Jon Dreyer: Equipment

Present

• Early 20th century flatback acoustic bass, possibly Czech or German, that looks bad and sounds great, with a Fishman Full Circle pickup. Sometimes I mix that pickup with a K&K Double Big Twin pickup and blend with a Dual Channel Pro Instrument Preamplifier by K&K Sound, but these days I usually just use the Full Circle.
• Czech Juzek cello, circa 1930.
• Electric upright bass by Jensen Musical Instruments.
• Braided carbon fiber French bass bow bought for about $90 (!) from YouBow.com.
• I wrote a review of my excellent combo amp, an Acoustic Image Coda. I have the first version, which is still a great amp, but I'm lusting after the Acoustic Image Ten2.
• Zoom R16 recorder/interface/controller. So far I've been using it as a recorder. 8 simultaneous tracks, combo inputs. Not as flexible as I'd hoped, and not always able to get enough from some dynamic mics, but looks like it will do the job, and an amazing piece of technology for the money. Most of my recent recordings were done with the R16.
• Edirol R-1 portable solid state recorder. This box does a wonderful job of recording audio to a CompactFlash card in .wav or .mp3 formats. This model and brand are no longer made but you can find lots of portable recording devices to buy online at the online retailer Wingfield Audio, which is run by a very cool Boston-based musician. Sweetwater Sound also has a great selection.
• Tiny binaural mics from Core Sound, which sound great.
• Audacity, an excellent, free, open source software package for audio editing and recording.
• VLC, an excellent, free, open source media player. When I need to slow a tune down to transcribe it, I usually use this.
• LAME, an excellent, free, open source mp3 encoder.
• Impro-visor, my practicing partner. An open-source Band-In-A-Box-like program with some amazing abilities, most of which I don't use. With The Imaginary Book, changes to lots of tunes in Impro-visor format.
• iReal♭, the successor to the iReal Book, a multiplatform chord-changes-only fake book/accompanist that works on iEverything, Android, Mac and Kindle Fire.

Past

• Polytone Mini-Brute III amp (sold)
• Ampeg B-15-N Portaflex bass amp (sold)
• My 1971 Fender Precision fretless bass is now one of Bob Gollihur's "eclectic basses"

Please like my fan page on facebook • Jon Dreyer • 781-696-2614 • 81 Baker Ave, Lexington MA 02421-6228 • email