Steve Weiss Music Blog

Handsonic and SM-57

March 30, 2007 – 8:58 am
Being a player that does a lot of live playing as well as studio recording, I couldn't be happier knowing that we are now carrying the SM-57 mics by Shure. It is by far my favorite mic to use on my snare drum, and gets a great sound, whether you mic the drum from the top or from the bottom. It is ultra sensitive, and just picks up the full tonality of the drum in either setting. I had a chance to play around with the Roland Handsonic HPD-10, and I was pretty impressed with it for the most part. The first thing that I noticed when I plugged it in and started tapping on it was the velocity sensitivity on the individual pads. Somehow, the "instrument" notices when you are playing a "slap" type of hit on the pads when trying to perform a conga "slap." The pads also ...

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My thoughts on the Pearl MBS2000 Marching Bass Drum Stand

March 28, 2007 – 2:14 pm
This past weekend, I was able to check out the new Pearl MBS2000 Marching Bass Drum Stand while teaching the Percussion Ensemble at Villanova University and thought I would pass along my findings. This stand was designed to be a lower priced alternative ($79.95) to Stadium Series Hardware ($150). There are no movable legs on this bass drum stand, but unless you are actually in the stands for a football game (and those stands are so narrow that the movable leg is needed), I can’t see many other reasons why this stand wouldn't work. Actually, the other reason I took one to practice to check out was because one of the two bell players in the Percussion Ensemble had to place the set of bells on top of chairs because we only had one X-style stand in the band room. I thought this MBS2000 stand could also double as a ...

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Website Update

March 19, 2007 – 8:57 am
Spring has sprung here at Steve Weiss Music, Inc, despite the last gasp from ‘Ole Man Winter to dump what I hope is the last of the wintry mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain into our region. No matter what weather you are “enjoying” right now, I hope you will check out all of the updates we have made to our site in the last few weeks. We are proud to announce the addition of two new vendor partners to our lineup of products…Dynasty and Roland. With a complete line of Marching and Concert Percussion products, and a tremendous Artist lineup including the Blue Devils Drum Corp and their caption head Scott Johnson (also endorsed with Vic Firth and his newest product…the SSJ3 Practice Sticks) and Mark Ford (also endorsed by Innovative Percussion with his full line of signature mallets) the Coordinator of Percussion Activities at The University ...

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