Ok. So I bonus myself a bit at the end of the year so I can continue (as in the infinitive) to upgrade my project studio. One of the things that I’ve been wanting is an external guitar effects processor. I’m not much of a guitarist, but since it was the first instrument that I learned, I sometimes find it easier to lay down electric guitar tracks with a guitar rather than sequencing the part via MIDI. The drawback to recording live guitar tracks is that - due to latency with plug-in FX - I’ve been recording guitar tracks dry and adding FX to the track afterward. That’s a problem because it’s hard to “get in the groove” listening to a dry (no amp; no nothing) guitar.

All that said, I didn’t want to spend $200 or more, since most of my stuff isn’t guitar-oriented, and I just don’t play enough to warrant a significant expense in that department. So, I did a bit of Web shopping, and read glowing reviews on this little item: Behringer V-Amp 2. For under $100 (eTailer price with my ASCAP discount), I figured that I didn’t have too much to lose. I didn’t! The unit comes with a foot switch, a canvas carrying case, and a bunch of nice presets. If the numerous presets weren’t good enough, you can download editing software, and hundreds of more user-contributed tones from the Behringer website. The MIDI control of parameters also looks promising.

How cool is this?