Tim Joyce of Old Town School of Folk Music shows us some more traveling acoustic options. After showing us a 3/4 sized Silvertone, Tim unsheathes the Martin Backpacker.  

BIAS has announced that their Peak 6 line has been extended with the introduction of Peak Pro XT 6. This package throws a wide load of mastering plugins including SoundSoap Pro and more from BIAS.  

Robert Rojas, half of the duo Nowhere Nothing, talks about using inherited gear in recording.  

In this continuing look at Ross Kelly's MIDI Mod to a Prophet-5, Ross prepares to switch out his temporary solution with the real deal.  

When considering buying a guitar for travel purposes, a lot of companies have made smaller scale and special travel-size guitars. Tim Joyce of Old Town School of Folk Music shows some short scale guitars that are ready to hit the road.  

Jeff Botta talks about the resonance of drums and why he plays his Ludwig Black Oyster Set instead of his more resonant Gretsch set live with 54 seconds. The fact that Dave Grohl does it isn't the main reason, but Jeff does use it for support. If Dave Grohl wrote a letter to Metallica saying he can't wait for their new album to come out, would you, Jeff? Would you?  

Voxengo Crunchessor 2.0 is a software compression that will compress anything you throw at it. It provides several options to color your sound a certain way, or you can take away its crayons for neutral processing.  

Cableguys has released FilterShaper, a plugin that offers a lot of modulation potential. It operates by allowing you to draw curves, for a fun filtering experience.  

As lead singer NOX confides, Lust Murder Box uses a lot of MIDI in their songs, from first germination to final product, so it makes sense that they favor Logic Pro 7 as their DAW-of-choice in their band's studio.  

If you've got a thing for noise and 50s sci-fi, you've got to get yourself a theramin, and if you can't find one, built one! That's what School of the Art Institute of Chicago student Rob Martens did!  

In their quest to forge their own sonic identity, Rob and Kate Houle of Before Dawn have built a nasty-sounding little synth that's probably pretty hard to get past airport security, and that's before they even mention its name.  

I've always wanted to sneak into a movie theater / airplane / the NBA by standing on someone's shoulders and wearing a large overcoat. Stewart Cochran of 54 Seconds had an equivalent idea for his Clavia Nord Electro 73 and a chunk of his stage gear.  

After opening up his MBox 2 Pro with a factory bundle of plugins, Jason Donnelly shows you how to open up Amplitube LE and briefly overviews its functions and features.  

By royal decree, Retro-King is now building guitar amplifiers targeted towards reinvigorating the classic sound of late 60s Marshall Plexi amps. They did so by extracting DNA from mosquitos trapped in amber on an island off of the tip of South America.  

The Stanton Uberstand Laptop Stand provides a straightforward solution for a common problem: where do I put my laptop in the cramped DJ booth? Looks like I can retire my sidewalk-huckster briefcase with the pop-out collapsible legs.  

Native Instruments announces that its building upon its ever-growing army of KORE SOUNDPACKS with the release of KONTAKT RETRO MACHINES. It features the finest analog and digital synths as well as drum machines from the 70s and 80s, coming at you with a sixty minute non-stop block of vintage sound.  

Voice of Addictions' vocalist and bassist, Ian Tomele, talks about his Warwick Thumb NT Bass and his Ampeg SVT-4 PRO. His SVT-4 PRO has been running strong as an ox for over a decade.  

Did you notice when KRK's uber-popular Rokit series near field monitors started, umm. . . inexplicably disappearing from the market? We've solved the mystery (with help from a press release): KRK's been developing the second Generation of Rokit Monitors, and if the first generation was any indication, the G2 Rokits are going to take over the world and enslave the human race.  

Inspired in part by his dual Marshall stereo full-stacks from the late 70s and his deteriorating back musculature from the late 90s, Tris Mahaffay of Songworks has designed a single amp head that can effortlessly drive three guitar cabinets of any imaginable configuration. Meet the world's first triple output tube amp.  

Bethany Childs of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago shows us her sweet conch effects. I bet you've never heard delay and pitch shift on the shell of a medium-sized to large saltwater snail.  

Ross Kelly opens up a Prophet-5 to show us how to add MIDI functions, but before he does, he gives us a tour of the internal boards. He also shows you how to tell if your keyboard has been tampered with by hippies.  

Bell Costom Guitars specializes in a unique, hybrid body design that fuses acrylic wings to a tonewood centerblock. More importantly, however, their guitars have a system of multicolor LED's embedded in the acrylic, and they light up like a Christmas tree on the Fourth of July. Ain't that America?  

The XBass 4000L from G-Sonique is a unique plug-in, sort of a hybrid sonic maximizer / tube preamp emulation that promises to add oomph and punch to low frequency instruments.  

Though they've missed National Black Metal Month (April, duh), Spaun Drums has still released their new "Inferno" Signature Snare Drum before the end of the Crosstalk Black-Metal Riff-Off. Who says we don't influence the industry?  

As part of the team that helped make Phil Spector's vision for the "Wall Of Sound" a reality, recording engineer Larry Levine had a massive impact on the sound of popular music in America. He passed away on May 8th.  

Anyone who knows how to take a screenshot can take me on mano e mano in the iZotope RX Spectrogram Screenshot Contest. Anyone who doesn't need only read this article to change his or her life forever and possibly win a free t-shirt.  

Now that Bill Holland has his notes arranged where he wants them in Notion Music Notion, it's time to see what you can do with them. Bill drags and drops several expressive options into his piece to show what Notion can do.  

Yet another shining example of the progressive creativity cultivated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bethany Childs played her modified conch shell for GW, and talked about the challenging build process (conch shells are hard).  

Ross Kelly - a Chicago-based DJ and Producer - salvaged a non-functioning Prophet 5 he found on craigslist, and figured that while he had the thing open, he might as well add a MIDI interface. In this video, he shows off the sounds that made the Prophet 5 so infamous.  

Rob Mann of Chicago's Voice of Addiction shows us a set we don't see too often: Pork Pie Pig Light acrylic drums. Rob talks about the benefits of this set and shows us an old hi-hat that has withstood 14 years of punishment.