For full terms and conditions visit mixdownmag.com.au/terms-and-conditions

Picture: Abbey Road Institute Berlin

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PRODUCT NEWS

Vale Dave Smith Legendary synth pioneer, Sequential founder, and “Father of MIDI” Dave Smith passed away on May 31 as confirmed by Sequential. “We’re heartbroken, but take some small solace in knowing he was on the road doing what he loved best in the company of family, friends, and artists,” they said. Smith founded Sequential Circuits in 1974 and changed the synth game three years later with the first commercial polyphonic and microprocessor-controlled synthesiser, the Prophet-5. From there, Smith would be involved in countless innovations such as inventing MIDI, soft synths, and so many more. He will remain one of the most influential figures in synthesis and electronic music instrument design.

Boost your small-scale studio with the new compact Wavebone Star Rover Desk

Give your guitar wings with the PRS wall-mounted guitar hanger

Artiphon’s Orba 2 is stacked with new features

ELECTRIC FACTORY | ELFA.COM.AU

KOALA AUDIO | KOALAAUDIO.COM.AU

KOALA AUDIO | KOALAAUDIO.COM.AU

The PRS Wall-Mounted Guitar Hanger lets you display your PRS in style. A metal insert keeps your hanger securely fixed to the wall, and the nitro-friendly foam wrapped hook safely cradles your guitar’s headstock. It fits electric, acoustic, bass, and offset models alike. Get your guitar off the ground and give your room an upgraded vibe with the PRS Wall-Mounted Guitar Hanger. Included in the box are two mounting screws, mounting hardware, guitar yoke and key, and a bird cover plate. Just make sure it’s on a stud and not exceeding 15 pounds (around seven kilos)!

Artiphon has unveiled Orba 2 following the success of the original pocket-sized synthesiser, looper, MIDI, and MPE controller. Orba 2 allows users to play any sound, wherever they like, with a redesigned sound engine capable of playing sampled pianos, guitars, found sounds, and more. Furthermore, the Orba 2 app will allow you to record any sound from the real world and transform it into a playable musical instrument, while also having an integrated looper that allows you to record loops right on the device itself. USB-C and Bluetooth MIDI connectivity is also available.

The new Wavebone Star Rover Studio Desk is a compact studio desk perfect for your small music production space or video editing suite, providing 6U of available rack space for rack mount equipment and a built-in height adjustable keyboard tray for your MIDI keyboard controller or other peripherals. You can use it with outboard gear or without, and it’s got removable wooden trays in the back that can fit up to nine rack units, which you can also use for extra storage space if you don’t have any rack gear.

Ernie Ball Music Man is going “back to the future” with new Ray finishes CMC MUSIC | CMCMUSIC.COM.AU Music Man is adding three new sparkle finishes to their 2022 StingRay Ray34 lineup: Blue Sparkle, Purple Sparkle, and Seafoam Sparkle. The StingRay Ray34 bass is an essential for any bassist. Designed for a super smooth feel, the StingRay’s roasted maple neck comes in two fingerboard options – roasted maple and rosewood, while its alnico humbucker pickup and three-band active preamp – delivers the signature big, bold sound with tonal versatility that is the Stingray’s hallmark. The StingRay34 Cosmic finishes have a recommended retail price of $2,895.

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XS Wireless IEM

About time to level up Make the move to personal monitoring with Sennheiser’s new XS WIRELESS IEM. Defining new standards for simple, flexible, and reliable wireless in-ear monitoring, this system is designed to help you level up your sound – regardless of your experience level. Whether a rehearsal or live performance, on a club stage or for a worship service, benefit from renowned Sennheiser sound and solid wireless reliability packaged into a convenient system – letting you focus on playing your best. www.sennheiser.com/XSW-IEM

PRODUCT NEWS

Markbass celebrates 20 years with the Series IV Combos CMC MUSIC | CMCMUSIC.COM.AU As part of their 20th anniversary celebration Markbass has released their Series IV range of bass Combos. The Little Mark IV combo head features a revised EQ section with updated centre frequencies allowing you to boost or cut up to 16dB on each band. The new bi-band limiter responds faster and more dynamically, the new old school filter cuts your highs and delivers a round and smooth tone, and a new mute switch is available on the front panel, next to the new three-way rotary switch which offers tone shaping options.

Get comfortable at your desk with the Viking Studio Chair

ADAM Audio goes direct with Focusrite Australia

Martin produces guitar number 2.5 million

KOALA AUDIO | KOALAAUDIO.COM.AU

FOCUSRITE AUSTRALIA | FOCUSRITE.COM

ELECTRIC FACTORY | ELFA.COM.AU

Make those marathon sessions more comfortable with the Wavebone Viking Multifunctional Studio Chair. Wavebone design and manufacture an ergonomic range of studio chairs specifically designed for musicians to go alongside their desks, with the Viking allowing you to fold away the armrests when you’re playing guitar, while even having little pockets on the back to put picks or cables in. For the mixing-inclined, there is special waist support, an adjustable seat depth and back height with lumbar support, and even a headrest as an optional additional purchase.

Following the news of Federal Audio closing their doors, Focusrite Australia has taken on local distribution of ADAM Audio and will concentrate on “building a strong presence and influence in Australia. Federal Audio owner Cris Stevens will be joining Focusrite Australia as Sales Manager for ADAM Audio and Focusrite Pro. “Cris has done an outstanding job for ADAM Audio in Australia with Federal Audio over the last few years”, said ADAM Audio CEO Christian Hellinger. “In fact, he and his team have been so good that we in Berlin have often been inspired by his marketing campaigns.”

Martin celebrated their 2.5 millionth guitar manufactured since the company’s inception by company founder Christian Frederick Martin Senior in 1833 with a one-off masterpiece of craftsmanship in the form of the Custom D-2.5 millionth, a custom-made, handcrafted guitar that will reside in the Martin Museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. The body of the guitar is made from special Belizean rosewood with a dark blue finish, and is adorned with 436 diamonds, six natural sapphires, one ruby, and a palladium pickguard, all themed around Martin Senior’s immigration from Germany to America.

New ultra-protective and durable Analog Cases stock to land for mobile producers KOALA AUDIO | KOALAAUDIO.COM.AU Analog Cases appointed Koala Audio as their Australian distributor late last year and their latest additions are must-haves for mobile producers transporting everything from MacBooks to interfaces. wThe PULSE case for the Macbook Pro 16” comes with a ton of unique storage features for chargers, cables, and more, boasting extreme durability and protection. The PULSE Case for studio headphones is made from durable and lightweight EVA (shockabsorbant). The GLIDE cases for both the PreSonus Studio 24c and the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 feature similar features to the headphones cases, but with velvet-lined and custom-moulded designs for each interface.

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Foals When we get on the line to the ever enigmatic, always stage-diving and crowd surfing Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis, he warns that he won’t be able to speak much because he has a sore throat.

However, the singer’s handicap hasn’t come about because of any sting in the tail end of a miserable British winter, or a bout of the spicy cough.

Yannis is knackered because his band has just performed to over 40 thousand people in their hometown of London – five nights back to back, a stark reminder that two years of lockdowns hasn’t made a dent in the feverish cult of Foals that continues to expand, despite the death knell of twenty teen’s indie rock.

“We did four nights at The Olympia and one at Brixton Academy – all sold-out,” he says with a hint of trump buried beneath the phlegm and coughing fits.

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“Brixton, in particular, was quite peculiar, that’s such a massive gig for a lot of bands, and it certainly wasn’t an afterthought but it did feel like one of the ‘smaller’ hometown shows now, which is a pretty mental thing to say.”

The fact that the London threepiece are still raking in the ticket sales is no surprise.

Their career bull-run has been remarkable, with their bonafide 2013 classic Holy Fire followed up by the feral What Went Down, assuring them main stage billing for any festival until the end of time.

The double album sprawl Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost further grew the lore of the band, which had shown both a

determination to progress and a prolific streak to keep even the most impatient fan sated.

But now, as the band get ready to launch another touring cycle for the forthcoming seventh LP Life Is Yours, the time has truly arrived for the band to tear up the rule book, throw the scraps into the fire and dance in the flames. Emphasis on dance.

“What we do will always be distinctly Foals and stylistically us – the guitar is what helps that along, and my voice being somewhat distorted wailing over the top of everything,” Yannis says.

“However, dance music has always been part of the DNA of the band, it’s just come more to the foreground on this record is all, but that’s always been a significant factor that makes up our sound.

“We’ve always liked to jam a bit and fuse our songs together. It makes the show a bit more of a party that way – it’s similar to the way DJs string stuff together in clubs – the momentum never drops in clubs, there’s

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always been amazing energy in the air, so that’s been something we’ve wanted to be mindful of more, both live and with this new record.

“There was a desire to take it back to more of the initial idea of the band where the rhythm, the grooves, and the guitars are interlocking architecturally. We wanted to tap into the physicality of music. And we wanted it to feel good.”

For the guitar lovers, no need to fear. Life Is Yours retains all the trademark earworms plucked out of Yannis’ and co-guitarist Jimmy Smith’s fretboards that made hits like ‘My Number’ and ‘Two Steps, Twice’ the ultimate guitar-led dance floor anthems.

However, there’s no denying the infectious shimmer of the synths, the moveability of the drums, and the celebratory nature of the hooks that spatter across Life Is Yours, bursting forth with an optimism rarely heard in a post-pandemic, post-Trumpian world.

“We were listening to heaps of ‘70s disco records while making this one – the view was for this album to be a bit more summery – it’s a going out record, an album that’s full of life and soundtracks the reemergence of people into the world,” Yannis says.

“It’s really exciting that the genres are cross-pollinating more now – there’s a feeling that nothing is off-limits.”

“The more electronically-based artists that we love mostly inspired us here, and we’ve developed that side of our sound over the past few albums anyway, so we wanted to really go deeper on that side of things.”

Yannis notes that – besides 40 thousand people coming to shows off the back of a few promo singles – the “battlelines” of music has changed, especially in rock.

“It’s been less tribal for a while,” he says. “When we started the band we wanted to follow the tradition of artists like LCD Soundsystem, we played house parties and club nights as much as we played classic rock venues. We have 15 years of history doing that kind of thing.

“It’s really exciting that the genres are crosspollinating more now – there’s a feeling that nothing is off-limits.”

Like most albums currently emerging, Life Is Yours emerged from the existential despair of lockdowns brought about by the pandemic.

Yannis is quick to point out though that this isn’t a reflection on a darker time of history, but an oasis for people looking for a reason to dance.

“Our touring was cancelled because of COVID-19, and during lockdown, we initially found it really nice to be in a restful headspace,” he said.

“But after a while though, like many artists really, I started to feel really restless and that was when I started writing some demos – ‘2am’ and ‘Wake Me Up’ were the two songs that really laid the template for this new record.

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“We rehearsed in this really cold, miserable rehearsal room in an industrial facility – no sunlight, no one around – it was really bleak, so that really propelled us to try and counter this sense of the grim pandemic winter.

As

“It became a really escapist project, for those four or five hours a day that we were working on the music we were liberated from thinking about COVID – that’s the spirit of this album really.”

“With ‘Wake Me Up’, I just wanted to write a song about transporting yourself to a better, idyllic situation.

“I think we all had that feeling of the last eighteen months being like a weird fever dream that felt surreal but very affecting. I think we all wished we could have woken up somewhere else at various points.”

The band also invited a swathe of other voices in to have their say on the record, with Yannis revealing some songs would be shared around with as many as four producers.

“Once we started recording the record we tried different producers, we ended up working with four and we would record 80 per cent of a track with one, and then change and go with someone else for the finishing touches.

“We’d never worked like that before but it meant there was so much creativity going on.

“After we had most of the record done, we relocated to a studio called ‘Real World’ which is famously owned by Peter Gabriel from Genesis.

“It was idyllic, on this beautiful lake – we worked there for eight weeks, and it all just came together beautifully, so we had it finished by the end of the summer – it was really great. I love Gabriel, I love ‘Slegehammer’. That era of stuff slaps.”

Yannis explains to close our interview, the album finale ‘Wild Green’ is both a signpost of where they’ve arrived, but also a hint of the things to potentially come.

“That was an exercise in just going overboard with synths – we had this amazing arpeggiator that the whole thing was based on – we jammed on this loop for half an hour non-stop,” he says.

“The idea was that the first half is a very lush tapestry of interlocking walls of sound, and then the second half breaks open and disintegrates at the same time with the way the guitars fall apart.

“It was a song of two halves, we like the idea of reemergence, and by the end, you reach the end of a life cycle. That song really is symbolic of the album as a whole.”

Who knows where this band will go next? One thing is for sure – there are hundreds of thousands of followers who are going on that journey too.

BY AL BELLING

Life Is Yours might take some digesting for fans of the guitardriven Foals staples ‘Mountain At My Gates’ and ‘Spanish Sahara’.

However, there’s no denying the brilliance in the composition spread across the 11 songs that make up the band’s new work.

Nothing is recycled, tired, or retreaded. Foals are fundamentally a rock band, but one that will continuously evolve, despite the trends surrounding them.

Life Is Yours will be released June 17 via Warner Music

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PAGE HEADER

Squidgenini: Up Close and Personal I’ve always been obsessed with music.

I grew up in the USA listening to a lot of Alicia Keys, Groove Armada, Wes Montgomery, and St Germaine, courtesy of my parents.

Getting my first iPod at age 11 unlocked a whole new world of iTunes pop singles. The first song I ever downloaded was ‘Pon De Replay’ by Rihanna. What an absolute tune.

I studied classical piano during school and had a natural affinity for it but not a whole lot of commitment! After high school I was drawn to music but I thought my only option as a singer and pianist was some kind of singer/ songwriter – not my vibe at all. Conveniently, my cousin introduced me to Ableton and that triggered a paradigm shift in me when I realised I could create the

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hi-def pop music I knew and loved.

Learning Ableton was incredibly daunting at first and I was grateful to have the piano background as it gave me the confidence to follow through with it.

I’ve been producing music as Squidgenini for almost 10 years now and have been through many sonic shifts, but my music now sits somewhere between soul, pop, house, and R&B. I create everything myself within Ableton often utilising my Juno-106 and Korg SV1. Early Squid was a lot more hip hopinfluenced with slower, boom-bap type beats. My evolution into DJing these past few years has led me to producing faster house-y things. This is a direction I’ve been exploring in the tracks for my next EP. In classic Squid style, it’s a split vibe with a few broken beats and jazzy tracks, and a few that are pop/house influenced.

I have a huge variety of influences that swirl around the cauldron inside me and inform my unique overall sound.

Erykah Badu has always been a huge influence on me, not only as a musician but as an all encompassing artist. I feel so inspired watching artists accurately capture the energy of the time they’re in and reflect that back to the world in their music.

Jessy Lanza’s vocal production and seamless fusion of pop and dance music has always been an inspiration for me aesthetically.

The fact that I sing as well as produce is pretty unique. It’s wild to me that it is but here we are.

I’ve noticed that doing everything myself means that all the parts are interwoven in a way that is much different to when multiple people are creating a track.

A lot of singers get recorded in a studio by an engineer (usually under time and cash pressure) which can technically ‘sound’ good but you end up with something that lacks originality. Unless you’re Ariana Grande, you’ll usually end up with a set of doubles and maybe two adlib takes. So boring.

Recording myself alone means I can experiment and do as many takes as I want which leads to more exciting vocal textures and layering. So I always tell people that want cool vocal production, learn how to record your own stuff!

I have an epic home studio in my share house that is home to my Juno-106, Korg SV1, Push1, Roland TR-8, Neumann TLM 103 condenser mic, and an SM58 running through a Space Echo delay pedal. Everything runs into the PreSonus Studio 1824c interface so we can keep

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everything always plugged in. I love having an idea and being able to sit down to work on it immediately without needing to set anything else up.

The TR-8 is a new one for me. I’ve always recorded my drums in Ableton, usually by playing them on my Push but I’ve started using the TR-8 when I want that old-skool house sound.

In terms of front end stuff, for the last several years I used a little Focusrite Scarlett which was fine as far as accessible interfaces go.

But I recently upgraded to a PreSonus Studio 1810c which is far superior. It’s important to have a quality interface when recording vocals at home. But it is even more important to have a quality microphone. I upgraded to the Neumann TLM 103 last year and it massively improved my vocal production. As for monitoring, I have ADAM Audio T7V 2-Way 7” monitors. They’re great.

When it comes to DAWs, well, if you didn’t already get it – Ableton 4life, and it always has been! I’ve been teaching myself how to use it since 2012 and it’s so fun. I’ve never used a different DAW so I don’t really know how it compares but I always found it really easy to use. The one thing I’ve always missed is playlisting but that’s in the new Ableton update so I have to upgrade! I always end up with 100+ vocal tracks in most sessions and a playlisting option would make the whole recording process much less chaotic.

In terms of my workflow, I usually start off a new track with a simple beat, then add a bassline or some type of melodic line, then layer some Space Echo sounds to start finding the core vocal melodies. I try and pick out a few words from my gibberish to formulate the lyrics for the track.

As for my work processes, short burst sessions and marathons are both no stranger to me. I’m in the EP creation part of my cycle so I’m pretty much always in the studio in between working and eating snacks. Knowing when something is finished can be tricky for me. I usually jump the gun and realise after a week that it needs more work. I usually work on a bunch of tracks at once so when one needs a listening break, I can switch over to another.

My sessions are always pretty chaotic on purpose. There’s something about having a clean and easy to navigate session that kills my creativity. I copy and paste whole tracks over and over again to write different versions of the same song within the same session. This is how I allow myself to be brutal with cutting whole sections or parts without fully deleting them. I find this process to be really freeing which is an important illusion to create while working inside the Ableton box.

But honestly I couldn’t live without all of the Soundtoys plugins. I use them on everything! I love a bit of Crunchy Decapitator on my drum group, Micro Shift on my synths and backing vocals, and the Plate Reverb on a return send for my drums.

I use the trusty Ableton stock glue compressor on pretty much everything as well. I like its simplicity and how little CPU it uses! But when I upgrade my laptop, I’m going to go searching for my new favourite fancy compressor plugin.

I love the FabFilter EQ but my laptop is so old and slow I have to be extremely selective with how many plugins I use. So I usually end up using Ableton stock compressors and EQs – as I need to have those on pretty much every track – so that I can save my CPU for the aesthetic plugins (the Soundtoys).

At the end of the day though, if I could only use one effect for the rest of my life, it would definitely be delay. I put different delays on almost everything. I love a little automated delay on my hi-hats to give them that extra depth, a 1/8 delay crash for transitions (a classic) and obviously vocals. Every other effect I feel like I could create some other way by recording things in a specific way and making sure my sample selection is on point.

If I could give any advice to anyone based on what I know, I’ve always had this mantra since the beginning – “just do you”. It always grounds me when I get a bit lost. Producing music electronically can be hectic sometimes because of the lack of limitations and it’s easy to lose your uniqueness in the process. I personally find that the most interesting music is when an artist’s essence is felt strongly within the work and you can’t achieve that by trying to be somebody else.

I’m quite content with the gear I have so from here, I don’t know if there’s any dream pieces of equipment I’d like to own. A new synth would be epic but what I really want is to get better at using what I already have. I feel like there’s so much in Ableton that I haven’t explored yet and I’d really like to embrace my inner nerd and go deeper into the details.

I’m in the process of finishing off my next EP which is extremely exciting. I can’t wait to share the journey I’ve been on and get more music out there! Stay tuned.

On average, Echoboy would get the most use out of all my plugins – the Soundtoys delay. My last EP was riddled with Echoboy. I love having a bunch of different delays on my vocals to fill out the mix. I also put a few as return sends so some drums, synths, and vocals can have the same delay vibe.

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PAGE HEADER

What’s New for Tama in 2022 From practising to performing, Tama’s new models and finishes have you covered.

Within the drumming community, the name Tama is certainly synonymous with reliability, innovation, and for many, is very much the industry standard.

Since the brand’s inception in 1974, Tama has always had a strong focus of innovation and building the most reliable instruments and hardware. With their main headquarters based in Seto, Japan, and a US counterpart in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, Tama have earned a solid street rep from all corners of the globe over the decades, and for very good reason.

Incredibly robust drum shells matched with equally sturdy,

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reliable, and pioneering hardware are true touring and studio workhorses; worthy of any hardhitting touring band or demanding studio session. You just never hear of a Tama blowing out.

FLAGSHIP INNOVATION – ENTRY LEVEL DEPENDABILITY A company never to rest on their laurels, Tama have always pushed the status quo in both their drums and accompanying hardware, continually bringing exciting and revolutionary products to the table.

Their flagship STAR line of kits offer unique wood shells, being bubinga, maple, and walnut. The accompanying hardware includes multiple US-patented designs such as Quick-Lock tom brackets, Hold Tight washers, Bass Drum spurs and the Super Resonant Mounting System.

The ever popular Starclassic line offers a classic all maple shell (always nice to have as an offering it has to be said), and a walnut/ birch blend.

Both of these high end lines have earned their respective places as being some of the most respected kits available today, comfortably sitting with the numerous usual suspects in the upper echelons of drum manufacturing.

As for Tama’s medium tier and entry level kits, there’s a good reason why there are so many of these kits around. The Superstar Classic and Imperialstar lines are maple and poplar shell composites respectively, clearly stating their positions in the intermediate/semi pro and beginner kits lanes, and both comfortably meet the needs of their players in true Tama style – reliable, powerful, and versatile.

GENRE DEFYING What’s always struck me with Tama as a drum brand is their versatility in shell construction and this gives their range breadth that many others can’t match. Their long list of long-standing players of the brand ranges from jazz to the deepest chasms of metal, let alone everything in between.

Long time Tama players include the likes of Stewart Copeland (The Police), Simon Phillips (Toto), Lars Ulrich (Metallica) and Kenny Arnoff (John Fogerty, LA session drumming royalty) with the modern era of players including guns such as Adam Deitch (John Schofield, Lettuce) and Australia’s own Nic Petterson (Northlane) to name but a few.

