13 Amazing Pieces of Gear You May Have Never Heard Of

Date:2020/2/13 22:31:41 Hits:

There’s a lot of killer gear out there these days — just take a look at Sweetwater.com or page through our ProGear directory! Some of it you see onstage or in videos with your favorite players. Other pieces you might catch a glimpse of behind the scenes. Bread-and-butter pieces of equipment — guitars, synths, drums, amps, and so on — are easy to define. But other, under-the-radar creative tools are sometimes harder to pigeonhole. Those often become the secret weapons of those who know about them, while they remain veiled in secrecy to everyone else. Here are 13 pieces of gear that might have escaped your attention, but that you should absolutely know about.

EarthQuaker Devices Data Corrupter

EarthQuaker Devices calls the Data Corrupter a “harmonizing pedal,” but that doesn’t do it justice. The Data Corrupter doesn’t just pitch shift your audio and give you a harmony. It uses a modulated monophonic PLL (phase-locked loop) circuit to turn your instrument’s output into a synth. It also has a square wave that will fuzz out your sound, as well as a subharmonic generator to create bone-rattling lows. Don’t think of this as just a guitar pedal, but use it with synthesizer or bass, or even to process drums and as outboard gear in a studio. You won’t use its craziness on everything, but when you do, it will be unique!

Roland EC-10 Cajon

Just when you think that you know what a cajon is, Roland changes the game by throwing their electronic drum engine into the EC-10 Cajon. And Roland, makers of V-Drums, definitely knows their electronic drum sounds! This can be a traditional cajon if that’s what you want, but the EC-10 lets you think way outside the box and create a full electronic and acoustic drum kit with just your hands. If you’re looking to get a cajon, but want to expand on what it can do, this is the instrument for you.

Roland SPD-One Family

While we’re focused on great Roland electronic percussion instruments, check out the Roland SPD-One Drum Pad line. There are four different pads: Electro (electronic/synth percussion sounds), Kick (lots of different electronic kicks), Percussion (more acoustic-style percussion sounds), and Sampler (sample your own percussion sounds into 4GB of built-in storage). The SPD-Ones are affordable, offer very effective, quick, and dirty tone controls, and sound excellent. Again, don’t ignore these just because you’re not a drummer. Any recording or performing musician who wants to tap out beats with their fingers or sticks can get an SPD-One and go to town.

Friedman BE-50 Deluxe

Okay, we’re kind of hedging here. You probably know who Friedman is. But the BE-50 Deluxe amp is so cool, we have to make sure you know about it — and unless you’ve seen our video introduction, you probably aren’t familiar with it. Go ahead and watch the video for the real scoop, but the short version is that it’s a 3-channel amp that offers the Friedman Buxom Betty’s cleans with the crunch and ultra-gain capabilities of the BE-100, souped-up even further and put in a 50-watt head. Made in the USA and as bulletproof and rugged as you can get, this is a no-compromise workhorse that can cover pretty much any ground you’d want a tube amp to cover.

Vox MV50 Family

On the exact opposite end of the amplifier scale from the Friedman BE-50 Deluxe lives the Vox MV50 family — an absolutely amazing series of hybrid tube micro-amps. With a “nanotube” in the preamp section straight out of the consumer-electronics world, mated with a solid-state power amp, these little beauties are small enough to fit on a pedalboard, and not much bigger than a pedal, either. There are three to choose from: the AC (guess which Vox vintage classic it’s styled after), Clean (keeps that “American” crystal clean going no matter what), and Rock (gets into harder rock territory than the AC, more like the other famous British amp brand). They sound great, cost no more than many pedals, and can be a pedalboard amp, practice amp, or with 50 watts of power, a gigging backup or even your main amp in a pinch. They’re also ideal for creating different tonal flavors in the studio. There’s even a matching 1×8″ cabinet for ultra-compact riffing, or an MV50 can drive any cabinet including a 4×12″!

Moog Theremini

You might have heard of the theremin — the odd-sounding analog synth controlled by waving your hands that you’ve heard on countless old science-fiction movies and Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” But the Theremini is a modern, digital, and affordable version. You have the full sound engine from Moog’s award-winning iOS-based Anamoog synth, and it’s more playable than ever thanks to selectable scales, variable note ranges, built-in effects, MIDI in and out, and USB. It’s weird, it’s wacky, but it’s completely usable and musical and can get you thinking out of the box in really creative ways.

