The Insomniac Player

What is it? It's a digital audio interface for Mac and Windows. Basically an external sound card that allows you to feed a microphone and guitar/instrument into the computer at the same time. Each of the inputs has its own gain control with a color LED to warn you if the signal is too hot. The microphone input also has a switchable 48V power source. The headphones/monitor outputs can be used to listen to the sound as processed from the OS, or you can bypass all processing and listen to the signals as fed into the device. Setup Be prepared, this device ships with a gazillion licenses for two Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) and about a gazillion plugins and even your choice of one of four virtual pianos. It is almost overwhelming, the software bundled with this device probably costs twice as much as the box itself. My workstation is a Dell Windows 10 Enterprise workstation with Intel Xeon E3-1270 V2 @ 3.5GHz, 32GB of RAM, operating system and data are on separate physical ...

I was told to keep my guitar(s) out of the case and nearby so I always have an excuse for a quick practice session. These are now mounted just three feet away from my desk, the mounts can be found here for just $10. The kit includes two mounts plus three sets of drywall screws. The mounts can be adjusted for length, and they can be tilted for uneven heads (see the Telecaster). Installing them was dead simple, I actually spent more time measuring them than what it took to drill the holes and mount them.

Details  here .

A horrible thing has happened. The two on the left are my son's, I don't know if they fed after midnight or what happened, because suddenly there were two more. Left-to-right: Rogue RD-80 (got it as a kit at Guitar Center, < $150 including a shitty bag, shitty strap, shitty, spare strings, a whistle tuner, you get the idea) Squier by Fender Affinity Telecaster, Competition Orange ($199 at Amazon) Squier by Fender Affinity Telecaster, Butterscotch Blonde, Left Handed ($199 at Amazon) Donner DAG-1CL, Left handed ($128 at Amazon with a nice padded bag, a decent digital tuner, shitty spare strings, decent strap, a generic capo) That's actually our second RD-80, the first one split at the head within 24 hours, luckily we had purchased accidental damage insurance. To avoid my wife kicking us out of the house, we are using VOX AC-30 amplugs (~ $35 each at Amazon) and headphones instead of amplifiers.