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WHAT’S NEW IN 2022 Never ones to shy away from limited edition runs, Tama’s 2022 Starclassic line features a walnut/birch shell in a new stunning Gloss Natural Tamo Ash finish. As for the Starclassic Performer line, the maple/birch shell composition is available in a striking Sky Blue Aurora finish.

Aside from their superb new acoustic kits, it seems Tama have created something rather special for those unable to work on their chops on a full acoustic kit, ala apartment living and alike. Their True Touch series is an exciting new and revolutionary line of practise kits pitched directly at these types of players, coming in a simple kick, snare, hats, and ride configuration, through to four and five-piece setups. Boasting an incredibly realistic feel and sensitivity on the heads, it looks as though Tama have set the new standard for the practise kit market, something sure to be appreciated in 2022.

Nic Pettersen of Northlane brings a classic rock styling to the rhythm, employing the use of tight snare and cymbal work and focusing more on the groove rather than overly technical playing. Throughout the video, Pettersen can be seen using the 2022 Tama Star Bubinga Kit, with a 22” kick drum, 16” and 14” floor toms, a 12” rack tom, and a 14” Soundworks Steel snare.

The high density of the bubinga wood adds a thick low end and an overall deeper and darker sound to the kit, while the thinner shells of the drums increase vibrations and improve resonance. The Soundworks steel snare offers a tight yet powerful sound that is excellent for live performances.

As for hardware, the flagship Iron Cobra series of kick pedals features a very fancy limited edition gold single and double kick pedals; for those looking for that extra bit of special something in their traps case. Very tasty indeed.

It’s always nice to see some updated finishes and it’s all too enticing when limited edition runs are done, particularly when it’s done right.

In true Tama fashion, the new limited edition finishes for their Starclassic series are equally striking as they are deep, and their hardware offerings continue to impress, and that’s saying something for traps!

While at Studios 301 jamming with Thy Art is Murder’s Jesse Beahler and Justice for the Damned’s Chas Levi, Nic Pettersen of Northlane demonstrated the new Starclassic walnut/birch drum kit from Tama drums.

Petterson used the new limited edition gold hardware kit with the full set up of two rack toms, two floor toms, a kick drum, and snare.

Thy Art is Murder drummer Jesse Beahler employs a more black/death metal inspired style of drumming, with lighting fast double kicks and tight blast beats, highlighting his speed and technical ability. For the performance, Beahler can be seen using the 2022 Tama Starclassic Performer kit with a 22” kick, 16” and 14” floor toms, 12” and 10” rack toms and a 14” Starphonic brass snare.

The maple and birch build of the Starclassic Performer combines the warmth of the maple wood with the clarity of birch to provide a nice clear tone that pushes through the mix. The Starphonic brass snare gives a clean, snappy sound, perfect for the abundance of snare work within the blast beats and quick snare rolls.

“Playing it was smooth!” Pettersen states.

“These toms absolutely sing, the kick is thumping and [the snare] can be tuned from both low to high ranges. It all compliments each other so nicely!”

The jam session showed off Tama’s latest and greatest additions to their range and was completely improvised with each drummer playing off one another while adding their own characteristics to the performance, following each other for the main groove while giving space to jam and improvise over the top.

Although each drummer hails from acts in Australia’s thriving metal community, they each have contrasting styles that compliment each other and add variety to the jam.

BY ANDY LLOYD-RUSSELL & CAMBELL COURTNEY

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Finally is Justice for the Damned drummer Chas Levi. Levi proves to be a nice middle ground between the two other styles, with punk rock and thrash metal influences. Levi’s tight snare and hat work compliments his aggression and speed to create a driving, high energy rhythm section. In the jam, Levi can also be seen playing the 2022 Tama Starclassic Performer kit. This time with a 22” kick drum, 16” and 12” floor and rack toms, and the 14” Star Bubinga snare.

The Starclassic Performer again gives the sound a nice clear and balanced sound, with plenty of depth without sacrificing clarity. The Star Bubinga snare provides a bright, snappy, and dry sound. The bubinga wood gives the snare a rich resonance which helps stand out from the rest of the kit.

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Audio-Technica 60th Anniversary In April this year, the folks at Audio-Technica celebrated 60 years since the company founder, Hideo Matsushita, established the business.

Starting from a small single-storey workshop in Shinjuku, the business grew to be one of the leading manufacturers of premium audio technology. Their gear has made a global impact on the audio world, with some killer releases – the AT4033 and AE2500 condensers, the M50x headphones, and their 30 and 20 series to name a few. Now celebrating their 60th anniversary, it’s no surprise that Audio-Technica is a household name in both the professional and domestic audio realms, as their stellar “audio for all” philosophy carries their legacy to ensure future generations can experience the joy of analogue.

From the beginning, AudioTechnica’s approach to making audio technology has been underlined by a devotion to the listening experience. Matsushita saw audio as an artform in itself.

Inspired to start making his own transducers after witnessing the depth of emotion he witnessed at vinyl listening sessions at the Bridgestone Museum of Arts in Tokyo, his first two cartridges, the AT-1 and AT-3, amounted to the preliminary success that helped provide the foundation for Matsushita to expand his business.

He opened a larger headquarters in Machida, where the company still operates within its global presence today.

One thing that has always remained consistent throughout AudioTechnica’s history has been their dedication to the use of high quality measuring equipment in the development process, even when the budget was smaller, This was an important philosophy of Matsushita’s from the brand’s earliest days.

“We have an anechoic room which is larger in scale in each 20

development basement compared to the other competitors,” explains Shioto Okita, current Manager of Microphone Development Department. “These environments realise the perfect-silence in the room, which enables the engineer to develop the microphone that has noise level marks under 0db SPL on spec.”

Some of Audio-Technica’s more notable products marked turning points for the business, expanding their popularity and knack for capturing music, broadcast, and even more recently, content creation.

One such notable Audio-Technica product is the AT4033 large diaphragm condenser mic released in 1991. It’s a high quality, affordable microphone, with a low noise floor and a transformerless design with design input from legendary engineer, the late Phil Ramone. Its sub-$1,000 affordability also made it increasingly popular, as studio microphones of the time generally had a far more intimidating price tag than today.

“At our price, the AT4033 became a smash-hit model not only in the professional field, but also for ordinary people, it meant the time had come for everyone to use good quality microphones,” explains Okita-San. Indeed, the DIY culture of the ‘90s meant the emergence of the bedroom producer and a greater demand for affordable gear. AudioTechnica were perfectly poised to be the de facto brand for a generation of music makers that were big on talent and low on funds.

Finding its way onto records by the likes of Steve Albini and Gordon Raphael along with a who’s who of alternative and alt-country classics, the 4033 was one of the definitive microphones of the 1990s.

This lifehack microphone lineage has continued to this day, with Audio-Technica’s recent 20-series microphones packing more specs than you’d expect for the price tag. With a range that includes the AT2020, 2040, 2031, 2035, 2041SP, 2050, and the USB version of the 2020, the series is aimed at budding engineers and content creators.

“Now, creators can easily edit the digital audio data and that brings an amazing effect on the results, but this is only about the process in between input and output,” Okita-san says.

“The AT2020 offers brilliant performance and sound quality with an incredible price tag,” notes Okita-san. “It still remains a darling of the content creator market, even as the recent demand for content creation tools has gotten bigger, and with many unique competing products entering the fold.”

One particularly interesting development in the history of Audio-Technica has been their contributions to the world of instrument and live mics. The brand’s penchant for cutting edge design, sound quality, and affordability makes for a slew of notable and important microphones.

Initially of the Artist Elite series, the AE2500 is a dual-element cardioid instrument microphone that is renowned for being one of the most forward-thinking kick mics ever created. Consisting of dual electret condenser and dynamic elements in the one ruggedlydesigned casing, with dual XLR outputs, it’s perfect for A/B comparisons or blending – and all in perfect phase!

It’s hard to mention AudioTechnica without mentioning their headphones, which have grown to become some of the most ubiquitous in all of professional studios. In January 2007, Audio-

Technica released their first-ever pair of ATH-M50s. These humble over-ear headphones were initially designed for professional level studio use, with comfortable padding and high sound quality, aided by the proprietary 45mm large-aperture drivers. With the release of the current-gen M50x, they’ve outgrown their studio roots, entering the public consciousness and becoming Audio-Technica’s best selling product worldwide.

From humble beginnings, AudioTechnica has successfully turned many people onto the art of analogue listening. They do this by making pro and domestic audio gear that is both audiophile and accessible. The growing overlap between these two worlds, combined with a current golden era for global content and music creation, means it’s an exciting time for a brand with an ear to the future.

“We will keep trying to ride the wave of recent fast-paced technological innovation.” Okitasan says. “But at the same time we also have to remember that we need to refine our technology for making analogue products like record cartridges, wired headphones, and microphones because it never ends.”

“We feel the warmth in our hearts which is sort of universal of the word ‘analogue’. We will continue to focus on improving this kind of transducer technology and being in tune with human sensibilities.” he explains, in a quintessentially Japanese way.

“What begins as a simple vibration; a subtle movement, results in an emotional connection – whether that be when listening deeply to an album or sharing your voice with the world.”

BY ROWENA WISE

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OUT NOW

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Creating your Perfect Recording Workflow with KRK For as long as there have been recording studios, there have been industry standards for studios.

Go-to signal chains, test tones, and standardised technical practices that have become something of a studio shorthand, with the aim of maximising efficiency on the clock and taking the guesswork out of what is the extremely complex process of making modern music.

This kind of standardisation is commonplace in the world of professional studio production, but as the gap between commercial and home studio becomes increasingly more narrow from a technical standpoint, so too are we seeing an increased sophistication in the kind of specialisation and optimisation of signal chains in the home recording space. This means that several pieces of ‘prosumer’ gear have ascended above the pack, becoming something of an ‘industry standard’ within their own right and in turn becoming part of the fabric of the modern home studio. But what is the quintessential home recording workflow in 2022 and what pieces of gear have come to symbolise this movement?

Well, if you were ever looking for a definitive glimpse into the current state of the art, perhaps you could look no further than Aussie distributor Jands and their massive ‘KRK Home Studio Giveaway’ taking place this month.

In what is the biggest giveaway of its type in recent memory, the good people at Jands are giving away an entire home studio setup, end to end. That’s everything from the MacBook, to the mic, monitors, the software, hardware, and everything in between. A simple squizz of the gear list and it’s hard to imagine a more ideal studio setup for the budding producer, artist, or engineer.

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The centre of operations here is undoubtedly the MacBook Pro, running Ableton (of course).

The combination of portability and processing power has made the MacBook Pro the de facto for a whole generation of home recordists and it’s easy to see why.

This laptop is more than capable of handling all of your recording, processing, and transportation needs, and given the kinds of high quality plugins and VSTs available these days, you need plenty of grunt under the hood to keep up with the multi-channel sessions stacking up.

Ableton is no longer just solely the live ‘DJ’ platform it was once known as, recent incarnations have seen the software transform into a brilliant recording and editing platform, with its own unique workflows and routing options. The tools now offered by Ableton are out of this world and manage to package it all into an interface that is more user friendly than so many other digital audio workstations.

As far as getting your sound recorded, a combination of both MIDI instruments within Ableton and recording audio with a microphone is going to provide the most versatility.

The Novation Launchkey USB MIDI Controller Keyboard has become a familiar go-to in home studios all over the world. Their intuitiveness and mappability makes them a natural fit for modern in-the-box composition and beatmaking. If you are not a natural piano player, then the 25-key model is perfect for everything from punching in synth bass lines into the software, which can then easily be shifted into the right location.

One of the biggest points of difference between pro and home studio is in the treatment of the acoustic environment. To combat the influence of the room, home recordists have trended towards the use of large diaphragm dynamic mics for vocals and instrument applications, and there is no more famous microphone of this type than the iconic Shure SM7B, which has become a something of a modern classic in recent times.

Being a dynamic mic, it’s not so sensitive that it will pick up every unflattering nuance in a less than ideal acoustic environment, and its ability to provide clear diction and a reinforced low end make it an awesome choice for voices of all types. It also doubles as an awesome instrument mic as well, particularly on guitars and hand percussion where it can handle a high sound pressure level with ease.

Now, getting the sound into your software is the next big consideration and this is where we start thinking about interfaces and A/D conversion. Of course, you’ll want something that offers both microphone and line level inputs, as well as a Hi-Z input for running instruments directly without a DI box, which is also a handy addition. The Focusrite Scarlett series of audio interfaces really have this part of the market cornered, offering a range of high quality compact boxes of varying channel counts, that all punch way above their weight in regards to conversion and component quality. These provide a simple, but effective front end from which to work from, while also providing an integrated headphone and monitoring controller.

and are an ideal set of closedback headphones for this sort of home recording setup. With good isolation and minimal spill, they are perfect for maintaining signal purity in your open mics, while simultaneously providing an extremely articulate reproduction of your sound.

But, when you want to really hear what you’ve been creating, the main course is really the monitors, and being a KRK-branded giveaway, this is a component that is sure to get tongues wagging.

In the nearfield, we have a pair of iconic KRK Rokit 5’s tied together with one of KRK’s awesome S8.4 Subs to give some solid control over the low end. On top of that KRK are also throwing in a pair of their awesome KRK Rokit 7’s for the mid-field, perfect for A/B comparisons and cross-checking for bigger systems. For anyone mixing at home, that would just about be a dream home studio setup right there.

So, wouldn’t it be incredible to have this dream home recording studio all for yourself? Well, you can with a massive promotion from Jands who are giving away this dream KRK Home Recording Package to one lucky customer. All you have to do is purchase a select KRK studio monitor or headphone in June, follow the prompts on the Mixdown or Jands website, and you’re in the running!

BY ROB GEE

Speaking of headphones, if you haven’t tried the KRK KNS 8402 headphones, you really should.

These are pretty new on the scene

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FROM THE STUDIO, TO THE STREET,

NO COMPROMISE. Harnessing the legendary M-series studio sound, the new ATH-M50xBT2 and ATH-M20xBT combine updated features and functionality with a classic design to set the new standard in wireless audio.

ATH-

M50xBT2 App-Based Equaliser

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50hr Battery

Beam Forming Technology

Multipoint Pairing

Follow us @AudioTechnicaAU

ATH-

M20xBT Lightweight Design

60 Hour Battery

Wired Connection Multipoint Capable Pairing

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Roland: Setting the Standard in Electronic Drums Since their inception in the mid 1970s, electronic drums have evolved to hold such esteem for both drummers and music makers, it’s almost unfathomable to think of a world without them.

Being one of the true innovators in the electronic drum world, Roland has pioneered not only the feel and sound of electronic drums, but have continually pushed the boundaries of how they integrate into live and studio spaces, as well as the home environment.

Combining the quality of the most meticulously-recorded drums and percussion sounds with the convenience of a compact setup, Roland V-Drums tick a ton of boxes for those wanting to be able to practise, write, and record either at home, or with the ability to quickly and conveniently transport their setup to another space. For many of us, having a full acoustic kit setup in the house, garage, or home studio just isn’t realistic, and it therefore seems blaringly obvious to say, but this is where electronic kits are unparalleled in their ability to offer all of the benefits that a near-silent playing experience can bring. A distinct lack of disgruntled neighbours or housemates being one over quoted example, and I for one can certainly attest to that!

To put things bluntly, Roland’s dominance in the electronic drumming world has been more or less unrivalled, particularly since the 1990s. As mentioned earlier, Roland has been responsible for helping shape the feel of electronic kits, bringing them as close to the response of an acoustic kit as possible, it would seem. With the release of the nowcoveted Roland mesh drum heads

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in 1997, an evolution was born within the electronic drumming community – as up until then they had been used to the feel and response of mostly rubber type pads available at the time.

The Roland mesh drum head not only changed the feel of the playing surface straight off the bat, but also allowed users to adjust them. For jazz players, this meant having a mesh head that could be cranked up, and for hard hitting rock players, something less responsive, all of which replicated the feel and response of an acoustic drum head.

While not every Roland kit came with mesh heads as standard when first introduced, now in 2022 every kit other than the entry level TD-1K has mesh heads as standard. What’s more, Roland certainly hasn’t just sat back on this innovation since 1997, but rather, have tweaked, refined, and developed this technology further in conjunction with their electronics and physical designs to get their pads even closer to that of an acoustic drum. This has led to larger head surfaces, and in the case of the mid-tier TD-17 series, the PDX-12 (12” diameter) snare pad comes as standard. While this may seem slightly trivial, having an electronic mesh-head snare being closer to the actual size of a “typical” 14” snare drum allows for a far more realistic touch, helping bring out all of the idiosyncrasies of a snare drum, depending on where the drum is struck. This

paired with a sophisticated drum module, creates a wildly authentic drumming experience – far more so than the smaller surface pads of the past.

So for players either continually switching between electric and acoustic setups or for those making a more permanent transition to using electronic drums, these changeovers have become more seamless.

Roland’s flagship V-Drum modules have always possessed some of the most intricate, detailed editing capabilities in the electronic drums universe; with near limitless tweaking of sounds and overall kit customisation. In true Roland fashion, these desirable top-tier features have indeed trickled their way down into the mid-range kits over the years. The TD-17 module for example, hosts some of the more “standard” features including the ability to adjust tuning/ muffling of each pad, as well as individual velocity sensitivity and volume.

A more advanced and I must say, very exciting feature of the TD-17 series is User Sample Importing.

This allows users to import their own samples via SD card into the module and be assigned to a chosen pad. This has been a highly requested feature for years and this alone really does take things to a whole new level for electronic drum modules!

Drum sample companies such as CP samples have even created dedicated expansion libraries specifically for the TD-17 module.

Played and created by none other than Chris Whitten (drummer for Paul McCartney, Dire Straits).

Having a measurable practising tool as a drummer is pretty (excuse the pun), immeasurable. The TD17’s coach mode I have to say is pretty genius in this regard. If only I’d had such a tool in my earlier drumming days… Never one to stop at just the hardware side of things, Roland also offers a wealth of free online practise exercise videos and online lessons for drummers wishing to really push themselves and improve their skills and development.

The VAD (V-Drums Acoustic Design) has been an exciting new addition to the Roland V-Drums line. These drums really do bridge the final gap between electronic and acoustic drums. While the mid-range VAD306 model has more shallow shells compared to the full-sized flagship VAD706, the large diameter pads of the VAD306 (12” snare, 10” rack toms, 12” floor, and 18” kick) are very much acoustic in feel. The accompanying double-braced hardware makes for an even more auth entic acoustic kit stage presence – a wonderful extension of this whole line and a detail that clearly hasn’t been overlooked.

Having been able to take a deep dive into Roland’s current range of V-Drums – particularly the TD-17 series, it’s no surprise this line has picked up some worthy industry awards. This all being testament to Roland’s ability to stay ahead of the curve in development, technology, and customer demand.

BY ANDY LLOYD-RUSSELL

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LVX Intuitive. Endless. Deep.

LVX is a Modular Delay System which breaks the paradigm of pre-set delay types in favor of freedom and flexibility. More than just a delay, LVX will twist and contort your sound into fragraments or shapes and clusters.

>>> $989 RRP mixdownmag.com.au

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FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL

Kink Dozer: A Fuzz you can Trust Once you’ve heard it, you can’t unhear it: the roaring, angry, downright nuts-swinging fuzz bass tone of Ross Knight from the Cosmic Psychos.

That tone originally came from a very specific source: the fuzz circuit of a Shin-Ei 8TR Fuzz Wah. It’s one of those coveted classics, but not because of the wah, which never seemed to overly excite players. That fuzz circuit though…

of that effect. He never uses the wah part at all. So essentially the project is a part-for-part clone in a more obtainable pedal than spending 800 bucks on an old Japanese fuzz you can’t get any more.”

Those Shin-Ei units have about five decades on them at this point, and Knight’s own pedal has seen some serious use and abuse, so he partnered with a bloke he can trust, Mark Quarrell from Australia’s Kink Guitar Pedals for the Dozer, a tank of a pedal housing the 8TR’s fuzz circuit with modern components and a more playerfriendly enclosure than the clunky 8TR layout.

The next step was to decide what the pedal should look like, but Knight had already thought of that, coming in with a mockup of the artwork right down to the Dozer font. Then Kink collaborator Pascal D’Bras added the finishing rusty touches to make the design look more like a beaten up old Caterpillar bulldozer on the farm. The typical ins, outs, and control labels are all named with a Psychos bulldozer twist: the input jack is labelled ‘Diesel,’ the output ‘Emissions,’ the gain ‘Dig’, and the output ‘Rip,’ while the two-way voicing switch is renamed ‘Lift.’

From a design perspective, the project was simple: Knight’s 8TR was no different to any other stock one, and the schematic – almostbut-not-quite the same as the Shin-Ei SuperFuzz design – has been out there for years. Mark built one prototype, substituting modern components in a few instances but staying faithful to that original circuit) and the feedback was that he’d nailed it straight away.

“If you listen to a Cosmic Psychos album after Ross started using that pedal, it’s very hard not to know it’s a Cosmic Psychos song.

It’s definitely his sound,” Mark says. “We discussed whether he used the wah as well but it’s one hundred percent just the fuzz side 26

The end result is a robust little bruiser of a pedal, powered off nine volts and with oversized control knobs and top mounted jacks to take up far less space than the original 8TR. Quarrell says the circuit required no special accommodation for bass, and is equally devastating on guitar.

“I ended up catching Ross at the Psychos show in Frankston, and crazy nice dude,” Mark says. “He told me that he sent a Dozer pedal off to Eddie Vedder. Eddie asked him for one! So Eddie’s got one of my pedals.”

Other folks to stomp on a Kink pedal include The Chats, who have a signature Scratchie Fuzz; Earthbong, and Hamish Glencross of Godthrymm (formerly of My Dying Bride). There’s also a pedal in the works for a very well known Australian grindcore band, but we’re sworn to secrecy on that project for now.

In a way, the relative simplicity of the project took Quarrell back to his earliest days as a pedal builder, starting with a simple DIY bass fuzz kit from an online seller. “I got sick of spending so much money on my guitar G.A.S,” Quarrell says.

