The year: 2013. The Holy Trinity of hypercars are assembled, combining screaming race-ready engines and plug-in hybrid technology to propel these engineering marvels to 60 mph in under 2.75 seconds. Simultaneously, Line 6 brings out the updated POD HD "X" product line to revitalize the controversial HD series.
Now, 12 years later, Line 6 announces the Helix Stadium, overhauling their already critically-acclaimed multiFX floorboards with a shiny new UI and amp modeling algorithms. This comes right after the second coming of 1000 hp hypercar insanity begins, though Line 6 is arguably getting a much better reception.
COINCIDENCE?!
I. Think. NOT!
Why do Line 6 product refreshes seem to come hot off the heels of new hardly road-legal, multimillion dollar European death traps that only oil tycoons and Jay Leno can afford?
Is Yamaha Corporation using McLaren, Porsche, and Ferrari product planning as a market indicator for guitar modeling gear release scheduling?
Is my recognition of this recurring situation a sign that I've completely lost my fucking mind?
Probably.
Does Fractal Audio Systems need to respond in kind?
Probably not.
Has Kemper Amps totally overplayed their hand with the barely upgraded Profiler Mk 2 now that Line 6 has stolen all of their thunder?
Almost certainly.
Does anybody give a damn what I think, or want to see a video about the new big boy modelers in town?
Almost certainly not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
41 - 14
A little update on my PreSonus Temblor T10 - the subwoofer I showcased in a video 2 years ago and have been using for nearly 3 years. While I would still mostly recommend a new model, proceed with caution on a used version (like mine was) if you are not prepared to work on it and solder to some surface mount components.
About a month ago, the status light would randomly turn red in sync with what sounded like a relay clicking. This led me to believe the bypass footswitch or associated jack was shorting out randomly, but the problem persisted even with the bypass switch unplugged. This eventually escalated to days where the status light exclusively flashed red, and a horrible mid-pitched square-wave sound played through the connected monitors.
While this doesn't seem to be an endemic problem with this series, I found a few other users experienced similar symptoms that point toward the subwoofer being in a thermal protection mode. Since this would happen with the subwoofer at a "cold start" at room temperature, obviously the thermostat or some component of thermal protection circuit is faulty.
Fortunately, this Reddit user investigated and found a clean method of shorting the proper control voltage to the thermal monitoring circuit through a 10K restitor. This supposedly retains all the OEM safety features, though I am not going to be running this at high volumes for a while just to be safe. After soldering in a resistor as instructed though, my sub has been functioning great for the past week.
If you happened to purchase one of these or a similar PreSonus model, hopefully you can cheaply resolve this issue on your own if it ever arrises. This is a perfect demonstration of product safety features bricking the entire system and causing unnecessary E-waste for those that can't repair it themselves, as well as the shortcomings of reviewing gear before it's been long enough for failures to occur. Such is life...
15 - 8
As most of you know (and even those that don't can figure this out quickly by looking at my view counts), I don't make videos or music for the money. This is especially true on the Katana video, since a recurring sponsor was gracious enough to work with me again.
Nonetheless, overreaching copyright claims are nearly enough to make some one never play another riff on YouTube again.
I don't claim to own "Fade to Black" or any of the licks from other artists I use to demonstrate gear. I won't even argue that a lot of my use cases fall under the strictest legal definition of "fair use," and gladly forgo any revenue on my full cover videos.
What I DO have a fucking problem with is some no-name, possibly completely fabricated "distributor" taking a sizeable chunk or ALL revenue for YOUR views over a portion of the video that comes out to less than 3% of the overall video's runtime.
Can you seriously justify a copyright claim on a 90 minute video because I covered a famous guitar riff for about 2 minutes? Especially when the mere 10s of dollader this video will make over its life is going to some faceless LLC that has absolutely nothing to do with the band that created this music?
Not only is my video technically transformative to the original work, but this little section was only one of DOZENS of songs I am using to demonstrate this gear. Regardless of whether I played all those well enough to trigger the Content ID system, this is a gigantic problem for musicians and media discussion channels on this irredeemable platform. Why should only a single, possibly phony entity have claim to a video that features riffs and song ideas from 20 other bands?
If this was about doing the right thing and paying credit where credit is due, shouldn't the creator be able to highlight the sections of the video to identify which song is being used where? Shouldn't I be able to proactively assign the revenue sharing fairly and equally to the artists I'm borrowing from, instead of relying on an overly sensitive yet tunnel-visioned bot to do so?
We all know it's not about doing the right thing because porn game ads and "Sick Isabella" bot spam posts are totally cool. This is just another corpo cicle-jerk to make a few pennies off of people watching the online equivalent of a guy noodling in the back corner of Guitar Center, and it's increasingly demoralizing that you can't even celebrate a fun song you learned to play 15 years ago because of this trash.
161 - 49
Boy howdy, I sure am giddy that YouTube is using its near-infinite resources to cram more low effort ads down our throats at totally inopportune moments in our favorite videos! I'm sure this will not break up the pacing of creator's content, nor backfire in any way, and is definitely a more important issue than tackling rage-bait spam bots linking to porn sites on every video! /s
Yeah... I'm turning this bullshit right off. If you see "automatic" ads in my videos placed at "natural breaks," please let me know. Tell the other channels you watch to not participate in this badly veiled attempt at cramming more ads per minute in vidoes.
If you're a channel owner - please turn this trash off. We all know channels are not going to make more off of this move, and it will not be "less interuptive" to our viewers than the break points we manually choose.
62 - 4
Somehow, 10 years have passed since Mercuriall released the U530... I'll be qualified for AARP in no time.
To celebrate, they are giving away U530 for FREE until February 9th! Give it a shot if you don't already own it, and try out my presets for some thiccck and saturated tones!
mercuriall.com/cms/details_ampbox/2
31 - 1
Forget the 6505 refreshes! After years of fans begging and pleading, Peavey is bringing back the holy grail of high gain guitar tones 😩🤟
Idk what executive greenlit this abomination... but thank you 😂
83 - 19
Happy Friday, gear needs! Mercuriall wanted everyone to know about their Cyber Week discounts that take 50% off most Amp Box amp sims!
If you liked what you heard out of 1987X, 6160 III or prior models, now is the time to pick them up.
mercuriall.com/cms/
22 - 0
Illatria - "Plague Doctor" is available now on Bandcamp! Preorder the Calamitous Constructs EP and receive the instrumental version for free on May 3rd!
illatria.bandcamp.com/album/calamitous-constructs
16 - 2
Give it up for the fifth of my previous eight guitar-playing videos with shared monetization! I'm sure these poor little publishers wouldn't be able to survive without taking a few bucks from random YouTube fans honoring their favorite bands by demonstrating a few seconds of an iconic riff (with their own playing of course).
Thanks, YouTube, for working to ensure your bulletproof copyright system only gets more fair and reasonable for the little guys!
61 - 10
Plague Scythe Studios - Gear. Tech. Metal.
Background Music By:
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/