wax&wires

Facelift is a removable and reusable guitar body overlay, allowing you to alter the cosmetics of your guitar on the cheap and in a jiffy. You can also quickly remove the decal if you don’t like it, and store it away for later use.
I’m surprised it took somebody so long to develop this idea. We’ve [...]

Now that we’ve posted a video on MOTU’s BPM, it’s only fair that we post the other most talked about groove box from NAMM 09, Native Instruments’ Maschine.

Though I’m not sure how useful the “step squencer” mode would be with just 4 pads and 4 tracks per bank, the ease of use for hooking it [...]

Here’s a quick overview video of the new MOTU BPM (Beat Production Machine) released at NAMM 09.

PRS has partnered with Doug Sewell to develop its first ever line of amplifiers.
Here’s a quote from Paul Smith himself:
“I met Doug Sewell at the Dallas International Guitar Show several years ago and needed an amp for that evening’s performance, so I borrowed one of his and was floored. We started working on this series [...]

Fender has a couple new offerings at this year’s NAMM, but nothing that’s really blowing me away. They all look to be basically DSP added to their timeless classics. I’m not that big a fan of effects processing built into amps. I think most guitar players right now, myself included, just want a great tone, [...]

MuteMath was on Leno last night with quite a few additional musicians, and down one trademark instrument. Paul’s keytar, the instrument that No Doubt tried to, and Mute Math did, make hip. Now you don’t have to hunt down a used Yamaha SHS-10 or Roland AX-7 on ebay to bring the funk.
At NAMM yesterday, Roland [...]

M-Audio released 25, 49, and 61 key Axiom Pros today that look very similar to the Novation controllers. So what’s the difference in your standard Axiom and the pro model?
1) It looks better. Check it out in the picture above. It’s much sleeker than the old clunky Axiom.2) Semi-weighted “TruTouch” keybed. I think TruTouch is [...]

From Ableton.com:
The APC40 (Ableton Performance Controller) is a dedicated controller for Ableton Live, designed by the same engineering team responsible for Akai’s iconic MPC range of products. This is a dream come true for the Ableton Live community and an exciting first step into the world of Ableton Live for new users.

The APC40 features high [...]

I’m excited!
So I’m still on Live 6 since I didn’t see anything in Live 7 that made me want to make the jump. Live 8 has wooed me over, and the update definitely earns the version change from 7 to 8.
There are far too many features for me to write an in depth take on [...]

This is such a simple idea, but will go a long way. It’s always been tough to mic cajons well. You want to capture the boom of the bass, but the high end of the slap, often pushing you to use two mics on such a small instrument.
Tycoon Percussion hopes to help you ditch some [...]

I’ve been waiting for this one. Back when I had a G5 tower, it was no sweat to find DSP cards to offload the processing of really solid plug-ins onto a card instead of the host CPU. While there have been products that tried to so similar things on laptops through firewire units and such, [...]

Quantum Leap has introduced the “Silk – Masters of the Silk Road” collection at NAMM 2009. Silk includes 25 GB of samples from Persian, Indian, and Chinese instruments, all housed within EastWest’s Play 64-bit sample engine.
Here’s the official release:
All instruments featured in SILK are multi-sampled with extreme attention to detail offering the maximum in expression. [...]

A month or so back, we had a post about Melodyne Direct Note Access (DNA). Celemony has just announced Melodyne Editor, which will be the first product to feature DNA. It’s expected to be released this Spring, and most of us have been waiting for it for the better part of a year now.
It looks [...]

We’re going to spend the next few days blasting through new releases from NAMM 2009, down here in Southern California. Stay tuned to the “wires” channel to keep up to date!
Our first good find is that VOX will be reissuing the AC4 amplifier. Back when I was looking for a small tube amp to use [...]