Grumpyrocker

Line6 is a company that does make some really great guitar hardware. I've owned a Line6 Spider III 75 modelling amp that is really good fun and I recently purchased an M13 Stompbox Modeller. The M13 is an amazing piece of kit and I'll be reviewing that at a later date, but it could be the last time Line6 gets any of my money.

The reason? The company's really awful Windows 7 support. A few months ago I purchased a Line6 UX1 USB interface. This clever bit of kit allows me to record guitar and mic on my PC with next to no latency and monitor in realtime. It really is a fabulous little device and comes feature packed with Line6's famous amp modelling tones.

Until recently the UX1 worked flawlessly. And then I updated to Windows 7.

Windows 7 clearly has come as something of a surprise to Line6. After all it's not as if there's been any publicity about it. The company has issued a beta Win7 driver for the Ux1 but as far as I can tell it seems to make no difference whether I use this driver or the previous Vista one.

The previously brilliant UX1 is rendered useless now due to poor driver support from Line6. When trying to use the device with a DAW such as Reaper or Cubase the UX1 will regularly emit ear-piercing white noise spikes which make using headphones hazardous and speakers plain nasty. It's random and horrible and makes recording anything a nightmare.

Line6 has set up a beta discussion forum which is full of people with the same problem and very little feedback at this point from Line6 itself. It's gone awful quiet over there from the company. Now one might have expected these kind of driver issues while Windows 7 was still in beta, but the OS has been available at retail for several months now and still Line6 can't make the UX1 or UX2 work properly with it. The lack of communication on the issue makes matters even worse.

So until Line6 actually bothers to fix its drivers I'd recommend against buying any of its USB recording interfaces.

In my review of the Peavey Vypyr 75 I pointed out that to get the full functionality of the amplifier you would need one of the two Sanpera pedals. The larger and more feature rich version - the Sanpera II - is the feature of this review.

The pedal board is housed in a sturdy metal chassis that feels like it could cope with some hard gigging. The two expression pedals also feel tough and all the foot switches are solid. It certainly seems a sturdier system than one might imagine at this pricepoint and the build belies the slight silliness of the design.

While the Vypyr allows you to store and recall 12 presets, adding the Sanpera II opens that up to 400 presets. The Sanpera also opens up the functionality of the looper and gies you pedal control over volume, pitch shift and wah.

The looper functionality is somewhat disappointing but Peavey has promised to address this in the next firmware update for the amp. The problem is that the loop always play back too loud, even almost muting it via the volume pedal while recording is not ideal. This isn't an actual problem with the Sanpera II though, and the pedal controls for recording/play and stop/reset work perfectly well.

So to do the other pedals which allow you to change the delay tap tempo, move memory banks up and down, and choose from one to four presets in each bank. Pushing forward on the volume pedal allows you to enter tuner mode. The other pedal is initially inactive but pressing down on it enables the wah, or pitch shifter if that's what you've selected via the amp effects section.

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I'm really enjoying the new Epica album Design Your Universe (download mp3 album). While many of the female fronted metal bands such as Within Temptation and Nightwish are exploring a more commercial sound it's quite a surprise to find the new Epica album is quite crushingly heavy at times. Mark Jansen's death grunts remain as much a part of the band's sound as Simone Simons' beautiful clean and soprano vocals.

Design Your Universe is overall a better album than the strong previous effort The Divine Conspiracy (download mp3 album) though I'd argue there isn't a single track as good as the brilliant Chasing the Dragon from that album. However Design Your Universe is an all round stronger collection of songs. I'm particularly fond of Martyr of the Free World, Burnt to a Cinder and the epic 13 minute track Kingdom of Heaven.

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Modelling amplifiers are becoming an increasingly common option at the less expensive end of the guitar amplification market. Previously if you wanted to emulate more expensive amps you would have to buy some kind of effects unit and footpedal that you would connect to your amplifier.

Now companies such as Line6 with its Spider amps and Peavey with the Vypyr series are offering all in one solutions that aim to provide guitarists on a budget with a selection of tones they could only previously dream of.

The Peavey Vypyr 75 combo modelling guitar amplifier is an interesting beast. Though it does not feature vacuum tubes it is not a wholly digital device, distortion sounds are created in an analog fashion via Peavey's transtube solid state technology. The practical upshot being that the distortion and overdrive on offer sounds much more warm and natural than many rival digital-only offerings.

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Music has lost of its great innovators. Les Paul has died at the age of 94. He was a brilliant and hugely successful musician, creator of one of the most famous electric guitars and a pioneer of multi-track recording.

The best biography and selection of tributes I have read so far can be found on the Gibson Guitars website.

I've listened to a lot of music this year and without doubt the best album I've heard so far is The Devil You Know by Heaven & Hell. This is a Black Sabbath album in all but name as Heaven & Hell comprises of Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Ronny James Dio and Vinnie Appice - the fellas behind the two amazing Black Sabbath albums Heaven & Hell and Mob Rules.

Naming their new band after their classic Sabbath album is an interesting move, it sets the stall out without bringing the baggage that the Sabbath name now has. Ozzy and his bloody wife have done their level best to turn Black Sabbath and its musical heritage into a joke.

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You know when a song gets into your head and you find yourself humming it all the time? That's currently what's happening with me and this song Cry for the Moon by Epica. I absolutely love Simone Simon's voice and the dynamic contrast in the instrumentation.

Most of my favourite stuff at the moment is of this ilk, as my wife calls it "the girl singer and the shouty man." But yes, I find myself listening to lots of Nightwish, Epica, Within Temptation, Delain, After Forever, Sirenia etc.

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It seems that guitar maestro Joe Satriani is sueing the exceedingly dull Coldplay for ripping off one of his songs. The story is being reported over on BBC Online.

Satriani alleges that Coldplay's Viva La Vida takes considerable portions from his own track If I Could Fly.

And here is the proof...

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There's still no official announcement from Metallica over the appaling brickwalled mix of Death Magnetic that's been sold on CD. But it seems that some parts of the music industry media are picking up on the story.

You can read an interesting article on the problems with the Death Magnetic CD over at musicradar.com.

Thankfully it seems the awful audio problems the CD displays were not introduced when the tracks were laid down in the studio. They seem to be the product of a terrible studio master by Rick Rubin's engineers and then a hot master from the record company on top.

How can we be sure?

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It's just been announced that Pink Floyd co-founder Richard Wright has died. The keyboard player and vocalist had been suffering from cancer.

He was just 65.

Shit.