Oliver Thiele, Author at miy

Piece by piece – the slite, the modular travel electric guitar

And again a guitar that can be disassembled. With The Slite from France, another company tries its hand at the travel guitar theme, playing like a real guitar. If that works we will have a closer look today.

If you like to travel with your guitar, you will appreciate the small packing size and light weight. But what should not be left behind is the playability. What good is the smallest travelguitar if it doesn’t play like the guitars you usually play? This often means that the fun of playing is lost and you can save yourself the trouble of taking it with you. ... weiter lesen

Grows with you – modular pedalboard from Morton Pedalboards

Such a pedalboard for guitarists and bassists is almost a living being. It grows, it shrinks, it changes constantly. So much the better that with the modular pedalboards from Morton Pedalboards there is finally an approach how to deal with it.

How often does it happen that you have finished your pedalboard and still managed to get the one great pedal that you always wanted? And of course you don’t have any space left on the board. Buy a bigger one now? That will be on the money. And all the work of rewiring them all. Of course, a month later you realize that you don’t really need Pedal X and Pedal Y after all. Living with a gap now? Looks uncool. The life of every pedalboard user. ... weiter lesen

Against the slightly different timing problem – Timebirds workout timer

No, today it is not about playing 64ths with the precision of an atomic clock. It’s more about time handling during your performances, where Timebirds, the Workout Timer might be helpful.

If you and your band like to perform at band battles, festivals or as support act in front of an audience, you will know the problem. You have a certain guideline how long you can play. And depending on how professional the organizer is in his program, it can happen that you get turned off in the middle of a song. Not a nice ending for a gig. ... weiter lesen

The Circle Guitar – the fastest picking in the country

So, now again something funny, the Circle Guitar. The english designer Anthony Dickens has finally turned an idea that has been growing for some time into a real and, above all, playable instrument. A guitar of a different kind. And that’s what I really like to have here in this blog.

At a first glance it looks a bit like an e-banjo or a dobro, the Circle Guitar quickly turns out to be a completely new idea in guitar playing. Around the bridge of the guitar a rotating disc is mounted in which a motor-driven sequencer can extend through 128 holes of pins, which in turn strike the strings of the guitar. ... weiter lesen

Noisemachine, Moddevice Dwarf und Strandberg. Eine Killer-Combo

Noisemachine – the wireless mini-midi controller

The eternal story of synthesizer sounds with the guitar I had already opened here a few days ago. Midi-guitar, pickups, pedals… all nice and well. But are there any other possibilities? With a little luck, yes. The wireless mini-midi-controller Noisemachine might be worth a look.

The Noisemachnie is a really small midi controller. It’s so small that it could easily be attached to a guitar of your choice. And since the whole thing runs without cables via BLE Midi, you don’t even have to worry about a big cable tangle. ... weiter lesen

Strandberg and coffee.. what could be better?

A look back – Strandberg Spark Topic #29 – coffee

Today we want to take a look back at one of the reasons why it has been so quiet here in the last two years. The reason for this is the Strandberg Spark competition on Facebook. This competition was so much fun for me in 2019 and 2019 that there was simply no time left to write a blog.

Winnings, winnings, winnings

The Strandberg Spark competition was created by Ola Strandberg to challenge the creativity of people interested in Strandberg guitars. And as it is usual at competitions, there was a lot to be won. Depending on how good the jury found the submitted entry, it could be awarded with so-called flints. Up to three flints were possible per entry. And depending on how many flints were collected, they could be exchanged for products from Strandberg. This went up to a complete guitar, if you could collect 40 flints.
Now some of you might ask why I write in the past tense. This is because the competition is currently being revised and will be restarted with new rules in September 2020. Just let yourself be surprised. It will be very exciting. ... weiter lesen

Second try – The Magnet Smartphone camera mount for the guitar

You always meet at least twice in life. This is also the case with The Magnet, the smartphone camera holder that you can quickly and easily clip onto the guitar neck. The old-fashioned blog readers might still have the project from 2014 in mind, which unfortunately failed to achieve its funding goal at that time. Meanwhile the second campaign has been successfully completed and the production is right on schedule according to the makers.

But what is The Magnet anyway and what do you need it for?

The way to speed

If you want to be fast you have to start slowly. Nevertheless you will get into situations from time to time, where problems and uncleanliness occur after a certain playing tempo on the guitar. The analysis of this, especially if you don’t have a good teacher at hand, is not easy for most people. How nice it would be if you could simply record your own playing with a camera.
Since nowadays everybody should own a smartphone, the camera itself is no problem anymore. Just finding the right camera position is complex. Whoever has ever tried to put a smartphone on a tripod and then film the action of the plectrum hand knows that this rarely produces usable results. Not to mention the effort involved. ... weiter lesen

The way to the midi guitar – synthesizer and keyboard with the Strandberg Boden

If you are in a three-man band like me, you might know the problem. A few keyboard pads underneath every now and then couldn’t hurt. Somehow I always had the bad luck to play in bands without a keyboard player, except for a relatively short time. And so I’ve been after the topic of midi guitars for quite a long time. Whatever it was that made me learn trumpet instead of piano like all the others when I was a little kid.

To get to beautiful synthesizer and keyboard sounds as a guitarist you first have to clarify a few basic conditions. After that there are several possibilities. For this reason I will split the article into several parts. Otherwise it will be too long and who has the time nowadays to read more than two lines of text… ok, apparently you. Well then, let’s start with a little overview. ... weiter lesen

What happened so far…

Hello friends, as you have certainly seen, there has been radio silence here lately. How come? One reason was that in the last two years there hasn’t been as much excitement in crowdfunding as in the years before. The scene has consolidated, the crazy ideas have become less. Maybe it’s also because it’s no longer so easy to convince potential clients of a crazy idea due to the many failed projects.

But apart from that, the main reason is the following: In the last articles you could clearly see that I had approached the topic guitar more strongly again. After a break of a few years my fingers were tingling again and since I got a Strandberg Boden Plini for Christmas 2018 it was clear that the focus of the blog had shifted to the topic guitar. ... weiter lesen

Schneckenschutzwall – ich bau mir ein Hochbeet

Ein Hochbeet macht das Pflanzen leichter (Bild: O. Thiele) — Schutz vor Schnecke – ein Hochbeet macht das Leben leichter (Bild: O. Thiele)

Was tun, wenn das Gemüse Opfer gefräßiger Schnecken wird? Einfach, wir bauen uns ein Hochbeet. Ja, ich weiß. Bauanleitungen gibt es wie Sand am Meer. Aber eine mehr kann da ja auch nicht schaden. Im Grund will ich nur zeigen, wie simpel die Geschichte ist.

Als erstes klären wir mal kurz, wozu so ein Hochbeet gut ist. Das ist im Grund schnell runtergebrochen. Zum einen muss man sich beim bestellen, jäten und ernten nicht mehr so tief bücken und zum anderen ist es in einem Hochbeet einfacher, gefräßigen Schnecken Einhalt zu bieten. Und wenn man sich minimal Gedanken macht kann die Geschichte auch noch ganz chic aussehen. Was will man mehr. ... weiter lesen