'Horrah for shiny new musical toys!'

By Katie Marie, on Friday, September 30, 2011

Photo taken by Lisa (Indigo Blue Photography) and edited by Sandra (Soul Photography)

Katie Marie: busy with a new musical toy

It’s been one busy week and I’m properly plum tuckered out. But all this surprise sunshine made it a whole lot better!

That combined with a shiny new musical toy to play with (horrah for shiny new musical toys!)

So here’s what the postman dropped through my letterbox:

It’s an LR Baggs Venue DI. I’ve not really tried any LR Baggs stuff before so was looking forward to seeing how it would (hopefully) improve my sound.

Off I trotted to my little studio to give it a test run using Tara (my Takamine TAN16c acoustic). As soon as I got it out the box it just oozed quality. The casing and the dials are lovely and sturdy and I was hoping it wasn’t just going to be a pretty face.

First off, I recorded me playing Tara without the DI so I had something to compare it to. I knew it would effect my sound in some way, but I really didn’t have any idea what an enormous amount of difference it would make… after all it’s just a fancy DI box right? Erm, wrong. I couldn’t believe the difference this little box made. Straight away I could hear the overall sound was more defined and it really latched onto my guitar tone and pushed all the nasties right out the way.

The DI has a 5 band EQ and I curious to see how much of a sweep each of the dials would have. Not only were they very effective in their application, but I was already looking forward to being able to EQ my own guitar sound at venues (yay!).

There’s other cool little features, the best one being a notch filter. Put your hand up if you’ve ever been at a gig where you guitar keeps feeding back for some unknown reason or when you try and get some volume it starts humming (**Katie puts her hand up**). Well the notch filter is basically like a feedback eliminator and works extremely well without you having to cut out that troublesome frequency. I made Tara feedback in my studio and the notch filter was on it straight away. Very cool.

The chromatic tuner takes a little bit of getting use to but it’s efficient and stupidly bright, which is perfect when you’re tuning up on stage mid gig!

There’s oodles of other nice little features like a battery lever checker, an input meter, a boost button, a mute switch and lots more.

I’ve also tried it at a gig with my Eko 60s bass going straight into the PA from the DI. It sounded awesome and it was great to have control over my bass tone (and have a tuner!).

So yeah, I’m chuffed to bits with it and you’ll defo be seeing me using it all over the place

Talking of being all over the place… this weekend I’ve got two gigs, one is in Chagford and the other in Germany! lol

Last night I was gigging at Acoustic Moon in Somerset which was loads of fun. Tomorrow is Nicky’s gig at Chagford Village Hall where I’ll not only be the support act, but I’ll also be playing cajon and bass in her trio. Then straight after the gig I’ll have a little kip in my car and then head off to Germany where I’ll be gigging the following afternoon. Rock n roll

So I’m going to head on out with a cuppa and enjoy this lovely sunshine before it disappears and becomes winter (*groan*). Have a great weekend and hope to see some of you in Chagford.

(image: Katie Marie Photo taken by Lisa (Indigo Blue Photography) and edited by Sandra (Soul Photography))