“I was just buying tons of gear then selling it all the time, and then I thought, should I give it a go?

So I bought a kit and made it and it worked, and it sort of blew my mind that something so simple on bass could sound so cool.”

From there, it was a relatively painless leap to the ColorSound one-knob fuzz circuit, which led to the Charlie Fuzz, a model still in the catalogue today. “I made a fuzz for myself and put it onto a DIY page on Facebook and got a heap of comments saying ‘You should sell it!’ And I went, yeah, it’s probably not a bad idea. Then five years later we’re making a pedal for Ross from the Cosmic Psychos.

It’s pretty amazing.”

distortion inspired by the HM-2 used by various Swedish death metal legends). A big pedal place wouldn’t take me because the guy was a Christian and didn’t like my stuff. So a lot of people either love me or they just don’t get me and don’t get the satire behind the whole thing.”

One quick glance at the Kink website will tell you this is a maker who understands the more aggressive musical genres and how to communicate that to exactly the kind of like-minded player who’s going to want to step on a pedal that looks like a bulldozer or a blood-splattered knife (or a purple unicorn on the Politically Correct Boost if you’d like a piece of Kink but are scared off by the, y’know, evil).

Among upcoming projects for Kink is a potential analog delay, but it won’t come out until Quarrell can find that elusive thing. That Kink factor. “It’s hard because I think, ‘What would I want?’ And I’d want a tap tempo switch and I’d want a couple of different options.”

But that’s for later. For now the Dozer is flying out the door almost too fast to keep up.

BY PETER HODGSON

It’s been a bit of a fight for Kink Guitar Pedals to stake out its rightful chunk of the pedal world; some of your more corporate outlets have baulked at some of the darker elements of the designs.

Quarrell puts it bluntly: “It’s always been a hard slog, because I have a pedal with Charles Manson on it. I have a pedal that has satanic kind of undertones (the Oath Of The Goat, a pentagram-and-sigil-clad mixdownmag.com.au

FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL

Meris Pedals have come a long way since those first few attempts at tremolos, fuzzes, and phasers emerged throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Not only are pedals now a massive part of our sounds, they’re more than just a steel chassis with a single function, thanks to massive improvements in technology.

This is maybe most notable in the rapidly-increasing power available for DSP chips, allowing pedals to become mini computers and handle more complex reverb algorithms, toggle between different amplifiers, cabinets, and rooms, as well as just about any other variant.

While there are brands that have made massive leaps forward with DSP processing in guitar and bass products, a company like Meris is changing the way we approach guitar and audio products, kicking the door down to a wide new world of computing opportunities.

Meris is led by three uniquelyversed professionals, namely Terry Burton of Strymon fame, Jinna Kim, a multimedia designer responsible for Meris’ unique look, feel, and messaging, and Angelo Mazzocco who was heavily involved in Line 6’s DSP products as an engineer.

Meris produces both guitar and pro audio products, the latter being a fine selection of 500 series modules. Firstly, the 440 Mic Preamp is a simple preamp with gain and output controls before some EQ settings and phase, pad, and phantom switches. What sets

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the 440 apart, not including the Cinemag-wound transformers, is the added effects loop, allowing you to add guitar pedals into your recording chain. A simple send and return is available via 1⁄4” jacks, so using your effects pedals in your mixes is simple.

Alongside the 440 is the Ottobit, a cleverly-named bit crusher and ‘Sonic Destroy’ module, again with some super unique controls: a pot to move between AM/FM signals, and LFO depth control, ringmod frequency, and more. If cleaner sounds are more your thing, Meris also offers an algorithmic DSP reverb in the Mercury 7. Wide, lush, and clean reverbs a plenty with some super simple controls to help you find the reverb you’ve never been able to nail with another unit.

Most recently, Meris has unveiled the LVX. It’s difficult to compare the LVX to much else on the market, because it’s such a unique product that only could’ve come from the minds of three experts in their respective fields. Simply put, the LVX is a modular delay system.

What makes the LVX so unique is the sheer amount of different delays types and parameters available, but also the customisable (and saveable) nature of it all.

With the rising popularity of home recording, as well as more and more players having a better and better understanding of the

rules of signal flow (as well as how to break them), a modular system is ripe for the market. In addition to standard controls like tone, feedback, mix, and mod/ modulation, the LVX features three Control knobs, C1, C2, and C3 that help the user dive deeper and deeper in controls via the dimmable screen – perfect for adjusting the screen so it can (or can’t) be seen on stage. The LVX features a bunch of the best from the rest of Meris’ line, such as Ottobit Jr, Hedra, Enzo, or Polymoon, which are insertable into the signal flow at different stages and used along with other features such as the ‘always available’ 60-second looper.

The sheer level of detail that you can go into customising sounds can be dizzying, but Meris allows us to control every level of our sound. For example, the modulation alone has speed, depth, type, mix, and locations knobs, the Location allowing us to insert the modulation before or after the delay. Similar controls are available for other parameters such as filter, premp, delay, pitch, all of which slowly unfold in the mindmap-like bubbles on the LVX’s screen, and begin to show just how many levels of control the LVX has to offer. Delay type is a great one to start with, as the LVX offers digital, BBD, and magnetic delay types to give you classic, clean digital delay, bucket brigade chip delay, or magnetic tape style delay. These are all broken up into configurable delay structures that give you access to parameters that make the delay/s Reverse, MultiTap, MultiFilter, Standard or

Poly, the latter being a dual version of Meris’ own Polymoon delay.

While most of these sentences are a mouthful, and eyeful, and maybe a brain-full, it’s the sheer limitlessness that the LVX exudes that make it such a complicated and beautiful beast. For Meris to have given users the control that they have in an intuitive box is beyond me. It could easily have been an overwhelming and redundant design, offering many options but burying them in pages and pages of menus – but Meris have made the LVX function and feel like a regular delay pedal – albeit offering every parameter you may want.

You can dive deep into the Meris at home or in the studio, then save and recall them for the stage. Meris as a company brings unique experience to the table, but ultimately they design and innovate products that are usable for the player. You can swim in the shallows if you want, but a deep ocean of options are available to you if you choose to dip a toe.

BY LEWIS NOKE EDWARDS

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FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL

Zachary Vex - ZVEX Effects The designer of the legendary ZVEX Fuzz Factory and various other legendary pedals, Zachary Vex is a true bon vivant, a man whose brain is bursting with ideas, stories, and tangents. The first thing you need to know about Zachary Vex is, the guy can talk.

He’s also hilarious, with a kind of deadpan ‘sounds like he’s being mean but he’s not’ thing that feels almost Australian in its directness. The following interview happened almost by accident while trying to schedule a time to chat: rather than mess around with international time zones and zoom calls, we decided to just jump straight into a phone call, somewhere around 3am for Vex in Minnesota, and evening for your Mixdown reporter in Melbourne. Both participants were a few drinks into their evenings, not expecting to need to be ‘on’ for an interview, and this article is distilled from a long-ranging conversation on everything from giant phallus paintings to camera crane accidents.

Mixdown: How about you tell us your story?

Zachary: August of 1994 I stopped being a recording engineer because my ears were ringing so badly that I couldn’t do sessions anymore. I was kicked out of the building I was living in, but I was given relocation money by the Minneapolis Community

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Development Agency. I moved into an apartment and for about a year I had enough money to live without working.

I had nothing to do because I had money coming in every month for a year. I had quit drinking. I had quit smoking pot. I was totally clean. I was doing nothing except designing electronics.

Now, in 1994 there weren’t very many people interested in guitar pedals. It was not a big thing. I went into a store and found a pedal for 15 bucks, a Shin-Ei, this weird wah fuzz thing called the Apollo. I opened it up and the schematic was printed on the battery cover! So I’m staring at the schematic and I was like ‘It doesn’t even make any sense that they would give all the secrets away.’

I built one and the problem with this particular design was, it was so quiet. It was no fun. So I built a booster circuit at the end of it and I jacked up the volume and there was a switch on it that would go between two different positions for tone. One was mid cut, kinda like a scoop, like a heavy metal sort of approach. And the other one was flat, and it was very aggressive.

That was the Octane. So I put a pot in there to blend between the two and sure enough, it worked.

So I painted a box and put the electronics into the box and I took it to this store called Willie’s run by a fellow named Nate. I held the thing up in the air and said, ‘Hey Nate, I made this.’ He knew me for years. But he knew me as an asshole, some guy who would always show up at his store and screw something up for him.

So I hold it up and he looks at me like an asshole who interrupted his sale and he goes, ‘I’ll take three.’ And that’s how I got started. He took three just to get rid of me. And I actually yelled, ‘Nate, you’ve never even heard the thing! You didn’t even listen to it!’ And he goes ‘It’ll sound fine. You’re a recording engineer.’ So that’s how I got into the business. Just because I was an ass. I was aggressive and I forced my way.

By November I was like, ‘Well, what do I do now?’ And he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Design me another pedal.’ Like he was my Dad or something, like he was in charge. And I did. I was scared at that point.

My cheques had run out. It was the last month I got my last cheque from the government. I had nowhere else to go. Next month I had to start making money making pedals. I had only sold 16 pedals. At tops I probably cleared a thousand dollars in profit total over the whole summer. It was bad. So I stayed up all night and invented the Fuzz Factory and to this day, it is our number one selling pedal.

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FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL What were you aiming to do with it? Other than, you know, ‘make something to sell tonight!’

Stay alive? I just wanted to not die. I have told this story before but I bought 150 transistors from a surplus place. What they would do is they would go into companies that were bankrupt and take all of their junk and then bring it into their warehouse. It was a retail place and you’d walk in off the street and there would just be piles of junk from different places. They had captured all of this stuff from dilapidated, defunct, and bankrupt companies and they would sell ‘em off.

I’d walk in one day and they had a plastic bin that had about 150 of these very cute transistors.

They were so cute. I looked at, and I was like, ‘God, these are the cutest transistors I’ve ever seen.’ So I bought ‘em all. They were like a dime a piece, you know? So I spent $15 to buy all 150 transistors and they put ‘em into a plastic bag for me and I took them home. And then the night that I went home from Nate’s where he said ‘make me a new pedal,’ I went home and I looked at those transistors in the bag and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna make myself a Fuzz Face. I’m gonna make the best Fuzz Face ever with the cutest transistors ever. That’s why I’m gonna make my money. It’ll be because the transistors are so cute.’

And then I built it and it just did nothing. So I put in trimpots to adjust the stability and gate. I was gonna turn them to where they sounded good and close it up, but then I thought what the heck, I should just leave it this way. I brought it over to Nate and he looked at it and he said, ‘You’re crazy. Nobody’s gonna want five knobs. They’re not gonna be able to figure out what to do.’ And I was like ‘No, I think it’s just the opposite. You adjust it to the spot where you feel like you’ve created your own sound.’

That’s really cool. I hadn’t put together that those controls were an accident from the development process.

Oh yeah. The whole thing was a giant accident. It was an all-night accident.

I love it. Now, you always seem to be very visual, with the use of the hand painted pedals and all the iconography. Where does that come from? Are you like a visually kind of inspired guy?

A very interesting person. She, oh my God. She used to do very large paintings, very large, and she was very short. She was like 5’2” and she would paint six-foot paintings. She would have to stand on a ladder to paint them. Anyway, I had a really lucky find where I found this fantastic girlfriend who painted for me for the first year, year and a half, when I was getting started. I built a paint booth for her in the basement of her house, which she was renting. And she painted. And so those pedals are worth a lot these days. If you can find one.

Now Lisa McGrath is our artist. For the last few years she has done, exclusively, every bit of art on ZVEX. I won’t let anyone else touch them right now. You know, we’re ageing, it’s an ageing community. I’m 62 in June. My company, all of our people working for us, we’re all ageing together, you know? And so we gotta look after each other and we take care of each other and we stick together.

BY PETER HODGSON

Actually it comes from some place that’s a lot simpler than what you’d imagine. When I got started, every single pedal manufacturer was using a silk screen, and I couldn’t afford it. I was so low-budget. My budget was so low that I asked my then-girlfriend to paint guitar pedals for me.

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FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL

Andrew Barta - Tech 21

what was originally designed just for service design, actually became a final feature.

When Andrew Barta developed the original SansAmp (now known as the Classic) in New York City over 30 years ago, he couldn’t have known that he would be at the forefront of a trend that would redefine recording and touring.

Who were the first artists to use your stuff?

Barta’s analog audio solutions gave guitarists a pocket-sized tone solution that would allow them to record studio-grade guitar tones without ever touching a mic. Since then, his company Tech 21 has made all sorts of variations on the SansAmp concept, from the revolutionary rack mount PSA-1, to the Fly Rig series of complete tone solutions, to pedals and preamps for Rush bass legend Geddy Lee. Mixdown: The SansAmp was ahead of its time when it came out and now 30-something years later there’s still a use for it despite all the digital stuff.

Andrew: Yeah. It’s like all-tube amps, they never went away.

There’s other technology and they can offer you a lot, but still tube amps have a certain sound and feel because they’re analog.

So I think that’s why this still has merit. I had an artist tell me that sometimes when they play a digital unit, they have to really wrestle with it to try to get the expression out of it. It doesn’t respond to your picking and playing the same organic way as analog equipment.

How did you think to create something like this? At the time there was the Scholtz Rockman,

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but that was pretty limited – it always sounds like a Rockman.

I had training in electronics and I always tinkered around with ideas. We were recording with my band at the time and studios were quite expensive and we spent hours and hours just to get a good sound. You’d block out maybe four hours to record something and three hours for setting up and it’s like, ‘Hurry up, hurry up!

We have to leave!’ So I wanted to create some kind of solution that gives you that sound that you want and you could carry it with you and it doesn’t take hours to set up. I wanted to find a way to create the sound in a convenient, small format, and that’s how it came about; many different tries, trial and error, but eventually the Classic came. And it’s a funny story because the Classic had all those little switches on it, and that was just for me to figure out the sound. I showed it to Mick Jones from Foreigner and he loved it.

He didn’t want to give it back to me. I told him, ‘OK, but you tell me what is the setting? And then I’ll make a pedal like that.’ And he said, ‘Forget it, that’s the best part, that I can play around with it and get different sounds.’ So that’s how,

Well I remember when Les Paul called. He called it the SandBox. Not SansAmp, SandBox. His engineer recommended it for his bass player first. They were playing Mondays in a jazz club and they had some trouble getting good bass and when they used our bass DI they were blown away. He had several different bass players because they were always on tours, so when he changed bass players he insisted that his bass player was gonna use the same DI. So that was the first conversation we had about the ‘SandBox’.

What were those early days like?

The first couple months we sold units, I went down to 48th street where all the music stores were. I put a couple units on consignment and they ended up selling in a week, six of ‘em, to KISS, to Def Leppard, to the guys from Madonna’s band, because there was nothing else like that. All the guys were telling each other, ‘You need to check this thing out, this is just so cool.’ And even if you had a great setup, it’s still nice to have something you can carry in your gig bag and not to be caught off guard.

And now everyone wants a Fly Rig based on the same tech. That’s a unit whose time is now, everyone wants something like that, but you’ve got this head start because you have this reputation for

getting it right since the beginning.

That’s an interesting story because one of my favourite guitar players is Richie Kotzen and I always wanted to meet him. We sent him a delay pedal and he loved it, and then he put it into a box with his overdrive, so we started to talk about creating a multi unit. And I always wanted to do that, but I needed the final nudge from somebody like him, because let’s face it, for a small company it’s expensive to tool up for a brand new product with a different casing. All these micro pedals were coming out at the time and I said, ‘This is stupid that you have to plug in six or seven of them to get something that you can use’, and every plug is a source of a problem, and then when you put the power supply in it, you create the ground loop. So now you’re gonna have hum. So I said, ‘let’s combine all these ideas into one thing’, which was the Fly Rig, and Let’s make our version and also a bass version. But let’s do the Kotzen one because he had a very particular way that he wanted to sound like.

Being a musician, one of the biggest thrills of doing this is meeting your idols. You meet all these incredibly talented people, many times these really humble, nice average people, but they have this special talent, so I’m really grateful that I’m able to do something that used to be my hobby and it became my job.

BY PETER HODGSON

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CLASSIC

ROKIT G4

V4 Series SCAN ME

distributed by

KRK are giving away a Fully Equipped Home Studio valued at over $6,000 & 100 prize packs with $250 worth of KRK Accessories! To enter simply purchase your favourite KRK Monitor above & enter the draw via the QR Code!

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FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL

Keeley Electronics HALO Andy Timmons Dual Echo Robert Keeley and Andy Timmons are names synonymous with guitar playing.

The former for his uniquelymodified pedals as well as a stellar line of Keeley’s own pedals that have either preserved, controlled, and augmented (or all three in the case of Keeley’s famous compressors) our tone for the better part of the last few decades.

The latter, Mr. Andy Timmons, is more widely known for soaring solos and bluesy licks, as well as spaciously delayed leads and melodies.

Where these two come together is in the newly-announced Keeley Electronics HALO Andy Timmons Dual Echo, a compact pedal that manages to harness a bunch of Timmons’ unique sounds as well as give the player a whole lot of routing and signal options despite its small footprint. At the outset, the HALO is a dual-stereo echo with expression pedal capabilities, preset-saving functionality, and a clearly laid out faceplate that compliments the dark, glittering finish. It’s powered by 9V and features two soft-stomp switches for a variety of functions, all of which can be programmed to be either true bypass or retain delay trails once the effect is turned off.

Turning to the specs for a moment, the HALO is a fairly standard size effect pedal so it won’t eat up any major space on your board – but

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it serves the function of a few pedals so you may very well be able to clear some space anyway!

It features a left/mono and right input and output, as well as a TRS input and expression pedal input to control specific parameters of your presets that can be saved to either soft-stomp switch A or B, both of which have three preset spaces available. It features five knobs with dual functionality as follows: the time knob doubles as a high-pass-filter to clean away the mud from your echo as well as adjust the time between repeats.

There’s a rate/tone knob that can adjust the frequency with which repeats occur and a high-pass filter to darken and hide echoes respectively. There’s a level/ saturate knob that controls the master output but also offers some soft, warm clipping if you’re more vintage or tape echo inclined, and finally there’s a depth and rhythm knob to control the depth of optional modulation and toggle between rhythm settings with different meter options. In the centre of the other four knobs is a feedback knob that controls how heavily the repeats repeat into themselves and, uh... repeat. The last three options on this dial are halo, bucket brigade, and tape echo options for our vintage pedal aficionados out there!

The TRS input is a stellar addition and admittedly not seen before, at least by me. TRS – or balanced – cables feature two lines and a ground wire. What the addition of a TRS input allows us to do, as labelled on the side of the pedal, is send two different signals to the separate circuits of the Keeley HALO. Stay with me. That means you could send the piezo output of your guitar to a subtle slapback while the main, hot-rodded humbucker output is sent to soaring and modulating repeats, both of which could be toggled on and off independently. This same rule applies for splitting your signal and sending the HALO signal from different chains or pedals, splits from a DI etc. The list is endless!

Even without the addition of the TRS input, the HALO is still tough to beat.

Andy Timmons’ HALO effect is a swirling, modulating delay with repeats that crash into each other with reverberant bliss, sometimes scattering so indistinctly that they’re undefined and spacious, crossing the line from delay into echo and full-blown reverb. What makes the HALO so handy to have around is how broad its offering of delay tones is. One preset can be a super clean, cold, digital delay, while another can be vintage mush that folds in on itself and repeats into feedback and walls of noise – all within one pedal!

and delay pedal you’ll ever need?

While Andy has spent years combining modulation, reverbs, and delays to create unique waves of delay and space, Keeley has helped him put all of this into one little box. The Keeley Electronics HALO Andy Timmons Dual Echo is every sound you’d need, all accessible by just two switches, and silent stomp switches no less!

It offers the subtle ‘always on’ type sounds, as well as the hooky, prominent sounds that have made so many famous guitar riffs iconic.

You have as much control as you need, but even with all those options, the HALO still functions like a regular delay so you can plug and play and get great sounds if that’s all you need.

Andy Timmons is a stellar guitar player in his own right, and an effect like delay acts to serve his playing, blooming and augmenting in all the right places.

Effects should never bog you down among patching, cables, and pedal board tap-dancing. The HALO serves to put your focus back in your playing – and it can handle the rest.

BY LEWIS NOKE EDWARDS

Keeley knows pedals, and Andy Timmons has been chasing tone since the ‘80s – so what better pair to produce the only echo

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At Home.

Anywhere.

BUILT FOR BIG THINGS Jacob Stibbie | Lead Guitar | Abstract Feedback

INTRODUCING THE NEW ZOOM G6 MULTI-EFFECTS PROCESSOR With state of the art amp modeling, powerful multi effects, and a touch screen interface, the G6 delivers what you need to take your sound with you, anywhere you go.

We’re For Creators

®

PAGE HEADER

PEDALS & PROCESSORS GUIDE 2022

D E L AY / R E V E R B / M O D U L AT I O N

FENDER HAMMERTONE REVERB

HIT’N’MIX RIPX DEEPAUDIO

DISTRIBUTED BY: FENDER RRP: $229

DISTRIBUTED BY: HIT’N’MIX ENQUIRE FOR PRICING

FEATURES: Add atmosphere and depth to your audio signal with this new reverb pedal from Fender.

Reverb is a necessity for smoothing out and blending guitar signals with other instruments and can also be used to enter a new universe of soundscapes via long reverberant tails which this pedal can do with ease. There are three different reverb types on offer with this pedal (Hall, Room, and Plate) which allow you to reach all the classic reverb sounds in one compact unit.

For adjusting the qualities of your reverb, there’s knobs for decay time, level, and a tone switch for making this stompbox play nice with the rest of your signal chain.

A switch has been provided on the front which can change the tone switch into an aptly named “dark mode” which rolls off the high end as opposed to the regular mode that balances it with the low end of your reverb sound. True bypass switching on this pedal will instantly kill reverberant tails and enable you to switch from verse to chorus with one stomp.

