(This post may be of interest only to musicians, especially those that roam)
A few years ago, if a guy wanted to travel the world with a guitar he had few options: Carry around a ton of gear, or get a dedicated miniature travel guitar. Now there is another choice
While consumer items don’t bring long term happiness, I am excited about my new Apogee JAM. It is going to revolutionize my guitar playing. The 15W practice amp I picked up last month for $92 is now up for sale, replaced with this wonderful electronic gizmo. At $84*, it is superior to the practice amp in every way
Winnie loves it because she no longer has to listen to me practice. I love it because it is portable, easy to use, and more functional. Instead of lugging a 6.2 lb beast up a hill to guitar lessons, I carry the Jam in my pocket. If I want to have a spontaneous rooftop concert, I just roam with the guitar to our terrace.
The Jam is a digital converter and preamp with a standard plug and play interface, so applications like Apple GarageBand recognize it as in instrument input. There is zero configuration, you just plug your guitar into the Jam, plug the Jam into a Mac or iDevice, and it is ready to go.
GarageBand lets me setup backing tracks, implement all type of effects, and record practice sessions for playback and critique. There are certainly more powerful tools, but this works seamlessly across our iPhone, iPad, and Mac. And at $0, the price is right
The Jam gets its power from the Mac or iDevice, so there is no extra power cord or charger to deal with. With a Mac this is no problem, but the iPhone can drain in a few hours of use. With an iPad2, playing for 90 minutes with the display off dropped the battery by only 8% (Amazing!)
For a traveler like me, this product is a dream, enabling guitar play anywhere and everywhere. No longer do I need to worry about a practice amp, or carrying around extra gear. I love it
* Amazon is an incredible company. Normally $99, the price on the Apogee JAM
recently dropped to $84.15. Not one to just let something like that slide, I contacted Amazon through their online chat system and asked for a credit. Normally their policy is to guarantee the price for only 7 days after product delivery. “Sorry, but your product was delivered 12 days ago. We aren’t able to credit the price difference.” But when I asked if I was allowed to return the current device and order a new one at the lower price, they saw the error in their ways and gave me a refund. That is how customer service should work. Thank you Amazon!
(Based on a 5 minute online chat at 1 am on a Sunday, I earned about $180/hour for this chat)
I don’t play guitar but I like the way you adapt to traveling light. I imagine being a perpetual traveler is way easier today versus even 10 or 15 years ago given high capacity storage devices, ultrathin computers or tablets, and tiny smartphones. And awesome digital cameras that don’t need film.
It is like the world is sending people signals that they should quit their jobs and travel
From a geek perspective, it is just cool that you can do all of this with a device that fits in your hand. An iPhone today is more powerful than a laptop from just 4 or 5 years ago
My wife and I hope to travel very light. Right now my notional goal is to only bring enough stuff to fit into a carry-on bag, so I am currently debating what sort of gadgets to bring along. Do I go for a tablet or a laptop (or one of those gizmos that behaves like both)? I’ll have to keep thinking. Decisions, decisions =).
Trimming down to only a carry-on bag would be impressive. We check our back packs when we fly, and have some carry on gear as well. But as in most things, less is more
We wrote a post with a picture of all of our stuff:
https://gocurrycracker.com/even-backpacks-have-gravity/
Since then we have trimmed a bit in some places and added in others
For us, given the choice of only one device, we would take the laptop. It is really the only option for content creation (photo shop, typing long blog posts, managing our spending spreadsheet, etc…)
“Winnie loves it because she no longer has to listen to me practice.” This is simply the best reason to get one :) btw, I’m using iRig HD for my daily practice. I’m wondering which of it sounds better, since iRig HD has a higher price. If I had read this article before I bought iRigHD maybe I could save some money :o. Best greetings from Taiwan.
I looked at the iRig HD and also a product from Line 6, but went with the Jam because the reviews looked solid. They all seem to have similar specs and probably all work equally as well
We are going to be in Taiwan in February. I want to climb Jade Mountain and also circumnavigate the island on a bicycle.