Stick

Stick

Click here to see the inside of the Orange Tiny Terror Hardwired Guts!

Available from Andertons Music Store, Guildford, UK They ship world wide to!

Don’t for get to follow Maplewood Studio on YouTube

Now I’m a rock kinda guy, I’m a huge John Paul Jones fan along with all the other big players from that era including the classic Gibson EB3 guys, but on top of that I have huge back (yes back as in spinal) issues. So, what’s that got to do with bass tone you may ask? Well, historically a big tone comes from a big rig, typically an Ampeg SVT head with an 8×10 cabinet and if you have ever tried to move one of them, or another brand equivalent, you will know exactly where the back part falls into place, I think the classic SVT head comes in around 43kg alone.

So, the Orange TB500 has an immediate attraction in this area, the amp is in keeping with the rest of the lunchbox or ‘Terror’ series and at only 5kg is certainly won’t make your back twinge, but it’s also built like a tank (bonus!) and it comes with a nice useable gig bag including a velcro amp handle cover (to protect your hand because it’s so heavy?). Standard UK and European power leads are also supplied but make sure the amp is set to the correct power location on the side before you plug it in, this should be factory set but it’s always worth checking. Tonally it’s secret is an all valve pre amp section, this is loaded with 2 12AX7 ‘unbranded’ valves with the power coming from a class D 500watt digital power amp, a very smart move and one that is indeed being implemented in many other ways in the world of music gear as class D power amps are indeed light but they are also very responsive and powerful!

The SmartPower SP212 Isobaric 2×12” bass speaker cabinets are not so light but they do not fall in to the backbreaking 8×10 vintage category either, at only 20kg each my brother would make a dumbbell with a pair. Isobaric means the two Eminence Neodymium 300w speakers are mounted directly one in front of the other so when put to work they work together, smart thinking! With some fancy cab design and some cab porting these innocent looking Orange cubes can handle up to 600watts each, that’s pretty impressive. To quote Orange ‘They may be small, but SmartPower bass cabs sound huge’ and that they sure do!

So, all fired up and running through my licks of choice all was looking/sounding good, that classic rock tone was there, my trousers were flapping and I felt like I meant business. I listen to a vast array of music and when I thought I would go in another tonal direction the frustration set in, and it set in quick! That is the trouble; there is no other direction to go in (out of the box anyway). This is a rock rig, 100% through and through, the fact you could transport your pub rock rig in the front seat of your car and still have a good volume fight with your drummer is indeed impressive but if you play anything other than rock you will be frustrated. The SP212 cabs are a cleaver bit of engineering but I can’t help but think if there were a tweeter in there it could release a caged bag of potential here and I’m no hi-fi bass fan, I like a bit of grit, my thinking being that it could make these cabs a lot more versatile.

So, the Terror Bass 500 head – Does it deliver in wattage? Yep. Tonal flexibility? Nope. Can it be tweaked? Yes and I think Orange are missing a trick here…….. ‘Terror Bass D.I.’ Bin the power section, change the tubes to ECC82’s and you have killer bass D.I. (not that I tried this of course, uhum….). In all honesty, the web in general points in this direction, this choice in valve also lowers the gain stage giving the amp a lot more clean level, with stock tubes the D.I clipped straight away.

So, all in all it’s a rock rig and a bloody good one but if (like me) you’re looking for something with a bit more flexibility look elsewhere. If it ticks your boxes you’re laughing as portability and volume rarely come in this smaller package. Make sure you crank it in the store to make sure you get a real feel for the tone and limitations but if it’s your bag crank it and enjoy….

I hope that was useful

Stick

Click here for Andertons store, Guildford who supply Stick with gear to review/demo http://bit.ly/r0E6fk

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Orange Terror Bass 500

Orange SP212

YouTube artists will find this experience especially useful. When shown a few simple recording set-up methods, your videos will improve instantly!

A Maplewood Studio Educational Experience costs £150, and throughout the session you get one to one studio tuition. Your requirements will be discussed in advance so you will arrive with direction and an end goal.

All files produced and worked on at the studio can be taken home, and your session will also be video blogged for the Maplewood Studio YouTube channel.

Contact experience@maplewoodstudio.com for more information and bookings.

