By Pieter Holland
www.rocknrollranchstudios.com

Hello everyone in Guitardom! Here is a review that is going to be fun to write due to the fact it's going to be easy. Why it's going to be easy you say.... Well there is nothing but good things to write about it.... What I'm talking about is the AXETRAK.

Lets Begin.....
Over the many years of my recording career I have always sought out a way to record the ultimate sounding guitar tracks. I have used everything from miking up a wall of Marshalls to all kinds of guitar processors known to mankind to... well you know what I mean, and there is nothing like a nice warm guitar sound created by a speaker that is responding to an overdriven signal. But there is one drawback from that and that is sometimes that amp is really loud and in your home studio that could be a really big problem or in many other applications we will talk about.

Enter the AXETRAK
This little grey box can give you everything you want out of miking your live rig and more.... No Kidding! Let me tell you how it works... You take your amp head and your pedal set up and plug that together your usual way and instead of plugging in your 4X12 or what ever speakers you use, you plug your speaker output of your amp into the AXETRAK. Then you take a low impedance mike cable and plug it into the output of the AXETRAK and go to your mixer for recording or even a P.A. !!! The AXETRAK works great with any 15-100 watt amp that can drive an 8 ohm load. After a couple of minutes of adjusting your amp [Read the enclosed manual to set it up] you will be in guitar heaven with this thing.... We took the AXETRAK into the studio and used it with a few different amps and it passed with flying colors! I really liked the sound I got with my Marshall Silver Jubilee head.... It sounded GREAT !!!! I played this thing for a couple of hours putting it thru it's paces and got a rainbow of sounds... Clean, crunch, Distortion etc. It really sounded state of the art! I can't wait to use it on sessions. The AXETRAK is made out of birch plywood for a warm tight sound. It's covered with gray speaker carpet for sound dampening and I must say.... looks pretty impressive to boot. What's inside this little gem is a custom made heavy-duty 6"driver made to AXETRAK unique specs by the good people at Eminence Speaker. It also has a custom built Microphone cartridge placed in the magic spot for the perfect performance and tone. It also comes with a high frequency roll-off switch that lets you choose between the original AXETRAK tone or a fatter off-axis type tone all by the flick of a switch. All in all folks this thing is a must for any guitarists arsenal of gear may it be using it for rehearsal, recording, amp repairs as opposed to a dummy load, or even live shows.

Here are the specs for The AXETRAK

• Input impedance - 8 Ohm-Standard Impedance[16 ohm available by request]
• Mic Cartridge - Modified Dynamic Cardioid type
• Output Impedance - Low Impedance [200-600 ohms]
• Wattage Rating - 75 Watts RMS [fuse protected]
• Size - 11"X10.5"X13.25"
• Weight 16 lbs
• Power requirement - None