Cool, COOOL toy! (Ya gotta get one!)

Irish Flute
1

Okay.

I’ve got a new toy and it’s way, WAY, neat.

I just bought it and played with it this morning. You’ll ALL love it and want one. I’m glad I’ve got it.

Read on.

Ever wanted to figure out just what Matt Molloy was doing on that tune, but he was just playing too freakin’ fast for it to make sense?

Heard that cool lick by Larry Nugent and, darn it, if it was just a teeny bit slower you could get it?

Don’t like futzing around with CDs at the computer, and have to constantly ply the keyboard to slow a tune down electronically?

What if it was portable?

What if you could do it in any part of your house…or at a friend’s house…or in your car?

It’s here.

The Superscope PSD 220/230/300 (or Marantz PDR300)

I just bought the 220 unit (@$300 at cheapest…stay away from the eBay sales of it…it’s illegal under the Superscope dealership contracts, so you know they’re not legitimate dealers…plus their prices on eBay are only marginally better, about $10-$20).

Let me tell you. Cool. Pop in the CD, hit play, hit the slow down button and BOOM, as slow as you’d like WITHOUT CHANGING THE PITCH! Excellent. In 5 seconds, a move of Molloy’s that’s been annoying me for weeks was there, easy as could be.

The 220 is the basic unit. While it has its own speaker, it’s much better plugged into a stereo through the AUX jacks (should be RCA type). Nice bass/treb/mid contrls, has an optional remote or footpedal.

AND…I love this feature…it will play as little or as much of a tune, anywhere on the CD (any CD works) that you want, over and over and…, until you’ve got it.

Folks…as a player who’s wanted one of these, let me tell you, it’s terrific tool for practice and learning tunes from CDs. WOW. It’s not attached to a computer! And it’s small. About the size of a box that holds computer software programs at the store.

The 230 does one better (which I dont’ need because I’ve got a good selection of instruments)…slows down speed AND can change pitch to any degree you want. Why is that good? Slow down Molloy’s Eb flute solos, AND lower the pitch to match your D flute!
HOw about the time you’ve tried your D flute to Kevin Crawford and he’s just a bit flatter (or sharper) than you. Raise/lower the pitch to match your tuning so you’re not constantly pulling in/out to the CD.
Price @ $400-$600.

The 330 is even better. It’s a CD player AND CD recorder!
That’s about $800-$1000 depending where you look.

Anyway…do I sound positive and upbeat? I am. I love this thing! I have it at my practice table in my den and it’s great. Before I was tired to go to the computer, download the tune from a Cd, slow it down, re-burn a new CD with the slow track…yadda, yadda, yadda.

Here’s a link to all 3 units and just read about them. There should be a function somewhere in there where you can try them and hear for yourself.
http://superscopetechnologies.com/products/

I bought my 220 from a place in Tenn. called Rik’s Music (link: http://www.riksmusic.com/superscope/psd220.htm )

They were great and have a return policy!

They don’t advertise their price on the Net because it’s less than the suggested, so they can’t. I paid $300 even for the 220, the lowest I found anywhere that’s legitimate. (The eBay sellers don’t offer returns)

I really hope you guys check this out. It’s terrific.

2

That’s cool, I’ve always had good luck with Marantz products, usually pretty high quality and rugged.

The thing I’m drooling over is the PMD670</a](http://www.marantzpro.com/Products/PMD670.html">PMD670</a)>. It’s a portable recording deck with a CF card interface. So you can use either a large CF card or one of the a large microdrives IBM and others sell.

It’s a bit pricy, $700, but looks like just the thing to record sessions and other live music with. If you can spare the cash.

Eddie

3

I don’t know
I’d be hard pressed to not look hard at the dual-CD PSD 300 (which can record on disk AND do all the cool slowdown stuff on playback). At $1000, why not? I’ve seen it available at $800.
Personally I use an analog system, the Tascam Porta One, which is an awesome little unit. I’ve had one since the day the were first available, c.1986. It’s terrific for just about anything you need.
dm

4

Dave, how is the sound fidelity when you really slow that bad boy down? Is it still crisp and full?

I use winamp with the pacemaker add-on to slow down tunes on my computer. It is a bit of a hassle to get them on the computer at first, but from then on, it is just play as usual. The problem is that when I slow the tunes down over, say 20%, the output is very noisy and inexact. That makes it hard to decipher something like the tricky bits you spoke about. Unfortunately, at my level, I have to slow the tunes WAAAY down to play along. Any of those units sound like they would be terrific to use, if they can keep their fidelity at slow outputs.

5

That’s a good point.
At its slowest (about 1/3 speed) there is noise and bleedover. That’s to be expected. I think at that degree of separation from the original speed, even on a computer (I use CoolEditPro which is pretty top-notch) there’s stuff.
The 220 isn’t precise in clear sound to the point of “okay…so how is he doing his rolls?” A portable unit like that would cost, I dare imagine, quite a bit.
But, you can say, “ah, okay, it’s a full roll followed by a G”, or much more easily learn the tune.
With back up instruments then it can get muddier (of course…there’s much more to slow down), but a solo deal is cleanest.
All of the portables have some muddy going on at the slowest of speeds (and it’s pretty slow, let me tell you).
What I like about it most is that a tune that’s flying by and it’s a lot of work to catch what’s going on (not just ornaments, but basic notes, too) that to have the “breather” of time is nice.
Best, though, is the revolving loop (which I used last night…it’s neat) of picking a couple bars or a phrase and have it play it over and over until you get it.
Again, the idea here isn’t to supplant the computer. That would be silly. Computers have much more versatility. But it’s to give some freedom (and ability to do this without being a techie…or just someone normal who hates having to pile into software…“I just want it to do…” is how I am sometimes).
I opted not to do the 300 unit because I already use an analog recorder that’s portable (a Tascam) so I don’t need the CD variety. But if you don’t have a unit to record, say a really good session, or your instructor, it’s pretty nifty.