No videos or audio examples today — I’m in the midst of “reconfiguring” my studio. (That’s the technical term for pulling stuff out of racks, tangling all your cables, making an ungodly mess, and dissolving into a puddle of bitter, frustrated tears.)
But the good news is, I got some cool new stuff. I’m switching over a pair of large Pro Tools and Apogee systems to a minimalist Universal Audio Apollo setup, an audio interface that doubles as a plug-in host. UA makes killer plug-ins, but I’ve never owned any, since they’ve always run off of proprietary PCI cards, and the card slots in my computers have always been filled to capacity. Now that I have the UA stuff in my grubby mitts, I’m obsessing on the idea of exploring non-amped guitar tones, especially distorted ones. And I’m not talking amp simulators, but the distortion you get from overdriving a recording console’s preamps.