One frequent resident on "Top 10 Coolest Things Of All Time" lists everywhere is harmonized guitar leads. In fact, anyone who claims not to like them is probably a witch and should be drowned just to be safe. Nevertheless, DigiTech stands to make a lot of money with the HarmonyMan.  

Allow me to introduce "Bundled Together," a zany Odd Couple meets Sanford and Son sitcom starring Renaissance Maxx Native and Toontrack EZdrummer as a set of roommates living together in a software bundle. What wacky situations will this unlikely twosome get into next?  

Christian Bland shows us his Coily, an older 12-string semi-hollow. He also gives quick tips on how to fix pickups that are coming loose, and if you like sugary flavored ice, you're in for some delicious guitar repair -- just be sure to treat both pickups equally so the other one doesn't get jealous.  

As a self-coined half-man, half-tree, full-hyphen-aficionado, I can verify that what Steve McCreary says about Bird's Eye Maple is true. My skin / bark develops various distressing signs in the grain whenever I hit a rough patch. I should really get it checked out sometime.  

In the 1998 cult classic The Big Lebowski, Maude Lebowski recommends that The Dude visit a doctor, citing that said doctor is "very thorough." So is the Prominy SC Electric Guitar collection, which does an uncomfortably thorough job of sampling the strat, even boring several new outputs into the guitar.  

Scuzzphut has finally graduated from freeware into software that you're actually supposed to pay for. Phatbeatz is a drum machine for people who need a good, quick beat in a pinch.  

Bill Webb from Fulton-Webb Amplifiers shows us a few more Fulton-Webb models. Each is inspired by some of the more notable classic amps with features thrown in to expand versatility manifold.  

Patrick Ogle journeys to the darkest, deepest trenches of Austin where only scant light reaches for very short periods of time to talk to Rob and Kate Houle of Before Dawn. Kate shows us the Zoom 506 II and one of Rob's creations -- a patch selecting footswitch he built for it.  

De la Mancha's dirtbox 3 audio plugin gives your tracks a figurative shower in rewind. If you want your tracks to sound like they just dug themselves out of their graves like an apocalyptic crop of sonic zombies, this is where it's at.  

What happens when you take an average delay pedal and soak it in a mixture of radioactive material and U2 guitarist The Edge's blood? It'd probably get ruined. Now that you have to buy a new delay pedal, check out the Empress Effects Superdelay -- coming to a planet near you.  

Chalk one up for Charles Darwin. According to a documentary I think I watched about ten years ago, monkey tools used to be things like twigs, used to fish delicious bugs out of holes in the dirt. Now Monkey Tools Sound Grinder Pro has hairy bipeds working with waveform editing and such.  

This is one of those videos that may perpetually come back to haunt Eric Singer -- friend of Gearwire (you might know him for his work with LEMUR) and obviously very close friend of unusual MIDI controllers. The Sonic Banana was developed by Singer way back in 2000, but these videos are timeless.  

Graph Tech has been producing after-market upgrade parts for electric and acoustic guitars for years, from nuts to saddles and more. For the first time ever, they've packaged matching components into complete upgrade kits.  

"In the 1870's, pioneering geologist Bill Paschick was data mining in the Blue Ridge Mountains when he came across a vein of raw-audio-processing-power. From this rare ore was crafted the first of Rain Recording's flagship DAWs: The Element."

I took that text directly from Rain's Website.

 

Oh, so you haven't garnered the courage to ask your parents what "spalting" means? Well, when a fungal colony and a rotting chunk of wood love each other very much, the fungal colony will "attach" itself to the wood, and "bleaching" will occur as the fungus "consumes" the wood's "lignin." You know what? Just ask your parents.  

Drawmer announces the availability of their A2D2 analog-to-digital converter. What's the big deal? For starters, it can output 44.1 kHz and 192 kHz at the same time.  

Ryan Maeker is a sound designer in NYC, and though he may come off as a somewhat threatening figure in this interview -- all talking about cuttin' fools, hitting people with cars and even threatening the life of yours truly -- he's actually a total teddy bear with a soft spot for Speilberg movies!  

Notion Music's Progression might scare guitarists away at first as notational software is quite an intimidating term for some. It's multitudinous features, ease of use and guitar effects capabilities make this software friendly for the notationally illiterate.  

Steve McCreary of Collings Guitars talks about the process of finishing a guitar. When it comes to varnish, Steve weighs in on his preferences between lacquer and polyurethane finishes.  

If you had your choice between a keyboard made by an air conditioning company or a keyboard made by a reputable instrument company that had been run over with a vehicle, which would you pick? The Black Angels picked both.  

Sacramento-based Loose Acoustic Trio busk and play in Northern California. They are a sort of modern jug band and have some super-neato gear.  

Mark Erlewine shows us the Erlewine Lazer, a sleek, compact guitar with no headstock and no time for nonsense. Touted by Johnny Winter, it's a portable, lightweight and tonally versatile force that'll shoot your eye out if you're not careful.  

With a name like LUST MURDER bOX, there's really not much respect for subtlety. Eric and Nox talk about some of the guitars they use to melt faces. It's no surprise that the Schecter guitars they use are the same guitars garnering newfound attention from the rocking masses.  

Singer / songwriter Patricia Vonne compares the way musicians are seen in Europe and North America. Her advice for any band strapped for cash is to ditch the tour van and get out your passport.  

Guitarist for Baltimore's Thrushes, Casey Harvey discusses pedals, guitars and stuff he wants.  

Kate Houle shows us her Carlo Robelli bass and Hartke Kickback 12, which she uses to lay down the groove for Before Dawn. It goes to show that you don't need a fridge to get people moving.  

Be careful when you watch this video featuring the Yamaha TQ5 tabletop synthesizer. Gearwire cannot be held responsible if during the course of this video, Mario Lopez, French Stewart or any other cast member of VH1's "I Love The 80s" 1988 episode haunts your dreams with terribly corny jokes.  

With tons of different picks and pick styles on the market, the V-Picks Acoustic and V-Picks Screamer stand out in appearance, but can such a mutant variation really provide the improvements it boasts?  

The Eiosis E2Transienter might get insulted if you call it a transient designer. In truth, it is a much more versatile application that can perform multiple effectual functions on your attacks and non-attacks  

Currently, the Scion car company is running some commercials about how one small tweak makes a major difference. Perhaps they should have consulted with Bill Webb, whose tweaking on a Fender Blackface Super Reverb style circuit turned a classic electric guitar amp into a great acoustic amp.