New studio gear purchases

Just thought I'd do a quick post about some new gear purchases I've made. I recently bought some new monitors for mixing - the Alesis Monitor One MKII's, the passive model with the Alesis RA100 amp. These are great budget range monitors - not just for the money, although they are very well priced, at around £120 for the monitors and £130 for the amp. For the price they have a pretty neutral sound - there's not much low end here though (drops off at 40hz, so if you do sub-bass stuff you may want a subwoofer) and the top end is possibly a little hyped. The stereo imaging though is really good, and they seem pretty easy to mix on so far. Here's a picture:

 

I've also picked up a Trace Elliot Supertramp Twin guitar combo amp. This is an amazing sounding discontinued combo from Trace Elliot It has a valve preamp section with a solid state power amp section, and a very lush built in reverb, and an overdrive and distortion. I just love it for it's clean sound though, it's a very coloured, gritty tone that sounds great through my pedalboard.

As well as that I bought a bunch of rockwool slabs from studiospares, and made my own broadband absorption panels to treat the acoustics in my studio. It's gotten rid of some flutter echoes and deadened the room a little bit, so it sounds slightly roomy still but a lot tighter. I didn't want to go overkill with treatment, as I like a roomy sound, I just wanted to tighten it up by cutting down on the reverb a little.

Lastly, I bought a new pickup for my acoustic guitar. The Dean Markley ZH-1 I was using was OK sounding, but being a magnetic pickup, it was purely picking up the vibrations of the strings, so it sounded a little 'electricy'. My new pickup, the LR Baggs M1 active, is another magnetic soundhole pickup, but it is a special type of humbucker, that actually picks up the vibration of the wood as well as the string, so it has a more natural sound. So far it's been working great for live use :)