Mark Schmieder

Good timing as I was wondering if I should start using Reverb to sell things as I'm not even getting watchers on Gear Exchange even after dropping prices and of course setting low "make an offer" bottoms. I don't think many people know about Gear Exchange yet, and as with this forum, I think it attracts the sort of people who are afraid to make offers. So I'm stuck with CL, which sometimes is a bit of good luck on specialty stuff and expensive stuff moving, even without price negotiation, as shipping charges have gone through the roof and Gear Exchange requires a set price in advance. With shipping costs varying by more than $100 between the coasts, it's too risky to place a cheap item as one could lose a bundle. But eBay isn't getting watchers, offers, or bites either. I think maybe everyone's just scared about the economy due to inflation. As for the actual experience as a seller, Gear Exchange winds hands down, by a country mile, except for that one caveat regarding shipping. And I have sold some stuff on there, it's just the specialty stuff, and oddly my Hammond XL-1c that I expected to sell in a day and hasn't had any watchers or inquiries on ANY of the four places it is posted! Maybe people are waiting for NAMM thinking there might be an XK-1d announced (unlikely). It's great to have a no-fee option on Gear Exchange, and it is by far the safest place to sell and to buy. Lots of protections for everyone involved, and immediate intervention by real human beings -- namely your own sales agent -- if any issues come up, bottlenecks, questions, etc.

Yeah I almost bought that device last year, then thought I'd wait to see what the next rev is like, as Zoom have really upped their game the past few years and the competition from Tascam is helping both players to improve. I figure that Zoom device might still find a place in workflow even with a traditional A&H mixer (albeit with USB) in tow. One of the advantages that tends to still be exclusively in the mixer domain, is multiple auxes for different monitoring feeds for each musician, when that's needed (whether for live work, or in the studio during full-band tracking or drum tracking with "ghost" instrumental tracks).

I looked into this last year and concluded that it isn't worth it. Too many compromises until you get closer to $2K. Ergonomically, the one with the fewest flaws is the series from Tascam (although each model has different issues), but rather than wait to see if the next revs or models address these issues, I bought an Allen & Heath last week, and it's even more amazing than I expected it to be. Furthermore, it does have a multi-channel USB output available for direct transfer of independent tracks, though only at 16-bit vs. 24-bit resolution. I decided not to splurge on Sound Devices (the cheaper line not the super-expensive pro line) due to ergonomics, and I sold my RME Fireface UFX a few years ago as I didn't find it all that convenient to do USB thumb drive direct recording using a rack unit (I got rid of ALL of my rack gear!), given the menu diving and lack of flexibility compared to a real mixer or doing things directly on a computer. But it did help with a few drum sessions before recording other parts. I do things old school style now though; all live. Anyway, the Tascam units probably come the closest to the old Portastudio workflow that many of us are familiar with, and for the most part they are fairly good mixers, maybe equivalent to Yamaha quality but probably a bit below that grade altogether. They go on sale now and then for good prices, so they're not a bad short-term solution or placeholder as an all-in-one unit, but you can fnd most of the caveats listed in user reviews at Sweetwater's site or in Sound-on-Sound reviews. Of course, there are also some mid-level solutions that aren't full-on mixers but do multiple channels and mics, especially from Zoom and Tascam, in those sort of box shapes that aren't too different from what Sound Devices offers, but I suspect those aren't the ergonomics you are looking for.

Yeah, I think Buffalo Springfield made their national TV debut on that show, as did a lot of other great artists. Tom was an amazing guy. I wonder who gets his yo-yo collection?

Yep, this confirms my ancient memories: Les McCann was the one who recommended Roberta Flack for a recording contract, and played on her albums. https://variety.com/2024/music/news/les-mccann-jazz-pianist-dead-1235859083/

I first became familiar with him via Roberta Flack's covers, then picked up some of his own albums. A very gifted musician and songwriter.

