Happy new year to meeeeeee!
And thanks to my awesome wife for the killer present. I’ve been looking to upgrade my signal chain for a while now. I’ve used a Baggs Venue DI for about, well, a bunch of years. And it’s fine as a DI, but the tuner suuuuuucks, and everyone I talk to about it agrees. Also, living on 9v batteries is not great.
But what to do? Well, I live in Lyons CO. If you don’t know, Lyons is home of one of the most awesome pro-audio makers evah. Grace Design makes really great preamps, studio components, and acoustic instrument pre-amps. Like, really good. Reaaaaaaaaallllllly good.
I’ve wanted an acoustic pre-amp from them for a while. Since the Felix came out a bunch of years ago (I can’t remember). I don’t need something as complex as the Felix though. I’m mostly playing one guitar the whole time. So voila the Alix!
I got on this kick because I’ve been getting a bunch of bad signal out of my guitar recently. I’ve played around with some fixes and didn’t really get there. It was a very transient thing and hard to pin down, but it was a problem.
So I had that guitar into Woodsongs Lutherie in Boulder while I had a break in gigs. Another really awesome local shop! As it turns out, the pickup in my Gibson had gone bad, which happens. Acoustic pickups can be funny things.
With the guitar in the shop, and with the pickup needing to be swapped anyway, it was a chance to upgrade a bit, so the awesome folks (thanks to Jon and his crew) at Woodsongs put in a new Baggs Anthem SL in the Gibson. While they were messing around they also discovered a crack in one of the X braces, to they put some glue on that (thanks for noticing).
Then, and I really liked this, they gave that guitar a clean. Which it needed. The finish on that model Gibson is much softer than the standard finish, and I love the look of it, but it picks up a lot of sweat and scunge from all the playing. I clean as best I can, but there is no substitute for running it through the buffer.
So, new year, new rig. I’m looking forward to taking it out tomorrow to Estes Park, where I’ll be at The Rock Inn from 5-8 singing songs and telling lies. Come on out and tell me how it sounds.
Be well, stay warm!
Follow me wherever you are!
