10 must-have music gears for your home studio

‘this is weird’ but then thinking it’s not quite as weird as what I’m about to write, which is more or less an obituary for my reverb until. Not just any reverb unit, though, mind you, but a 1997 Alesis Nanoverb. It didn’t die, per se… we never quite got there, but she’s been on her last leg for quite some time. Her inputs are scratchy and make everything fuzzy, or worse, audio levels drop off entirely mid-performance. And I know that you’re asking yourself ‘what kind of tool writes an obit for a reverb unit?’ but I’m telling you, at no time, have I had a piece of gear that was better than this Alesis Nanoverb. I think she cost about $100 bucks new, if that, , and have been able to at least since the Nanoverb 2 came out some times in the last ten years. No matter, though, I stuck with my Nanoverb, she was a real beaut!

I bought my Nanoverb in 1997 before I even knew what ambient or spacemusic was, along with a Nanocompressor, well, because knowing nothing about home recording and I think because the guy at Guitar Center talked me into it, it seemed like a good idea. I had no freakin’ clue what to do with it. I had always been a bass player, you plugged that it into an amp, if it rattled your lower intestines like a traveller’s case of IBS, you were in business – Let’s rock! However, when I did discover the power of the Nanoverb, it was all done – She was the one for me.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Alesis Nanoverb was a big deal in a small box. I remember the first time that I learned about the plate reverb with the mix turned all the way up. My friend and I were doing a gig, a background kind of acoustic jazz gig that I was doing at the time, and he brought the Nanoverb and started playing with it on my guitar. I remember so clearly: We were at a café, it was early spring, just off Biddle in Wyandotte, a “downriver” community south of Detroit, and as he turned up the mix, I played my first bit of ambient guitar. I didn’t know that at the time, I just thought it was pretty cool. I made a mental note, wrapped up the evening by playing a few crummy covers like Stairway to Heaven with 9th chords or something to make it more jazzy (keeping in mind that at this time, I thought jazz fakebook was doing just that: playing 7th or 9th chords over rock stuff and tricking would be listeners at cafes into believing it was jazz, which paid more than coversof Blowin’ in the Wind).

To be sure, the Nanoverb sat on a variety of shelves for a variety of years, but some time in 1999, I picked it up and began to use it. I found it immediately useful. Soon I couldn’t be without it. I’ve played probably a few hundred ambient gigs and it has been to every one. I’ve gone through dozens of guitars, more than several dozen other effects units, and at least a dozen laptops and other computers; literally tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear, but the Nanoverb, she’s been my trusty ally.