https://www.surfyindustries.com/store#!/SurfyBear-Classic-Black-with-SurfyPan/p/364978285/category=40852028 I discovered this company (a somewhat new one) last night while looking into whether anyone still makes Spring Reverbs now that Fender stopped production and their formerly $650 units now go regularly for $2400 or higher on the used market. I first discovered some large effects pedals that have actual springs in them (a tiny handful of manufacturers) but then found my way to this Swedish company that debuted a few years ago with FET based solid state boards that use four long springs like the old Fender Reverb Tanks. As most people know, the so-called “reverb” in the Deluxe Reverb amp is a Vibrato, not a Fender Spring Reverb Tank, but the current models that include actual reverb tanks (Super Reverb — super expensive — and Blues Jr) are not to my liking and anyway I’d want to use it with the Deluxe Reverb amp. I don’t use surf sounds all that much in my music, but I sure do use a lot of spring reverb in anything that is reggae influenced, so I am glad to be able to do that while playing rather than guess what it will sound like later and do it in production with audio plugins. I don’t care for other types of reverb, except for Plate Reverb, which is similar in some ways to Spring Reverb, only way larger. Some people build their own, but you gotta have the room. Not worth it! Unlike Spring Reverb, Plate Reverb is pretty good in audio plugins and it doesn’t really much affect how you play or phrase while doing a take. Anyway, I got lucky with the New Year sale as this reverb tank is usually $450, and as the effect pedals that have springs are more expensive as well. I’ll sit this atop the Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb. They have a metal version with True Bypass but I don’t think it sounds quite as good; it’s a bit dark sounding. It was a tough choice though. It would be more practical for live use, of course, but I rarely play guitar live, even though I play it almost daily at home. I decided years ago that my live life would mostly be bass, woodwinds, keyboards.

WayOutWare had one a number of years ago but it became abandonware even before TimewARP 2600 did, so I'm glad to see someone take this one on, and probably it is better as so many years have gone by. I doubt they have any relation to each other in terms of development code base.

Well, now they know what it's like to be in a real banned!

I felt the Spark abandonment years ago and sold the hardware before it became useless to the next buyer. It was a tough choice as I still feel it was the best software drum machine emulation ever, and it covered so many overlooked models, but I have also moved almost 100% away from those overdone sounds and find that I like just about everything better with acoustic drums, even in electronic genres.

I rarely keep up with live recordings, so thanks for the heads-up. Didn't Peter do a "mix it yourself" album a number of years ago? This is a different notion though, so I'm curious about the bright vs. dark mixes. I've been keen on such stuff forever, due to being a Beatles fan and being aware at a young age of their often radically different takes on the same song, often at different tempi. And certainly many of us have heard endless remixes of the "Let It Be" soundtrack, each revealing different aspects.

Yeah, I like MiniFreak but have Pigments and it does seem a bit redundant in that context, but I could be wrong. Although the Moog Mini sounds like a huge improvement, I use my hardware Voyager for most Moog sounds and also have Moog's own soft synths, which are quite good (including the excellent new Mariana bass synth). I have no use for the Augmented-type libs. When I was younger, I probably would have thought they were cool, and I certainly respect Arturia for doing something a bit different. At any rate, I can barely run the ones I have, on my 2017 iMac.

My upgrade is $200, too steep as I don't particularly need or want the additions, but I wouldn't mind the two updates. I think in previous cycles those have been free to owners of the previous collection, but I haven't checked yet this time. The audio demos do sound like big improvements, and MiniFreak V is kind of cool too.

Thanks for posting that; he remains my favorite guitarist of the past fifty years, alongside Johnny Marr, who of course was heavily influenced by him. Half-quoting the lyrics of the song, I was entranced from the opening of Siouxsie and the Banshee's mile-a-minute "Spellbound" and it caused me to totally rethink the role of guitar in modern music, especially that of the acoustic guitar as a lead instrument yet aggressive and energetic beyond what any heavy metal guitarist could dream of. I followed him onward in his journey as he joined ex-Buzzcocks member Howard Devoto in his jazz/punk/avant fusion project called "Magazine", and his work with Johnny Lydon (Rotten) in PiL (Public Image Ltd) that followed his tenure in Siouxsie and the Banshees.

I can't remember if I ever had a hard copy and haven't checked to see if I have a soft copy, but I do remember it being discussed way back, and of course I own all of the Twiddly.BITS MIDI libraries, which to this day are still the ones I find the most useful as they preserve so many nuances of core players due to how they were produced.

