GEAR ROUND UP
[ WM ] WORSHIP MUSICIAN GEAR ROUND UP | Eric Dahl
MONO Stage & Studio Instrument Cables Ace Performance Picks
Elixir New ATTUNE Treated Guitar Strings
Many of us know and utilize a variety of the Mono products including their instrument gig bags, double instrument gig bags, pedalboard bags, guitar straps and backpacks. Now the company that makes gig bags cool, and more protective, has gotten into the instrument cable business with their new Stage & Studio instrument cables. Some of the innovations MONO is bringing to instrument cables are 180-degree ¼” connectors that can be input straight, right, left of angles. Auto mute tech ¼” jacks for silent plugging in of instruments and quiet on stage when unplugging. Quality built brass ¼” housing engineered in Japan. The core conductor on the MONO cables is high-purity oxygen-free copper, surrounded by a braided shield and flexible PVC outer jacket. The MONO Stage and Studio cables come in lengths of 10’ and 20’. Stage are currently available in white PVC jacket and Studio is in the black PVC jacket. The Studio cables are designed for higher fidelity use and the core conductors have 150 strands of 0.08mm oxygen-free copper, so they are a more robust thickness than the Stage cables. Besides excellent sound quality and reproduction, I’ m really a fan of the 180-degree ¼” connector which makes the cable compatible with any guitar plug in style, pedals and amplifiers. The MONO Stage & Studio cables are extremely well made, and you can your length of cable and the connectors you prefer. The cables start at $ 99 and they do have a limited lifetime warranty. All of the pedals and amps in this Worship Musician Buyers Guide were tested with the MONO Stage and Studio cables. www. monocreators. com
Changing up your guitar picks or strings is a great way to bring now sound or playing style to your playing. I had been seeing the social media comments for a company called Ace Performance Picks and reached out to their owner Anthony Crawford on etsy. com. For review we tested out the Green Guitar Pickup in teardrop shape priced at $ 20. The pick is made of polymer and is available in polished( as tested) or matte finish. Compared to other picks I found the Ace Performance Pick to be brighter when plucking the strings compared to a traditional nylon pick. The gloss finish was a bit more slippery between my fingers when I was strumming. But Ace also offers selfadhesive Cork Grips for their picks available in plain, flame or with cross imprints at only $ 4.99 a pack 6. I installed one of the Cork Grips on the Green Guitar pick and it was perfect and stayed in place in between my fingers. Ace Performance Picks has many other cool pick offerings too so visit their store online at: www. etsy. com / shop / AcePerformancePicks.
When many people think of treated guitar strings Elixir is a brand that frequently springs to mind. At the winter NAMM show I was introduced to Elixir’ s first new string release in ten years, the ATTUNE series. At the booth they had guitars setup with different string gauges so that you could test out the new strings for yourself. ATTUNE acoustic strings, as texted, come in phosphor bronze and I put a set of the Custom Lights 11-52 on my Furch acoustic guitar. The sound was crisp and full with lots of clarity and string separation in the G through E strings and louder. I was surprised at the added bass response from the ATTUNE strings also, not muddy just full and pronounced. The strings don’ t feel like they have a coating on them which many treated strings do and I don’ t care for. Elixir is using new technology on the ATTUNE strings and they have been at the forefront of this string concept since 1997. I had a friend of mine test a set of ATTUNE strings also and he stated“ They at more responsiveness, kind of like a presence knob on an amplifier. Definitely help you cut through the mix and I would buy them. Elixir ATTUNE are priced at $ 23.99 a pack they are more expensive than traditional Elixir strings, but if they make you play more and last longer than it also saves you from changing strings more often and tone lose. Try the new Elixir ATTUNE guitar strings for yourself! www. elixirstrings. com
46 BUYER’ S GUIDE # 14- 2026 WL Subscribe to [ WM ] for Free...