New demos coming soon

[Doc B]

We had the privilege of recording a demo of the amazing Ayron Jones playing his new Tode amp yesterday. Unfortunately I learned the hard way about how little trust I can put into the tiny screen of my new video camera and pooched the focus on the video, but we got the important part  - Ayron's playing and singing, captured on tape with my Nagra T and a couple of tube condenser mics. When it comes time to try to get my soul back from the devil I'm taking Ayron to the Crossroads with me to take on the devil's guitar player.

http://www.ajandtheway.com/

I'll start processing the files today and hope to have them up soon. Tomorrow we will have another session with another gifted player, Kevin Crew, who will be shredding on a 7 string Ibanez.

If it isn't obvious - yes, I love my job.

 

[Doc B]

Oh hell yeah! Today we had Kevin Crew of Steelscape

http://www.myspace.com/steelscape

stop by to play his new Tode amp. Talk about a technically superb player. I used a prototype Bottlehead tube overdrive pedal ahead of the Tode so Kevin could get the sustain and crunch he needed.

Kevin was kind enough to not only bring a badass eight string Shecter with active pickups, he also brought a 4x12 cab with four Celestion G12T75s in it. These speakers are rated for 97dB, so the four of them should be able to do 103dB at a watt, 106 at 2 watts, 109 at 4 watts and 112 at 8 watts. When we plugged the 4x12 into the Tode-as-head Kevin was hitting 112. Ohhh yeah! Good thing the neighbors were closed today! There will be video...

 

[Doc B]

The next new demo video is now up on youtube. Ayron Jones was fabulous, the producer was struggling. I set my new video camera up wrong and the video was miserably out of focus. So I decided to take some artistic license. Luckily the sound came out great on the Nagra T.

Enjoy - by the way it is fairly long and I was having some intermittent issues with it loading fast enough:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG0EQrKNSUQ&feature=player_embedded

 

[Pfenning]

Wow, this is good stuff! I'm grabbing his album right away. Thanks for this demo Doc. I can't wait for my Tode to arrive.

Pfenning

 

[Doc B]

Thanks Justin. I've been using Virtual Dub to do the initial processing of the video and Reaper for the audio. Once I get it all synced up in a high def file I use Windows Live Movie Maker to do the final edits and credits and stuff. The first three demo videos came out great that way. But there is some kind of problem with Movie Maker now, that I didn't notice immediately with this demo because of it's "old movie" look (which I did to downplay an out-of-focus problem).

While working on Kevin Crew's crazy heavy metal shredding video I realized Movie Maker was taking the really smooth video I got from my new Nikon and dropping frames like crazy to make it look very choppy. I'm working to resolve the dropped frame issue and when I do I will put up a better version of this video and will also post Kevin's video. Even if you are not a metal fan, you have to respect the Tode cranking out 112dB from a 4x12 stack, and Kevin's playing is definitely worth seeing.

About half of the first run of Todes is shipped and more Tode kits are heading out next week. We were waiting for more wood cabinet pieces and they just arrived. I think most of the kits that have been ordered so far should be shipped out by the end of next week.  For those who didn't get in on the first run, we are working on getting the second run into production for you. I'd estimate the usual 4-6 weeks before we have all the parts in stock, and the usual selling out of the run before we even get all the parts in from our suppliers.

 

[xcortes]

Is Ayron work available on vinyl? Doc, you should put him on tape.

 

[Doc B]

Doc, you should put him on tape.

Yeah, Ayron needs to get an album out. Alas, doing that right takes a lot of money.