I spend a truly embarassing amount of time tinkering with gear, often to the exclusion of actually using any of it. So a page concerning this work is arguably more fitting than a page concerning my recording efforts. eg. The Audio page tends to get stale in a hurry. (But we are working on it!)

Anyway, here you can read about my latest efforts to waste time better spent practicing... usually by way of plugging things together that were never meant to be plugged together, and then cursing at them.

I finally got fed up with the fact that there were no USB-powered MIDI floorboards on the market (why is that??) and thusly got caught up in this mess.

But this one - built for the studio, but likely to find its way onstage eventually - is even better.

My latest configuration, a truly mobile studio suitable for recording or performing with guitar, synth, vocals, etc.

I've always preferred wacky, heavy metal, meedly-meedly guitars that slice and dice and balance your checkbook in addition to playing notes and chords. Over the years I've been a fan of Ibanez guitars, then Hamers, and most recently Parkers. The Parkers are nearly as expressive as the meedly-meedly guitars of my youth, without all the maintenance headaches associated with a Floyd Rose tremelo. (My youth is long gone and I don't have time to be hunting around for hex wrenches, dagnabit.)

Two of my Parkers also have MIDI output, which is great when a song absolutely requires a mediocre guitarist sounding like a terrible pianist, for instance. Another has been transplanted with Line 6 Variax guts, which is theoretically handy in that I own no banjos, sitars, etc. I say theoretically because I don't actually need any banjos, sitars, etc.

My amplification these days is all smoke and mirrors - digital modeling amps and software plug-ins.  Presently, a Vetta gathers dust in the basement while a PC runs Native Instruments' Guitar Rig into a pair of studio monitors, and that's about all there is to it. I'm toying with the idea of gigging with a little Roland Cube 30X practice amp - another modeller - because I am endlessly lazy when it comes to lugging gear to and from venues.

Owing to my trademark low tolerance for frustration, I found that I was unable to work with my best-sounding softsynth (Dimension Pro) in my favorite DAW/ VST host (Ableton Live.) So I went insane and did this .