Another very positive experience with Gear Exchange today, as their sales agents quickly took care of a software snafu that was slowing down the completion of an adjusted sale. I doubt any other site would do that; especially in a timely fashion. It had to do with a non-local making an offer, my deciding to risk shipping, and our agreeing to a shipping price. Strangely, unlike my previous non-local sale, the Sweetwater discounted shipping was way less than my own discount done from direct FedEx estimates. On another note though, I bought a rare guitar case tonight after hours of searching and after failing with twelve other vendors, due to it being made by Yorkville and only sold in Canada. Who knew that shipping from Canada to the USA is almost impossible these days; hardly anyone is willing to do it! Easier to ship from the U.K. anymore! At any rate, their teardrop case is the only one on the market that will fit Danelectro's 12-string guitar, and as I decided it's a long-time keeper, I want a case rather than a bag. The strangest part is that I ha to pay Virginia sales tax (though it's low compared to California). I had no idea that we have a reciprocal arrangement with Canada in that regard; I would have thought that stuff like that simply incurs potential customs fees (though of course it avoids Canada's VAT). I still have not sold on Reverb, but it turns out I have bought two or three times from that site and forgot, as you don't have to jump through any hoops as with eBay.

I was really into them when I first moved to SF in late 1991, and was thrilled when Ringo Starr chose to collaborate with them.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/05/entertainment/denny-laine-death/index.html This one hit me like a ton of bricks. One of my three bands is classic rock and we do almost the entire Wings catalog, focusing especially on Denny's songs. I was hoping to catch him on his solo tour, and was even considering traveling a long distance due to the limited shows. Yet one more artist I never got to see live. Denny was for all practical purposes an equal partner in the Wings venture with the McCartneys. And he was an all around nice guy; not a mean bone in him.

The EKX-12 shone well on the Korg Kaoss piano patches at jazz quintet rehearsal tonight, and I went flat on the EQ this time (unlike on Hammond Organ). I haven't had a chance to try my bass guitar through it yet, which is a possibility, with vocals on the other channel, for my folk-rock gigs.

Fred Lispius is a member of a jazz trio that my friend leads. Great guy and very humble. Good reminder about his book! Of course he uses no music at all at gigs.

Most states by now have reciprocal sales tax, but there might still be a few that don't. These days, it's the state you live in. Many years ago, before people understood the internet's implications for interstate commerce, it was often the state you were buying from, as though you had physically visited the store. My items are fairly specialized, and people have inquired but not recently, probably reserving money for Black Friday. The oddest is the Hammond XK-1c, which I have dropped four times and is well below the usual used price, yet not a single inquiry or watcher in all these months, or even many views!

If you really want to get academic and authentic, there's the probably-out-of-print Hal Leonard series by genre. I loaned the Stride book to my jazz quintet's keyboardist and he says he has found it extremely helpful and educational as well as inspirational and inspiring. I plan to get rid of mine, but have been holding them in case he wants to borrow more of them. I also loaned him the Swing book. I think there are about two dozen volumes in all. Very deeply researched with lots of exercises and examples. I love Mark Levine's book, but it is more of a theory book. If you're less focused on technique based books than arrangements, you might try some of the alternative Real Book editions, all of which I own, that re-voice the songs significantly.

Due to a $350 discount during Black Friday, I finally grabbed one of these, and it arrived a couple of days ago. I've been frustrated that I can only use headphones anymore to practice keys, or pipe it through an audio app on my iMac and listen through my active monitors with round-trip AD/DA latency. If not for the steep discount, I was going to buy an ELX-12. I previously owned the Z-series 8" speaker and used it at nursing home jazz gigs with my Fender Precision Bass, and my keyboardist/bandleader used one for his digital keyboard at gigs where there wasn't a house piano. Very flexible design, like all E/V speakers, and balanced/natural. As I don't currently own a digital piano, and don't care about monitoring my Moog Voyager as I never play it live (too risky regarding theft!), I have so far only had a chance to try the EX-12 with my Hammond XK-4. Out of the box, it sounds AWFUL, but what speaker wouldn't? Organ is very specific. It took just a few seconds to apply my intuition and boost the treble by +3 dB, leave the mids at unity gain, and lower the bass by -3 dB. Perfect balance at that point and it sounds very full and organic. We will find out at jazz rehearsal tomorrow night how it sounds with the keyboardist's Korg Whatever (I can't remember the order of their model releases any more, but it's recent). I';m sure we'll need to adjust it, but I doubt it will take much work. It will certainly sound better than his Behringer keyboard amp! There are four basic settings in the DSP menu, and of course I set it to Live. I was surprised that I had to turn the input gain to 9 o'clock, which is actually a significant cut as 12 o'clock is unity gain, but otherwise I had to turn the XK-4 almost down to zero or I'd be deafened! This speaker can deliver 1500 watts! I'll need to figure out the ideal gain staging, which will be determined by whether the XK-4 is strictly gain or has an impedance stage or some other built-in level jump that means that it's OK to ride its volume super-low without getting distortion or non-ideal sound. A lot of devices are trim-only, some are gain-only, and others have unity gain in the middle, like EKX-12. It's interesting that Electro-Voice chose to make this series in just 12" and 15" size, with the subs as 15" or 18". Although the user manual shows applications with the mains stacked atop the subs, I feel it is usually better to have the subs separately stacked, and positioned in the middle (depending on venue, of course). Not sure I'll bother with subs; for larger gigs, I'd depend on FOH and backline. Maybe I'll buy a second 12" main though. Also not sure if I want the pole-mounting or will use mostly as a wedge monitor on stage for the band itself. Time will tell. A big investment, but this was a good time to do it, on steep discount and before more inflation. I spent $60 on the bag though. I was hoping to pump my bass through it tonight as a test for my folk/rock gigs, where I also sing and could use this as my full setup, but tenants are sleeping due to night shift.