Elektron Digitakt

While we’re talking about unique digital instruments, the Elektron Digitakt is in a league of its own. It defies easy categorization — it’s a drum machine, a sampler, a sequencer, an effects unit…you can use it as a standalone song-creation tool or integrate it with your existing gear to make sounds, process other instruments, or craft complete songs. You can even control it from your DAW with Elektron Overbridge. This is another of those devices where reading the tech specs won’t tell you the story; you have to watch the Sweetwater videos and check it out for yourself to really get a feel for what it can do.

Fishman TriplePlay Wireless MIDI Pickup

Do you want to play synthesizers and samplers with your guitar? This is how. With no surgery required on your guitar and no wires between your guitar and your computer, the Fishman TriplePlay wireless MIDI pickup translates the notes and chords you play into MIDI data and sends it via wireless to its own included software and/or your DAW. You can use the TriplePlay to trigger absolutely everything the software world has to offer — virtual analog synthesizers, sample libraries, any software instrument or guitar effects software you can imagine — even enter notes into a notation/scoring program. If you want to stretch your guitar into other worlds, this is the way.

BOSS SY-300

If you want to play synth sounds with your guitar and you don’t want to install a special pickup, the Boss SY-300 is the only game in town. How it sounds so good and tracks so fast, without doing any pitch conversion or requiring a special pickup, is Roland’s magic at its finest. The SY-300 sounds like the classic synths of old, but with cutting-edge effects, and it can play notes, chords, bends, anything you throw at it. This isn’t MIDI; this is real: true synthesizing of your guitar signal into something else, and it’s amazing.

Auralex ProMax v2

If the cost of acoustically treating your room is out of reach and/or you can’t hang anything up or otherwise modify your space, portable treatment panels are your answer. The Auralex ProMax V2 stand-mount panels are effective and affordable, and they will let you create a portable “recording niche” free from problematic room reflections and slapback. A pair of ProMax v2 panels and their stands costs no more than a boutique pedal. Place them to control the acoustics around the musician you’re recording, and then put them away when not in use. Sound-absorption panels may not be as exciting as gear that makes sound, but without them, that exciting gear won’t sound nearly as exciting.

Softube Modular

Admit it, you’ve always been fascinated with the idea of having a Eurorack modular synthesizer system, but the idea of spending thousands of dollars for a wall of synth modules and creating patches that you can’t save or recall in your DAW is putting you off. Softube has answered your prayers. With the Modular they have re-created — in software — a fully modular Eurorack system that you can use as a virtual instrument in any DAW. And this isn’t just any Softube re-creation (and by the way, the Softube re-creations are excellent), but they got many of the actual Eurorack companies to sign off and create or license their own modules, so your virtual Eurorack system can literally look like a physical one. And not only is it compatible with all DAWs and easy to use, but most importantly, it also sounds amazing. You can even expand Modular with additional virtual plug-in modules!

Line 6 Variax Guitars

Everybody knows that modeling processors and amplifiers can sound like all kinds of different amps and effects. But did you know that Line 6 makes Variax guitars that can sound like all kinds of different guitars? At the twist of a dial and the flick of a pickup switch, your guitar can sound like a Telecaster, a Les Paul, a Stratocaster, a 12-string, or even an acoustic. Line 6 makes a bunch of different Variax guitars in different body and neck styles that range in price from affordable to boutique, so there’s a Variax out there for everyone. If you’ve wanted to be able to switch among a bunch of guitars onstage but don’t want to bring (or don’t own) a dozen different guitars for the gig, the Variax can make it happen in about the most efficient way possible.

Softube Console 1 MKII Controller

When Softube released the original Console 1, it was a cool controller for the company’s high-quality SSL channel-strip software and additional add-on plug-ins. That was nice, but only truly useful to those who wanted to go all-in with Softube console emulation plug-ins. With the Console 1 MKII, Softube has upped Console 1’s value, while simultaneously dropping the price. Not only is it the perfect physical front end to their own excellent console emulations and channel-strip software, but you can use it as a standalone controller for your UAD plug-ins, Studio One, Reaper, and soon Cubase and other DAWs, and plug-ins. Console 1 MKII is becoming a favorite for professional musicians and producers for good reason, and it’s definitely worth a look.

Prev:RME HDSP-RAYDAT

Next:Mackie MC Extender Pro

Leave a message

Message List

Comments Loading...

Products Category

Products Tags

Fmuser Sites

13 Amazing Pieces of Gear You May Have Never Heard Of

Leave a message

Message List