ADL-700 + MA-201 FET = good squared

Presonus ADL700 Channel Strip

 I recently got to use the new Presonus ADL-700 for a couple of nights. If you haven't heard, this is the new channel strip which is Presonus's response to the success of the ADL600, all tube dual channel preamp. It starts with one channel of the ADL600, and then hits a custom built FET compressor, and ends at a semi-parametric eq. Aesthetically, they kept with the same sleek design as its predecessor. It has sturdy knobs and switches which look and feel great. I used a Mojave MA-201 FET mic and recorded some vocal. I noticed straight away, like the '600, there's tons of headroom. The vocal was loud and I had the gain structure set a little hot, and, though it was drivey, it still sounded great and kinda gritty. This is probably accredited to the 300 volt power rails inside. It's very warm. Yes, warm (aural quality is indeed measured in temperature as it turns out). There's a variable impedance selector and a high pass filter which can roll off up to 200hz. The compressor, I found to be the coolest part of the unit. All the knobs are variable pots and it's very responsive. It sounded great and the harder I compressed, the top end sounded better and better. The EQ sounded great and even when exaggerated, it maintained smoothness and clarity. Each section of the unit can be bypassed and the EQ can be put before the compressor with the flip of a switch.The compressor's setting can link out of the back if you're chaining two units together for a stereo application. The unit feels, looks, and operates like a high-end piece. And it is. I only tried it on vocals but I imagine it would sound great on pretty much anything. Even an onion.We carry it here at the shop and you check one out starting around $50 for a weekend or $105 a month.  We are one of a few select dealers to stock this unit, so come buy some as well.



                                                  Mojave Audio MA-201FET

                                                           

    So speaking of the MA201FET, I rented it. I used it on vocals. It is designed by David Royer of Royer ribbon mics. This is a FET mic which means it's equipped with a type of transistor that some say closely mimics the tonal characteristics of tube mics without the tube. It's true, I guess. I found that this mic was very well balanced, clear, and had a nice top end. What I mean by balance, is proximity effect. It was very forgiving to the source, even when bobbing back in fourth from its position. Even with compression off, I didn't experience that cliff-like drop when your vocal gets a hair too far away and it maintained smoothness and clarity when right up on it. I really enjoyed that I never detected much harshness that can be inherant on non-tube mics, it's smooth. It's an impressive microphone with an impressive price point too (around $700). It certainly could hold its own even against it's big brother tube model MA-300 which is around double the price. It's worth trying if you wanna try a non-tube flavor of condenser mics.



Reviewed By: Rene C.

Offset Special or Thinline Jazzmaster?

Let me start by saying that the two guitars that've been my favorite over the years for their diversity and functionality were my '72 Thinline Telecaster and my (current) Classic Player Jazzmaster.  If I were to build a guitar myself, it would somehow embody the 'twangy-humbucking-bite' of that Tele while being just a pick-up switch away from the 'well-defined-creamy-smoothness' of my Jazzmaster.  So, when the Fender Pawn Shop Series Offline Special arrived unannounced at our store the other day, I was more than excited to give it a try!  I play exclusively through a 'stock' Vox AC15 with a Fender Jazzmaster, cuz I think the Jazzmaster's special single-coil pickups compliment a 'chime-y' tube amp perfectly without getting too-bright.  My initial observation upon plugging this Tele into my Vox was that it sounded great clean. I tried "dialing-in" a few tone/pickup combinations, but I feel like this guitar sounds best the less you mess with it.  This guitar is semi-hollowbody and very light in weight.  Guitar chords sound full and bright, while single-note playing retains the smooth characteristics of the pick-ups!  I would go as far as to say that this guitar sounds terrible through an overdriven amp and distortion pedals.  I tried adding a little "fuzz" and "crunch" from various guitar pedals, but couldn't achieve anything but a flat, dull tone.  Rent this guitar for studio work, but don't expect it to be versatile in live situations. 

- Jared Paul Boulanger (guitarist, The Sour Notes)

DSLR for Dummies

By: Sierra Norman, RocknRoll Rentals
Special thanks to Este Vato!

GODIN TO THE CORE, BRO.

