november 2013

Photo by Jim McGuire.

A flatpicking Americana forefather looks back on 50 years in the biz—with music still flowing and a smile on his face.

Pyromaniacs are notorious for returning to the scenes of their crimes, but fretboard burner David Bromberg has always been content to start musical conflagrations and move along — from country to bluegrass to jazz to folk to rock and to blues, sometimes all on the same album.

“I’ve always played whatever I’ve wanted to play,” says the 68-year-old éminence grise of Americana. “The difference is, me and my bands always dug a little deeper with all the stuff we approached. We didn’t want to play the obvious. We wanted to play the music that spoke to us.”

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Here’s a look at my previous home studio. When you really get to know your monitoring environment, you’ll have a solid foundation on which to base your critical listening.

Before you can produce mixes that translate well in a variety of listening environments, you need to get intimately familiar with your own listening space.

In last month’s column [“More Mix Tricks,” October 2013], we talked about assembling a reference CD. Assuming you’ve chosen your tracks and have your CD ready, it’s time to evaluate and learn your room. And a good way to begin is to emulate what the pros do.

Even if your studio is in the corner of the living room or it’s not possible for you to make changes to your room or setup, going through this process of learning your room will help you achieve better results from your rig. Just being aware of potential problems can help you work around them.

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Hayden’s newest, smallest member of the MoFo family delivers portability and surprising power for players with rocking inclinations.

Hayden is a relatively new name in amplifier circles. The company was formed in 2006 in the UK as a guitar-centric sister company to Ashdown, a brand known for their bass amps.

Hayden didn’t fool around when it came to developing their new line. They recruited Matamp’s chief engineer Dave Green to design their amps and developed two main product lines—a handwired series made in England and a more affordable line of PCB construction amps made in China. This year, Hayden retooled and restyled their amp lineup, including our review amp, the Mini MoFo 15, a lunchbox-sized head equipped with two EL84 power tubes and one ECC83 preamp tube.

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