Guthrie Govan Discussion :: View topic - My Vastly Improved New iPad Guitar Rig
Help support this site by shopping at Amazon through our link.
Guthrie Govan Discussion Forum Index

Guthrie Govan Discussion
The Official Guthrie Govan Discussion Board

www.GuthrieGovan.co.uk

 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

 

 
My Vastly Improved New iPad Guitar Rig

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Guthrie Govan Discussion Forum Index -> Guthrie Tones and Gear
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 2783
Location: Chino, CA

PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 5:32 am    Post subject: My Vastly Improved New iPad Guitar Rig Reply with quote

Well, the certified Apple junkie that I am, I recently acquired the new iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina Display - which are all great for my work at GC, BOING Music management work, my own consulting business, teaching work and all kinds of personal endeavors (mainly reading books and magazines as well as web browsing and writing journals). While I was browsing the App Store, I ran into these guitar apps called BIAS and JamUp Pro from a company called Positive Grid. I was intrigued and did some research on the web and decided they'll be worth investigating. It really isn't much money ($20 each) in the grand scheme of things.

http://www.positivegrid.com

I already had Agile Partners' AmpKit+ (which Guthrie had recommended to me amongst a bunch that he had tried) and I thought it was good for what it is but I always felt that things could be better. So I downloaded the apps and started going through the presets and messing with the interface. I was immediately taken aback by the quality of the sounds and the awesome interface, which is by far the best I've ever experienced on an iOS device or any sort of guitar app on a computing device.

What has really hooked me is the overall feel, which is a difficult thing to quantify but something you know right away. I've owned and tried many dozens of boutique tube amps over the years and always believed that the feel is at least half of the overall quotient. It is also what kept me away from digital modelers over all these years although I was an enthusiastic early proponent of the modeler/simulator technology back in the 90's. I can actually play this iPad/PG apps rig for hours on end and have fun with it - just like I do with the Axe-Fx II/Atomic CLR rig. And for late night bedroom or hotel room playing at low volume levels, this iPad rig is so insanely good. And, of course, you can get it as loud as you need depending on what you have it hooked up to.

Here are some pics of my new iPad rig (I also have the 1 pound Bose Mini SoundLink that I'll take on business trips), which includes the AirTurn BT-105 Bluetooth pedalboard that can change presets, control the sampler/looper, and do all kinds of other stuff. Pretty amazing. Honestly, I was starting to miss the easy controls of the tube amps and pedals because I don't care for the deep editing functions and the absurd amounts of tweakable parameters on the Axe-Fx II, but these Positive Grid apps have made me totally satisfied with staying all digital.

At this point in my life, there's no way I'm going the route of a tube amp, cabinet and pedals and a gaggle of cables again. Been there, done that and I can actually have a lot more fun with this super compact, portable and light rig. The JamUp Pro app even has the Jam feature to load and play along with your iTunes library (including slowing down the tracks), a sampler/looper, and an 8-track recorder. I've been using the sampler/looper feature the most as I can save the loops and even load them into the iTunes library.

I've started messing with the BIAS app and it's really nice. The interface is what makes it so easy to understand and fun to program. It's laid out in a way that us guitar players are totally comfortable and familiar with. I'm absolutely convinced that this is the future of guitar amplification. The smartphones and tablets will get more and more powerful every year. The software algorithms of these modeling and sim apps will also get increasingly more complex to take advantage of the ever-increasing processing power. I simply don't miss using tube amps anymore.

I see more and more pros using strictly digital rigs and many of them are players and artists who could use tube amps if they wanted to and have roadies load and unload the rigs during tours. I'm quite certain that Guthrie would be happy to use an all-digital rig in many cases (and he has used the NI GuitarRig on his MacBook for the live Young Punx gigs in the past) but, for now, he's going to stick with what he is familiar with and what has proven to be reliable and easy to work with. I would too. Right now, a digital rig would pose way more questions and challenges than a simple amp/cab/pedalboard rig.

