Man, how did this band get to play on the Grammys? There's a reason there are only two members - the drummer can't keep a beat. I'm sure every other musician they've ever tried to recruit has left in frustration. Jack White sings like a banshee while making his guitar sound like it's being whacked with a dead fish. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Stop it. That really hurts! Please, God, make the White Stripes go away...
While watching The Science of Rock and Roll on Discovery Channel (Canada) the narrator highlighted the guitarist's self-tuning guitar. A few Google-seconds later, here's the link to the actual product. Cool. Apparently you can switch tunings in 1.4 seconds.
A small computer mounted inside the self tuning guitar controls motors that are linked to each string. The bridge and tailpiece are replaced by the self tuning system, allowing your imagination to run wild. At the touch of a button or footswitch, motors are activated to adjust the tension of each string.
Customers include Eddie Van Halen, and Paul Allen - yes, the Paul Allen who started Microsoft with Bill Gates.
I was doing my usual Music Stop (St. John's) visit on Saturday and spotted a great deal on an Audio Technica ATW-R73 receiver and R73 transmitter pack. They had recently upgraded all their rental wireless units and were selling off the used rental gear. I had my old Audio Technica wireless unit stolen over a year ago and had been reimbursed the cost of the unit, but hadn't yet replaced it. So I picked up two of these for $199.00 CAD each.
They supplied the rack kit and the joiner plate, but no screws for attaching them. After checking at Canadian Tire and Kent for a suitable set of screws (which I knew would be a long shot) I remembered that I had an old Yamaha cassette deck in my basement that I was using for soldering practice (don't ask). I figured it might have some suitable screws that I could scavenge. Bingo!
Anyway, today I bought an SKB Roto Rack 4U rackmount case, mounted the two wireless units and transferred my Behringer Composer Pro MDX2200 compressor to it. Now I have two wireless and two compressor channels ready to roll with the rest of my guitar gear.
All I need now is that Line6 POD Pro rackmount on my wishlist to fill up the remaining 2U spaces.
