Here's an outside shot of Far Cry... and some of the lovely winter weather we've been having lately.
Instrument-wise, first up is my Mapex M-Birch drum kit. Given the lousy room acoustics and my extrmemly limited tuning ability, I think they sound great. Here's the specifics:
Although the drums sounds good, the cymbals... well... they're entry-level. The crashes aren't too bad but the ride isn't very good. The bell, in particular, is too clangy. The hats are somewhere in between; they sound fine but lack subtlety. Maybe, given my limited skill, I should be happy about that. The Paise Alpha splash is my best cymbal. The Wuhan china is the loudest. By far. I'm going to have replace it with a smaller version just to get the volume down to reasonable levels. Fortunately, Wuhan chinas are cheap!
In that picure you can also see the Sterling ST-55 condenser mic, down at the bottom on the left. It's going to take a while to figure out mic placement to get the best sound. Room acoustics are pretty challenging - it's not as bad a garage, but we have wood floors with a crawlspace underneath. That makes for some nasty resonances, particularly on the snare wires.
Anyway, the next picture is of my Fender Geddy Lee Signature Jazz Bass on the right. You could say that I bought it because it was the Geddy Lee bass but that wouldn't quite be true - it's actually a heck of a lot of bass for the money. Shaved neck, better bridge... and it's a Japanese Fender. At the time, the Japanese models were arguably as good as, if not better than, the Americans. The fit and finish is terrific. And, I'll be honest, having Geddy's name on it is cool. Anyway, I recently did a tune-up on it and it plays like a dream now. A good move was to switch from the ancient factory roundwounds to Rotosound flatwounds - easier on the fingers and easier on the frets. The sound is probably a little darker but I actually think that's a good thing for the way I play.
On the left is my ESP LTD M-50 guitar. I don't really consider myself a guitarist but it seems well made and sounds good for the money. And unlike previous guitars I've owned, this one manages stays in tune. I run both the bass and guitar through a Korg Pandora effects box. If you're looking for a one-box-does-it-all solution, the Pandora is hard to beat.
Center stage on the next picture is my wife's Yamaha keyboard. The sound banks are just okay but it has midi in/out and a velocity-sensitive keyboard. Like my ESP guitar, it seems like you get a lot for the money there. On the left is my crummy Kustom bass amp. I've heard worse, but it's nothing to get excited about. On the right is the spiffy Roland Cube 30 guitar amp; that's a really nice piece of kit. The onboard modeling and effects are nice. It even sounds good with the bass (well, better than the Kustom anyway). On the far right is my wife's Yamaha classical guitar. Nice sound, very mellow. It's amazing to me how much different the experience is playing the electric versus playing the acoustic. The dog toy and cat rarely do much for the sound production process.
In the next shot we see the brains: my old Mac iBook G4. Although you can't see it, there's a year-older PC-based laptop on the bottom of the stand (you can actually see it in the guitar pic up above). I use the Mac almost exclusively these days but I appropriated the PC because Guitar Pro 5 runs somewhat poorly on my Mac (even without using RSE). No, it doesn't run much faster on the PC. Speaking of Guitar Pro, I've been a user since back in the v4 days and I think it's a great piece of software; I use it almost exclusively for composition. One of these days I may learn how to to run it better so it doesn't take me 15 minutes per bar. Anyway, you can also get a peek at the new Lexicon Lambda USB interface. It has two mic inputs (with phantom power), two instrument inputs, and several bitchin' knobs. I like knobs. It came with Cubase LE 4 which offers 48-track recording. The learning curve looks a bit steep but I was able to do a simple recording within a half hour of breaking the seal on the box. Sweet!
Seeing as I have a Mac, Garage Band is also in the mix. I have even less idea how to run that than I do GP or Cubase. Well, I'm sure that with all these toys I can do something. What? I haven't the foggiest.
Signpost up ahead... next stop... FrogdonG!