Digital Clef

  Is it possible to sound professional(-ish) when recording audio and video through your smartphone? Absolutely! There's a bunch of options out there for every budgets and every needs. Let's explore a few of them, and deep dive on the microphone I ended up pruchasing and how I set it up to record bass and guitar straight from the amp. The prices mentioned are, as usual, in Can eh dian Dollars. A word of warning, though: I am limited by the devices (microphones and smartphones) I actually own. I am an Android user, so I cannot do a full review for Apple users since I do not have an iDevice to test with. Smartphone evolution, a (very) abridged version Note: devices like Blackberry, Palm Pilot, and PDAs are excluded. They follow a similar, parallel evolution, but the intent of these devices was mainly business use, not "standard home use". The typical use-case for mobile phones drastically changed over the last 15 years. Calling and texting was pretty much the only thing

  A few weeks ago, I was on the lookout for a dynamic overdrive/dirt pedal for my bass. After doing some research, I came up with a few potential candidates, but the only one in stock anywhere was ZVEX's Basstortion, and this purchase opened the door for two more to happen (and an incidental third purchase that isn't a ZVEX but was on sale; it's in the pile of gear to review). Basstortion What exactly is the Basstortion? It's not exactly a distortion, not exactly a boost, and not exactly an overdrive. It's a mix of all three. It is a very dynamic circuit that will react differently depending on your playing. The sound it creates is very reminiscent of the beloved Ampeg SVT "Blue Line" grind and it reacts in a very similar way, but it's not exactly a clone of that either. As it behaves similarly to the front end of a tube amp, it is preferable to place it last in the signal chain (or before your reverb and delay). Basstortion pedal in its natural habita