What gear suprised you?

dav nagle

I am just wondering if you ever had a piece of gear that you hoped was going to be great but let you down until one day you gave something else a try through it and you were blown away. I got that feeling using this piece of kit recently and it was like the first time since I bought it that I felt that it was worth every penny. Here is my story, please share yours, we could learn so much if we all chipped in our favorite suprise gear stories!

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I got the TLA Ivory 2 six months ago and I got no use out of it for ages. The gearslut that sold it to me said it was savage for bass. They retail at €1500 I got mine for €800. Now a real audio freak might know of something better for the money and thats fair enough but I bought it and I was stuck with it. Recently I plugged a fender Jazz into and went out into my Apogee and I had a proper 'studio bass guitar sound'.I tracked electric guitars through it and slammed the limiter on the track and boom I was blown away. The more you use gear and get to know it's value the better life gets as far as I'm concerned. You could give me a studio worth millions in gear but no matter what you can't cheat trial and error.

ICN

Awwwww... Bad Gear Man.

ICN

Actually..

The best bit of gear I ever had.. if you can call it that.. was a CB type microphone that you'd plug into a Megaphone.. one with a side switch on it.

I've been listening to old 4 track tapes recently that my friends & I used to make.. Jeesus.. like 14 years ago

I would use it for vocals.. just plugged in.. (No Megaphone..)

The thing that sets my recordings apart from everyone elses (and that requires a fair bit of goodwill & imagination..) is how the treble from the CB Mic cuts through all the mud.

The 4 tracks we were using were really basic.. no bounce & no eq. The sound was all Bass in retrospect..

We'd record the 4 tracks out to another tape recorder.. stick it back into the Tascam & have another 2 tracks left to mess around with. So 6 tracks in all before the sound would begin eating itself.

Not as fancy as a big box of tricks.. but I was lucky to have it.

Didnt realise at the time why it sounded good.. but it just did.

studiorat

The T-Bone ribbon mic for €100 surprised me. It's the business on guitars and overheads. Same mic as the Nady BTW. Another piece of kit that I was pleasantly surprised by was the SPL channel one recording channel.

Big letdowns was the Neve summing mixer, actually anything by the Neve company I've always found to be a bit of an anti-climax.

dav nagle

studiorat wrote: »

The T-Bone ribbon mic for €100 surprised me. It's the business on guitars and overheads. Same mic as the Nady BTW. Another piece of kit that I was pleasantly surprised by was the SPL channel one recording channel.

Big letdowns was the Neve summing mixer, actually anything by the Neve company I've always found to be a bit of an anti-climax.

Something like this?

http://www.thomann.de/gb/the_tbone_rb500.htm

danjokill

I love my TLA 5051 ........ i use it 90% of the time on bass and think its the bee and eee's. bought it on the fly as it was going cheap and turns out its the peices of gear i use the most. Super tube sound.

dav nagle

danjokill wrote: »

I love my TLA 5051 ........ i use it 90% of the time on bass and think its the bee and eee's. bought it on the fly as it was going cheap and turns out its the peices of gear i use the most. Super tube sound.

I know! They are so fat!

studiorat

dav nagle wrote: »

Something like this?

http://www.thomann.de/gb/the_tbone_rb500.htm

Yup!

Iomega Man

5th gear always surprises me....

dav nagle

studiorat wrote: »

Yup!

Well thats a must buy then. Very good.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

there is a whole mod you can do to remove the grills etc inside that thomann mic , and put some damping compound in them ,that makes them sound very good for the price - have you done this ?

it makes them very fragile , but it apparently opens the sound up alot.

seachto7

studiorat wrote: »

Yup!

hmmmmm, Ive heard good things about the Rode M3, but now you've put the cat amongst the pigeons with this T-bone one...