For me, these Positive Grid apps are undoubtedly the best value guitar gear purchases I've ever made. For around $50~90 (if you include the In-App purchases of more amp and pedal sim packages), you get a rig that would have costed way over 5 figures back in the 80's and 90's. For me, it's like the Axe-Fx II/Atomic CLR rig inside an iPad/iPhone that I can take anywhere. All the bells and whistles are cool but what matters is the sound and the feel. I can honestly say that I just don't miss tube amps anymore and that only happened over the past year or so. I finally feel that the technology has indeed arrived to get the sound and the feel that guitar players need and are used to. It's a great time to be alive and witness this technological revolution. Kids these days take it for granted and can't appreciate it but I'm truly grateful to have seen the progress and how far it has come along. I look forward to even more breakneck progress in the years ahead. Very Happy

The new iPad Air guitar rig:



The weight of this entire rig is easily under 5 pounds and could also be battery-powered for 8+ hours.



Components of the rig: iPad Air Wi-Fi 64GB, Apogee Jam interface, JDS Labs O2 Headphone Amp/DAC (not necessary but helpful "midamp" between the iPad and the Bose SoundLink stereo speaker), Evidence Audio Reveal instrument cable, iSimple 3.5mm interconnect stereo cables, Red Bear Big Jazzer Heavy picks, and for the super cool icing on the cake: AirTurn BT-105 Bluetooth pedalboard.



Positive Grid's JamUp Pro XT app is super intuitive, extremely easy to use, flexible, and much more powerful than meets the eye. You can change the order of the signal chain by dragging around the effects and turn them on and off by dragging them in and out of the signal chain.

You can choose from dozens of amps or effects sims by pressing down on each effect category for a few seconds and you see all the options pop up. You can tap on an amp or an effect to have its control panel pop up and tweak accordingly. Once you figure out how it works, it's easier to manipulate than going back and forth between a real amp and a real pedalboard.

Here is a shot of the delay/echo effect (a vintage Echoplex sim) chosen for editing:



Here is the panel of the overdrive (a TS-808 Tube Screamer sim) in front of the amp. There is well over a dozen other well-known overdrive/fuzz/distortion/boost/compressor stomp pedal sims to choose from.



Now, the digital reverb setting:



You can save up to 128 presets. Modifying and saving presets is the easier than anything you'd find in typical rack mount processors or modelers with little display windows.



A photo of my new iPad mini with Retina Display in another room with the Bose SoundLink speaker in simpler battery-only setup. This shows the JamUp Pro's sampler/looper mode where I've recorded and saved a bunch of chord progression loops to jam over. Really cool and hours of fun...


_________________
Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.


Last edited by alexkhan on Mon Dec 23, 2013 1:24 am; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 2783
Location: Chino, CA

PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 2:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Things get really fun when you start integrating different apps together and use each app's strength to its fullest and actually start recording musical ideas. I've never cared for the amp sims in Garage Band so I got the Audiobus app to use Positive Grid's JamUp Pro XT app at the front end. JamUp Pro XT doesn't have true stereo effects (not yet, anyway), so I got the AUFX:DUB (delay and echo) and the AUFX:SPACE (reverb) apps to place that behind the JamUp Pro XT and before Garage Band, which is used for playing along with the Apple Loops and recording some stuff for the fun of it.

It really is amazing to think that you're getting so much power, functionality and high quality sounds and features out of such a small rig: dozens of very high quality amps, effects, and speakers/cabinets sims, audio routers, instant access to your entire iTunes music library to play along to, samplers & loopers, and multi-track recording with built-in mixers, loops and dozens of more instruments. Now when I go on business trips or vacations, I just bring a guitar, a cord, and the Apogee JAM interface with the iDevices and a Bose mini speaker that I'll take along anyway and it's like having an entire rack system and a studio with me wherever I go.

Now someone like Guthrie takes an Axe-FX II with him on a big tour with Steven Wilson and he can set it up with his MacBook/Logic/Apogee ONE rig in the hotel room and record guest solos and do other serious studio work when he has some downtime. This iPad rig (JamUp Pro XT/BIAS, Audiobus, Garage Band, Apogee JAM) would be a scaled-down (and much less costly) version of something like that and it works and sounds great. I'm certainly not a pro like Guthrie but I'm a serious guitar geek and this rig is just so awesome because it really has so many great sounds and features in such a tiny portable package. Seriously, I could not even imagine something like this even a few years ago. I figured the stuff will get better but I'm quite flabbergasted by how quickly it has all come along.

