Musical Instruments

I have a confession to make. The first time I went camping as an adult was two summers ago. Before that, I was seven and my parents shipped me off for the weekend with my Brownie troupe to learn all sorts of life skills and earn all sorts of badges. I cried the whole time. But when one of my closest friends convinced me to join her annual camping trip—which meant no electricity, no WiFi, and no plumbing—I decided to put my tiara away for a few days and suck it up; and as it turns out, it was one of the best times I’ve ever had.

When it comes to playing blues guitar, the Fender brand is almost synonymous with the genre. From the Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Stratocaster to Muddy Water’s Telecaster, the Fender guitar is as a part of the sound of modern blues as the techniques currently employed by Fender players like John Mayer, Eric Clapton, and Bonnie Raitt . The guitar isn’t alone either as Fender amplifiers have long been a part of this history. The Fender Champ, Twin, Bassman, Super Reverb, and Deluxe reverb are all in the Pantheon of blues amplification and are saving a spot for the all tube Fender Blues Junior which will be looked at in this blog.

With a plethora of guitar effects pedal manufacturers producing an increasing number of beautiful looking and sounding pedals, the average pedal board has little real estate to accommodate all that you may want. Hotone Audio has responded with some very aesthetically appealing and fun sounding pedals that are priced friendly and take up about 1/3 of the space that your average stompbox requires. This blog will look at the EKO (delay), Grass (overdrive), and OCTA (Octave effect) from the company’s Skyline product line.

The price-performance ratio is hard to beat on this piano—you really can’t go wrong. It is a solid product with a good feature set that will enable the beginner or intermediate player to really enjoy the instrument. If you’ve been wanting to take up piano or you’ve been looking for a reason to buy a piano and cost has been a factor, check out the CDP-130CS at Best Buy Canada.

  The Fender FA-300CE Acoustic-Electric guitar package bundles together everything that you need to produce a great acoustic tone in a live setting and in a recorded format. The FA-300CE is a solid acoustic guitar with great tone and playability for those wanting to learn the guitar, just starting to learn, and also for those intermediate players wanting to take the next step. The included Slide interface and accompanying software makes it incredibly easy to learn thanks to the Rock Prodigy software and to record and edit your music via the AmpliTtube software.

The Yeti is a rich sounding, flexible USB microphone that sonically stands on its own against some heavy hitters in the microphone world, but its large size makes it inconvenient for portable applications.  

2015 is a very exciting year in the guitar geek and gear-head musical community: Fender announced at NAMM 2015 that it will be releasing extremely limited editions of unique-looking and unique-sounding electric guitars.  And the “best” news? Best Buy will carry some of those beauties! Let’s take a closer look.

The re-release of the M-Audio M-Track USB audio interface (the M-Track MkII) is a no-nonsense, straight-shooting package for those who are looking to get audio into and out of their computer.

The Fender Mustang 1 V.2 is more than just a 20 watt practice amp with an 8” speaker and a load of tones and flexibility, it is also a guitarist’s entrance into the online world of social connectivity. The Fender Mustang 1 V.2 is a potent little amplifier that offers you a myriad of sounds and the ability to tweak to your heart’s content, but it also connects to your computer, connects you with other musicians, and connects you with your inner music producer.

IK Multimedia has taken already compact and portable recording technologies and made them even more compact and more portable. All of this without significantly restricting what or how you can record and what you can ultimately produce. In this blog I am going to look at two different IK Multimedia products. First is the iRig Pro, which was released in late 2013. I will then look at the brand new iRig2 and explain what each can do for you so that you might have a better idea which unit will meet your needs.