Gear Reviews - Page 3

Ruppert Musical Instruments dubs their Basswitch IQ DI the “Swiss Army Knife for Bass Players”, and I have to agree. The device is just now available in the U.S. The device indeed is many things in one: A/B box: Allows you to have to instruments plugged in for fast switching on stage Clean Boost: Engage the EQ with a separate...

Finland-based Darkglass Electronics, a company focused on bass effects and boasts handmade pedals, is the brainchild of Chilean-born Douglas Castro. Castro started the venture to create effects and tones that he heard in his head but couldn’t get with other pedals. The company’s flagship is their Microtubes B3K Bass Overdrive, a compact pedal featuring hybrid JFET and CMOS gain stages....

If there’s one thing about playing I’ve always had trouble with, it’s going through strings. My hands sweat. A lot. And sweat really breaks down strings, especially in places where the humidity can be really bad (such as the Midwest, where I live). I’ve played every brand and type of string: coated, uncoated, steel, nickel… the whole spectrum, and I’ve...

The Green Rhino MkII, by Way Huge Electronics made its debut at the NAMM Show in January, and I recently took it for a test spin. Way Huge was making pedals back in the 1990’s and sort of fell off the radar for a while. Dunlop now manufactures this new series, and one of the most popular requests for a...

The EP2 Envelope Phaser is a rework of the Pigtronix’s flagship EP1, which they released six years ago. Though similar in concept, the new model really expands on its sonic capabilities and controls. The pedal, which features true bypass, is a phase shifter that is controlled by an Envelope (EF) or a LFO, giving you either that funky filter based...

Technology is a beautiful thing, and TC Electronic’s RH450 head unit is just another reminder of how sweet it can be. The amp is a solid-state head with a built in multi-band compressor, semi parametric EQ, and tube simulator. It features 450 Watts with a switchmode power supply and Class D power amp. With a handful of cool studio-quality features...

“Small. Under-powered. Lackluster tone.” These words come to mind when one thinks of a bass combo amp. We’re pre-programmed to assume this as most combo amps are all those things because most combos are beginner amps. TC Electronics’ has set-out to destroy the old combo amp negative connotations with its new BG500. The BG 500 bass combo amp comes in...

Until recently, due to limited budget, I’ve been using the free software looping solution, Mobius. A couple of weeks ago I came across the Boss RC-20XL Phrase Recorder in my local music store. It is the relatively inexpensive (approx. $250) two-pedal ‘middle sibling’ of the Loop Station family; the smaller unit being the one-pedal RC-2 and the much larger unit...