FEATURES: In case you haven’t noticed yet, plugins and software have come a long way in recent years. Nowhere is this more apparent than in something like Hit’n’Mix’s awesome RipX DeepAudio, a professional stem extraction and audio manipulation tool with a host of nifty tricks up its sleeve. Featuring the same powerful AI Algorithms as the brands DeepRemix software, DeepAudio expands on DeepRemix’s ability to pull stems from fully mastered audio tracks, whilst also providing a host of additional editing and corrective tools to better perfect and prepare your stems prior to export.

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THE BOTTOM LINE: Create anything from subtle depth to cavernous ambience and add it to your audio signal with classic reverb modes at the flick of a switch.

The Harmonic Editor within DeepAudio allows you to manipulate the timbral content of your prerecorded material, while the ‘Draw Pitch’ function allows edit removal of notes within polyphonic vocal, instrument and percussion recordings, including Acoustic Guitar (which as many of you are probably aware, is a notoriously tricky task). Individual

notes in a performance can be adjusted at the finest possible detail, and even be blended with other sounds, to provide you with an unprecedented amount of processing flexibility.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Equal parts Corrective and Creative, RipX DeepAudio’s revolutionary abilities as a one stop stem extraction and sound manipulation tool are second to none. Without question the cutting edge for this kind of processing.

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FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL D E L AY / R E V E R B / M O D U L AT I O N

SOUND PARTICLES DENSITY

FENDER HAMMERTONE CHORUS

DISTRIBUTED BY: SOUND PARTICLES ENQUIRE FOR PRICING

DISTRIBUTED BY: FENDER RRP: $229

FEATURES: Built from granular synthesis, this unique plugin allows you to add interesting and ear-catching width, depth, and movement to audio signals.

Density is built around three modes which add levels of functionality from a simple unisonesque effect to the wild multipitch mode which has more parameters than you can poke a stick at. It can easily turn a violin into a quartet or an orchestra and with more complex settings it’s as if they’re running in random directions while playing around you! The plugin allows you to add layers of granular voices to your source audio, detuning them, changing their relative volume and placement within the stereo field while also controlling how the granules are played back and if they travel clockwise, anticlockwise, or randomly around a given point in space. Density has obvious uses in music production and music mixing, but due to its varied input and output settings, it allows use

FEATURES: Add another layer of wiggle to your guitar or audio signal with this new Chorus pedal from Fender. Featuring controls for depth, rate, and level as you’d expect from a chorus pedal, this one goes further than that, adding type and tone switches to the mix.

The type knob goes from a classic single voice chorus sound to two and four voice modes which are delayed even further from the original signal. When adding more voices to the sound, this pedal will automatically drop the level of the effect to make sure the volume coming out is consistent with what is already happening. Speaking of volume, the level control knob will let you adjust the ratio of dry and wet signals for low or high modulated outputs. Flicking the tone switch on will roll off some top end from the modulated chorus signal to create space for your dry signal to shine through.

Utilising these two flick switches alongside changing depth and rate allows you to create subtle and

for surround and immersive audio, making it a perfect tool for Film and TV post production. Hitting the randomise button will generate instant and interesting variations which can go from subtle to intense quickly.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A unique sound design and mixing tool that will find a home within everyone’s in the box audio production setup.

FENDER HAMMERTONE DELAY

THE BOTTOM LINE: A dreamy modulation pedal with more controls than usual to add classic chorus tones and then some to your stompbox setup.

HIT’N’MIX DEEPREMIX

DISTRIBUTED BY: FENDER RRP: $229

DISTRIBUTED BY: HIT’N’MIX ENQUIRE FOR PRICING

FEATURES: Add perspective to your guitar sound courtesy of this feature-packed compact delay pedal from Fender. Whether you’re looking for a touch of slapback or deep and modulated waves of sound, this pedal delivers. Designed to be added into your existing pedal setup, the Hammertone Delay utilises analog dry-through audio to ensure you’re only adding the desired delay effect to your signal chain. There are knobs for controlling delay time, feedback, and the level of delayed signal with the time control capable of reaching 950ms per repeat. There are three modes of delay available on this stompbox, digital delay, analog delay, and tape echo, all with their own unique flavour and character alongside a modulation control which adds a chorus-like effect to the delayed signal. For even more control over this, there are trim pots on the inside of the pedal to affect the depth and rate of the modulation, allowing

FEATURES: Oftentimes we hear something in a track that hits us deep in the cockles of our imagination and desire for creative endeavours but are stopped due to our inability to isolate multitrack recordings or individual tracks.

Hit’n’Mix and their new RipX DeepRemix software introduces a broader set of tools primarily for separating audio files into individual vocal, bass, drum, and instrumental stems, useful for guitarists in a swathe of ways.

If you’re struggling to find a good backing track to practise improvising scales over, just grab your favourite drum or bass tracks and keep them on loop, not worrying about the video starting and stopping and YouTube ads.

Speaking of YouTube, enough with some tutorial guy’s take on a guitar part you’ve been dying to learn, one that you know deep down isn’t what you need, hear it straight from the source and check your accuracy that way. Better yet,

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slow-moving modulation effects as well as fast warbly tones within one compact stompbox.

for another level of depth to be achieved by this handy device.

THE BOTTOM LINE: With an in-house-designed digital delay circuit, the Hammertone Delay pedal can create both tight slapback effects and long feedback loops that add another layer to your audio signal (literally).

bedroom producers can get rid of the bootleg and scarce multitracks to drag in your favourite tracks, a la ESG’s genre defying instrumental masterpiece ‘UFO’.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Changing the game for sample sourcing.

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FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL P R E A M P / M O D E L L I N G / C O M P R ES S I O N

TECH 21 SANSAMP PSA 2.0

LR BAGGS VOICEPRINT DI

DISTRIBUTED BY: NATIONAL MUSIC RRP: $889

FEATURES: Made for those who want the sound of a tube amplifier and cabinet without the hassle of lugging around a tube amplifier and cabinet. Originally a rack mounted unit, this new and improved model is a compact pedal that can fit in your pocket and create beastly tones that you’d be certain were generated from the real deal. Featuring controls for level, high and low EQ, drive, crunch, punch, buzz, trim, and gain you’ll be hard pressed to find a tone you can’t craft with this unit. Use it as a preamp to your speaker cabinet or direct to the FOH mix for a thick and

consistent tone. You can save over 100 presets and the unit comes with almost 50 presets that emulate classic amplifier sounds which can be changed by the press of a footswitch. In addition to dense control over the tube amp simulation, there’s a speaker simulation built into the pedal which emulates a physical cabinet without the nuance of finding the sweet spot with your microphone.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A fantastic programmable analog tube amplifier and cabinet simulator that sounds the real deal in a small and portable enclosure.

EFFECTRODE BLACKBIRD PREAMP

DISTRIBUTED BY: NATIONAL MUSIC RRP: $869 FEATURES: Utilising the processing power of your phone through their AcousticLive iPhone app, this new impulse response pedal corrects the raw pickup sound from your acoustic guitar jack output to match the body of sound your acoustic actually makes. Creating a voiceprint for your acoustic takes about a minute and is saved in the pedal which can be blended with the raw signal for further sculpting.

There’s an anti-feedback control on board to help tame those pesky frequencies when playing live for when there might not be a sound engineer handy. In addition to the unique Voiceprint control, there’s a five-band parametric EQ to tweak your acoustic guitar’s sound with presets on board for quick tone changes. With the ability to store 99 unique Voiceprints, you’ll be able to bring your whole collection of acoustic guitars to the gig and know you’ll sound exactly like you would without amplification. The

THE BOTTOM LINE: A must for translating studio-sounding acoustic guitar to the stage without the need for on-stage miking or feedback worries.

THE PILL PEDAL STEREO DUCKING PEDAL

DISTRIBUTED BY: GSUS4 RRP: $759

DISTRIBUTED BY: THE PILL PEDAL ENQUIRE FOR PRICING

FEATURES: Utilising design imprints of famous amplifiers, the Blackbird preamp pedal is a gorgeous-sounding vacuum tube unit with multiple channels available for instant tone changes.

The clean channel is based on a Blackface style amp while the overdrive channel uses Dumblestyle hot-rodded tube circuitry to maximum effect. Both channels feature a three-band EQ and volume knobs with the overdrive channel featuring a gain control for that extra crunch and punch.

By using three 12AX7 vacuum tube amplifiers which are fitted on the unit for all to see, you can play harder/softer and hear the dynamic change work in a musical way with your playing. On the back of the unit there’s a toggle for switching between the aptly named creamy and classic modes which unlocks another level of depth to tone control. There’s an internal trim-pot for adjusting preamp drive bias to change the way this neat pedal sounds. If you were worried about accidentally

FEATURES: A truly visionary pedal with endless room for experimentation, The Pill represents a new era for the stompbox, one that has no qualms blurring the lines between stage and studio, in this case bringing the heady world of analogue stereo ducking to the modern pedalboard.

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unit features ¼” in and outs with a separate FX send/return loop and an XLR out which really makes this an all-in-one solution for creating a smooth acoustic sound.

breaking this thing, it’s created from military grade materials and the all-aluminium housing will be enough to protect those precious and delicious-sounding analog tubes.

THE BOTTOM LINE: An all-tube preamp in a pedal format that creates fantastic sounding tones in a small form unit.

With three adjustable and highly interactive parameters and mono and stereo routing, The Pill is an extremely adaptable and intuitive pedal, comfortably sitting at the intersection between dynamic processor, volume pedal and rhythmic effect.

Whether used subtly, as a means to lightly ‘glue’ together organic kick and bass sounds or more aggressively as a way to ‘part the seas’ on a lush synth pad, the three aforementioned parameters (coupled with The Pill’s impressive input flexibility) result in a pedal that encourages boundless experimentation and out-of-thebox thinking.

In all honesty, The Pill’s appropriateness is only bound by the limitations of ones own imagination, with The Pill being open to a seemingly endless combination of sound sources and parameter settings.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Handmade using the highest quality components (and with some of the strictest QC protocol of any manufacturer out there), The Pill simply oozes quality across the board- from it’s concept to its construction and sonic output. It’s a classy bit of kit.

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FX & PROCESSING SPECIAL O V E R D R I V E / D I STO R T I O N / F U Z Z

LIMETONE AUDIO JACKAL

FENDER HAMMERTONE OVERDRIVE

DISTRIBUTED BY: GSUS4 RRP: $469

DISTRIBUTED BY: FENDER RRP: $199

FEATURES: A 4-Stage FET based distortion pedal from relative newcomers Limetone Audio.

This high-gain unit is capable of bringing heavy and destructive tones to your audio signal as well as some more subtle sonic characteristics. Onboard this pedal is a three-band EQ with pre and post-drive gain controls for sculpting your overdriven guitar sound to taste. In addition to these classic controls there’s a bite switch that adds some attack to the transients, and the plexi switch which creates a reduction in distortion when activated, which is great for quickly changing to a cleaner tone. Trim controls inside the unit are available for balance, presence, and resonance plus a variac switch to add even more distortion to your audio signal, if you think you need more. This low-noise unit will add plenty of sustain and bite while not taking away your picking nuances which

FEATURES: Push your guitar sound right upfront with the new Hammertone Overdrive pedal from Fender. On the front of the unit, you’ll find knobs for tone, level, and gain as most distortion/ overdrive pedals have, but this particular model allows you to sculpt your tone further with a pre-mid boost. This does exactly what it says on the tin, by boosting the mid range frequencies of your signal before the drive circuit which allows you to push your guitar sound to the front and centre of the mix. If that wasn’t enough, there’s a hidden trim pot on the inside of the unit which allows for more tonal shaping by altering the high frequency character of the input signal, allowing you to tame screeching frequencies before they hit your amp. Pair all this with true-bypass switching, a hearty construction, and the Fender quality you’d expect, you’ll be able to add this

is great for shredding solos as well as chugging rhythms. Utilising the middle EQ band adds more tone shaping parameters than the usual two-band approach on pedals which can help you fade into the background or cut through the mix.

THE BOTTOM LINE: An excellent high-gain FET distortion pedal with plenty of flexibility to fit into pretty much any pedalboard.

FENDER HAMMERTONE DISTORTION

THE BOTTOM LINE: This affordable and compact stompbox is capable of adding tones from subtle harmonics to dirty crunch courtesy of the unique Fenderdesigned analog overdrive circuit.

EARTHQUAKER DEVICES SPECIAL CRANKER

DISTRIBUTED BY: FENDER RRP: $199

DISTRIBUTED BY: YAMAHA RRP: $219.99

FEATURES: Add waves of gain and grit with the Hammertone Distortion pedal from Fender. Fender went the extra mile for this new addition to their pedal line by designing an original distortion circuit to generate a low-noise and highpowered stompbox fit for rock and roll shredding for everything from home use to the stage. Level and Gain controls allow you to tweak this distortion circuit to your liking from subtle overdrive to crunchy distorted audio destruction! This distortion pedal doubles as an active EQ pedal with Treble and Bass (high and low) controls to boost or attenuate by 15dB in easy reach, with front panel controls and a mid boost/cut on the inside of the unit. There’s also a low-pass filter control inside the unit to tailor this distortion pedal to your unique flavour by reducing some of the nasty high end frequencies. As with the rest of the Hammertone line, this pedal features top mounted input and output jacks for a slim design profile and easy implementation into your pedal board.

FEATURES: Are you tired of all your distortion and overdrive pedals immediately defaulting to 11? EarthQuaker Devices’ Special Cranker might be the pedal for you, with exceptional clarity through both overdrive diodes and the ability to seem almost bypassed adding just a touch of sheen to your sound while at more extreme settings pushing into crunchy over biassed drive goodness. There are three simple controls on the Special Cranker, level, tone and ‘more’ plus a switch for choosing between a softer germanium diode or a silicon one which presents a brighter sound.

Tone functions as a high end roll off and high boost combo knob depending on how bright you prefer your driven sounds and the aptly titled ‘more’ knob adds gain to the signal producing more drive to the signal. Best of all, this pedal performs extremely well at high gain settings without adding mud to the low end or blurring your mid range frequency content so your tone stays pure.

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to your signal chain anywhere you please.

THE BOTTOM LINE: No guitarist should be without a distortion pedal and this affordable offering from Fender should more than feed your appetite for destruction.

THE BOTTOM LINE: This alldiscrete analog overdrive pedal can add juicy harmonics to your audio signal without pushing it into heavy distortion, although it can also do that too.

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PAGE HEADER

Monitoring 101 with KRK It is often said that your choices in monitoring can make or break a production.

It’s the lens through which every decision is made, imparting a tangible sonic influence on the overall outcome of your track.

It’s for this reason that things like monitor selection, positioning, and setup have always been such serious business for studio boffins, even since the earliest days of the recording studio. Outside of the obvious intangibles, like the quality of the material and/or talent, monitoring may well be the next most important consideration when it comes to successful productions – as well as being something that the engineer at least has some kind of control over!

The ideal monitoring set-up is really about delivering a clarity of vision. I’m not talking about clarity in the visual or literal sense, but rather something much more esoteric and indirect. As an audio engineer, it is vital that we know the tendencies of our monitors, how the subtle differences in frequency and transient response are going to be perceived by an outside audience and from there, making our decisions with this end goal in mind (or landing on something that is, at the very least, likely to work across the broadest cross section of playback devices).

Fundamentally, it all starts with the choice of monitors themselves and in this respect, there is a lot to be gained by investing in a brand that has done their research in the electro-acoustic environment. KRK Music is an established name in the music monitor industry and offers a range of tailored solutions to suit the various environments where music is mixed in the contemporary industry. The new Rokit G4 range with onboard

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DSP EQ for room correction, are extremely affordable and well equipped to deliver the type of transparency required.

There is a lot to be said about your choice of monitor, but it’s important to know that there is also a lot of technique involved in understanding the role various monitor types can play throughout the mixing and recording process and the way this relates to your studio environment.

One of the first things to consider is the size of the space that you’re mixing in, as this will in many ways dictate what’s best for your situation. For most, nearfield monitors form the foundation for the majority of home monitoring set-ups, as they are inherently designed for listening to fine detail while keeping the physical footprint to a minimum.

The Rokit G4 range includes the latest incarnation of their ubiquitous 5” model which has been the go-to nearfield for small studios for years. One of the great advantages of their design is that because of their close proximity to the mix position, they inherently reduce the influence of the room on your perception, while providing an impressive bass response for a monitor of this size.

A relatively new term in monitoring, the continued rise of the midfield monitor has seen them become more and more prevalent in the home studio, both as a secondary option, or to allow for a wider sense of stereo and better A/B comparisons due to their extended low frequency response.

Featuring 7” and 8” variants, the smaller Rokit midfields are an awesome option for those lucky enough to be working with a slightly larger or well-treated space.

For those with even more space again, the Rokit 10-3 G4 is a threeway option with a 10” driver, which packs a serious punch for those looking for a slightly more long range option.

When it comes to full control of the low end though, there is really little substitute for a tailored subwoofer and that’s precisely why it’s worth looking at the addition of one of the KRK Rokit G4 Subs to pair with your nearfield/midfield setup. The addition of a subwoofer into the set-up will allow you to fine-tune in the 26Hz to 93Hz range for the 12” G4 Sub option, or the 34.5Hz to 133Hz range for the 8” G4 subwoofer, these allow for optimum control of the all important low end. The KRK subwoofer models all have an optional footswitch that can be used to switch the subwoofer in and out of the mix, enabling you to make important comparisons related to frequency response.

The room size will once again determine what particular subwoofer is the best and the most suitable power option for your space. If your system is overpowered for the room size, then monitoring too loudly could introduce all sorts of issues.

Utilising a subwoofer into your monitoring set-up still requires some thought and consideration though and it definitely pays to consider placement and the addition of acoustic treatment if needed. Low frequencies in a small parallel room are definitely a candidate for creating standing waves, which can make low frequencies very hard to translate

into mixes that effectively deliver a tight low end. Bass traps as a minimum can assist with eliminating some of these issues.

While providing a great deal of detailed mix information can be accurately portrayed from our midfield, nearfield, and sub monitors, sometimes headphones can also serve as an important cross reference. This is especially the case when checking panning and other stereo positioning elements of the mix. KRK also offers an affordable solution for these tasks through the KNS8402. This model offers great separation and isolation (30dBA) for fine-tuning aspects of the mix.

Translation is the key to any great mix, as well as being able to convey or evoke emotion. Utilising monitoring tools that eliminate the guesswork of mixing, can only improve your potential to meet these benchmark standards. A bit of forethought regarding studio size, a bit of investment at the front end, and a commitment to proper listening technique will ultimately go a long way to better sounding records. After all, isn’t that the name of the game?

And now for a limited time only, you can get yourself a brand new pair of KRK Classics, ROKITs or V Series monitors and go into the draw to win a Fully Equipped Home Studio valued at $6,649!

Not only that, there are also hundreds of runner up prize packs boasting $250 worth of KRK accessories to be won for all KRK monitor fans!

To enter, simply purchase your favourite KRK Monitor in the month of June and enter the draw via Jands’ competition page.

BY BRETT VOSS

mixdownmag.com.au

Maybe Dolls, and Died Pretty created complete albums in the original Ultimo Sydney space.

full of vintage units such as 1950s and 1960s Neumanns, Reslo Ribbons, AKG’s, and more.

After moving to Balmain in 2000 the studio continued to build its clients and reputation.

We’d even have international producers such as Ken Stringfellow (REM), Jeff Baxter (Steely Dan), and others use the facility while on tour in Australia. The studio moved an hour out of Sydney in 2019 to a massive new facility owned

by Jason Stenning who became the new partner in the business from that point forward.

Is there a signature Damien Gerard sound/ workflow/approach that stands out to your ears?

What services do you offer?

Damien Gerard Studios Damien Gerard Studios is one of the oldest, continuously operating recording facilities in Australia.

Can you tell us a bit about Damien Gerard Studios. How long has the studio been open?

The studio was established in 1983 and began as a ‘demo’ studio where bands like the Divinyls, Hoodoo Gurus, Spy vs Spy, The Models, Icehouse, and so many more used the studio for song writing, pre-production, and often tracking. By the late ‘80s the studio was renowned as the most affordable high quality studio for final product recording in Sydney and many bands like Noiseworks, Rose Tattoo, The

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DG’s is a full service studio so we offer live album lockout type recording for large bands (the live room is 160 square metres), single, album, and EP deals for indies, demos, and preproduction. All our vintage guitars, drums and amps are available for sessions, and mixing and mastering are a big part of what we do. We also do work such as voice overs, audio for video, podcasts, live events, and live streaming.

What’s your setup at Damien Gerards?

We have a large live room, with three iso spaces, backline room, kitchen and bathroom, a large control room, and tech room.

What is it that separates DG’s from other studios in the area?

Thirty-five years of experience with all types of music. Our engineers are highly experienced and can act as producers if needed. We also have a huge range of very high quality vintage guitars, drums, and amps dating from the early ‘60s available on all sessions. Our mic locker is also

At Damien Gerard’s, it’s all about capturing the best performance from the artist. So firstly that means they need to be comfortable in our space, not intimidated by the technology we have. It’s the general ambience, but it also means that if a singer is more comfortable on a handheld SM58 instead of wearing headphones singing into a $25k vintage Neumann, then that’s what we give them.

We find that approach makes the session workflow very fast especially since we can track all the band members live and still separate if needed. Having a great room makes a huge difference, we spent a lot of time tuning both the live and control rooms for the best possible audio experience both for our engineers and for the artists and producers. Things like drums just sound amazing in the room before we even add the mics.

You arrive to find the studio on fire (touch wood!) and you only have time to save one piece of gear. What do you grab and why?

The Telefunken/AKG ELAM251 Large Condenser Tube Microphone from the ‘60s.

This mic is worth somewhere between $3050k, it’s a legendary unit and there are very few in Australia – one of the most renowned vocal mics ever!

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COLUMNS

GUITAR

Effects with Purpose Guitar effects are almost as widely employed and discussed as the instrument itself. There are countless forums, posts, websites, podcasts, reviews, and more dedicated to guitar effects and processing, and seemingly every week there is a new release and often a new company popping up as the latest and greatest thing.

