Stringwork

Saturday and Sunday saw a lot of playtime. The strings settled in only slightly, still a very bright, metallic sound. So I'm likely to avoid the Phosphor Bronze and Bronze strings from Martin in the future. The other options are Elixir, with their "nanoweb" coating, and the recommended D'Addario Silk and Steel strings, both of which are supposed to give me a bit of a softer, more mellow sound. That is what I like, so that sounds like a plan for the future for things to try.

Anyway, not much practicing on Monday or Tuesday. Last night I subbed in for a friend's soccer team and scored my first goal in organised soccer. Hopefully tonight I can get back "on the horse".

I did find a taker for the Yamaha mixer, so it's heading out the door. I had a taker for the AT2020, but inspecting the box revealed that the eBay seller either lied directly or made the mistake of forgotting 2 fairly key accessories. So that fell through in fairly spectacular fashion. There is another guy with interest, so maybe I can get those accessories and make the sale yet. Otherwise, it is a highly reviewed microphone, so maybe, just maybe, I'll try it out myself. [More]

Help is on the way

On the way home, I emptied the contents of my wallet on some final close-out items from my local music shop. (And I wonder: where am I going to go for gear and guitar tech help now?) A couple of XLR microphone cables and an el-cheapo (as in $10) microphone stand. They had a couple of really interesting-looking microphone stands, really solidly-built boom stands from Germany, but even at closeout they were $50. (For a microphone stand. Yes, really.)

And then reaching home I realized that, once again, I am an idiot.

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Labour Day weekend is a doozy

Leaving the house on Saturday morning, heading out for some errands, I did not expect to see people wearing breadboards announcing that my treasured local music shop, Pearson Music, was going out of business. On a whim, I headed inside to see what might remain on the shelves. Sadly, no microphones, but they had three Mackie mixers to pick from, all at fairly steep markdown: a DFX-12, a 1202-VLZ Pro, and my eventual choice, a 1402-VLZ Pro.

So, I've been spending some time trying to figure out how to use it. So far, so good.

But unfortunately the upgrade from my previous microphone pre-amp (if a Radio Shack Karaoke Mic Adapter can be named as such) didn't alleviate my issues with the damaged goods that are my Akai DM-13 microphones. And, worse yet, my Dean Markley Acoustical Transducer decided that this would be the day it finally gave up the ghost for good. So I picked up a new microphone, a Shure PG57, but so far I haven't had a chance to take it out of the plastic wrap and put it to any kind of test.

So, quite a weekend. Maybe with the mixer and a new microphone, I'll get my butt in gear and put something together in the next couple of weeks. We'll see how it goes. [More]