Category Archives: Music Gear

Friday Faves: Contests and Kickstarter Projects I Like

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Here’s another roundup of projects I’m supporting and contests I’m entering:

Kickstarter:

Do you look through the Mens and Boys clothing sections hoping to find items that vaguely fit your female figure? Get custom-fit shirts, vests, and blazers from this project:

 

Get some cool cigar box instruments:

 

Turn your iPod touch into a wifi hotspot with 500MB of free data per month (check their coverage map first to see if you are in it):

 

Still time to get a Ninja Standing Desk!

 

Contests:

Enter Engadget’s back to school givaway to win a bag full of electronic goodies – comment daily on each new post that appears at noon ET (see linked page for links to each post when they are live) through August.

Win a violin, bow, case, strings and accessories from D’Addario – enter once daily now through October 1st.

The Korg MicroKorg giveaway is still running through December – enter once daily.

Some Things to Know When Changing Acoustic Guitar Strings

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I recently bought a used acoustic bass guitar. The strings on it were fine, but I wanted a different kind (flat-wound, coated, recommended as better for an acoustic). They duly arrived, and last weekend I decided to change to them.

I had never previously changed guitar strings, but had seen it done before (Pete in The Gobshites used to go through several a night at a 3-set gig). I looked at a few instruction pages on the web and it seemed pretty straightforward. I began by loosening the E string, removing it from the tuning machine, and…

could not get the corresponding bridge peg to come out!

I wrestled with it, looked up more info, found someone who had had the problem with my bass model, tried what they were told – loosen the next string in order to put a hand into the guitar and push the peg from underneath… still not going anywhere. Finally got it out with Joann pushing it from below while I worked on levering it carefully with a wrench. Did that again for the A string next to it. While I might have had better leverage if I’d had a string winder with a peg puller, these bass pegs were a lot thicker than 6-string guitar pegs, and I’d read that it may not have fit.

I moved on to putting on the new E string, but now the peg kept popping up as I tuned it up :-(

I went back to the web (I had shut down everything while a thunderstorm came through) and found a very helpful video, in which at 1:30 the presenter describes the correct way to mount the string with the bridge peg – basically put the string’s ball end into the hole, put the peg in loosely, then pull up on the string so that the ball is not under the end of the peg, but higher up on the side of the peg. The peg then keeps the ball from being able to exit the hole both are in, but the string ball is not pulling up on the peg itself.

And then my mind reversed this information: to remove the peg, I should not be trying to pull up the string… I should try to push the string down so that the peg is not running up against the ball as I try to pull it up!

Once I had this epiphany I was able to remove the remaining two strings’ pegs by myself with little difficulty!

Perhaps there are instructions somewhere that detail this trick, but none of the ones I found gave any time to removing the old strings – though I suspect that this is not as much of an issue for regular guitars, whose strings and pegs are both much thinner than those of my acoustic bass guitar.

 

What Do Others Think About that Guitar/Amp/etc?

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Many online music stores (as well as Amazon) include user reviews of gear they sell, and that’s certainly a place to start when you are considering a purchase. But also visit this one-stop site containing years of reviews, especially if you are considering buying a used item that is no longer sold new:

http://www.harmonycentral.com/user-reviews

Since the review format is uniform and detailed, you may get more information than the frequent Amazon “I bought it 3 weeks ago – it’s awesome!”

Also see my post about determining a fair price for used gear if you missed it.

Hearing Protection For Musicians

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Whether you play in a rock band or an orchestra  (e.g., viola section in front of the timpani, woodwinds in front of the brass, etc), you NEED to protect your hearing.

The cheap foam earplugs many bars will sell you for a buck are better than nothing, but you will rightly complain that you cannot really hear music properly through them – it’s all muffled with lots of frequency loss.

Which it why it’s best to plan ahead and obtain “musicians’ earplugs” which are designed to filter sound evenly over the entire spectrum, low to high – protecting your ears from damaging sound levels while still allowing you to enjoy all elements of the performance.

Depending on your budget, musicians’ earplugs are available from around $10 for a basic model to $150+ for a custom fitted set.

Alison Brill & Alison Murray, who I met at Ladies Rock Camp, recommend these custom plugs. They say:

Best investment I’ve ever made, seriously. They allow you to hear accurately while protecting you from damaging sounds. They’re $150 and you can get them at Brookline Hearing Services, or from most audiologists. Keep rockin’ (safely)!

And if you are not up for that cost at the moment, I recommend Alpine Musicsafe earplugs – not custom, but they do a good job, are comfortable, and have 2 different interchangeable filters depending on how loud your environment is. These go for about $22 ($28 if you want a choice of 3 filter levels).

There are more choices in the $8-$20 range here. Frankly, the best earplugs are the ones you have with you everywhere – if you suddenly find yourself in an uncomfortably loud movie theater or other event, are you really going to run back out to your car for them?! Most models come with a case that fits on your keychain. In addition to my “good” pair on my keys, I also have a $10 pair on EVERY instrument case, and a spare set in my car in case my partner forgets hers.

My father had 80% hearing loss by the time he was 80, due to firing anti-aircraft guns during WWII with only cotton stuffed into his ears – don’t be that cranky old guy/gal!