Early rock and roll and R&B (actual rhythm and blues) players were utilising reverb and then distortion to vary their tone. Fuzz, wah, and some modulation effects then showed up a little while later and nowadays we have everything from digital plugins to modellers to huge rack effects to hand wired boutique pedals. While the tone quest for most guitarists never seems to end, adding or using effects can be a great device when you need a dose of creativity and have seemingly exhausted all avenues. Essentially, using effects can change your approach to playing the guitar and help you express yourself.

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Oz Noy has a ridiculous command of the instrument across a broad range of styles. His tunes employ effects often just as prominently as the actual harmony itself with loops, delay parts, ring modulators, chorus, distortion, fuzz, wah, and more. He will often approach a lick, line, or even chord stab with a separate effect (for just that one part) to give the feeling of movement and create the illusion that there is more than one instrument or player involved.

Eric Johnson has long been revered for his tone and use of effects. Employing fuzz for lead lines (as opposed to distortion) creates a thick, smooth sound that really lets him articulate each note.

He also utilises beautiful delay, reverb, and chorus tones with multi amp rigs to add width and space.

I recently heard the great Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots fame discussing his main tones and rig setup. He mentioned that he found

a setup that he liked early on in his career (a Demeter preamp, VHT power amp, Intelliverb effects, and 2x Marshall quad boxes) but wanted more clarity with his dirty tones (especially with some of the more detailed voicings he uses – Major 7ths, 9ths, 11ths etc). So, his solution was to add another amp to the rig (a Vox AC30 set fairly clean). This added chime and cleanliness to his tone for the blend that allowed him to play exactly how he wanted to. The effects and rig helped him express himself with the tone he was after.

Delay might make you play less, or play different rhythms as the delay repeats become part of the lick. U2’s The Edge has become synonymous with delays (and perhaps more specifically dotted eighth delays) which create some nice polyrhythms to make very simple two and three-note licks (or small two and three-note chord voicings) sound huge!

Tom Morello and Rage Against The Machine were like nothing previously heard when they burst onto the scene in the ‘90s. While their songs combined elements of rock, rap, and hip hop, it was also Morello’s combination of big riffs and effects that really blew some minds. Whammy, delay, harmoniser, wah (often with several combined) often gave him a more sound and rhythmic approach to parts and solos rather than just chops and burning licks. At times the tonal content was as much a part of his sound and playing as was the harmonic content.

Whatever you’re searching for tone wise – perhaps take some time to experiment and play with effects in ways you haven’t previously. Get a looper, create a shimmer delay/reverb sound, use a wah as a filter with a gradual sweep rather than just full quack.

The options are almost endless!

BY NICK BROWN

mixdownmag.com.au

COLUMNS

BASS

Four Essential Effects for Bass Having some effects in your arsenal can be a valuable tool for recording, performing, and composing. While no amount of effects will cover up bad playing, having more than just your fundamental tone can really open up a world of possibilities and affect the way you approach playing your instrument.

Lastly – I realise there’s a lot of other effects I could have included here (phaser, filter, synth, auto wah pedals and the like). I think they are super useful and creative tools but they really are a diverse bunch however, and almost need their own dedicated column to dissect further (hence me leaving them for a further discussion!).

OCTAVE Doubling your note an octave (or sometimes two) either above or below is a great tool for thickening your sound or creating synthstyled tones. Blending your direct signal can add some girth while just running the affected signal

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can take you to sub-low land and beyond. Some favourites among the masses are the Boss OC-2, EBS Octabass, MXR Vintage Bass Octave, and even the Digitech Whammy. The famed Boss OC-2 (and especially the Japanese version in particular) is held in high regard by players and aficionados alike for its warmth and round tone. Anything from sounding like Stevie Wonder’s ‘Boogie On Reggae Woman’ to ‘80s synthline wildness.

DISTORTION/OVERDRIVE/ FUZZ While distortion, overdrive, and fuzz are slightly different beasts, they all add some gain and harmonic content to your tone. There are a range of ways to utilise these with your bass rig and indeed you might be surprised to hear that some of your favourite recorded bass tones are dirtier than you think. Distortion, overdrive, and fuzz can really fatten up the low mids and low end and support both guitars and

keys and blend with the kick drum.

Vintage rock through to prog, metal, and even EDM and modern funk can really benefit from some low end distortion when used appropriately. Check out Sansamp, Darkglass Microtubes, Ampeg Scrambler, Way Huge Pork and Pickle, Boss Bass OD, and Big Muff for starters.

COMPRESSOR Compressors have been used on bass for many moons. Typically it’s used to even out the level of your playing/dynamics and add some overall punch to your sound.

Compressors have often been employed when playing slap to help boost some of the softer notes and limit the louder ones, as well as adding a ‘sheen’ to the overall tone (especially on super clean solid state or even DI’d rigs).

Just be careful with applying too much compression. While this can create a certain ‘sound’ (if that’s what you’re going for), it might also suffer from an overall lack of dynamics. Some established and

current favourites are the MXR Bass Compressor, Origin Effects Cali 76, Darkglass Hyper Luminal, Aguilar TLC, and TC Electronics Spectra Comp.

CHORUS A mainstay of many ‘80s bass rigs, chorus adds modulation to your sound creating a thicker, wider, bigger, and wetter tone. Effective with a pick chorus is still heard in metal, hard rock, and prog, but can also blend nicely with distortion for some wilder alt rock, punk, and experimental tones. The rate and depth controls will balance the amount of warble and extremity of the effect with some units also having a blend control for adding your dry signal to the mix. Boss Bass Chorus, MXR Bass Chorus Deluxe, Electro Harmonix Bass Clone, and Eden World Tour Chorus are some good examples to get your chorus expedition underway.

BY NICK BROWN

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

FENDER

Hammertone Fuzz FENDER AUSTRALIA | RRP: $199 We may think it unimaginably prehistoric, but many moons ago, at the dawn of rock and roll, if you wanted anything other than a crystal clear electrified signal from your instrument, one of two things needed to happen. If you wanted reverb or vibrato you had to buy an amp with those effects already firmly soldered into place. If you wanted dirt, you had to all but destroy the thing you’d most likely scrimped and saved for across dozens of pay cheques.

We here in the future owe much to the conjecture that the pioneers of amplifier design were, for all intents and purposes, terrible at their jobs. These machines, originally intended to give guitar players an abundance of clean headroom to wander around in, inevitably took the merest of nudges to max out said headroom by the grace of a few minor wiring oversights.

Equally, the players that firmly cemented the limitations of these designs into the annals of history seem to have been hell-bent on destroying the amplifiers that helped launch them into infamy.

Once the roar of burning vacuum tubes had been thoroughly explored, in most cases at several shows a week, the next inevitable step was for speakers’ paper cones to tear from the pressure of such unabashed abuse. Upstarts like Junior Barnard, Goree Carter, Chuck Berry, Link Wray, Dave Davies, and a raft of slick-haired ne’er-do-wells pushed their amps as hard as they could, certainly beyond the point of warranty coverage, and in doing so, inspired millions of others to seek that fuzzed-out sound for themselves.

This particular fuzz is a spirited descendant of the super squelchy, velcro-tearing squawk that we all know and love, with a few choice nuggets from the decades since its inception included for the sake of limiting anachronism in favour of reliability and practicality.

Put bluntly, “tearing velcro” is the best way to describe what is going on here. Based on a dual silicon diode design popularised in the ‘60s, the Hammertone Fuzz is perfect for those looking for the sputtery gristle of legends like Tony Iommi and Brant Bjork as opposed to the creamier, more woofy end of the spectrum. That signature screech is underpinned by a

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hefty waft of low end, customary of most fuzzes, harnessed by a particularly broad sweeping tone knob that will bring you from royal blue, through electric purple, out the other side to blinding yellow syn, aesthetically speaking.

One thing that is undeniably rare in Fuzzbox World is a certain subtlety usually reserved for lower gain overdrives. I was pleasantly surprised to find, not only a good amount of variation in tone and texture but also that I was able to reign this wild beast in quite a way. Down around one on the fuzz knob, I was surprised to discover such transparency and low-level grit, as though Fender had been clever enough to blend a healthy dollop of clean signal over the top of the obvious wall of heck. Once my ear tuned in to this aspect of the tonal fingerprint I noticed how much this fuzz maintained, or more accurately relished, the character of the guitar I had feeding it heat.

More so than other fuzzes I’ve tried recently, this one chewed on riffs just to the point where I was able to clearly distinguish tonal variation depending on where on the pick-up selector I’d landed.

In my mind, this is a massive tick in the ‘pros’ column. There are precious few pedal designers

clever enough to realise that it is not solely Kyuss fans and bonglords that dig that fuzzy sound.

So too do tasteful players like Eric Johnson and more than a handful of jazz cats for whom a heaving wall of thickened, woolly muck is not the most desirable item on the menu.

Having said that, rest assured that people with faded copies of Cheech & Chong DVDs and tie-dyed t-shirts strewn across their parents’ basement floor are well and truly catered for. Drop the needle on Axis: Bold As Love, flick on the octave switch, and play along with the unadulterated, creamed-across-the-roof Octavio sound that Jimi graciously left us all. There are also internal trim pots to help custom fit this fuzz to the specific tonal ecosystem of your rig, yet another thing to remind you that Fender is not just trotting out another line of pedals scraping under the $200 mark.

Given that it was among the first effects introduced to the language of modern, western guitar playing, fuzz is understandably a welltilled field in 2022. The enduring popularity of bands and artists like Queens of The Stone Age, Black Sabbath, Hendrix, Clapton,

and everything that Jack White has ever touched ensures that words like ‘silicon’ and ‘germanium’ remain firmly entrenched in the guitarist’s lexicon. Why then would we need another fuzz in the cabinet? Simply because each one of these tidy circuits seems to do something indescribable that the others don’t. As opposed to bringing on waves of option paralysis, there are countless colours in this rainbow for us to choose from and collect.

The Hammertones are shaping up to be a bag of heretofore underexplored tricks that, once added to your arsenal, are sure to set your playing apart from the pack. This Fuzz, as well as the Space Delay (reviewed elsewhere in these hallowed pages), both walk a fine line between reinventing their respective wheels and emitting a familiar, essential sound destined to slot neatly into just about every board.

BY LUKE SHIELDS

mixdownmag.com.au

PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

FENDER

Hammertone Space Delay FENDER AUSTRALIA | RRP: $229 Often, when one is asked to ruminate on the word ‘space’, several disparate images swirl giddily to mind. For some, the wry grins and inimitable genius of explainers of the universe like Carl Sagan or Neil DeGrasse Tyson pop up like nerdy old friends. For others, it’s the endless blackness of the abyss beyond the ozone layer that creeps up menacingly behind their eyelids.

For a happy-go-lucky third set, the mind quickly becomes awash with classic ‘60s sci-fi like Lost In Space, The Jetsons, The Day The Earth Stood Still, or any number of other retrospectively goofy yet undeniably formative titles in Hollywood backlot history.

Where, if anywhere, would this third subset be without the now-iconic soundtracks to such masterstrokes of fantastical storytelling, replete as they were with tricks conjured by film scorers and foley artists alike on tape machines of old? Fiddly as they may have been, these giddy, ascendant, chaotic, warbling, mysterious, and ultimately complex Pandora’s boxes were and continue to be not only portals to a sonic world matched solely by the frenzied imagination whipped up in the writers’ room, but in turn have inspired generations of musicians to apply that same improvised wizardry to their music. Not to mention the glorious sun-soaked colour they give a recorded signal when the heads are pared back! Countless companies have tried to replicate this mania in the decades since using a variety of analogue, digital, and otherwise techniques, but few have managed to recreate the unadulterated goofiness to be found in the farthest reaches of tape echo space. This is where Fender’s new Hammertone Space Delay steps in.

I’ll be honest, when I first read the press release for the Hammertone line, I assumed it was Leo’s torch bearers having a crack at the lowest end of the market with a scaled-back version of their already successful line of bigger-boxed essentials.

I flippantly wondered why they felt the need to jump into the shallow end of so populous a pool when units like their Santa Ana overdrive, Pinwheel rotary

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speaker emulator, and The Bends compressor are already doing a bang-up job of giving younger effects heavyweights a run for their money. The Space Delay, and indeed the Fuzz reviewed elsewhere in this issue, quickly make the rationale abundantly clear. These pedals are not what their unassuming, hammered finish, more board-friendly sized casings would have you assume.

They are far from, in fact, a line of budget stomp-boxes for people looking for a Reflecting Pool or Mirror Image on a shoestring.

Rather, they are the kookier, wilder, more anarchic sidekicks, standing defiantly beside the main characters that Fender’s engineers have already written into history. It’s almost as if, in the process of designing the original line-up as the be-all-and-end-all of its designated effect type, they picked up a few brackish, bratty stragglers along the way. The Hammertone series is their way of giving rise to a wilder and more fun branch to the Fender family tree.

On the surface, the Space Delay is a simple enough offering. The austere, radio parts store gray chassis proudly sports three F-stamped, witch hat knobs and two switches; a vista familiar enough to anyone who’s ever stood in front of the pedal cabinet at their local emporium. Delay time, feedback, and overall effect level are accompanied by a modulation switch, emulating the choral wooziness and glimmer of over-ripe tape, and a switch intriguingly stamped ‘pattern’.

First off, one thing this pedal has going for it is the length of delay time afforded to the user. 950ms is nothing to baulk at when most other similarly-priced units can only muster around the 500ms mark. The modulated effect, which can be tweaked and tamed more or less by two internal trim-pots for the less adventurous among us, is considerably deeper and more present straight out of the box than evidenced by some of the tried and true riffs on a similar theme.

Add these two factors to the fact that, at full tilt, the feedback dial goes all the way up to shoegaze-baiting self-oscillation (at a tastefully listenable volume

mind), and you are afforded a good amount of variation, which, if we’re honest, is more likely what we all came here for in the first place. This is where it gets interesting, however. The pattern switch is truly what makes this unit as realistically usable as it is fun and wild. Fender’s engineers have done well in choosing three tape head combinations, a simple slap-back repeat, a trippy triplet, and a pre-delay imitating short/ long style one-two punch, that give you almost limitless textural possibilities.

At this point, I should chastise myself for having too much of an inclination toward cynicism. I pulled Fender’s newest creation out of its humble, hand-stamped, white cardboard packaging, and feebly anticipated something I’d already heard thousands of times over. How wrong I was! A company as big as Fender does not need to waste its dear devotees’ time

pandering to paltry pockets and cheap money grabs for real estate on every pedalboard in the rock world! Instead, in the Hammertone series as I’ve experienced thus far, especially the Space Delay, they simply want to show us some other cool stuff they found along the way, all the while quietly making it indispensable to our sound.

Not only are there fully functioning crisp delay, hearty slap-back, and darkened echo sounds on tap, but also a raft of outliers, heretofore unimagined by the merest of delay pedals, but no less bound to become a signature part of our sonic explorations henceforth.

If you think you’ve already got everything a tape-style delay can do on your board, think again.

Fender has got something cool you need to hear.

BY LUKE SHIELDS

mixdownmag.com.au

PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

SEQUENTIAL

Take 5 Compact Poly Synth FOCUSRITE AUSTRALIA | RRP: $2,199

It’s been a few years since the Mopho or Tetra – Sequential’s two most compact instruments – and with the new Take 5, they’ve struck a sophisticated balance between portability, as it’s the only synth in their lineup that has an optional backpack enclosure, and analog legitimacy in the form of dual VCO oscillators. With fivevoice polyphony, it covers most bases (not to mention basses) well and certainly lends itself to live performance by offering a flexible and beefy engine in such a modest-sized enclosure.

Having seen pictures online I just wrongly assumed it would be bigger than it was – an odd experience. It’s built to the high standard we’ve come to expect from Sequential, the knobs have the right resistance with zero wobble, the buttons are hard but not too hard to press, and the LED screen is crisp and easy to read.

The sleek charcoal case looks professional yet understated; it’s not boring black but it’s not hectic RGB cheese either.

Five-voice polyphony is uncommon but is the namesake of Sequential’s most famous synthesiser, the immortal Prophet -5. While it isn’t the ideal count for huge pads, it’s close enough to the cover-mostbases approach of other bestselling synths, still featuring a three and a half octave Fatar keyboard and 47 knobs for tactile control of most of the engine’s functions.

The two VCOs are lively and agile with variable waveform shapes, a sub osc and a noise generator (pink or white). There’s hard-sync and frequency modulation from Osc 2 to Osc 1. For the lovers of the smell of acrid-leaking

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capacitors and all things dusty, a ‘vintage’ knob keeps sonic instability and subtle voice variance close at hand.

Beyond the knobs, in the oscillator menu you can find less commonly used features such as separate glide amounts for each oscillator or disabling key tracking for atonal or sound-effect-style LFO pitchmodulated patches. The oscillators can also be independently finetuned or in the global menu, set to microtonal scales as favoured by Wendy Carlos or Aphex Twin.

Except for the Prophet X, the Sequential brand is synonymous with Curtis CEM filter designs. It famously broke tradition in 2018 with a SSM filter design. The Take 5 also features SSM filters modelled after the most acclaimed revision of the Prophet-5, and compared to the CEM classics like the Prophet 08/Rev 2, they’re a refreshing change. They particularly shine in the sounds this synth excels at; punchy resonant basslines and sweepy sparkling leads. A dedicated filter drive knob makes uncovering the filters’ sweet spots a tactile delight.

After the initial thrill of tweaking the raw building blocks of the Take 5 starts to wane, it’s time to dive deeper into sound design with the two LFOs and the mod matrix. LFO1 is global compared to LFO2 which operates on a per-voice basis. Both extend well into the audible range and can be free-running or synced to the arpeggiator/sequencer and alternated between the two modes at the press of a button, perfect for switching up the modulation chaos during a performance. There are also buttons for selecting each

LFO’s destination, and similarly, the mod matrix source and destination buttons make routing a fast and efficient process. With 19 sources and 54 destinations (16 of which are other modulation amounts), there are vast sonic possibilities to explore. For example, routing a sample and hold shaped LFO to the FX balance is a great way to introduce some evolving depth and texture.

While the arpeggiator is essentially the classic design you’d expect, being able to switch the clock division, operation type, and note repetition with the dedicated dials on the fly add some welcome playful interaction. The step sequencer steps beyond the norm by being polyphonic. Between the overdriven output and the tie and rest style of the step sequencer, there’s a lot of fun to be had programming basslines and playing the lead over the top.

Alternatively for the virtuosos, there’s a split function to separate the upper and lower octaves, allowing you to increase the chromatic scope of your keyboard, alleviating the claustrophobia of being confined to just three octaves, all too common these days due to the recent trend of smaller and smaller synthesisers.

Being a VCO poly, it wouldn’t be complete without a unison function to stack the oscillators into a monster mono synth. You can restrict the number of voices stacked if all five are too muddy and adjust the spread to dial the pitch variance in with precision. House and hardcore producers alike will be excited to learn that the unison also doubles as a chord memory feature.

Dissonant rave chords for days!

The digital FX engines superbly polish the sounds and like so much of the Take 5’s functionality, are perfectly suited to live performance. Delays and reverbs create a pleasing ethereal backdrop for pads, while the chorus, flanger, phaser or ringmod can be the missing ingredient to commanding, dramatic leads.

An analog overdrive on the final output is the finishing touch to get the Take 5’s sound exactly where you want it in the mix.

While there is a lack of bitimbrality, the more mature a composer I become, the more I value not wanting to dominate the entire spectrum with one instrument, and there’s always multitracking if your project demands it.

To sum it up, the late Dave Smith and the team at Sequential have done it again. They’ve packed a whole lot of dynamic synthesiser functionality into an efficiently compact enclosure. The purists will love the classic tones and the modern producer will be thrilled with the flexible engine. Owners of even the most restrictive studio space or desk, will make room for an instrument of this calibre. Sheer quality and rock-solid reliability have made Sequential the go-to for live performance for years and I expect many touring artists will be excited at the prospect to trade up for the Take 5.

BY DAN NICHOLLS

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

HEADRUSH

MX5 Special Edition Silver FX Board ELECTRIC FACTORY | RRP: $899

Being a relatively new company in the world of multi effect units, HeadRush do certainly bring a few things to the table that are of interest, and as they should. I think it’s fair to say players aren’t exactly looking for the same old bag of tricks (and gripes) they might be used to from these types of effects processors.

With the overwhelming sense of immediacy having entrenched our daily lives, deep menu diving is not exactly a fond memory for guitarists familiar with some of the multi effects processors of yesteryear. Instead, having something that’s quick, intuitive, and easy to use is, I think, going to tick some boxes. So the question is, does the HeadRush MX5-S bring the goods to the table in creating inspiring guitar tones? I was certainly keen to find out.

With more than enough effects and amp models than you could throw a stick at, I’d confidently say that the MX5-S is packed full of fun. This custom-designed DSP multi-core processing system is quite powerful. To get the obvious stuff out of the way, the highresolution four-inch touch display is easily one of the standout features of this processor, and I’ll dive into why later.

Expected hardware features such as solid footswitches, a built-in expression pedal, and sturdy menu dials are all nice and don’t feel cheap. The expression pedal, although a little small, is smooth and comfortable underfoot (and also features a toe-switch

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and adjustable tension). The footswitches each serve multiple purposes depending on whether they’re pressed once or pressed and held. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

The usual array of 1/4” jacks for input and outputs as well as expression pedal and FX send and returns (for external FX or for the four-cable connectivity) are located on the back. There’s also four 1/8” jack connectors for headphones output, auxiliary input, and MIDI in and out. The USB Type-B connector allows for connecting to a computer for recording or re-amping (at up to 24-bit/96kHz) or importing impulse response (IR) files to the unit. The DC In takes a dedicated 12V centre positive power supply.

writing or committing sounds to a track, this thing has plenty to offer. Blasting through a bunch of presets certainly showed off the numerous “amp rigs” and myriad of effects this compact beast has to offer. Although some were a little over the top and sometimes a little spiky to my ears, with a quick bit of tweaking, they were pretty darn usable. I will say though, I wasn’t a fan of the default noise gate settings, so I either changed these parameters per patch (super easy to adjust) or just turned it off entirely.

