Last week I took my favorite electric guitar to Mike Lull for a set up. On a stringed instrument like a guitar or bass, a “set up” involves things like adjusting the action, intonation, neck relief and other mechanical aspects of the playing geometry. Generally, I do my own guitar work since I have a pretty good idea of how I want things to be on my instruments. But I wanted to have this guitar get a detailed shop setup from Mike. He’s considered to be one of the best – if not THE best – luthier in the Northwest, and his shop rates are actually fairly reasonable considering his reputation for excellence. All in all, I’m delighted with the results, and feel the money was well spent.
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Every electronic device in my house has a different control interface, and anything with a remote control uses a proprietary IR command set per manufacturer (and sometimes per device). As much as I can appreciate the competitive advantage that this provides, it means all my gizmos live in isolation from each other. I can’t use them to the degree I want to. And it means that whole-house automation is a challenging task. What I want to see is a standard USB port on every electronic device in the house, with some kind of control panel or other documented API for control. USB is fast, ubiquitous, and inexpensive to implement. They should be able to discover each other and be controlled from any computer on the network.
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Every item in my home theater setup has a dedicated remote control. There are separate remotes for the TV, cable box, VCR, receiver/amp, and DVD. Each is somewhat capable of acting as sort of a master for the other devices, but with limited functionality and no means of customizing the setup. The especially frustrating part is all the switching between them to first choose the correct video input on the TV, then select the corresponding audio input on the receiver/amp, and then actually control the source in question. They take up space, are difficult to differentiate, and every remote consumes a couple of AA batteries per month.
What I wanted was a good universal remote that could (1) act as the single source of control for every function on every device (2) be programmed with macros to send a series of predefined commands with a single button (3) run on some kind of rechargeable batteries and (4) in spite of all this power, be self-explanatory to first-time users. After over a year of research, I decided to order a Logitech Harmony 880 universal remote. It took some effort to get it programmed, but after a few weeks of working on it I can say it’s been able to meet my requirements.
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My guitar rig is really pretty simple. I’ve got a preamp, a processor, and a power amp. The audio processing (modulation/delay/reverb effects, equalization, filtering, etc) is all handled by one smart black box – a TC Electronics GForce. The technical specifications on this device are impressive. It has a 24-bit 128x oversampling processor with over 105 dB of dynamic range, 20 Hz – 20kHz frequency response and 0.005% THD. I ordered my unit before the first shipments had even left Denmark. I had used TC Electronics gear in the studio and knew the company’s reputation for high quality, so when they announced the release of a new guitar-centric processor, it was an easy decision. It replaced a fairly expensive multi-effect unit that I was reasonably satisfied with, but I knew that the GForce would have that legendary TC reverb and chorus. From the first day I received it I was delighted with the audio quality and lush effects. I’m 100% satisfied with it, and no other piece of equipment in my rig can make that claim.
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I’ve long been one of those mad scientist musicians who modifies equipment to improve sound or extend functionality. Whenever I get some new piece of gear, it’s just a matter of time before I fire up my soldering iron. My main Stratocaster is a mid-1990s “Ultra” model, which came equipped with a set of Seymour Duncan pickups installed. It sounded good but I suspected it was possible to squeeze a little extra mojo out of that great guitar by installing a set of Fralin pickups. Lindy Fralin custom-manufactures some of the very best (and therefore expensive) electric guitar pickups available. His approach to pickup making is to recreate the most desirable tonal characteristics of vintage models, using the same materials and construction techniques, but by applying much tighter quality control. The result is a newly built pickup that sounds like an ideal vintage model.
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