The Continuum

Today is the day after February 28th. Normally, we would be welcoming the lion's roar of March's early days. And yet... no March.

Similarly, there is a rather large hole in the wall of The Laboratory.

Where there was once March, now there is more February. Where there was a wall... now there is more Laboratory.

I have some concern as to the whereabouts of March, but I am certain that it has something to do with bigger Laboratorys needing bigger months.

I have attached some low quality camera phone shots of the progress. It is no accident that the gorgeously dynamic Orange Rockerverb 100 is front and center in the photos. You should consider coming by to give it a test-rock. Just watch out for wormholes in the space-time continuum. That's what we'll be doing.

The intrepid Larry toils at his craft

The dust shield down, you can now see the existing showroom from the new expanded territory

Stock's Vox Box of Rocks Knocks Socks

If I haven't said it before here, I am a gadgeteer. I love little gizmos that promise to do cool things. When I was in middle school in the eighties for example, I was able to successfully ward of any interest from the opposite sex with my Casio calculator watch which also stored up to 100 contacts and integrated a calendar with schedule alarms.

So it is that often my favorite new products that come through our door are the little ones packed with cool features. Which is why I'm surprised that it took me a few days to crank up the little Vox DA5 guitar amp. I guess I wasn't getting exactly what I beheld: I saw "battery powered mini amp with strap" instead of "variable wattage portable digital modeling amp with effects and a good speaker."

I plugged in a Hamer Echotone to get things going, and set the volume at a middle of the road setting. I then started marching through its eleven amp models (yes, it goes to 11). Each one was fairly distinct, and produced a tone I could easily imagine miking up for a cool array of layers in my pathetic little project studio. The common characteristic was a tight chunk of low end from the well engineered enclosure.

Also numbered eleven are its digital effects, which each have controllable rate and depth. These were as I expected: clean and useful. I'm glad digital technology has been refined to its current state; most of what I hear out there now is reasonably good and functional.

The amp has variable wattage, and I liked the sound at each setting. They put a tough enough speaker in it to handle full throttle volume on any setting (it actually gets kinda loud - but you're not going to hear it over a drummer).

One of our customers who is a partner at an area recording and rehearsal studio stopped in during my test drive, so I handed the wheel to him. He was so enthused that he presented us with one of his wife's gourmet cakes. Now that's an endorsement I can sink my teeth into!

So in conclusion, if you like gadgets, tones, and cake (who doesn't like cake?), the Vox DA5 is for you! (Do you like how I repeated the link, so you can click onto our site and maybe buy one? All the kids are doing it.)

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your next cake.

www.laboratorymusic.com