Firstly, I tried the MX5-S directly with headphones. Being used to recording my Jazzmaster via DI for numerous projects and alike over the years, I was eager to see what the MX5-S could offer as a studio tool without the use of an amp.

After noodling around with some presets I then of course started from scratch and commenced creating various custom patches.

I actually cannot understate how easy this was. Compared to numerous other multi effects and amp modelling units I’ve tried over the years, the MX5-S has got to be the most intuitive one I’ve tried to date. The touch screen, although a little small on this unit, is a star feature, making signal chain changes lightning quick and adding in/swapping out stomp boxes/amp/cabinets easy as pie.

The tails feature is nice too and not something that all other boxes in this category offer. So having delay and reverb tails available makes for nice, smooth transitions between patches. Pretty lush.

Despite the initial adjustment to the perceived top-end lift this unit has, after spending only a couple of minutes it became clear that MX5-S is a fine companion for the studio. Whether it be getting tones and ideas down quickly while

Each stompbox or amp model can easily be tweaked by double tapping them, where numerous parameters can be adjusted. The various amp models I tried were pretty impressive and well in the ballpark of the amps they aimed to

I’ll start off by stating that from the get go I decided to not consult the manual prior or during my testing of this unit. So despite my usual course of action which is to RTFM (google it); I threw caution to the wind with this one and I gotta say, this thing is so easy to use!

be modelling, with cabinet pairing and the various mics available made very easy to access and tweak if required. I particularly enjoyed the sounds of the various boosters and compressors available as well as some of the time-based effects from reverse delay lines to big washy reverbs.

I then turned off the amp modelling side of things and ran the MX5-S straight into a Fender Hot-Rod Deluxe. Again, like most effects units, a little bit of tonal tweaking was required to play nicely with the amp (mostly dialling down top-end, as I mentioned earlier) but I found the various stomp boxes in the MX5-S to sound pretty lush through a tube amp. Tweaking sounds again was breezy and oh so intuitive.

Having not consulted a manual once from start to finish of testing out this unit, I was certainly impressed with how easy it is to operate, both navigating through presets, hardware assignment, and further tweaking of the wealth of amp models and stomp boxes available. Although some of the initial presets sounded a little harsh to begin with, some quick tweaking and tone shaping really allowed this unit to shine. A worthy contender for those looking for a compact, but feature-rich multi effects and amp modelling unit for the studio or stage.

BY ANDY LLOYD-RUSSELL

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

FENDER

Hammertone Metal FENDER AUSTRALIA | RRP: $199

Fender knows tone. They know how it’s made from perfectlywound pickups, but they also know how imperfect, overwound, and underwound pickups can also produce unique tones in the right hands, and with the right woods, hardware, and guitar design. They also know amps and understand tubes, their biassing, preamplifier circuitry, and cabinet designs.

Fender are responsible for a long line of equipment that has been used, trusted, and refined for a rapidly-approaching century in the industry. Their goal has always been to serve the player, and consistent conversations with musicians, along with their unparalleled technical engineering knowledge has birthed arguably the most widely-used guitars and amps in history.

What Fender are becoming increasingly well known for are their pedals. Fender has decades of experience in amplifying signal, so if anyone can be trusted to add a little more between your guitar and your amp, it’s them. Enter the Hammertone Metal, one of the more high gain pedals available as part of their Hammertone range.

Hammertone Metal is a four-knob drive pedal with controls for level (output) and gain (input/internal gain), low, and high EQ control to boost either end of your tone. You can also think of this as a massive scoop in the mid range. Finally, the Hammertone Metal has a bright blue LED that can easily be seen on stage.

The Hammertone Metal is a four-knob distortion housed in an aluminium hammered box.

It has a simple input and output located on the top of the pedal, and can be powered by a 9V battery or adapter. The 9V input is also located on top of the pedal for easy integration into your pedal board. Like the rest of the range, the Hammertone Metal is true bypass so it’s a giver, not a taker, assisting further in retaining the dynamics of your tone. For the spec-heads, this pedal has a 500k-ohm input and 470k-ohm output and will draw a negligible 24mA from a power supply. The ‘low’ EQ seems to boost in the low mids, around 200Hz, while the high acts somewhat as a

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shelf that introduces frequencies progressively upwards of 4-5k.

The Hammertone Metal is, in a few words, a super usable distortion.

While the branding and name of the pedal place it in a certain category of pedal, the gain knob offers a super wide range of tones from subtle, tubey breakup to all-out American-sounding distortion. Somewhere in the middle gives you a little British rock, and most tone-hunters can find a home somewhere among these options. What makes the Hammertone Metal especially handy is how quiet it is, meaning you can dial in some subtle drive, then push the output hard into your amp and create even more unique tones without introducing too much noise. Guitar players will feel right at home with the clearly laid out dials, as well as the sounds roaring from that output. It can offer familiar tones that resemble tubes screaming, or more highgain tones more associated with amplifiers with two or three rectifiers, all while retaining clarity and punch and never introducing mud. Other pedals within the Hammertone range are equally focused on their own niche of gain, and the Hammertone Metal reproduces every tone that

influenced heavy metal in one way or another. From a subtle amplifier push that was used in the ‘60s to a bluesy warmth, before increasing levels of gain exposed our pick attack and shaped an entire genre.

Using the Metal to boost specific frequencies makes it a really handy and unique tool in your arsenal.

The high section of the EQ brings out attack, snarl, and the transients of your playing and can help drive them into your amp for tube saturation of those frequencies or solid-state transistors depending on your preferences. The other end of the spectrum allows you to boost low-end punch into your amp for warmth or impact, more clearly defining chugs and giving those speakers that ‘womp’ that makes simple open riffs so good!

to use. EQ controls allow us to shape our tone further than most pedals, and the gain introduced is as aggressive as you need it be, while being super clean and pairs perfectly with a loud amp for minimal noise and maximum bite.

Fender are experts in tone, having invented, shaped, inspired, and refined it for longer than anyone else in the rock game, and the Hammertone range is no exception. The Hammertone Metal is just one example of a big range of more affordable pedals in the Hammertone series, all of which are equally robust, road-ready, and quickly being scribbled on my list of Fender gear to buy.

BY LEWIS NOKE EDWARDS

All in all, the Fender Hammertone Metal is a pedal that could give every player something they’re looking for. It takes up minimal pedalboard space, uses minimal power, and what’s more – the input and output are even located in a super practical place. While the ‘metal’ branding may conjure up a certain sonic imprint, the Hammertone Metal is much more than that. It’s a drive pedal that is low noise, powerful, and simple

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

ROLAND

TD-17KVX Electronic Drum Kit ROLAND AUSTRALIA | RRP: $3,569 Over the years, the Roland TD Series has become synonymous with quality, versatility, and performance feel for beginners and professional drummers alike.

As the range has grown and developed, we have seen features in higher end models passed down the line to continue their development. And every iteration of a new model is an exciting time to see what key features are on offer to improve where the previous model left off. That was what made the release of the TD-17 range so exciting when they first launched. With two models, the TD-17KV and the TD-17KVX, Roland promised a lot in both features and price. The best part was, they delivered.

The TD-17KVX is an all mesh, five-piece electronic drum kit that moves away from a practice tool and becomes a very real performance kit. It offers two crash cymbal pads and one ride, with a hi-hat trigger system that you mount onto your own hi-hat stand. To round the kit out is the kick pad, which is designed to accommodate your own kick pedal, to suit your needs.

The snare comes as a PDX-12 pad, which is a 12” dual-trigger pad. It offers a tension-adjustable two-ply mesh head with triggers and a rim trigger as well, which offers a natural rim height as most drummers would be accustomed top, not just a low edge to the pad.

It’s a drum pad that is designed to take a beating and keep on delivering. You may expect the mesh to struggle in hiding up to repeated beatings in the same zone over and over again, but I have seen these pads take more than two years of abuse and show nothing more than some grotty wear and a well-polished sweet spot. You don’t get that sort of durability from a real snare head!

These same heads are found on the three PDX-8 tom pads, offering a natural feel, a snappy rebound, and a serious amount of play time without wear.

The VH-10 hi-hat trigger is a great addition to the TD-17KVX. This is one of the standouts that the KVX has over the KV, with a more realistic feel to the left foot as you get to drive your own hi-hat stand and not simply open and close a trigger with spring-tensioned

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paddle. If you’re going to be performing on stage with this kit, or practising at home before switching to an acoustic kit, you want all the elements to feel as natural as possible. That is why the hi-hat trigger in the KVX is such a joy to play with.

It’s for that very same reason that the kick drum is offered on a pad that accommodates your own kick pedal. The KD-10 kick pad is compact enough to not be cumbersome, but offers a large enough footprint and pad zone to accept most double kick pedals.

I found these kick pads to have a spongey feel, that dampened well when you drove into them, but still offered a nice positive rebound. It certainly does the trick with that satisfying thud feel, but it doesn’t create a lot of acoustic noise, so you’ll not have the family in the next room banging on your door to quit practising when you’re really getting into it. That is, as long as you don’t have the TD-17KVX connected to a PA system.

And with that, it has me needing to talk about the sounds. The entire kit is designed for a relatively quiet

practice situation. The pads, kick, and cymbal triggers all present very little acoustic noise. What the TD-17 range does offer is an incredible array of sounds in the module, which are very easy to navigate. Both the TD-17KV and the TD17KVX share the same module. You aren’t missing out on sounds with the lower-priced option, just the number of cymbal pads and the feel in the hi-hat.

Once all wired up, aside from lacking one cymbal trigger, the TD17KV sounds just like its improved relative.

Of course, Roland have been creating electronic drum sounds for more than 40 years, since the release of the old CR-78 with its coloured buttons and wooden cabinet. Well, the TD-17 has come a very long way since then. What you get in this module is more than 40 years of updating of sounds to culminate in a brilliant collection of electronic drum tones. On top of that, there are recorded drum tones for real studio or live performance sounds.

You can have your TD-17 sound like just about any type of drum

kit, be it a modern acoustic studio kit, a Latin American percussion section, or a vintage electronic drum machine, and just about everything in between. Further to these factory-loaded sounds that come with the TD-17, you are able to download additional sounds and effects to your module to further increase the potential it has.

A quick trip to the Roland website will allow you to register there and download a selection of custom patches created by Roland V-Drum specialist Simon Ayton.

So, what you get in the box is really only the beginning. You can expand the sounds the TD-17 has available and then build your own kits with the sounds it offers to create custom patches of your own. This kit is really only limited to your imagination and creativity.

BY ROB GEE

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

LINE 6

HX Stomp XL YAMAHA AUSTRALIA | RRP: $1,449 It’s time to admit something to ourselves: amplifier modelling is the new reality. This new wave began in 1998 with Line 6’s kidney-shaped POD. Line 6 has slowly released updates of the POD, such as the POD HD and HD X series, and since the early inceptions of the Flextone, AxSys, and POD, Line 6 has continued to develop guitar tools that have been eagerly embraced by the greater guitar community. Recent trends with modelling and the subsequent success of the Helix range has seen them expand their range.

Despite this, Line 6 has remained associated with the tones and sounds and effects on the original POD, even though they have been consistently releasing top-quality products.

This all changed in 2015 when they released the Helix and re-entered the big league, and then hit another home run with the HX Stomp, a nifty, compact multi-effect that’s won the guitar market over with its versatile tones and tiny footprint. The HX Stomp was, and still is a great all-round introduction to amplifier modelling at a great price. Don’t be fooled by its size and appearance – the Stomp is every bit as powerful as its larger counterparts, and Line 6 didn’t skip out on the quality of the effects and amplifier modelling either. It’s a professional grade piece of gear that can hold its own, but is portable enough to fit in your backpack.

Following on from the unprecedented success of their HX Stomp, Line 6 have doubled down and debuted the HX Stomp XL. What’s better than the Line 6 HX Stomp? A HX Stomp with a couple more switches, that’s what!

Offering itself as a revamped, expanded version of the popular 2018 unit, the HX Stomp XL makes use of a longer chassis with more controls to make it all the more malleable for onstage use.

The Line 6 HX Stomp XL is everything we loved from the HX Stomp with five extra switches for extra effects and modelling. You have a total of eight switches to toggle between presets, banks, a tuner, and tap tempo effects, as well as a backlit screen that shines bright in every situation.

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You can run the HX Stomp as an entire rig or as a pedal board, and both options sound as good as you would need whether you’re recording, writing, or performing.

There are inputs, outputs, sends, returns and MIDI for you to route just about any sound you want in or out of the unit.

The HX Stomp XL features stereo outputs that work for balanced and unbalanced outs. There’s a 1/4” headphone output beside the MIDI input and output which allows for silent practise, and USB port to connect your HX Stomp to a computer for editing. The unit features stereo send and return that doubles as an auxiliary input, and an expression pedal input that can also be used to expand the footswitches by up to two switches.

Now for what the people came to see. The Line 6 HX Stomp XL features hundreds of amplifiers, cabinets, and effects to choose from out of the Helix range, as well as ‘legacy’ effects from their M-Series and stompboxes such as DL4, FM4, and more.

Line 6 have modelled the components and their behaviour, as well as 16 adjustable microphone models available when choosing your cabinet sound, that are all adjustable in direction, proximity and angle at

the ‘speaker cone’. These options can be complicated at first, but with a little experimentation and know-how, the HX Stomp XL eclipses much of its competition in the amp modelling world.

Other products may offer similar amplifier profiles, but Line 6 excels in pushing those sounds out of the speaker cones.

Below the 2.4” (6cm) colour LCD are three knobs, that have variable uses depending on what you’re tweaking, and when. The action button beside the screen allows you to select and move sounds for ease of access once you’ve created a few tones of your own, or downloaded other users’ presets from the CustomTone Marketplace.

For those who haven’t used amp modellers before, you’ve got access to an entire ‘rig’ that starts with pedals, moves into an amplifier, and then to a cabinet.

Where the HX Stomp XL really excels is the cabinet simulation that uses impulse responses.

These are often used to profile spaces with reverbs, or to profile cabinets when emulating speakers.

Because of how the cabinet filters the sound coming through the cabinet, theoretically a signal processed through the same filter should sound like it’s being played through that cabinet.

The HX Stomp is a much more accessible pedal than the flagship Helix, and the XL makes it more user friendly, especially in a live space. A larger unit makes space for more routing options, and the HX Stomp XL has them in spades.

There’s a big bright LED to make changes either on the fly on stage or in the comfort of a studio, or you can download and upload profiles and edit them on a computer via the USB port.

All in all, and through and through, the Line 6 HX Stomp XL is a phenomenal upgrade from an already stellar product. It can be used to add effects to an already great-sounding amplifier sound, or it can replace your entire rig of pedals, amps, cabinets, and effects, all the while doing it with more routing options than most pedals and amps.

From seasoned software tweakers to bedroom guitarists and bass players, the HX Stomp XL would be a great addition to anyone’s collection of gear.

BY ERIC FOREMAN

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

GRAVITY SOUNDS

Gravity Cart M01 B LINK AUDIO | ENQUIRE FOR PRICING When you pop down to your local musical instrument store, it’s usually with the intent of purchasing a beautiful new instrument, some exciting new electronic gear, or just to pick up some guitar strings and some more picks, because those things never last. Still, there is a certain magical energy, and the enjoyment of walking away from that experience is what keeps us going back.

Well, not all purchases come with so much romanticism and fond memories. Sometimes you just need a level-headed purchase to make the enjoyment of using all that amazing equipment carry on, as you have to carry it. So, let me introduce you to the Gravity M 01 B Cart, that one piece of gear that you didn’t dream about, but really know you want.

Sound guys, stagehands, and DJs will probably pay more attention to this item. They are the people who spend a lot of time loading gear in and out of venues and truly know how to appreciate a good bit of engineering when they see it. Let’s face it, an engineer is more likely to get excited about a trolley than a creative type, because they can truly appreciate its form and function. But musicians will be glad to have one of these in the back of their car too.

For the acoustic duo, or solo artist, it is an obvious decision.

Musicians who have to bring a PA system into a venue along with instruments, microphones, cables, and stands for just about every gig.

The Gravity M 01 B Cart is going to make the set-up process so much simpler, especially so when it is often near impossible to find a car park anywhere near the venue.

Imagine reducing those six trips back and forth to the car down to one casual stroll, leisurely pushing your new trolley as you go. OK, so it might not be that idyllic, after all, you have a show to get to, but you can see my point.

It gets even better for larger bands.

You can get an entire drum kit’s cases, traps bag, and all on one of these and make it one easy trip into the venue. The guitar amp and bass amp can both go on there together, if the bass player actually turns up on time. Or, if you’re lugging in an amp head and cabinet, it can be switched around to become a tilt trolley and you

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can roll that rig inside in one go.

There’s even enough space to fit a guitar case upright on there with your cabinet.

Essentially, this is the friend that every musician and sound technician wishes they had always had. Its sturdy build allows for a capacity of up to 150kg, so you can wheel the drummer out to the van at the end of a show if things get out of hand. It’s an eight-inone design, allowing for eight different setup configurations.

That said, you’ll most likely find the one or two setups that work best for you and never bother with the rest. As mentioned, the tilt trolley design is going to work well in a lot of instances, and with its extended base section, you will fit more onto it in this fashion than you do with most of those fold out tilt trolleys that a lot of people use. But it goes much further than that.

As a flat bed trolley, you have the option of a handle at one end, or a handle at both ends. Using the two-handle option means you can only side load the trolley, but the front handle does act as a barrier to stop your gear flying off the

front when you stop suddenly or take a corner with a little too much excitement. When fully extended, you will get an entire drum kit on there, as long as you’re not performing in a prog rock band.

This of course seriously widens the turning circle, but with the swivel wheels at the front, you can still get it around even some fairly tight corners in narrow corridors.

The swivel wheels at the front have a stamp-down locking mechanism on them. So, you can turn your back to have a chat and not worry about all your equipment rolling off into the distance with a mind of its own. The rear wheels are a larger diameter, with solid rubber tyres on them. This makes it easier to bump up steps if needs be, rather than jamming the little front wheels into a gutter. If you tilt the cart back slightly to pop the front wheels over a step or gutter, two curved rails on the underside will stop the rear wheel from jamming and enable the cart to slide up until the rear wheels engage and keep on rolling. And when you’re finished with the load, it quickly folds up to reduce space in transit.

It may not seem like it, but there is a lot going on with this clever design. It is far from the glamourous purchase at your local music store, but it might well be the best one you make for a long time. When you’re all set up at your next gig with plenty of time to spare, you’ll be glad you had a Gravity M 01 B Cart in your kit.

And when you bump out of the venue in one swift motion at the end of the night, I think you’ll agree that this is a piece of kit that you will never want to go without again.

BY ROB GEE

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

ERNIE BALL

VPJR Tuner CMC MUSIC | RRP: $675

As a company, Ernie Ball has always positioned itself as the young upstart on the market. The peak of their popularity came hand in hand with the rise of Southern Californian pop punk in the late ‘90s, but they are now over four decades into their lifetime and have not shied away from the wisdom that comes with age.

Their neon-packaged strings are the preferred choice for more discerning players and when their volume and expression pedals hit the market all those years ago, they changed the way we express ourselves from the pedalboard up.

Utility pedals can be a hard category to justify splashing your cash on. While undeniably serving a purpose, volume pedals are often tough to squeeze onto your pedalboard, and let’s face it: no one’s ever enjoyed purchasing a tuning pedal. These kinds of pedals are seen more as tools than they are as tricks, and it’s for this reason that they’re often at the bottom of any pedal head’s list of priorities.

Ernie Ball’s VPJR Tuner pedal might just change all of that.

Building on the blueprint of the sturdy VPJR, Ernie Ball has integrated the volume pedal with an ultra-precise touch screen tuner display. On paper, it’s an offer you simply can’t refuse. For some, it’d be easy to scoff and swat this concept away as just being a gimmick for some easy Ernie

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Ball unit shifting, and I can admit to being a bit sceptical about the pedal on initial assessment.

Thankfully, the VPJR Tuner pedal lives up to all expectations, and actually makes for an incredibly useful and even creative addition to any pedalboard.

Straight off the bat, it’s worth noting that the VPJR is definitely not a ‘junior’ pedal, but it’s worth making the space for. It’s quite bulky, and has a footprint marginally bigger than your average wah pedal. On the flip side, it’s also as sturdy as they come, and the rubber surface that surrounds the screen offers plenty of grip for your footwork.

Interestingly perhaps, Ernie Ball has forgone a touchless sensor system and employed a cable mechanism in the design of the VPJR’s volume component, which is constructed from PVC-coated Kevlar and provides consistent tension when sweeping with the pedal. Given that it features a touch screen, this pedal also requires a 9-18V power supply, whereas most other Ernie Ball volume pedals are passive. Our review unit featured a racing car red finish: others are available in black, silver, or white.

Upon engaging the pedal, the VPJR’s touch screen lets you choose three different display modes: volume, tuner, or both.

Choosing tuner mode and double

tapping the screen also lets you change the reference pitch of the tuner upwards or downwards from 440Hz, which is a nice touch for all those picky ears out there. On that note, the tuning precision of the VPJR is spot on, and the bright incremental display makes for a great guide to navigating each string, with the changing lights and pitch indicator making it as easy as possible. I feel like it would have been cool to see the VPJR feature a polyphonic tuning mode, but you can’t really take points away given what’s already on offer.

In use, the VPJR Tuner – and volume – pedal is exactly the same as the tuner-less version that preceded it. Swift sweeps and incremental adjustments are simple, and the action of the pedal makes for a consistently taut response. In volume mode, the touch screen display is also utilised as a numerical value depicting the volume of your signal, which is a killer way to gauge your overall master volume from a distance or in dim lit rooms. This screen really adds a lot to the overall practicality of the pedal, and I feel like it’ll go on to set a trend in this niche market.

amp or a pedal, or even as a gain control for either configuration.

