PRODUCT REVIEWS RECORDING KING
Dirty 1930's RPS-9P-TS EGM DISTRIBUTION | EGM.NET.AU |EXPECT TO PAY: $599 Recording King started as a house brand for Montgomery Ward in the 1930sm originally made by companies like Gibson and Kay. The brand was discontinued in 1939 and original Recording King guitars, which are becoming increasingly rare can fetch large prices on the vintage guitar market. In fact original Recording King guitars are one of the few guitars from a bygone era which are still within the financial limits of musicians who play and record with them, as opposed to collectors. The brand was revived in 2007 by The Music Link in Hayward, CA. Current Recording King products use vintage designs and replicas of pre-World War II parts. Because of their construction and sound, the new Recording King models lend themselves to music styles of a bygone era - country, blues and even early jazz. A flick through any books on blues and country will reveal to the keen eye many Recording King guitars due to their availability and affordability at the time. In fact, in the recent Coen Brothers movie “The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs”. Singing cowboy Buster Scruggs played by Tim Blake Nelson is seen playing a Recording King guitar while crooning the classic tune “Cool Water”. The small parlour size makes it super comfortable to play with a slim neck and a low action straight
out of the box. As is traditional with parlour guitars . The neck meets the body at the twelfth fret so high access is not on the menu, but it’s not really built with shredding in mind. The Recording King RPS-9P-TS has great projection and balance when used for traditional blues and country finger style playing and has a surprising volume when you start strumming some fat open chords .It’ll be right at home for the folk/ roots players as well, with a character and midrange bark that set sit apart from your standard full bodied dreadnaught. One of the biggest advantages of a small bodied parlour guitar is how perfect they are for unamplified vocal accompaniment. The slightly reigned in projection and clear voicing make them the perfect underlay for troubadour or singer-songwriter material (particularly of the old-timey ilk)
guitar for around the house. Both playable and portable, it’s the kind of guitar that is nice just to have around the lounge room or……parlour? If you’re looking for a small body guitar at a great price, Recording King could be just what you’re looking for. Its unique character makes it highly addictive and after a few minutes you may not want to put it down. I certainly didn’t. MATT DWYER
HITS: ∙ Nice mid range presence MISSES: ∙ Not much
With it’s spruce top, 25.4” scale length, cross lap bracing, bone nut and saddle, the workmanship is of a notably high quality. It’s small, light body and ergonomic neck make it an easy guitar to play…very easy. It’s lack of boominess at the soundhole, would also make it great recording guitar for certain applications. The diminiutive body and relatively hushed projection make the RPS-9P-TS the perfect
PHIL JONES BASS
Phil Jones Ear Box EGM DISTRIBUTION | WWW.EGM.NET.AU | EXPECT TO PAY: $359 Onstage monitoring is an interesting topic in 2019. In-ear monitoring has become more accessible, feasible and affordable, while profiling amplifiers can provide a direct signal to onstage monitors, blasting yourself and your bandmates with your meticulously dialled tone as sound bounces around the stage. Traditional amplifier head and cabinet players monitor at the mercy of their environment, muffled as they attempt to stand as close to their amp as they can to get as direct a sound as possible from the cabinet. In-ear monitor users take the alternative route and give in to trebly, harsh signal from their in-ears. Phil Jones Bass, in an endless quest to solve the little issues that we as musicians face, have produced an onstage solution for bass. The Phil Jones Bass Ear Box, a little dual-driver speaker enclosure is an onstage but out-of-the-way monitor designed to give you the attack and articulation you need to play your best every gig that won’t be affected by room acoustics, nor will it bleed heavily into other sound sources on a stage. The Phil Jones Bass Ear Box is a small piece of gear that weighs in at about a kilo. Dual Phil Jones Bass Neodymium magnet 12ohm drivers push sound from 250Hz up to 20kHz out at ear height once they are mounted to a vertical microphone stand and plugged in via a Neutrik NL 4 cable. The drivers are mounted inside a sleek, classily finished
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black splattered box, which will easily hide the monitor away on side of stage while it’s doing its job. Measuring about 18cm x 10cm x 15cm and inconspicuously finished and designed, the Ear-Box can hide away on a dark stage once integrated into your setup. It can handle heads up to 1000 watt RMS, so it will be easily integrated into almost any rig. Straight front bass cabinets (besides 810s that do reach head height, but are too hefty to cart around to most gigs) usually blast sound to a bass players legs or feet. The Ear Box won’t reproduce a boomy, muffled low end – just the attack and articulation you need to hold down your playing and anchor the band. In a busy club or noisy bar, the mids and highs are the problem area as it becomes messy and mixed in with chatter and background noise; this is where the Ear Box shines. An EQ before the Ear Box itself can further attenuate frequencies and really hone in on what you need to hear. This product serves the user, but spoils the band with a well-balanced stage sound because you can hear the sounds you need onstage, and there’s no need to tweak EQ, spoil your tone for the audience, or turn up your amp and ruin the onstage mix.
a grey area, between being at the mercy of onstage monitors or in-ear systems has been fixed. The box is inconspicuous enough to hide away, even at the recommended head height and remain hidden. The band won’t hear your monitor unless it’s directed at them, so you’ve got your own little secret weapon. You can hear the attack and intricacies of your playing for better or worse, even when crowd noise is at a high. The Ear Box is designed for smaller clubs and gigs, such as bars, cafes or even little outdoor shows, and while it won’t compete with a blasting drummer in a metal club, it’ll keep you monitoring confidently for pretty much everything else. BY LEWIS NOKE EDWARDS
HITS: ∙ Inconspicuous MISSES: ∙ N/A
The Phil Jones Bass Ear Box really is an entirely new product, but one we’ve needed for a long time. A large inconvenience, and
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