I've been turning my guitar friends onto this and they're totally blown away as well. They've all played guitar sim apps here and there before but they're now like, "Wow. I could actually play this for hours on end and not miss the tube amps. The feel is there." I just loaded the apps into my son's iPad 2 and he loves it. It doesn't matter that he hasn't played real tube amps before. I have an old Vox Valvetronix modeling combo and this little rig sounds and feels so much better. I really don't see the point of low-end beginner's amps anymore. Kids all have an iDevice of some sort now. Just get 'em some apps like these and be done with it. They're way cheaper, way more flexible, and they don't take up any space, which is always the issue with guitar gear; they're just so bulky and heavy.

I can honestly say that I'm having much more fun playing this stuff now than plugging into expensive tube boutique gear in a corner of a bedroom. If I was gigging professionally then, yeah, I'd probably want a real tube amp rig to use as my main rig and use the digital stuff as complementary tools - just like Guthrie does. But I can now playing along with my music library, loops, and pre-recorded tracks with the minimal amount of hassle (and cost) with everything coming out of one speaker or through the headphones with my guitar sound sitting nicely in the mix. It's like having what used to be $50~100K worth of gear compressed into $100-or-less since one would have an iDevice and a guitar already anyway. Now I can think about music - like what scales will work better through certain changes - instead of thinking about trying some NOS tubes, configuring the order of the pedals, or changing the speakers in a cabinet, etc.

I've come to see what a colossal waste of time and money gear fetish is. Yes, good gear is nice but it just isn't necessary. I think too many musicians (both pros and hobbyists alike) just go on an endless tail-chasing endeavor when it comes to gear. I can have just as much fun with an import $500 guitar as a boutique $3000 guitar. I'd probably want to put in better pickups on the import and get a decent fret job done by a guitar tech I trust (which is what I'm using now until the Charvel GG Sig becomes available!), but I've come to see that the differences are minute and, ultimately, just not that important for having fun and in producing great sounds. The sound is still in your hands.

The greatest sounds of music history weren't produced by boutique or Custom Shop level instruments or Stradivarius violins or six-figure Steinway pianos. They were produced by the greatest musicians. Let's look at what Jimi Hendrix used during his day. The entire rig could probably be mass-produced for less than $500 these days overseas and Jimi would sound just as amazing with it. But a replica of such a rig from the famous name brand companies would cost a lot more since they'll want to use expensive labor, spend a lot more time on them, and mark it up handsomely to take advantage of the association. That's just how business works. Which is fine. But I just no longer see the value in things like that - especially after spending a good amount of time with this iPad rig. Now I'm going to get back to playing. Cool

Here are some photos of the rig again with the apps because the software really is such a big part of it now.



A snapshot of the Audiobus app that strings together the Positive Grid JamUp Pro XT amp/processor rig app, the AUFX:DUB delay/echo app, and Garage Band for recording tracks and playing with loops.


The BIAS app can be accessed from Garage Band to replace the less-than-satisfactory amp sims in the Apple app. The sound and the feel of the BIAS apps are spot on depending on the amp flavors you like.


The AUFX:DUB is great for fine control of the delay that the JamUp Pro XT doesn't provide. For one, it's stereo. This is a great little app (along with AUFX:SPACE for reverb) that can be used in a variety of ways.


Finally, I start laying down the tracks and the loops in Garage Band to jam along or record some ideas to listen back and realize how much more practicing I need to do. Laughing
_________________
Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 2783
Location: Chino, CA

PostPosted: Sat Dec 14, 2013 2:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Greetings from a rather fancy hotel in Guangzhou, China as I'm in midst of another exciting business trip to Asia. Heading out to Jakarta, Indonesia in several hours and am hoping to run into Guthrie there who's there on a clinic tour.

I think a trip like this really highlights how cool this iPad guitar rig is. I'll typically borrow a decent usable guitar from the factory I'm visiting for jamming and practicing in the hotel rooms.