This can let you get a bit creative with your use of the pedal, and makes it a lot more versatile than you’d think, particularly for more textural swells or clever effect fade-ins. It’s nice to have such a practical unit that still lets you facilitate creative ideas without making them over complicated or forcing you to go menu diving to unlock its inner secrets.

At its price point, the VPJR Tuner might not be accessible for all users, and it’s a bulky pedal to justify carving out such a huge chunk of pedalboard space for.

Yet, it’s an incredibly alluring product from Ernie Ball, who has obviously paid a lot of attention to detail in order to create a sturdy, feature-packed and ultimately useful design. I wouldn’t be against describing it as the best volume pedal on the market, and there’s sufficient evidence to say the same about the tuner as well: I can’t see how anything can come close to what’s on offer here from Ernie Ball.

BY LUKE SHIELDS

There’s also a range of routing options on the top of the VPJR, including standard I/O as well as Effects Send/Return. On top of a standard Effects Loop setup, you could set up the VPJR to control the master volume of either your

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

LINE 6

POD Go Wireless YAMAHA AUSTRALIA | RRP: $949

Line 6 is synonymous with a handful of products. You mention the name and instantly people fondly remember the Line 6 PODs, large, kidney-shaped amp modellers that, at the time, we all thought sounded undoubtedly like a real amp.

Some musicians will think of the G-Series wirelesses, now a staple for live bands all over the globe, their battered and road-tested G50 receivers a badge of honour.

Line 6 is reliable, forward-thinking, and accessible for working musicians and hobbyists alike.

The new Line 6 POD Go Wireless combines these two designs into one simple, intuitive, floorboard style design. It features Line 6’s award winning amp and cabinet tones, effects, and a Line 6 G10TII transmitter to pair with the receiver built into the unit. Ready to play are Line 6’s professional-grade HX effects, as found on their HX Stomp and Helix models, as well as a long list of classic amp tones at the push of a button.

The POD Go is designed to be as plug-and-play as possible, allowing for tones to be tweaked and dialled on the fly, as well as on first use.

Like a normal amp, it features an effects loop in and out, and if HX’s cabinet models weren’t enough, you can capture your own impulse responses and load them into the amp profiles.

While obviously designed for the stage, the Line 6 POD Go Wireless also acts as a four input,

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four output audio interface for recording and re-amping through world class sounds. Specifications wise, it’s important to break the POD Go Wireless into what it really is: three products.

As an amp modeller, HX sounds are unparalleled. Without going too much into trying to describe how good the long, long, long list of tones and amps sound, clips and sound samples of the HX sounds can be found on the Line 6 website. The unit features six stompbox style buttons to toggle between either preset buttons or stompbox buttons via the MODE button, and an independent tuner button.

The POD Go Wireless also features an expression pedal, which can be toggled between either wah or volume pedal, or can be used to control other parameters within your effects. A large, bright screen will be easily seen from a dark or bright stage alike, the latter sometimes offering less visibility. In addition to stellar amp tones, the Line 6 POD Go can be used as a multi-FX, also featuring an ‘Amp Out’ (that pulls signal before the amp/cab block part of the signal chain) for use with a traditional amplifier.

For those not paying attention, this means you could easily use both amp and cab simulations and a real amp. Alternatively, the unit can make up your whole rig, where you would use the ‘Main Out’ direct to PA; with either mono

or stereo capabilities. There’s also a connection for an extra expression pedal, or alternatively, a place to connect an extra footswitch for two extra stompboxes.

The amp sounds are that of the HX family and are tweakable to the nth degree, from preamp and power amp saturation to tube bias and power sag. You can really tweak your tones into a unique voice for your own sounds. Not only can you perfect your tones, but you can tweak the layout of your parameters so you can access the adjustments you need more easily.

For when you’re not on stage, the Line 6 can double as a USB recording interface for home. You can record through it, using worldclass amp sounds and effects, or use it for re-amping after the fact.

The Line 6 also features enough interesting effects that these could easily be printed back into a DAW as reverbs, delays, or modulation.

Simply send signal out of your DAW, into the ‘Guitar Input’, through whatever effects or sounds you like, and back out via the ‘Main Out’ into your DAW. The POD Go Wireless can record and play back at a maximum or 24-bit/96kHz, and features a headphone out for monitoring, or you could use the Main Out for monitors, but you would lose the outputs for re-amping.

a handy storage compartment in the unit itself, and the ‘Guitar In’ acting as a charger for the transmitter. The Relay G10TII will work for both active and passive instruments via the 1⁄4” jack connection. To keep the unit more affordable, Line 6 has done away with any XLR ins and outs as the POD Go is designed for live use where these connections are much less common among guitars and basses.

All in all, the Line 6 POD Go Wireless has managed to pack just about everything you’d need in a unit with a much smaller footprint than its larger siblings.

Without sacrificing too much, the POD Go features amp sounds and emulation to satisfy even the most anti-digital players, and houses it all in a small steel chassis that screams convenience, portability, and ease of use.

For a product that can be used on professional levels and does away with the need for three separate purchases, the initiative and value for money can’t be beat.

Line 6 has always had the busy musician in mind, and the POD Go wireless continues this trend in style in a value-packed, road-ready construction.

BY LEWIS NOKE EDWARDS

As a wireless unit, the POD Go Wireless features Line 6’s ever popular Relay G10TII wireless, with

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

FENDER

Hammertone Flanger FENDER AUSTRALIA | RRP: $229

Fender’s foray into the world of effects pedal has been a success. Starting with their more colourful, unique, albeit more expensive range of pedals, Fender recently unveiled their range of Hammertone pedals, nine pedals that cover every effect and element of your tone you could want to control or augment. The Hammertone range offers drives, distortions, delays, and space effects, as well as modulation effects such as the Flanger.

Finished in a hammered aluminium chassis, the Hammertone Flanger is simple to use, with three brightly-coloured F-stamped knobs and two toggle switches to further make it a uniquesounding pedal. For lack of a better word, the Hammertone Flanger offers everything from fairly familiar flanger tones through to super effected, warbling, and soaring flange. As we all know, flange harnesses comb-filtering to create unique tones that modulate and move in either subtle or psyched-out sounds. The Hammertone range is designed to be ultra pedalboard friendly, with well-placed connectors, uniform housing, and a lightweight aluminium design. Any one of the range is a welcome addition to sometimes tired tones, as they impart a unique take on familiar effects, maybe none do this more so than the Hammertone Flanger.

The entire Hammertone range is similarly-sized in aluminium boxes and different colours that reflect the tonal colour of their sound. The Flanger features three knobs and two toggle switches. The depth and rate knobs, while being fairly standard, are self explanatory for Flangers, giving a unique tonal imprint. The depth controls how deep the modulation goes, but the sensitivity of the F-stamped knob allows you to really fine-tune your tone with precision. The Rate knob controls the speed with which the valleys of modulation offer their voice across your sound.

This differs from the manual knob, which is used to manually adjust the delay time, as you would on a genuine reel-to-reel machine, where the tap flanging effect was initially invented and used. The res switch offers three options with more and more resonance, or

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feedback, with each step. The type switch adjusts the polarity of the feedback, offering more harmonics or way, way more harmonics. The Hammertone range features true bypass switches to minimise their impact on your board, while the input and output jacks are housed on the top of the pedal for minimal cabling. The 9V input jack also sits atop the pedal, allowing cables to be easily hidden away.

Once plugged in, the Fender Hammertone Flanger can get pretty wild. When compared to more traditional modulation effects, the Hammertone Flanger imparts a particularly mid-forward tone, easily cutting through with a unique flange effect. This sonic voice makes the Hammertone Flanger particularly good for distorted tones, especially with just a subtle bit of movement. Maxed out, the Hammertone Flanger is overkill for most intents and purposes, but not all. Maximum resonance and delay time offers some pretty alien sounding tones that quickly depart from your original signal, and quickly become spaced out, unique and mind-bending – so proceed with caution! The type switch is a really interesting addition, toggling

between flange that blends into your tone or pokes its head out more blatantly, while the use of a toggle switch allows you to make a call and move on – as well as easily recall your settings. The res switch is the same, offering increasing, almost copious amounts of feedback, warble, and phase cancellation, without needing the ability to fine-tune the effect. More simply – it allows you to quickly make a decision and get on with playing! The Hammertone Flanger is a familiar effect re-imagined for 2022. It can give you everything you’ve ever known about flange and then some, allowing you to tweak tones with previously unknown accuracy. Heck – having two on your boards with separate settings wouldn’t go astray!

The Hammertone range overall is another success in the bank for Fender. What makes Fender’s work unique is how they’ve listened to their players for decades and made consistent refinements while retaining the good bits along the way. The Hammertone Flanger specifically is a unique take on one of the most widely-used guitar and bass effects in history, and somehow also offers familiar tones if that’s what you need it for.

What I love about the Hammertone Flanger is how far I can push it – admittedly probably more than I’d ever actually use, but that tells me that every tone I could possibly want is in there somewhere. While some pedals fall flat even with their controls dimmed, the Hammertone Flanger simply gives and gives, offering unique controls to really dial your own character into it.

The Hammertone Flanger is housed in an aluminium chassis, as is the whole Hammertone range.

They need to be so lightweight of course, to account for being full of tone! Unique controls give you complete control over your flange, including phase flip and a Res switch to give you more and more flange depending on the song – or your mood!

BY LEWIS NOKE EDWARDS

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / MI

ZOOM

G6 Multi-Effects Guitar Processor Pedal DYNAMIC MUSIC | RRP: $599 Multi-effects pedals have come a long, long way in recent years.

Even as early as 10 years ago, most floorboard units were cumbersome, loaded with poorly modelled sounds and were controlled by a crummy calculator-like interface. They were to be avoided like the plague – that is, until sophisticated effects processing came along and changed it all.

Since the arrival of technologies such as impulse responses, cab simulation, audio-over-USB, and touch screen interfacing, the multi-effects market has flourished into one of the most cutting edge and profitable today, with more and more floorbound modellers and all-in-one solutions gaining acceptance in high profile touring rig and studio situations. Among those brands leading the pack is none other than Japanese firm Zoom – a company who have always been at the forefront of multi-effects innovation, even in the dark days – and their new device, the G6 Multi-Effects Guitar Processor, is emblematic of a brand who understand the space better than anyone else out there The Zoom G6 Multi-Effects Guitar Processor Pedal is seriously something to get excited about.

It’s one of the most functionpacked processor pedals that you can get at its price point, and considering Zoom’s reputation for superior DSP and realistic amp emulations, you can bet you’ll be getting exceptional tonal quality too.

This sturdily built, well-sized unit has six different amp models to choose from, with each amp being custom designed and tweaked for inclusion. There’s also an impressive 22 cabinet emulations, with 70 pre-loaded full impulse responses providing various options for microphone positions and rooms. If this wasn’t enough, you can also upload your own favourite impulse responses (IRs) via the SD card slot.

The G6 Multi-Effects Guitar Processor Pedal has Zoom’s very own effects designed and developed over the span of 30 years; such as, reverb, delay, drive, modulation, and more. All of these effects sound great in operation, and unlike some other processor

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effects, don’t sound noticeably digital – something that many an analogue enthusiast will be impressed by.

It has a 4.3-inch colour touch screen with a really easy-on-theeye and user-friendly interface with its drag and swipe functions that’ll help you get to your preferred setting quickly and with ease. On this LCD screen, you can create and edit patches and swap effects among other many functions. You can save up to nine effects on each patch and easily access them through the play mode footswitch which also has the options for looper, memory, and effect board.

To make navigating the device easy, the Zoom G6 has six pedalstyle stomp footswitches for seamless switching, and a very nifty expression volume pedal for real-time manipulation of your sound. There’s also the effects loops available at the back of the board via mono send and return, that will allow you to integrate your stompboxes, amps, and external effects.

And, just in case that wasn’t enough it can be used in itself as a USB audio interface and you can connect it via Bluetooth application to be remote controlled, the app acts as a secondary interface. The USB connection allows you to browse

and update Zoom’s GuitarLab software that contains various amps, effects, and patches. There’s a whole bevy of awesome content available through this software suite, and we highly recommend you take full advantage of everything on offer.

Through the effect board play mode, the colour screen depicts your custom pedal chain with colour coordination, and understandable icons and signs so you don’t have to think too hard when performing or setting up. A little light above the icon for the footswitch on the screen lights up when you engage and effect and turns off when disengaged. Editing the parameters of the effects is yet again, a breeze as you simply press the image of the stompbox and away you go.

The G6’s memory mode even allows you to pre-program your entire performance. I really appreciated this function, as you can group any combination of your custom made ‘pedal boards’ or patches into groups of four, which I would argue is more than most would need for a live setting.

That’s four completely different signal chains in one bundle so you can have vastly different sounds per song, or even each section if you wish. This not only works great in live situations, but also in the recording studio if you

prefer a more hands on approach to tweaking your sound. I know I certainly do.

Back to live performance, creativity, and practise, I will always say that a looper is your best friend in most situations, and of course, the Zoom G6 multi-effects guitar processor pedal is decked out with that as well with a whopping two hours worth of loop time, plus more if you decide to expand via SD card.

It has so many effects, including new distortion and modulation effects, and thanks to Zoom’s engineers you have access to carefully crafted hybrid amplifier models that take iconic sounds and blend them with other timeless selections for new, unique tones. Speaking of practising, you can also play along to any one of 16 rhythm patterns across an array of time signatures and genres.

Honestly, it’s hard to find fault in the Zoom G6; these guys have really picked a winner here. What a dynamic, resourceful device at such an incredible price. While it’s not micro-sized, it does not take up too much space and it certainly doesn’t break the bank. I would highly recommend checking it out!

BY WILL BREWSTER

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / AUDIO

HIT’N’MIX

RipX: DeepAudio & DeepRemix HIT’N’MIX | ENQUIRE FOR PRICING

This is a pretty embarrassing thing to admit, but one of my nerdier musical pastimes (and I do have many) is finding bootleg multitracks of classic songs and flying them into my DAW of choice just to see how the sausage is made.

It’s a telling exercise, sitting back and listening to songs you have heard hundreds of times on classic radio, soloing and muting individual tracks and instrument groups to really get the full picture in the hope of learning what it is that makes them tick. The things you can learn about individual arrangement ideas, timbres, and production techniques and the interplay between them all makes for some truly compelling listening.

Now as you can probably imagine, there isn’t always a surplus of these kinds of multitrack sessions available to the public and those that are out there tend to exist only by virtue of a light-fingered studio assistant having smuggled them out of their former place of employment, many moons ago.

Over in the parallel universe that is electronic music production there also exists a similar demand for isolated tracks and stems, primarily for the purpose of sample, loop, and remix creation.

For decades, beatmakers and DJs have had to rely on a less-than-ideal combination of heavy-handed EQ and filtering, combined with various phase and expansion tricks to try and extract individual instruments out of existing tracks with as few artefacts as possible. This has almost always been an inexact and extremely laborious task.

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Needless to say, the ability to digitally isolate, locate, and draw out specific instruments from within a busy master track (and to do so with proper accuracy and limited artefacts or spill), has been something of a holy grail for crate diggers and sample fanatics ever since the beginning of the DAW revolution – it has just taken a while for the technology to get to a point where it allows for consistently musical results.

This is precisely where American developer Hit’n’Mix and their flagship RipX software come into the equation.

For over 10 years Hit’n’Mix have been on the forefront of refining this kind of technology and it shows in the attention to detail and impressive processing power of their latest offering.

Comprised of two main components – DeepRemix, which is a broader set of tools primarily for separating audio files into individual vocal, bass, drum, and instrumental stems, and DeepAudio – which allows you to really hone in and manipulate particular elements from within your imported audio file, the RipX package may well be the most powerful and best suited tool for this kind of processing we’ve come across, I mean there is some serious voodoo going on here.

The first step is the analysation and extraction process, which is as mysterious as it is impressive.

Using sophisticated AI algorithms and powerful DSP, the ‘ripper’ somehow manages to extract and analyse audio with an accuracy unlike anything we’ve really seen before, reverse engineering tracks

regardless of source quality and providing clean, usable results on an incredibly consistent basis.

After a couple of successful imports, I thought I would try and throw RipX a bit of a curve ball in the form of a bleed-filled garage punk song I recorded in high school. The accuracy and intuition with which it was able to discern one instrument from the next was really quite remarkable, and its ability to predict intended tempo and pitch (of what was in reality quite a ramshackle and poorly executed performance) was something to behold.

Obviously, given the complexity and detail of what we are asking RipX to do, this kind of processing does take a little bit time to analyse, so it’s probably worth making a coffee while you let the software do its thing. Once extracted though, you are left with high quality stems that are the perfect starting point for loops.

The handy little faderbank and mix component of the software are a central place to audition changes, mute and solo extracted stems, and mix within different instrument groups.

For added tweakability, the aforementioned DeepAudio offers advanced stem clean-up and audio manipulation tools to the workflow, so you can create the highest quality extracted audio, and from there customise and creatively process your sound to your heart’s content. Timing and pitch are all quantisable and the software’s ability to allow for indepth polyphonic editing means that bung notes and slightly out

of tune performances can be rectified prior to export.

Perhaps some of the most practical features on offer here are the extended export options, with the choice of MIDI, MP3, MP4, and WAV providing heaps of flexibility at post. While audio to MIDI is nothing new in the DAW world, the ability to draw out said MIDI information from complete stereo masters and inherently know which instrument it is assigned to is a very powerful tool. Suffice to say those chiptunes and 8-bit fans would have saved themselves a lot of time had something like RipX existed during those genres heyday.

Perhaps the true beauty of RipX is how its usefulness transcends regardless of application. For the traditional musician, you have a powerful analysis engine and transcription tool, with the ability to isolate and transpose to better help with ear training.

For remixers and beatmakers, you have the ultimate isolation tool and the perfect starting point for samples and loop work.

For DJs, the ability to remix and remove troublesome midrange instruments for extended versions before exporting straight to WAV and then on into your DJ software is an optimised workflow of the highest order.

For me personally, the ability to just be able to chuck a track into RipX and pull out a passable multitrack to drink beers to is more than worth the cost of entry. I’ll go back to my corner now.

BY PABLO FRANCOIS

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / AUDIO

TONE PROJECTS

Unisum Mastering Compressor TONE PROJECTS | ENQUIRE FOR PRICING Every once in a while, a plugin producer releases a plugin that eclipses its competition so unanimously that a new benchmark is set, one to which any subsequent rival offerings are tirelessly held to on audio gear forums and YouTube channels dedicated to plugin reviews.

Tone Projects’ recently-released Unisum Mastering Compressor is a prime example of one of these paradigm-shifting plugins, putting rival offerings from multimillion dollar companies with dozens of employees to shame.

Tone Projects, FKA OtiumFX, is the brand under which Danish polymath Rune Lund-Hermansen has been quietly releasing exemplary plugins for the better part of 20 years.

If you’ve ever spent time trawling endless debates on internet forums about compressor plugins, you’ll have likely heard the names Molot and Kotelnikov being thrown around. These notorious compressor plugins, produced by VladG and Tokyo Dawn Labs respectively, rival plugins produced by the biggest names on the market, and have countless advocates throughout the professional audio world.

Not only were these plugins outperforming more well-known products at a fraction of the price (or even for free), these were one-person operations outdoing entire teams of software engineers.

While Vladislav Goncharov’s vivacious Molot compressor and Fabien Schivre’s glossy Kotelnikov compressor are two of the more well known “indie” plugins, there are countless low-cost plugins borne of the bedroom tinkering of competent engineers that deserve far more attention than they receive.

While Unisum might be comparable to Kotelnikov in terms of cultural impact, Unisum is a far more advanced product, and is playing an entirely different ballgame. Unisum is designed around the ethos that every song is different, hence every mix has its unique features, and the only way to treat each mix to its merits is by offering a supremely tweakable compressor that can adapt to every scenario it encounters. In practice, this means that you can alter just about every aspect of the compressor to achieve your

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desired style of compression – whether your goal is to eke out some extra dB’s of compression on a mix without introducing any artefacts, or to really add some punch to a master, Unisum will do the job better than anything else if you’re patient enough to dial in the settings properly. The only caveat is that this is a very advanced compressor – you’ll only get as much out of it as you’re willing to put into reading the manual and getting a full understanding of what each switch and knob does. That being said, Unisum is packed with plenty of presets to flick through to show you the full spectrum of compression styles that it is capable of.

Unisum’s GUI resembles the tried and true design of hardware mastering compressors, with a button at the bottom of the plugin revealing the advanced controls that you won’t see on a hardware unit. A button labelled Hygge, a word that means something similar to cosy in Danish and Norwegian, enables the Hygge circuit which gives a warmer and thicker sound to the compressor by subtly altering the harmonic, transient, and frequency responses. Unisum has all the features of a true mastering compressor, you can switch between mid/side and L/R processing, and then slide between dual mono processing or channel linked processing – or a blend of therein. The Filter option lets you choose how much influence high frequency or low frequency content has on the channel linking, while the limit function limits the difference in gain reduction allowed between

the two channels. These functions make Unisum incredibly precise when used to rebalance skewed mixes in mastering, all the while remaining completely transparent in its operation. The RMS/peak bias function allows you to control how the compressor’s linking occurs – any pumping artefacts can be easily managed by making the compressor favour RMS readings of loudness when linking the channels. Even this feature alone is an incredible asset for a mastering engineer – you can do some serious mid/side compression with Unisum without getting any artefacts.

The sidechain controls in Unisum are unparalleled, along with the standard high-pass filter, you can choose between emphasising a desired frequency, dipping that frequency, or a full low-pass filter. The relax control allows you to tame the compressor’s responsiveness to transients, making an excellent case for the Unisum as your go-to drum bus compressor when used in conjunction with the sidechain controls and the wet/dry function.

The plethora of presets marked with the prefix ‘drum bus’ suggests that Tone Projects are fully aware of Unisum’s sonic potential.

The ultimate secret behind the absolute sorcery that Unisum can conjure up lies within the attack/release modifiers section.

This is the part that can really make your head hurt when trying to comprehend, but once you figure it out, the keys to the city are yours. Regular compressors have attack and release controls.

