Today's Top Stories:

  Epiphone E Series Amps
Following the successful introduction of Epiphone's Valve Series of guitar amps, the company has announced their new E Series line line, which uses proprietary "Tube Tone" circuitry to emulate tube response in a lightweight solid state amplifier. There will be three models: the Firefly 30DSP, a 30-watt combo with 10" speaker; the Triggerman 60DSP, a 60-watt combo with 12" speaker, and the 100-watt Triggerman 100HDSP guitar head. The line also includes the Trigger Cabinet, a 4X12" speaker cabinet with power handling up to 280 watts. Each E Series product is covered in a rich, hand covered burgundy tolex with 2-inch cabinet radiuses and sports vintage, basket-weave grille cloth with white piping and a cream-colored, heavy-gauge steel faceplate. Features such as 16-gauge, spot-welded steel chassis, durable metal cabinet corners, and high-quality tolex covering assure the player years of reliability. All E Series Amplifiers feature two Channels (Overdrive and Clean), 16 DSP effects plus separate Digital Reverb, and E Series speakers.

  A Lifetime of Music Will Cost You How Much?
Now here's some useful information that you can throw out the next time your significant other points out how much you spend on pro music gear: Research by Prudential in the UK shows that people spend $37,000 on music and music gear during a lifetime. Prudential's figure includes everything from purchasing CDs and MP3 downloads, to the consumer audio equipment the music is played on, including CD players, speakers and (of course) iPods, plus music magazines, gigs, festivals and events.

  Never Been Any Reason
Were the Prop Heads listening to Head East when they created Reason? (Don't let on if you get that reference; you'll date yourself!) Who cares - with v3 the program is better than ever, and there are more and more add-ons appearing every day. Case in point; IK Multimedia showed off an entire series of Miroslav Orchestra ReFills for Reason at New York's AES show earlier this month. Sonic Reality did the design work, with libraries of string enembles, solo strings, brass, woodwinds, choirs, percussion and keyboards. Each is "hypersampled," meaning:

• Multiple velocity levels (as many as 80+ samples per note)
• Multiple microphones, each on its own Reason channel (perfect for ReWire)
• Multiple same velocity samples
• Multiple variation sampling (techniques, grips, and playing styles)

  New In Stock At Sweetwater

• Rode NT6 - The amall size of the Rode NT6 optimizes it for difficult mounting applications, where full-size mics just won't fit. The NT6 utilizes a 1/2" externally biased gold-sputtered true condenser transducer. The capsule is designed to attach to a custom-made, multi-position swivel mount allowing it to be independently positioned with ease. The NT6 is also supplied with two thread adaptors that enable the assembly to be securely attached to a wide variety of mic stands, tripods, and boom poles. The surface-mount preamp circuit includes a 2-position variable pad and a 2-position variable 80Hz high-pass filter.
• Yamaha AW2400 - Yamaha's groundbreaking digital audio workstations brought the "studio in a box" concept directly to musicians, providing immediate access to inspiration and creativity. That legacy continues with the AW2400 24-bit, 24-track workstation. It's backward-compatible with prior Yamaha workstations, and has everything you need to record your music anytime, anywhere in a compact, road-worthy design. Other features include eight virtual tracks per channel, 100mm motorized faders, eight phantom-powered XLR inputs, a USB port, and a 40GB internal hard drive.

  Guitar Of The Day
The i1P is at the top of Brian Moore's i2000 Series, with tons of cool features, plus one you didn't expect: A USB port! It's got a comfort contoured mahogany body with a highly figured maple top, three Seymour Duncan magnetic pickups, an RMC Piezo pickup in the combination vibrato/bridge, solid neck-thru construction, gold hardware, and much more. But what really separates this guitar from anything else is the built-in USB connectivity. Just "plug and play!" You can record instantly into your favorite software, like Logic, Garage Band, Digital Performer or Sonar (to name a few). What will they think of next?