Musical Instruments

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.

The M-Audio Producer USB was one of the first USB microphones to hit the market a few years ago – ushering in an era of minimalistic mobile recording solutions. You no longer needed a host of middleware hardware to deliver decent audio into your computer or mobile device. USB microphones allow you to plug directly into your computers USB port and start recording. As a solid, professional-looking microphone that’s simple to setup and use, the M-Audio Producer USB is a decent choice in this category of microphones.

Here’s the American Standard Stratocaster electric guitar by Fender. This beauty had the privilege of spending some time in my studio for a little routine check. And what a ride it was! For some rock chords, blues riffs, funky rhythms and lots of modern jazz, this Strat is a versatile, high-end guitar. The American Standard I personally tried is equipped with three single coil pickups, features a black body finish with a classic white pickguard. The sexy curves of this solid body (it has contours that fit the musician’s arms) makes this guitar a gem of modern electric instrument manufacturing. The Stratocaster model, with its two asymmetrical horns continues to be the most imitated guitar body amongst all lesser brands of electric guitars. Thousands of timeless albums feature the tones of this american musical giant. Hendrix, Clapton, Stevie (and many more) used the Strat as their main instrument. We shouldn’t take this lightly!