Not only is the guitar amp faulty, but one of the key components of PowerBook Studio broke down recently. This means that there is NO recording taking place until either a replacement can be purchased or the current device being repaired.

I have to admit that I’m at a bit of a loss of what to do, butI am determined to deal with this in a calm manner and maybe even to see what positive learnings there are to be had from this experience. Anyway. If anyone knows where there is an Apogee Mini Me for sale, please get in touch via the contact page. That would be very positive and I would be very grateful!

I am having a mini ordeal with my latest guitar amplifier: The Princeton Recording Amp. It sounds great, but it has a fault, which renders it pretty much useless most of the time. The sound keeps cutting out and it has been back to Fender for a repair, which has not fixed the fault.

It is a known fault, but alas, so far has not been remedied by the Fender technicians. I will persevere with them until this is fixed however because I want this amp working and I want to keep it too. I was so looking forward to getting this thing back working this week, so I could begin recording and filming for an Electric Guitar special podcast, which would form episode 1 of the PowerBook Producer’s Studiocast.

Seeing as the that will be delayed further now, I’ll try and describe breifly what it will contain.
3 different amplifiers, same guitar and various ways of getting great sounds from them onto tape (well file!). I spend a lot of time fine-tuning things to record great guitar sounds and use a variety of methods to suit also including standard mic’ing and speaker-emulated DI’ing too. Anything from clean sounds to overdriven and my main tip, which is not being tempted to use any distortion pedals, well any pedals for that matter throught the amp. Cleaner, more natural sounds always end up sounding bigger when recorded, especially when there a number of guitar tracks all vying for space to be heard in the mix.

Still if you want to have something to read that is updated more regularly then you could do a lot worse than to pop over to The Weekly Songcast. I’m hoping I can get to work on Studiocast episode 1 in the next couple of weeks.

Please be patient all you would be guitar Gods!

I am planning to produce some articles and audio/video presentations on the applications of this amp for recording great guitar. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, which I want to share in order to help any recording guitarists out there who are finding it frustratingly difficult to capture the sound of their electric guitar.

It is quite a common complaint, especially with home-recording musicians that the guitar sounds they end up with on their recordings sound so small compared to the way their guitar and amp sound when they are playing.

What area of guitar recording are you having trouble with? I would love to hear your requests for what solutions you would like to see provided here by The PowerBook Producer. I am determined to find the answers for you, seeing as I have solved pretty much all of my guitar recording problems myself.

Allow me to help shed some light on this and get you on the road to sounding like a true guitar hero should sound!

I hope you will stick around and become a familiar "face" in this musical corner of cyberspace.