I recently purchased the Bose SoundLink Mini speaker for my frequent trips to Asia and it has worked out as perfectly as I could have hoped for. It's about 1.5 pounds, lasts 8+ hours on battery power, is Bluetooth for use with the iPhone but also has an Aux input for use with the iPad guitar rig or my iPod Classic and headphone amp for listening to my iTunes library in the Apple Lossless format.

The sound of the Bose Mini is superb for a speaker its size and fills the large hotel room without any problem at all. So whether it's for listening to my iTunes library or playing the guitar through the iPads, it puts out plenty of volume and with great sound. Just amazing how far technology has come along and how I can enjoy great guitar sounds during my travels.

Here are some photos of my hotel room in China:











The Mini Rig - iPad mini with Retina display and the Bose SoundLink Mini (super compact with 8+ hour battery power and a virtual warehouse full of amps, effects and recording devices)

It seems like a lot of little gear to lug around but the stuff is so compact, light and easy to set up that I can't imagine traveling with out these gadgets anymore. I travel quite light with one backpack weighing about 7 pounds (MBA, iPad Air, and some paper stuff) and a checked luggage that's about 35 pounds for 3-week trips. And the guitar rig is a tiny portion of that. The modern guitar rig has really come a long way. Very Happy
_________________
Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 2783
Location: Chino, CA

PostPosted: Sat Dec 21, 2013 8:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm back home for the holidays after an amazing trip to Jakarta, Indonesia spending time at one of the largest musical instruments factories in the world: PT Samick - a Korean-managed company. Being that I'm of Korean descent (lived 11 of my first 16 years there) and that I speak very fluent Korean (almost as fluent as English), it's really great for me to work with Korean companies and staff members.

Most of the guitar and MI manufacturing companies in Indonesia are Korean-managed with the notable exception of Yamaha which is, of course, Japanese-managed. The largest guitar factory in the world is PT Cort in Surabaya, a factory I worked with closely in the late-90's during my days at Fender and a company I still have a close relationship with. Here is a video tour of the PT Cort factory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se4XIpmCHMQ

PT Samick is quite impressive as well with over one million square feet of manufacturing space to produce 45,000 guitars and 2,500 pianos per month. Here are some photos of the massive PT Samick factory:

These first photos are of the wood-working section of the factory.







Sides of acoustic guitars getting joined:



With the sides joined, the bodies get prepped and now await tops and backs with braces installed to become a whole body:



Some of the higher-end models produced here actually get the Plek Pro process:



Final assembly at the electric guitar line:



Here is the final setup and cleaning/polishing section:



Grand pianos at the final assembly. PT Samick puts out around 250 grand pianos per month. You look at all the parts going into a grand piano, it certainly does make a guitar seem like a little toy in comparison...





I can honestly say that some of the higher-end guitars (both acoustic and electric) being produced at factories in both China and Indonesia are world-class instruments that are amongst the best produced in the world and at a far better value. They still have a long way to go to achieve the consistency at such massive volume levels but that's why I'm going over there: to help them achieve that consistency. The key is helping the engineers, the key production managers, and the QC staff to understand why guitars are built as they are.

Now it's time for them to understand what makes a good sounding, feeling, and playing guitars - qualities that aren't readily measurable with rulers and gauges or inspection lights, etc. Getting the specs right and lowering the defect rates to below 3% is a given these days. It's not good enough anymore in today's fiercely competitive guitar market (basically, way too much production capacity compared to demand - from the super low-end to the ultra high-end) to just get the nut heights right with no blemishes on the finish.

The guitars have to sound good, feel good, and play good - not just be merely "acceptable" for their respective price points. And that's what I'm hammering into these factories and staff members - helping them understand why and how and what can be done to keep improving their products to reach world-class levels at very affordable prices. All my experience of 22+ years in this industry is now going into this endeavor.

It's a long-term goal and it'll take years but I've worked with the biggest and the best and have learned a lot. There's no doubt in my mind that in can be done through good communications and collective efforts by all involved. Things are already progressing at a very fast pace now. The quality improvements I've observed just over the past few years have been staggering.