    The new Godin Core has landed at Rock n Roll rentals! And it's been a head turner among employees and patrons alike. I got a chance to take it out to a couple of gigs over the weekend as a back up, and after popping a string straight away, it didn't stay benched.
    Godin has made this model available in a few different variations; ours is the classic, vibey, sunburst finish option. It also features a pair of Seymour Duncan P90s nestled in a chambered mahogany body, solid maple top,  set mahogany neck, rosewood fret board, Graphtech wrap around bridge, and black tuners...for sex appeal. It has a light but solid construction and is very nicely balanced when strapped. A volume and tone pot for either pick up is also featured, which is nice. The first night, I played it through a newer Ampeg tube guitar amp along side indie rock sledge hammer, Jared Boulanger.  The Core sounds warm and fat in the neck position and when the volume was rolled back, it revealed wonderful bluesy, jazzy kind of tones. When opened up in the bridge position, the P90s shine with that archaic, classic rock n roll bite. In your face, but sweetly so.

    
    My Grandma (pictured above) got to play it the second night. Lucky ol' gal. Just kidding, that's not my Grandma, that's Oscar from repair and a fellow vato. He played it through a Fender Deluxe and a hundred or so effects pedals. It sounded great, and on the clean channel, took the edge off the otherwise harsh inherent tone of the Deluxe. It needed to be tuned more often the second night, but the humid, hot, outside air may have been the culprit.
    The Core is a pretty straight forward, work horse of a guitar. In addition to sounding great and looking good, they are 100% crafted and assembled in Quebec, Canada though you might not guess it with the  doable street price. It's a solid build and a very comfortable play. P90 lovers will not be let down. 


   Come into the shop and snag this one...from my cold dead hands. :)

reviewed by: Rene C.

Radial's Workhorse Cube: Both Workhorse-like and Cube-shaped.

Over the weekend, I took home a Radial Workhorse Cube to get familiar with three of their new 500-series modules: the Powerpre, the Q3 Induction Coil EQ, and the Komit compressor. The Radial products I'm most familiar with are transparent tools like DI boxes and Reampers, which they do a great job at, but I was curious what they would bring to a channel-strip-style setup like this.

I had a session over the weekend with a female singer songwriter, and had opportunities to try the Workhorse on a few things. Before you even plug it in, Radial's excellent build quality shows with their solid steel construction and baked enamel finishes, and every knob and switch feels substantial, which makes the units fun to work with. Of course, I eventually calmed down and plugged the thing in. Even this was easy thanks to the Powerpre's front XLR input, and a 'feed' switch between each channel, which sends a unit's output into the next unit, eliminating the need for patch cables. Other fun on the Workhorse's rear includes a Link switch for stereo linkage, and an Omniport input, a 1/4" jack for each unit that provides extra functionality.

My first test was kick drum. The Powerpre is wonderfully quiet for the +55dB of gain it boasts, but on kick the Q3 was what really stood out. A few mild adjustments on the 12-position Grayhill switches brought out what I was looking for on both lows and highs, while the Mid Cut knob took away some of the pesky "basketball-sounding" frequencies. The Q3's Omniport is assigned as an effects loop. My only gripe about the Q3 is a minor one, and that is that the Shift switch for each band is hard to get at, but that's a "set-and-forget" type thing anyway, so maybe I'll just stop complaining already.

Next up, I wanted to see how my guest channel strip would squash a room mic for me, so I put a Peluso 2247LE (psst, also available at Rock N Roll Rentals!) through the Workhorse. The Peluso is a great mic all by itself, and didn't need the Q3 to help it out, but the Komit squeezed my room mic nicely, gluing disparate sounds like bells and accordion together without sucking the life out of them. As with the other two modules, there are fewer than five controls (including the "On" feature), so the Komit works a lot of magic on it's own, thanks in part to it's full-size discrete electronics and Hammond broadcast transformers. With the Komit, the Omniport is a key input for side-chaining or de-essing.

Radial Engineering's Workhorse Cube and 500-series modules offered me a lot of great sounds, thanks to great craftsmanship and well-thought-out features, and it's portable enough to take anywhere. I highly recommend taking one home for yourself, especially at Rock N Roll Rentals' awesome Reservation Rate of $47 for Tues/Wed/Thurs- Monday or only $108 for a month!


Also available pre-filled! That is to say, filled with preamps. 

reviewed by:
-John Pearson

X-Mas wasn't too chilly with the Mojave Audio MA-300...

Over the holiday weekend I took a test-drive with the MA-300 large-diaphragm condenser microphone from Mojave Audio. Initially, I was skeptical about it. I had never heard of ‘Mojave Audio’ as a brand until recently, and I had assumed that it was a semi-affordable condenser to compete with AKG or Audio-Technica. I quickly found out that there was a lot more to the company and the mic than I could have anticipated.

Mojave Audio is a relatively new company, created by ‘ribbon microphone’ legend David Royer. If you aren’t familiar, Royer reintroduced ribbon microphones to the world in the late 1990’s, and became an instant legend for doing so. Royer’s work has often been compared to the quality of leading German products, and his mics are regarded as a studio essential for achieving rich and warm tones.