Put crudely, Unisum’s attack and release controls have their own attack and release controls.

The loud xTime and quiet xTime controls let you fine tune how the attack and release functions of Unisum behave at different levels of compression intensity, giving you a whole new level of control that you can fine tune to fit your unique mix. Part of the magic of optical compressors like the LA-2A is how they compress louder and quieter sounds at different speeds.

By altering the attack/release modifiers, you can tune Unisum to sound just like an optical compressor, or whatever style of compressor takes your fancy.

Master this section of the plugin and you can build whatever kind of compressor you like, whether it exists yet or not. Unisum even gives you 15 different styles of compressors to choose from as a starting point. The possibilities are endless. A great way to learn how Unisum (and compression in general) works and how to use it is by reverse engineering these compressor styles and seeing what parameters differ among them that gives them their unique sonic fingerprint.

Unisum’s triumph cements Rune’s place on the list of independent plugin producers who have transcended the competition with their idiosyncratic offerings, proving once again that it is the curiosity driven tinkering of the dedicated few by which technology advances, not the soulless R’n’D of profit-minded corporations.

BY LIAM MCSHANE

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / AUDIO

SOUND PARTICLES

Density SOUND PARTICLES | ENQUIRE FOR PRICING Breathing life into the digital plugin landscape is a tough sell. There’s a large swathe of plugins that either blatantly copy or take their major ideas from other VSTs or their hardware counterparts. That sentiment does not ring true for Sound Particles, the Portuguesebased plugin manufacturers who create truly unique plugins that you won’t find anywhere else. Their first offering, the namesake plugin Sound Particles, applied computer graphics techniques to audio, with more features and parameters than you would imagine to manipulate and tweak.

Building from this, they utilised the granular synthesis model and have applied it to more specific parts of audio processing. For those unaware, granular synthesis is a technique that splits audio samples into tiny grains of audio and by playing them back at different amplitudes, speeds and phases, you can obtain extremely rich and new sounds from even simple waveshapes or noise. This new offering from Sound Particles, aptly named Density, utilises this granular synthesis technique to create multiple layers of the input signal, detune them, repitch them, and move them around the stereo field with you in control of how this takes place.

One way to think about this effect is imagining a choir of let’s say 10 people. Each person would naturally start and stop singing at fractionally different times, as well as have slightly different pitches and sing at different levels.

This would result in 10 different layers of sound with slightly different results within these three parameters. This is what Density is achieving within the digital realm, adding slightly detuned layers to the original signal at different volumes and with very short delay times to emulate multiple voices in a choir from one single voice.

This concept applies not only to human voices, but for creating an ensemble from a single violin or enhancing a synth tone into a wide, moving, and dense sound.

For users who want to add more of a classic layered unison effect, there’s basic mode which simplifies the control set and lets the plugin do most of the thinking.

In this mode you simply have three controls to worry about,

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voice detune, add bass, and the choice between a small or large ensemble. The ‘add bass’ option adds an additional layer of voices an octave below the input signal to create added thickness alongside the unison effect. This basic mode also pans the voices between outputs in a balanced way that will maintain phase correlation.

Detune mode adds another layer of tweaking with controls for delay range, grain size, dynamic range, voice speed, divergence, movement direction, grain type, and the specific amount of voices in use by the plugin.

With these controls, the depth of what’s available for sound design becomes immense with the ability to create some absolutely striking wide and moving audio signals.

For example, you could create 100 voices detuned by up to 80 cents with close to one second of delay added to any one grain, with random grain movement in both regular and reversed voices. Wild.

Moving on to the third and final mode, multipitch which builds on the functionality from the detune mode and adds the ability to control a group of voices tuned to specific frequencies. There’s eight different slots with individual controls for pitch, the number of voices and gain. With 25 voices per slot, you can technically add 200 voices with this mode which is just about as dense as you’re going to get in terms of movement and depth.

If you find a sound you like, you can save it via the preset menu which is easily accessible by the top panel. There’s factory presets available for perusing to help you add quick width or absolute wildness to your audio signal. Maybe these aren’t scratching the itch? You can always hit the randomise button and see what happens with most results pleasing, and some utterly bonkers. Density features a noiseless bypass button which you can use to audition the dry signal without the clicks and pops usually associated with bypassing an audio effect using your DAW’s controls.

One of the cool features of the detune and multipitch modes is the ‘top view’ which allows you to see all audio granules bounce around in virtual space. It’s especially interesting in multipitch mode as each group of voices or granules is colour coded to show you how you’re affecting the stereo field in real time.

Density can be used in a variety of ways to enhance your audio productions, whether that be widening the stereo field on a mono track during a mixdown, creating interesting textures and sound effects during sound production, or utilising the output routing to breathe life and space into a mono source in immersive audio formats, this plugin is a robust and well thought out plugin design that can be used by many different audio specialisations.

Overall, Density is a great plugin for adding width, depth, and space to your audio sources which due to its three modes, suits the budding, intermediate, and advanced audio engineers alike.

This plugin adds spatialisation to the mix in both subtle and intense ways with a visualiser, so you know exactly how you’re affecting the source material.

BY SAM MCNIECE

The Density plugin is capable of outputting in a variety of audio formats from mono and stereo, to 5.1 and immersive audio which lets you spray audio granules in 3D space. This makes the plugin suitable for post-production film and TV uses alongside its obvious place within music mixing, production, and sound design. The plugin can be used in AAX Native, AU, AUv3, and VST3 formats to suit engineers in any DAW.

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / AUDIO

SENNHEISER

XS Wireless IEM SENNHEISER AUSTRALIA | ENQUIRE FOR PRICING

Remember when only professional internationally touring bands and artists used in-ear monitors?

The world has changed a lot since then, with technology once reserved for the best of the best, now within a price bracket that means you can hear your live performance with clarity, and take back control from the averagesounding monitor speakers at your local venue.

In-ear monitors add a level of precision and control to you, the performers, by placing you in complete control of what you hear in your mix. This self-managed approach using a digital mixer and a splitter for live shows adds a level of consistency to your performance as you’ll be hearing the same mix, no matter what venue you’re performing at.

With this in mind, Sennheiser has unveiled a new range of wireless receivers and transmitters, XS Wireless, aimed at both up and coming and established live performers, looking to add this level of consistency to the mix.

The Sennheiser XS Wireless IEM set which we have on review comes with a XSW IEM SR stereo transmitter, XSW IEM EK stereo receiver, IE 4 in-ear headphones, batteries for the receiver, a power cable for the transmitter, and a rackmount kit for use on tour and when gigging to protect the transmitter from damage.

The stereo transmitter can send audio to an unlimited number of receivers which means that if everyone in your band is happy

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with one mix, you could get away with purchasing just one transmitter and multiple receivers.

Obviously purchasing multiple sets would allow for more control over your in-ear monitoring mixes, but it’s not a requirement to get started with them.

Looking in detail at the transmitter, it’s got an LED screen, multiple buttons, and a headphone jack on the front panel with two XLR audio inputs on the rear alongside power and antenna connection slots. The interface on this device is straight to the point and easy to use.

Both receiver and transmitter have a signal to noise ratio of at least 88dB with the ability to send and receive frequencies from 45Hz to 15kHz which is not as high as the human hearing spectrum, but during testing I could hardly notice the lack of high-high frequencies.

There’s an in-built limiter that kicks in at -10dB to ensure you don’t damage your ears accidentally, and a high boost EQ that adds 10dB at 13kHz to emulate that top-end you’re losing through transmission.

The unit uses eight banks with 12 channels within each, designed so that finding open and usable frequencies is simple. You are recommended to use a single frequency bank when using multiple transmitters as they are equidistant from each other across the frequency spectrum and removes the possibility of cross-talk. If you want to get extra specific you can actually choose the precise frequency you’d like to

use for transmitting audio which would only be used in special circumstances.

also isolating you from the rest of your environment so you can hear exactly what you’re performing.

If you do want to use a specific frequency or want a fast way to receive audio from your transmitter, you can use the sync function on the unit. This speedy way of aligning the frequencies utilises infrared technology to pair the units. It’s as simple as opening the front panel on your receiver, moving it within 5 centimetres of your transmitter, and pressing the sync button on the transmitter. Easy.

One cool way to use the XS Wireless systems is by changing them into what Sennheiser has dubbed “focus mode”. This essentially allows for the pan setting to control the volume of the left and right channels as mono sources on each receiver.

One way of utilising this would be using one transmitter with multiple receivers for a band. The vocals would be on one input with a premixed signal of the rest of the band on another input allowing for the vocalist to turn themselves up to ensure they’re singing in tune, while the rest of the band turns the instruments up to keep their performance in check.

Both receiver and transmitter are hearty in their construction, able to take the punishment that touring usually does to gear, courtesy of a sturdy enclosure with the buttons on the receiver hidden behind a panel which is easy to open, but not when you don’t want to. The two-sided mechanism means that it won’t open just by knocking it, allowing you to be whoever you want on stage.

If you’re planning on taking this on the road, the transmitters take up a half-rack space which will make them easy to fit into your existing setup, or a new road case if you’re just getting started.

While we’re talking about hearty constructions, the IE-4 earbuds that are provided with this set provide a nice dynamic punch and have a build quality that speaks to longevity. They come with different sized silicone ear sleeves and a rugged cable that will meet your touring needs.

They provide a level of clarity that you’ll need for performing, while

The fact that Sennheiser, who are one of the industry leaders in the field of wireless audio transmission, have released a professional offering that is accessible to independent bands and performers without hurting the bank account should be seen as a blessing.

The focus of these wireless kits is for live acts to get a foot in the door and utilise this technology that has been used for decades.

At this price point, the XS Wireless IEM brings Sennheiser’s proven industry standard wireless technology to not only the world’s best but you too.

BY SAM MCNIECE

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PRODUCT REVIEWS / AUDIO

TONE PROJECTS

Kelvin Tone Shaper TONE PROJECTS | ENQUIRE FOR PRICING

So, there’s a new saturation plugin on the market. Now before the proverbial eye rolls start, hear me out for a second. I know, in today’s world of plugins it’s almost laughable the senseless amount of options we have at our disposal in DAW land. Be that as it may, I must admit when I heard of the Tone Projects Kelvin Tone Shaper, my interest was indeed piqued – despite an already belligerent plugin folder.

Tone Projects (previously OtiumFX) market themselves as a boutique audio plugin developer based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Their mastermind is Rune Lund-Hermansen, who develops all their products, often in close collaboration with various engineers, producers and of course, DSP specialists. And the story checks out, as upon install and first opening up of the Kelvin Tone Shaper in a session, it’s abundantly clear these cats mean business.

As the name suggests, Kelvin is indeed a Tone Shaper – with an interactive dual stage saturation section and a rather sophisticated EQ or “shaping” section; but that’s just where the fun starts. Both of these sections rather cleverly interact with each other, but more on that shortly.

Kelvin has many of the usual features you’d expect from a plugin released in 2021. Input and output controls, yep. A mix knob, absolutely! A four-position switch called spread, sure, why not.

Going through each part of this plugin (a handy “tool tips” button if more info is required), it became

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immediately obvious just how much attention to detail had been put into this plugin. It’s certainly not over populated with switches and knobs, but seemingly just the right amount. Not trying to do too much, nor too little.

There are several modes in which Kelvin can operate. Series, parallel, and m/s (mid-side). Depending on which mode of operation is chosen dictates how the Stage 1 and Stage 2 parts of the saturation stage can interact with each other.

There’s also varying levels of quality the plugin can perform at in real time too, ranging from low latency through to pristine, as well as the option to offline render in pristine quality.

I mentioned the spread function earlier, and this is worth going into more detail. This, depending where set, introduces slight variations of harmonics between the left and right (but also can be used on mono sources). This can indeed range from very subtle to more obvious or “creative” amounts depending where it is set and in what mode is being used. The defuzz three-position switch is also rather interesting as it affects the amount of harmonic artefacts in the mid and high frequency bands. Really worth a tweak and play with, especially when driving or saturating in more extreme settings.

Now let’s talk about saturation for a sec. The two stages called gain and drive cleverly interact with each other. Opening up with a menu of available saturation types there’s a wealth of options to choose from ranging from clean

(bypassed, not as exciting), pure second or third order harmonics, through to numerous tube-based saturation types or transformerbased circuits. The variety of flavours available here is pretty amazing, and even just having one stage with this many options would be worth the price of admission. But having two stages to work with and given how they network with each other is pretty fresh and inspiring; not to mention they sound great!

The EQ or “shaping” section of Kelvin is, despite its rather unassuming façade, pretty darn powerful, and the way in which it interplays with the saturation stages makes it even more noteworthy.

Each of the three available bands have pre and post sliders. These in essence shape source material either pre or post saturation stage. The pre-slider focuses the way in which that specific band is effected or saturated, without changing the frequency response (when the post slider is left at unity), which is pretty neat as some rather interesting shapes and characteristics can be brought out in the source material. There’s a wealth of filter shapes available on each band, with a variety of shelf shapes (low and high), bell curves (wide and Hi-Q), as well as EQP shapes for the respective low and high bands (being, you guessed it, Pultec inspired), and low and high pass filters for the low and high bands, which can be set pre or post. The frequency band width of each band is pretty broad with plenty of crossover between each

band, ranging from 10Hz to 20kHz between them all. A little drop down menu at the bottom of each band can dictate whether each band interacts with either Stage 1, Stage 2, or both, and these can be independently selected per EQ band.

Obviously the shaping section is designed for just that – tonal shaping – and it isn’t surgical, and nor should it be. There really is some pretty clever wizardry going on under the hood here. Between the pre and post sliders, how they interface with the saturation stages, controlling how a sound source is saturated, but also some overall EQ shaping in the post stage can help give things an overall lift and really encourages creative ideas to flow.

Certainly not a one trick pony, Kelvin also isn’t trying to bite off more than it can chew.

This tone shaping plugin has been very cleverly executed with inspiring sections that interact beautifully together. This really is as versatile as I’d hoped, being that it’s equally suited being inserted on a snare drum, kick, or vocal, as it is on a buss or over the master.

If the fun is in the detail or you just want to get things nice and crunchy, Kelvin is equally likely to find its way onto numerous parts of your next session.

BY ANDY LLOYD-RUSSELL

mixdownmag.com.au

HOME OF QUALITY, HAND MADE, AUSTRALIAN GUITAR & BASS EFFECTS KINKGUITARPEDALS.COM mixdownmag.com.au

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PRODUCT REVIEW / AUDIO

PRESONUS

Eris E5 BT Monitors LINK AUDIO | RRP: $399

Whether you’re just starting to dip your toes into the deep, murky waters of setting up your own studio or you’re a seasoned professional with a penchant for all things boutique, you’ll know that PreSonus are always there to be relied upon. Although the brand has always aimed to appease those within the audio technology sector, it’s apparent there’s more to the market than musicians in this day and age.

The allure of podcasting, content creation, and live streaming is attracting more and more casual consumers who are less picky about tech specs and focus rather on functionality and price.

If you’ve been creating podcasts, music, or video content for a while and it’s high time you levelled up from headphone mixing to active reference monitors, the PreSonus Eris E5 BTs have you covered.

PreSonus’ Eris brand is well established and their E5 BT model offers a lot of versatility in a five-inch form factor. Built with faithful sonic reproduction in mind, they feature a few handy options to get the best out of even the most challenging of small studio environments. They look sleekly professional with an illuminated logo and their metal grille gives them an air of rugged reassurance.

Home offices, bedrooms, or other untreated rooms often produce worse sound if you throw too much at them. The Eris E5 features a 5.25-inch woofer, perfect for modest-sized rooms. They

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provide a plethora of connectivity options, including the Bluetooth 5.0 this revision is named after. It’s becoming increasingly common that desktops form part of tutorial sets and the minimalism afforded by a wireless setup will certainly appeal to aesthetically-minded content producers. Outside of wireless options, there’s balanced TRS and unbalanced RCA, and for the first time in the Eris series, a Sub Out option for integrating a subwoofer into your monitoring system.

Alongside the inputs at the rear of the monitor, you’ll find acoustic tuning dials for highs and mids, to fine-tune the sonic reproduction for your listening environment.

Each dial can attenuate or gain the signal by up to 6dB, the mids at the 100Hz frequency and the highs at 10kHz. For use with a subwoofer, a low-cut switch allows you to select from flat, 80Hz, or 100Hz. Finally, there’s also a toggle switch to attenuate sub800Hz frequencies based on their placement relative to the corners of the room, labelled ‘acoustic space’. There’s a handy diagram to help determine when to use it, perfect for users that don’t have bass traps.

Woven-glass composite woofers and silk-dome tweeters are utilised to project an impressively clean, neutral sound. With a frequency response of 53Hz to 22kHz, the one area they may be lacking is the bottom end, but the option of using them alongside a sub gives them great flexibility for treated rooms. With the prevalence of

bedrooms or home-office content creation, the versatility of five-inch speakers used in combination with headphones for dialling in the bottom end is becoming increasingly common. The Eris E5 BT monitors suit this workflow perfectly and even feature a front-mounted headphone jack for ergonomic ease. RF interference and subsonic filtering provide protection from unwanted noise or muddy reflection.

Bundled in with these nifty monitors is PreSonus’ own StudioOne DAW software with over $1,000 worth of effects and VSTs to begin or enhance your music production journey. With 100 watts of combined power behind these monitors, they reach a booming SPL of 120 decibels, more than most home studios will ever need. That’s surprising power coming out of the modest 260 by 178-millimetre enclosure!

In use, the Eris E5 BTs performed admirably. Connecting via Bluetooth was a breeze and really helped reduce the amount of studio cable spaghetti that’s evermultiplying in our studio corners.

Having alternate connection options will be appealing to live streamers and podcast producers, especially the additional auxiliary input. The response was clear and articulate, ideal for mixing vocal takes whether it be reining in sibilance or adding more body and depth through EQ’ing, or spreading stacked takes to create the perfect stereo harmony for

a chorus. In the non-linear video editing suite, they worked a treat for dialling in the mix between voice-over and soundtrack for corporate video production.

Back in the DAW, the bass does noticeably taper off in the lowest frequencies but if used in combination with headphones, you can tame the bottom end much more accurately than trying to work with a dramatically-hyped monitor or entertainment system.

There is also the subwoofer route which will appeal to creators working in treated studio spaces with limited space.

Here at Mixdown, we were impressed at the quality of these affordable monitors and expect them to be a popular option, especially for content creators. Given their price point, functionality, and sound, the PreSonus Eris BT series definitely set a new standard for budding content creators. They’re light, compact, easy to use, sound great, and most importantly, cater to a range of users who mightn’t be as well-versed in the tech-heavy lingo of other reference monitors – and for that, PreSonus have bagged a winner with this fiveinch variant.

PreSonus’ Eris monitors have a solid reputation for good reason, and between the bonus software and wide range of connectivity options, it’s hard to go wrong with the PreSonus Eris E5 BT.

BY DANE MICHAELS

mixdownmag.com.au

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MY RIG:

Chris Cheney “You know what, it doesn’t fucking make any difference what you plug into and run through, you get up there and you put on a ripper show – it all comes out of your fingers at the end of the day,” The Living End’s Chris Cheney laughingly and matter-of-factly explains.

Cheney has carved out a reputation as one of Australia’s best guitarists as The Living End’s charismatic frontman and axeman, but has ventured on his own path to release a solo album years in the making, The Storm Before The Calm.

Featuring tracks from earlier Nashville recordings, musings of his time in Los Angeles, and reflections of his childhood after his recent relocation back to Melbourne, the record reflects different parts of his life.

Synonymous with Cheney’s on-stage presence is no doubt his assortment of Gretsch guitars which he’d always had a penchant for, before he even owned one.

“There was just all those cool old photos and footage of those rockabilly guitar players which was one thing, and the playing was just next level which was what drew me to them,” he says.

Leading up to the release of his upcoming album, we thought we’d discuss his Gretsch affinity at length, as well as the rest of his “complicated” live setup.

GUITARS Gretsch White Falcon “The Falcon’s just got this kind of extra mojo that I haven’t really found, even when I’ve played other White Falcons, that guitar just has something.

It just has that thing that I was looking for I suppose, that fine, good balance between the Gretsch kind of twang, that deep growl, and that bitchin’ AC/DC toughness with the string attack. Not only was it the best looking guitar, it had the sound as well.”

AMPS Vox AC30 & Wizard Modern Classic “It’s a lot more complicated than probably what people would expect. I have

backwards cabs that are all plugged in, isolated, and all miked up, and then I have one front-facing cab. My main two cabs are an AC30, a new one, just a Hand Wired, and a Wizard 2x12 cab facing backwards, which has one of my 100-watt Modern Classics running into it. They are ridiculously loud, you don’t want to stand at the back of the stage when The Living End are playing – it hurts. The forward-facing cab I just have for some feedback and a little bit of monitoring because I like to be able to feel the sound. You gotta have that thunk hitting your legs, and to hit a note and get a little bit of feedback and that squeal when you need to.”

PEDALS Voodoo Lab Ground Control Pro “Pedal-wise, I have a Ground Control switcher, so I have that in front of me to make adjustments if I need to.

Wizard Modern Classic

Basically I’m just running an Eventide TimeFactor, so all my delays are pre-set for different songs on the Ground Control, I have a trusty old Klon, and an Ibanez Tube Screamer that I’ve had since I was about 17 which never leaves the board.”

SLIDE VB Stubbie Cheney is also known to not only enjoy drinking the Very Best on stage, but to inventively use it as a slide!

“A lot of people cringe at a few of the things I do to my guitars, but it’s all about putting on a show really – the multiple uses of a VB bottle!

It cleans up alright though, it probably gets into the wiring over the course of 20 years or something but you just wipe them down.”

BY ELI DUXSON

VB Stubbie Vox AC30

Voodoo Lab Ground Control Pro

Gretsch White Falcon

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Proudly distributed in Australia by National Music.

Available at all good music stores.

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HEADRUSH is proudly distributed by Electric Factory Pty Ltd 51 Northgate Drive Thomastown VIC 3074 headrush@elfa.com.au