The demonstration team consists of ‘Captain’ (the man behind the shop & the one who makes it all possible, Lee Anderton) and his partner in crime, YouTube guitar guru Rob Chapman and between them much chaos and carnage is created! Stick’s job is to make sure that what you hear back is a true representation of the products being demonstrated, from stomp box’s to acoustic guitars to £4000 guitar amps, it’s all in there and where appropriate high quality audio is presented on SoundCloud in a uncompressed format.

September 2011 Captain & Chappers were here at Maplewood Studio along with Paul Hindmarsh Line 6’s independent global demonstrator to demonstrate the new Line 6 DT25 amp and cab. So, we shot the demo for this amazing new product over the day, infact Chappers had been playing with it the day before and was blown away with it, it’s an amazing bit of kit! It is a proper amp in every sense with no ‘modelling’ in site but with a few hard wired switches you could make this sound like many of the classic amplifiers all guitarists dream of owning by changing the valve characteristics. As usual with Line 6, add a couple more of the DT25’s sister products into the mix and wow, this set-up has so many tricks up it’s sleeve it’s unreal and they all sound SO GOOD! Check out the full video here -

Line 6 DT25

BUT, what has really taken us by surprise is that LINE 6 themselves were so impressed with the audio and video quality and by the videos content they have made it part of their World Wide product training for the DT25, How cool is that! Maplewood Studio is slowly getting on the map.

Proud Stick out…

The Drum wallet is a simple solution to a age old problem of dampening your snare drum, it just attaches to your snare drum via two tension bolts and you simply flip the wallet onto the snare head when required. Why is it called a wallet? Well, back in the day session guys used to stick their wallets on the snare drum to create that classic snare sound, I guess the more successfully guys had bigger wallets! But saying that I have never meet a ‘loaded’ drummer LOL

The Cloudlifter CL-1 is such a simple device and yet it could be the answer to many problems! Designed initially with passive ribbon mics in mind it uses 48v phantom power to create up to 25bd of super clean gain in the signal chain. So, plug your mic XLR in to this box of wonder and the other end to your desk or mic pre, feed it 48v and all of a sudden you don’t have to crank your mic pre anywhere near as high making ribbons much more versatile, this also gives you a much better signal to noise ratio with your lower end mic pres. BUT, what this also turned out to excel at was working with dynamic mics, for example you classic Shure SM7b or RE20 need LOTS of gain, even with my RME OctaMic II I have to really crank it, stick this bad boy in line and WOW. It’s also great for thoes long signal runs.

Look out for my video reviews coming up soon.

Take it easy all!

Stick

Well, as just mentioned, the Bridging chipset. Glyph use a very high quality Oxford 934 Bridging Chipset which makes their drives connectivity seamless, reliable and very quick. The Portagig 50 also offers 2 FW800 ports so, if you have a new MacBook Pro with only one FW800 port (like me) you can put the drive in the chain to your audio interface (RME FF800 in my case) so the drive has plenty of power via the FW buss and saves me mucking about with a USB connection for data and a second for power (Glyph drives also come with a external PSU should you need it), it does also have a USB and a eSATA port on it but I should mention that if using the eSATA you will need to supply the drive with power from either the FW800 port or via the PSU it comes with.

The drive it self is a very well built housing with no fans, it runs pretty much silent, just make sure it has some air moving around it. All the ports on the back are solid with zero movement when plugin in or removing cables, another impressive bit of attention to detail. All in all I wish I had got one ages ago, sure the price may look expensive (well it is!) but after going through a selection of other efforts it would actually be cheaper to buy wise the 1st time.

So, if you are looking for a HDD for your studio set-up be it bedroom or pro, defiantly speak to a company who supply the like of us day in day out, they are specialists for a reason. There is no worse feeling than loosing your audio recording session as the day wraps up, sure it could still happen and you should always back-up asap but eliminating poor bits of kit out of the system lower the odds.

Stick

I was blown away with the tonal quality, the build quality and the price of all the Mapex gear and would not hesitate in recommending them to any drummers out there, on top of that Steve was a really nice guy and working with nice people always makes your job enjoyable.

Check out the video series here

Take it easy all

Stick

Hi Guys, welcome to my 2nd beginners drum lesson. Here we look at a 1/4 and 1/8th note basic rock beat #2. Remember to practice slowly making sure all your beats are accurate and precise.

Click here to download the PDF/MP3s