Some of the factories are actually starting to get it in terms of what makes a really good guitar. Now I have to work with them on achieving it. Only a relatively few factories will be able to do it and I'll only work with those types of factories. Of course, the great majority will never get it. Culturally, the guitar is just too distant to them. But there are people there - whether they're craftsmen, sales managers, engineers or QC inspectors - who really love the guitar and have a passion for it. Ultimately, those are the types I want to work with and the ones who get it and will eventually succeed - because they love the guitar and have a willingness to learn.

This is amazingly fun work. I've done quite a few fun things in the past over my career in this industry but this is, without doubt and by far, the best and most enjoyable gig I've ever had. Although my supply chain, sourcing, operations, and QC experience at Fender for over a decade is the obviously applicable discipline for what I'm doing now, I feel that the decade in the boutique sector doing sales, marketing, artist relations, and customer services work has helped me understand the market in a way that I never could have otherwise. And managing the Aristocrats, going on international tours, running the band's record label business, and working closely with Guthrie have brought another dimension to my understanding of the industry. Now, I'm putting all that experience and knowledge into a blender and will start forming and creating new stuff in the future. I can't even imagine a better or cooler job. Very Happy

Another thing I showed them was this iPad rig and it literally had their jaws on the floor. Laughing They just couldn't believe how good it sounded. I grabbed an Epiphone Les Paul from the factory floor or a showroom and it sounded great. And when I played along with songs or backing tracks in the iTunes library or prerecorded loops in the JamUp Pro app, they were shaking their heads in disbelief - all that sound coming from an iPad and a battery-powered 1.5 pound speaker. That was really fun.

And it certainly helps that I can come back into a hotel room like this at the end of a long workday on the factory floors and getting wined and dined late into the night by the management members. This hotel in downtown Jakarta called the Keraton was absolutely amazing. Jakarta has come a long way since I started coming here in the late-90's. Still a very long way to go but that's the fun of it: watching something grow and doing what little I can to make it keep growing - at least when it comes to building better guitars. Taking something small or still in its early stages and building it up into something bigger and better is what I like to do and what I have always done over my career. Now is the ultimate challenge at the largest M.I. company in the world working with the largest manufacturers in the world. Everything is just way bigger and better. Very Happy













On a rare off-day, I was able to check out this amazing indoor pool facility within the hotel. It was in the early evening and I was the only one there. I brought my waterproofed iPod Shuffle and headphones attached to my goggles just for an occasion like this and it was super cool - the best swim I've ever had. It has glass walls around half of the pool and the floor has little light-reflecting stones, which made it seem like I was swimming over the stars, so to speak. Listening to some New Age, ambient electronica, and classical music while swimming in this pool was a totally intoxicating experience. I just didn't want to get out and ended up swimming for well over an hour. At the end, I sat in a corner, looked over the pool and the interior and thought, "Ah, so this is what the decadent Roman emperors enjoyed in their heydays..." Laughing







A view of a section of downtown Jakarta from another hotel:



"My ride home" pulling into the gate before the departure from Guangzhou to LAX. The A380 is an amazing plane to ride. It's what I've ridden for flights home from Seoul and I seek it out all the time for long-distance flights now. It's much smoother and much quieter than any other plane. Very often, it will feel like the plane is standing still on the ground.



BTW, couldn't hook up with Guthrie in Indonesia. Our schedules just didn't match up for us to get together. Seems Guthrie really enjoyed Indonesia as well. Smile

I'm going to get this Traveler guitar model for my future trips. I got the piezo acoustic version just for kicks and it plays great but I realize I need the regular electric version now. My next trip in the spring will be a 4~5 week marathon so I could definitely use this - 3 pounds total and no hassles whatsoever at the airport.



Well, one thing I wouldn't do again on a future trip is eat at this type of restaurant in China. Guess what kind of meat they specialize here. It's supposed to be a delicacy and is considered better than beef but I'll remember to stay with tried-and-true fish in the future. I'm a fairly adventurous eater but this one was a little too much. Couldn't really get out of it but next time, I'll just have to say "No." Wink


_________________
Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.


Last edited by alexkhan on Thu Dec 26, 2013 12:46 am; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 2783
Location: Chino, CA

PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 11:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A very nice demo of the BIAS app:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDe6wmJc-RM
_________________
Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Guthrie Govan Discussion Forum Index -> Guthrie Tones and Gear All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum



Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group