The MA-300 is loaded with JAN military-grade vacuum tubes, a 15- DB pad, as well as a high-pass filter, and multiple patterns (which is the only difference between cardioid sibling MA-200). It’s multiple patterns are controllable from a converter box, which allow it to use cardioid, figure-8, and Omni patterns. This converter box sends it’s own phantom power, and it can handle phantom power added additionally, which is handy if you want to use it in large mic set-ups.

To start, I set it up to record some chimey acoustic guitar. It instantly sounded so gratifying. It focused on high-mids, and cancelled out any problem frequencies that often occur on recording acoustic guitars. Instantly upon play-back, the guitar sat out in the mix, with a warm tone and the exact frequency range I wanted to it to sit in. I was so impressed!  Perhaps it’s the JAN tubes in them, but this mic instantly sounds golden. Recently I tested the P-67, which I was also immensely impressed by (see Colin Laflin’s awesome P-67 review), but the MA-300 achieved the sound I was peronsally wanting to hear from Peluso’s replica.

Next I moved onto testing it on vocals, and yet again, it performed flawlessly. The vocals sat in the mix pre-EQ or compression almost exactly where they needed to be. It handled lows smoothly, and in the high mid-range (1kHz+) is where the mic added compression like warmth and voice. Something I didn’t get to try that most demos and reviews of the MA-300 praise is its ability as a drum room/overhead microphone. 

I highly recommend checking out this awesome product from Mojave Audio, and the best way to take the test drive I did on your own recording is to rent it from Rock N’ Roll Rentals!!! You can get it for a “Reservation Rate” (Tues/Wed/Thurs-Monday) for $29 or on a monthly rental for $64, which is a real steal for getting to know this and other recording microphones!

-William Glosup

Rupert Neve's Time Machine Tape-o-Magnetron-alizer

Just kidding. On review here is the Portico 5042 Tape FX unit from Rupert Neve Designs, a tape simulator meant to capture the fatness and saturation of recording to tape, without the expense and Lord-of-The-Rings-caliber journey it takes to acquire magnetic tape. The general idea is simple - use all the analog components of a tape machine (fat transformers, tape heads, etc.) - and in place of the tape, have a saturation control.

It's fairly common to record sources with lots of transient content (particularly things inclined to be harsh...i.e. cymbals) like drums, acoustic guitar, and vocals to tape for a number of reasons. Tape acts as a limiter - when things peak above the area that can be written to tape, that portion of the waveform is simply shaved off, without losing the "punch"...even the best of limiters have a hard time doing this. The components in a tape machine generate a lot of "harmonics", particularly 3rd order harmonics, which for a wide variety of reasons, cancel and phase frequencies down the spectrum. In normal, practical, "actually matters" parlance, it mellows harsh things out and makes them sound "rich".

As for the unit itself, it does this far better than any plugins I've used. The transformer selection is typical for the rest of the Portico line, and imparts a very fat "Portico sound", heavy in the 300-500hz range, which can overwhelm certain things quickly, but is great for fattening up thin parts.
The saturation is great - can be driven incredibly hard and still retain punch, and because of the two channels, you can run a single source to both channels (depending on the setup of your patchbay) and treat the same signal in parallel...leaving one nearly untouched and the other smashed to heck (a technique commonly used on vocals, bass, or drum buss). The tape "speed controls" simulate what happens at different tape speeds - namely a more responsive high-end at the faster setting. This can sometimes add "harshness", depending on the source, but is particularly helpful if the Portico 500hz "fatness" is overwhelming.

My biggest gripe with this unit, one that rendered it EXTREMELY tedious, is the lack of a stereo link. For all intents and purposes, this is a dual mono unit. The pots aren't precise enough that similar settings yield similar saturation, so sending stereo sources through it like a mix or drum overheads (two MAJOR USES for analog tape) is incredibly time consuming and tedious. It took ages to get the stereo image balanced, and even then, I wasn't certain if I was achieving identical effects on the L and R channels of my overhead track...resulting in a shifty snare and kick that seemed to dance around my overhead "center". This was even more noticeable on a full mix.

If you need to run this on several mono sources, or run a single source through two different saturation units, this unit is killer. Sometimes this unit is all it took to get something to sit in the mix. If you're looking for something to reliably handle stereo channels though, you should be prepared to spend some time dialing it in. Either way, great to track through-right after the pre, before the interface - to fat sounds, nice limiting (often essential in today's demand for loud mixes/masters), and well worth the money! $43 a weekend, $95 a month, at Rock N Roll Rentals!