THE KAOS MONTHLY - FEBRUARY 2010

KAOS WEBSITE ADDS VIDEO DEMO SECTION

Anyone who knows us here at KAOS knows that the one thing that we hate is standing still, sometimes to a fault. Nonetheless, we always believe that in order to keep our customer's attention we need to constantly reinvent ourselves and add new things to our offerings. With this in mind we have added a new section to our website called 'Videos'. In this section there are two subsections. The first is a section called 'Product Demo Videos' that will contain weekly product demonstration videos of products from our store presented by our very own staff. The idea is to give you a look into the store before actually coming in. We know that busy people don't always get to come into their favorite music store as much as they'd like. So, these videos will endeavor to bring the music store to you. Each week, we will add at least one if not more videos to this section. Click here to see them.

The second section in the video area is a section titled 'Phil X - Frettedamericana' . Phil X is a Toronto based guitarist living in LA and also a great friend of ours here at KAOS. In LA, he is considered one of the most sought after session players and has been heard on dozens of very well known albums in the past 5 years. Frettedamericana is a vintage guitar shop in LA who hired Phil to star in a series of videos demonstrating their guitars. There are two reasons we have embedded these videos on our site. First, what guitar enthusiast doesn't like to see cool, old guitars in action. Second, Phil is a really fantastic guitarist and an absolute pleasure to watch. His super human enthusiasm is completely genuine and very fun to watch. Viewers will definitely learn something each time they tune in. Click here to check them out.

WE NEED YOUR OPINION... and you may even get paid for it!

All to often, we as an organization come up with what we think is a great idea only to find out after we've implemented it that our customers weren't really onboard with what we were trying to do. Aside from learning valuable lessons about the importance of market research we really just end up wasting a ton of time and sometimes money. So, with this in mind we are turning to you for advice on our current idea. We hope that you will email us any feedback that you might have. If you do, we'll enter you to win a $100 KAOS Gift Card to be drawn the week of March 8th. Here goes...

We are working on an idea to launch a new "guitar orientated" web site geared to offer guitar enthusiasts a place to view product videos, read product reviews, read user generated product reviews, learn about guitar maintenance, get playing tips, post products for sale in a classified section and buy new guitar products like guitar play-a-long books, capos, picks, strings, guitar apparel and other products not easily found in a typical music store. We want the site to be of value to its visitors so that they will return on a regular basis.

I suppose the question is, what would you find valuable in a site dedicated to guitar? For you to want to visit a site on a regular basis, what content would it have to offer? Click here to email us your feedback and be entered to win the Gift Card.

BACK TO BASICS.. THE MARSHALL CLASS 5

In a world full of guitar amps, it's getting really hard to decide what to get. Do you buy a tube amp or solid state? Do you buy one high powered amp or two, one low power and one high powered? Are built in effects any good? How much power is enough? All good questions and with the available variety of products on the market it is getting really hard to decide between the huge number of offerings. Marshall is not immune to the lure of offering many different products. Currently, their product line is one of the largest. However, one thing that Marshall has done really well for over 50 years is build exceptional sounding plexi style tube amps.

The Class 5 is just that, a bare bones plexi style tube amp that endeavors to deliver pure tube tone in a small powered, small footprint package. We just plugged in for the first time the other day and everyone at the store was pretty darn impressed with what came out of this little green package. The green color is a limited edition color only available in Canada and only for a short time, then it's back to plain old black. Each country is getting it's own color for a limited time so having one them would be kind of cool. Anyhow, all that to say that we loved the sound and would highly recommend that you check it out. At under $500, this little amp is perfect for home use, recording and small jams. The big thing about it is how good it sounds and how well in responds to your playing, your guitar and the volume setting.

Click here to visit the Marshall site for more information.

GODIN JUST KEEPS ON COMING WITH IT'S NEW SESSION

By now any regular customer of ours knows how we feel about anything made by Godin, we love them. Ever since Fender lost their battle to copyright their guitar body and headstock design, Godin has been busy building new instruments that use the famous Fender body shape. Last year they released the Progression, a super nice Strat style guitar with many nice improvements over the Fender version at a fraction of the price of a US made Fender. Now, they have just started shipping the Session, a slightly (and we mean slightly) scaled down version of the Progression. With slightly less expensive machine heads, slightly less expensive pick ups and the removal of their pick up booster the Session comes in at almost half the price. This makes it less expensive then a Mexi Strat. Don't forget, all of the Godin products are manufactured exclusively in the US and Canadian production facilities. In our opinion, maybe the best guitar that we have ever seen in this price range. We expect to receive our first shipment any day, stay tuned. Click here to visit Godin's website for more information.

TAKE ANOTHER LOOK... IT'S A MARTIN