Easy Pay Plans - Online music stores

So you know you need some great gear, but great gear is expensive.  How in the world do you afford it all?  First, I would advise that you carefully consider the gear you need and to search around for the right price.  Beware going into debt over this; it's not worth it.  If you use a credit card, after interest is considered, you may end up paying for the gear 4 times over.  There are better ways to afford the gear you need.  This should be especially important for those i'm trying to help out: the Christian musician.  Here are some ways to afford the gear you need that you may not know about...

There are several music gear store websites that offer easy-pay plans.  These plans allow you to buy gear, have it shipped to you, and pay for it in monthly installments without interest and without a financing plan.  If you have a visa debit card to your bank account, you can do this.  You can do this with your credit card, too, but please be careful with charges to your credit card.  These companies do a basic credit check, but it does not open any account and isn't reported to your credit report (unless you fail to be able to pay, in which case they CAN report to the credit agencies).

American Musical Supply (ams) - www.americanmusical.com  -  this company is great!  If you purchase gear $250-$995, you have the option to pay for it in 3 equal payments.  For example, if you buy $300 worth of gear, the first payment is due upon purchase (plus shipping), so shipping is $15, your first payment is $115.  The card you used to buy will then automatically be drafted $100 on the same day the next month, and then again the month after that to complete your purchase.  The best part is that you don't have to wait until payment is complete.  They send you the gear as soon as you order.  If your gear is over $1000, they'll break it up into 5 payments.  This is a great way to afford gear without having to drop all the cash at once.  Unless you have a money tree.  They charge a $10 fee for using the easy pay.

zzounds.com - zZounds does a 4 payment plan similar to AMS.  This company is also great.  Also charges a $10 fee.

sweetwater.com - Sweetwater recently started a 3-pay plan that is similar to AMS and zZounds.  Sweetwater charges a $10 fee to do the plan and you have to call to place the order.  Sweetwater is a wildly popular music store and they have some great products.

All of these online music stores offer great products and great services.  Go to the website and check it out for yourself.  It's a great way to afford the gear you need for your church, band, or your personal studio.

This thing is awesome!  Presonus' StudioLive digital mixer is an incredible board that provides a simple digital mixing interface for live and the studio, as well as acts as a firewire multi-track recording interface that connects to your computer (Mac or PC). They have a 16 channel version ($1999) and a new 24 channel version ($3299).  It has all the typical things you'd expect with a digital mixer: on-board effects, recallable scenes, dynamics for each channel, etc...  There is one set of "channel strip" knobs called the Fat Channel (reminescent of the old Mackie D8B digital board).  Once you "select" a channel, the channel strip is now affecting that channel.  It includes high-pass filter, gate, compressor, EQ, Pan, and Aux assignments.  The 24 channel has some extended compressor, more Auxes, EQ, gate, and limiter knobs to easier fine-tuning.  The input/output section is quite vast as well.



Possibly the coolest thing about this product is the recording interface capabilities.  It includes 2 firewire ports.  You can use the firewire port to connect to your recording computer DAW, as well as expand your system by adding another StudioLive board and double your channels.  You can expand your system by linking up to 4 StudioLive boards, but you can only record up to 32 tracks.  32 tracks is nothing to shake your head at.  That's a lot of tracks!  It comes with a simple recording capture software aptly named "Capture" to ease the pain of recording live.  The simplicity is beautiful; all you do is connect the mixer to your computer via firewire, open capture, arm all tracks and press record.  Capture is made specifically for the StudioLive, so it just works with no setup.  After your tracking is done, you can export the tracks to your favorite recording software (Logic, Cubase, Sonar, etc...).  It also features a very cool and unique function that would allow you to take your previously recorded tracks, and pump them back through your channels on the StudioLive for sound check.  For example, lets say your took your StudioLive 16 channel board to run live sound for a local band you're working with called "God's Dorks".  You have run sound for God's Dorks before, and better yet, you recorded their show.  You get to the venue before God's Dorks and setup all your stuff.  God's Dorks is running late and there will be little time for soundcheck.  You cue up Capture and load the performance you recorded previously.  You select the option to playback all those tracks through your StudioLive board.  All of the audio tracks are routed to the board as if they are plugged in from the stage, and all the channels now operate as if you're mixing the band.  You can then get a soundcheck and make your adjustments with the band that isn't even there!  Pretty slick.

I would personally like to upgrade my setup to one of these StudioLive boards for studio use and live recording that will be done in the future.  Check out the links!

http://www.presonus.com/products/Detail.aspx?ProductId=52
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/StudioLive24/
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/StudioLive16/

The upcoming TC Electronic Polytune guitar tuner looks to be an awesome step forward in guitar tuner technology.  It's not really a product that gets revamped all that often, but TC seems to have come up with something super cool and I have no idea how they've done it.

You can check it out for yourself on their website, but the basic premise is all you do is strum your guitar (all the strings at the same time) and the tuner gives you a read out of each string at the same time and you make your tuning adjustments.  This is going to save a lot of time when tuning.  I don't know how they extract the tones from each string individually, but who cares.  It works.  Check it out:  http://www.tcelectronic.com/polytune.asp
Starts shipping mid-March.  Pre-order for $99 at American Musical Supply http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-TCE-POLYTUNE-LIST

Good job, TC!