Today's Top Stories:

  The Evolution of the Grace Design 801 Preamp
Here at Sweetwater, we've been big fans of the mic preamps from Grace Design for quite a while. One of the company's best sellers has been the Model 801 8-channel mic preamp, which has become a highly prized staple in the music recording, film scoring, and live sound markets. Now the company has unveiled the 801's successor, the m801. Well yeah, they could have called this the M801 Mark II Ultra, but the folks at Grace Designs build great products and don't believe a flashy name will produce better recordings, so they're sticking with "m801." Differences? There's not a whole lot anyone could do to make the 801 sound better, but the Grace Design team was able to provide the preamp with a dynamic range improvement of about 3dB, which may not sound like much, but multiply 3dB by eight channels and trust us, it's quite significant. Other cool new features include a new ribbon mic switching function and increased output current so so the m801 can drive audio lines up to 1,500 feet without audio quality loss. Naturally, with a product built to such high standards, the m801 comes with a full 5-year limited warranty on all parts and labor. Want to know more? Give your Sweetwater Sales Engineer a call right now.

  A Smaart New Software Option for Mac Owners
No, it's not a typo folks. SmaartLive is SIA Software Company's dual-channel FFT-based audio measurement software. SIA is wholly owned subsidiary of Eastern Acoustic Works Inc. (EAW) and its parent company Mackie Designs, Inc. (a little company you may have heard of a few times). SmaartLive has been the professional audio industry standard for real-time sound system measurement, optimization and control for quite a while, but it's been restricted to the PC platform - until now. SIA's SmaartLive software is available now for the first time for the Macintosh. This is a beta version that combines powerful audio frequency measurement, analysis and data logging capability with a highly intuitive, user-friendly interface and (get this) the ability to remotely control an extensive list of top name equalizers and DSP processors. You can download a copy.

  New In Stock At Sweetwater

• BSS AR-416 - Every recording facility - from project to pro - needs DI boxes to handle bass guitars, synthesizers, samplers, MIDI voice modules, drum machines, electric pianos, and acoustic instruments with pickups. By using a DI box, you cut way down on the number of open mics, hence a lot less noise. The BSS AR-416 4-channel Active DI is powered by AC (no batteries) and features independent link outputs for backline or submixer use. Premium-quality components mean total isolation between channels.
• Lexicon Lambda - This is Lexicon Pro's newest USB desktop recording solution. It comes with everything needed for portable, pro quality recordings, including the Lambda Studio USB I/O mixer, MIDI interface, Steinberg's Cubase LE multi-track PC and Mac OS X recording software, as well as the Lexicon Pantheon reverb VST plug-in. Oh, and it just happens to cost under $200 with free shipping included!
• Roland RT-Series - With acoustic-drum triggering more popular now than ever, Roland has responded to the everwhelming demand and created these new-generation triggers: The RT-10K (for kick drums), RT-10S (for snare drums), and RT-10T (for toms). They're physically smaller and lighter than their predecessors, so they're easier to position, plus they come with new trigger-sensing technology for improved response. All three will work directly with Roland's V-Drums TD series, TMC-6, SPD series, and HPD-series. All three are in stock right now!
• Marantz CDR632 - This is Marantz's newest standalone CD-RW recorder. It's rackmountable in a 2U space, and will play and record on standard CD-R and CD-RW discs. In addition, it will play MP3 files for hours and hours of music from a single disc. Notable features include programmable auto-track increment, pitch control, level-dependent sync recording, single play mode, power-on play plus analog, digital, and optical input and output, complete with integrated sample rate conversion.

  Guitar Of The Day
The inSync editor usually frowns on copy written in the first-person, but how else am I going to tell you why this is such an awesome guitar? See, I owned a Gibson SG Standard in high school - it was my very first professional guitar (following a cheap acoustic and a Sears Silvertone electric with an amp built into the case). Man, I sure did love that guitar and wish I had it back. I saved for almost a year and a half to get it! But when I gently lifted this Gibson SG Standard from its plush-lined hardshell case, it was like picking up my "old friend" again. It was uncanny! My old '66 SG had the same dark cherry stain on a nicely figured chunk of solid mahogany with those ultra-slick beveled edges, that incredibly thin mahogany neck with an ebony fingerboard, and even the exact same Maestro Vibrola tailpiece, which Gibson used almost exclusively on the SG line (most of their other electrics featured Bigsby vibratos). By now, I'm sure everyone knows the story behind the SG, but I'll recap anyhow. When sales of Gibson's original Les Paul guitars dipped, then-president Ted McCarty thought it was time to address a few of the issues he felt players had with the Les Paul model, namely the weight and the limited access to the highest notes. By creating a solidbody electric with two deep cutaways (we called them "horns") and a neck that connected to the body right at the 22nd fret, he was sure the company had a winner. And he was right. Back in '66 our local Gibson retailer couldn't keep enough SGs in stock. I actually had to wait two months to get mine (though it felt like a lot longer). Any guitar player who walked on stage with an SG was automatically a cool guy (though the players with ES-335s in cherry finishes were a close second). This reissue has all the '60s vibe you could ask for, along with the benefit of a pair of '57 Classic humbuckers (often called PAFs because the pickups had a sticker on the back side that said "patent applied for"). The best news? You won't have to wait two months to own this slice of Gibson history, because we have it in stock right now, resting comfortably in its case following its 55-point inspection and master set-up by Sweetwater's team of ace guitar techs.