Having gone through about 30 posts at Gear Exchange by now (half of them not yet sold), I can report on a few interesting aspects that make this site special: 1. High level of protection for both buyer and seller, compared to other sites 2. You get to keep 100% (no commission or fees) if you decide to take your payout in Sweetwater Gear Credits 3. You can apparently only set one shipping price, in advance, which is a bummer as local vs. opposite coast can be over $100 difference 4. Very few people make offers, but they'll wait six months for you to drop your base price to their sweet spot, which is aggravating 5. Not many people yet know that Sweetwater now deals in high quality orchestral and band instruments, beginner to pro, including used 6. There's a tendency for people to flake and ghost you after many backs and forths where you have spent hours to accommodate them 7. On the other hand, Sweetwater kicks people off the site if they "buy" something and then don't pay -- I've had three people do this to me Overall, I prefer Gear Exchange to eBay or Reverb at this point, but Craigslist is still more flexible for offers and getting cash, it's just usually a longer wait to find the right customer even though people have a chance to try before they buy. I hate eBay at this point; fees have skyrocketed. But at least they've improved the payment part. The main takeaway is that Gear Exchange buyers tend to be the opposite of horse traders, which makes it hard to get your best value without alienating a lot of people, or to even find a compromise price you can live with. Maybe this will change over time, as more people become familiar with the site, but right now it is a lot like this forum, where almost no one is willing to make an offer on anything. The other thing is that it only makes sense to post local-only with no shipping, for anything weighing more than 2-4 lbs, due to the astronomical cost of shipping these days. Even my harmonica case is local-only as the eight pound case, which is about the size of a small briefcase, would cost $45 to $65 to send, depending on USPS vs. UPS. Paying is smooth at Gear Exchange and it is really easy for the seller to complete the deal confidently and get discounted pre-paid shipping tags. It's just that it's too late to adjust the price at that point. It takes a lot of time (hours usually) to research the likely range of shipping costs and then to decide on a mid-way "average". Maybe there's a feature I haven't found yet, that allows shipping to be determined at checkout time. To me, that is the single biggest flaw of Gear Exchange.

Interestingly, I dispensed with all my keyboard pedals a few years ago. I ended up deciding that I prefer the flexibility of doing it on an aux bus in the mix. I also didn't like being pushed into mono by most of the pedals that I actually liked. I do use expression pedals, but it can be a bit frustrating that not all keyboards pass through that signal when recording MIDI. I sometimes tweak a sound or switch it later, but like the performance and want to preserve those playing nuances, as long as they still apply well to the revised or new sound (not always the case; record a new take then). On my Hammond XK-4, I have the half-moon switch. I like its revised Leslie effect and other built-in effects way better than previous models, so I suspect I won't bother buying an outboard Leslie effect at this time. Maybe eventually an actual rotary speaker. Back in the day though, I was using Moogerfooger Delay, Small Stone Phaser (EHX), and Memory Man Deluxe (EHX). Not as much as I expected though, as I had Sequential/DSI and Oberheim synths at the time, and ended up using the built-in effects patching due to matrix mod possibilities. I think if I owned an actual Clavinet or Rhodes, or even a Wurly, things might be different, but some of those keyboards also have super low output levels and may not do a good job of driving modern pedals.