It amazes me how easy recording music is these days, especially on the performer’s end. Advances in technology have made it where anyone with a small / moderate amount of money and time can put together a bedroom studio that would put someone 10 years ago out of business.
Agile 3000 - Grado SR60 Headphones - PodXT
This is a modest setup that I use to record most everything I do, save any acoustic parts. Years ago, getting a mixer / amp / monitors / RTR tapes / etc would have cost you tens of thousands of dollars. Brand new, this all cost me about $750 and you could probably do much better / cheaper now.
I will say that no small setup like this can give you exactly the tone and feel of playing through a real amp in person, but it makes a great portable studio and practice setup. Plug the USB from the PODXT into your computer, and you have access to thousands of user created sounds and rigs, and play along with any music on your computer with any selected models. Want to record? Fire up Audacity, a great free multitrack recording program, and get your ideas down pretty quickly and easily.
I find myself using the PODXT more than my traditional amp setup more and more each day. I would take playing through my amp (Vox Valvetronix AD60 VTX w/ foot controller board) almost any day over playing through the POD, but for ease of use and sheer amount of sounds possible, something like the POD is hard to beat. The Grado SR60 headphones are probably hands down the best open aural headphones I’ve ever used, if you need a semi-audiophile of phones that won’t break the bank in the least, you need to get these. They are easy to drive and very versatile. You can use these for just about anything, I use them for recording / listening to music / gaming.
The Agile line of guitars is one of those hidden gems that most people don’t know about. Rondomusic.com, the only vendor of this line besides ebay, has an extremely large selection of just about any type of guitar you could want, at very reasonable prices. The Agile line is supposedly manufactured off of the same line as Gibson, only no Gibson name to inflate the price. As such, they can afford to put very high end parts on these guitars without having to charge an arm and a leg.
