B-Band surprice

I did some tests with a colleagued, who needed a non-permanent pickup.

We took a good 4 hours trying out some of my pickups and mics.

The choice was for me a little surpricing: A B-Band 1470 pickup mounted in a certain spot on his fiddle and viola sounded great, both natural and with a good amount of feedback rejection.

I decided to make some further testing on this pickup. Hopefully, if time allows, I will be able to present some soundclips and more in depth thoughts on placement soon.

Acoustic Image Flex

Acoustic Image is know for their high-power light weight acoustic amps.

They have recently introduced the Flex preamp/mixer and cabinet.

Both units work independently or connected via an RJ45 cable to form a powerful combo.

The preamp features 2 separate channels with xlr and 1/4" inputs, 4 band eq and 2 fx units.

The cabinet is equipped with 2 10" woofers and a 2.5" tweeter all powered separately.

Vintage Revolution Acousticbox

I have been doing some research on blender/mixer preamps on behalf of a couple of my colleagues, who needed to blend a mic and pickup.

I came about this system I did not hear of before: Vintage Revolution Acousticbox and thought I would share my findings with you.

The unit is actually designed for Upright Bass and it features two channels, an active (phantom power) and a passive channel (designed for pickups). Both channels have 1 band of parametric EQ and mid-level adjustment. When summed an additional 3 band graphic eq is available.

Jean Luc Ponty on his gear

I found this video of an interview with the Jazz and New Age violinist Jean Luc Ponty. He talks about his violins, pickups, preamps and effects.

Be aware that the video is made by D'Addario strings, so of course he also talks positively about their strings.

Svend Asmussen

photo by Keld Navntoft 2010

One of the big icons in Danish music is Svend Asmussen.
He is of course famous for his fiddle playing on the many jazz recordings he have done, but he is also know as a talented multi instrumentalist and composer.
He has played with all the big names throughout  the history of jazz and continues to play at a very high level even at an age of 97.

I found a great interview written by Richard Brooks for Fiddle Magazine in 2005 (in 4 parts), which I would like to share with you: http://www.scvfa.org/newsletter/articles/SvendAsmussen_FiddlersRag2005_03-04-05.pdf

The article tells us about his life with music, about jazz and Svend Asmussens collaborations and recordings. There is also a part on his gear, violin and electronics, which I of course have read many times :-)

At the end there is a transcription of the song: Swing Manouche