Alright guys:
Jeff is indeed an extremely friendly dude and I really enjoyed talking with him. I was able to ask about so much random guitar stuff...which guitar picks are better for metal (which at that point he went into a drawer and gave me like, five of his guitar picks), about hitting pinch harmonics just right, how to figure out pinch harmonics that harmonize well together... And I asked him things about a bunch of my favorite Nevermore guitar parts of his, that sweeping part late in the song "This Godless Endeavor" for one. Of course he's just like "Oh yeah, this...", and noodles it out on his guitar there. Apparently he tries to be pretty practiced up for the studio so as to not waste time...so I got the impression that he pretty much nails all of his parts in the first take or two (!!!!). It was incredible to just sit there and think, "Holy crap! I'm in Jeff Loomis' house watching him play Nevermore licks!". And, his new signature Schecter looks awesome. He said that it's going to be unveiled at the next NAMM, and even though he let me take a couple pictures of it, at the time I didn't think to ask him if he would be okay with me putting the pictures online for anyone to see. I doubt it will be an issue but I'd rather wait to ask him than risk causing any trouble. But that doesn't mean I can't describe the guitar...haha. The finish is a flat, transparent dark crimson with the wood grain showing through, with a maple neck with these kind of celtic looking black cross inlays. The headstock is a similar light wood color, of course with his signature engraved into the plastic piece that rests against the first fret. And, it comes stock with the active EMG 7-string pickups...can't remember what they're called. It's a beautiful guitar though, and he said they'll probably go for around $899, but if that's the list price then they will obviously go for less.
I mentioned before how he just got his Digi002 up and running (Pro Tools 7.1.1). He also just bought a Korg padKONTROL, because he's trying to get away from using his old Boss drum machine and the old recorder he's been using for quite a while. The padKONTROL comes with a Korg edition of dfhSUPERIOR, and his hopes are that he'll get some better drum sounds out of that for demoing purposes. As for the purpose of my friend and I going to his house...he basically couldn't figure out how to get any drum sounds. We were getting MIDI signal from the padKONTROL into Pro Tools just fine, but even after going through the Korg edition dfhSUPERIOR installation process (which he may not have done in the first place), we couldn't get the plug-in to actually freaking show up. Apparently the Korg edition is only a VST or AU thing, but it looked to me like the installation process included a wrapper so that Pro Tools on a Mac could handle it. It just wouldn't show up in Pro Tools, even after I ran home and back to install my copy of the fxpansion VST to RTAS. The fxpansion thing found the drummer.vst plug-in and said it created an RTAS for it, and when we relaunched Pro Tools I could even see it load the drummer.vst plug-in, but still...the plug-in would just not appear in any of the insert lists. So, if any of you have any pointers here, you will be directly helping Mr. Jeff Loomis. I have never before had this much trouble with an installation of any type. Internet searches and all of the user manuals included helped us understand everything a lot better than before, but they didn't solve the problem. I'm wondering if it's some pain-in-the-ass compatibility issue or something.
Anyhow...hopefully we can get this thing running properly soon. From there it looks like I'll still be helping Jeff learn his way around Pro Tools a bit and getting used to demoing in a different way...I'm excited.
He offered to give me guitar lessons... I think I might die.
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