The H4 offers luthiers the opportunity to do several things that not too long ago would have required an enormous outlay of money, energy, and learning. With the H4, however, we can record our instruments at home, in the shop, from the audience at a club, in our bathroom with that lovely natural reverb, or even in a quiet glen in the mountains, the river just out of earshot, but still there.

About the size of a small submarine sandwich, that is, about 6"×2.5"×1", the H4 is lightweight in the hand but quite heavyweight in terms of features. It has a built-in pair of condenser mikes, set in an X/Y configuration and protected by a little roll cage. Additionally, there are cleverly designed inputs that will accommodate either 1/4" ring-tip-sleeve connectors or XLRs, all with the availability of phantom power. What this means is if you wish, you could use those cheap but great-sounding mikes that Radio Shack discontinued the same month that Audio Magazine rated them as superior to their reference mike. Until now it was hard to find a 1/4" balanced input to make the most of them. Since there are now so many good-sounding large-diaphragm condenser mikes available at good prices, you could set up a pair of them externally, powered by the internal phantom source in the H4. To further break it down, what this means to us is that we can record well using only the H4; but we can also use our arsenal of mikes for even higher fidelity and tone.

Because the H4 employs SD memory cards, you can record over six hours at CD quality using a 2Gb card. You can erase and rerecord as often as you like, or archive them in your computer, or just start collecting SD cards. As cheap as memory cards have become, I’m surprised they aren’t offering them in bubble gum. If you only want MP3 quality, you can record thirty-four hours on that same card, which is enough to get all the verses of “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” I realize this is starting to sound like a late-night commercial for Ginsu Steak Knives, but if you order right now....

For the data hunters and gatherers the H4 has a USB mass-storage jack. This means you can output directly to your computer. The H4 comes bundled with recording software to edit, EQ, and mix. It is surprisingly intuitive and has decent help screens to get you out of trouble. I expect the Sci-Luths will be getting us reports of more specific data than we have been able to glean up until now. It should be relatively easy to record, archive, and analyze the recordings to parse out various aspects of our guitars. A picture of the various amplitudes of various frequencies at various phase relationships (I think we could do that) would be a boon to those luthiers seeking to control their instruments by corralling data. I can imagine taking the simple measurements such as weight, flexibility, strength, and resonant frequency; coupling them with Q, Lucci measurements, and aroma; dividing by the flavor the dust leaves on the back of the throat; and running it all, folded gently into the Fast Fourier Transform available in my computer. OK, I cannot really imagine that, since I don’t even know what it means, but I’m getting closer to that day.

On top of all that, you can use the H4 as an interface from your instrument or mikes to your computer to record directly to your hard drive, or to employ the continually improving and inexpensifying software that is also practically free. And by practically free I mean actually free. There is freeware, shareware, wetware, software, gelware (well, there could be!), all for us to play with.

I have not had a chance to experiment with the 4-track capability of the H4. At this point that is not high on my agenda. I did record at each of the four settings, 96kHz, 48kHz, 44.1kHz (CD quality), and MP3. I like that I can decide what balance of bits to time I need. Most H4 functions are controlled by a single “joystick” button on the front of the recorder. It only took a few minutes to get used to that and to be able to navigate the input menu.

OK. So, how does it work? The first thing I did after a very cursory look through the manual was set the record quality to CD, set it on the ledge of our treetop-level guest house in Ubud, and record the cacophony of frogs, crickets, cicadas, monkeys, and who knows what else. Using the included earphones I listened gleefully to the sounds of the Bali night. As it turns out, even geckos make a really amazing sound. What I assumed must be a huge, fierce amphibious creature turned out to be a frog the size of a silver dollar. By fiddling a bit with the input levels and laying the recorder on its side on a pillow, I was able to improve the already cool sounds I was capturing.

On the downside, the earphones are barely usable, both uncomfortable and a bit flat sounding. Luckily better earphones are readily available.

At a concert of gamelon orchestra the next evening I recorded music that covered the entire dynamic range from whisper-soft wood flute to the truly deafening roar of the full gamelon. Nyoman Darna, a driver whom Janet has now known for a couple of years, is an accomplished wood carver, as well as a student of the bamboo gamelon and a guitar player. On a trip across the island Nyoman suggested a stop at a gamelon maker’s shop. In addition to being a truly fine craftsman, the gamelon maker turned out to be Nyoman’s teacher. Hmm, we drive up into the mountains, visit a gamelon maker, Nyoman gets a lesson. Not a bad day’s travel. As Nyoman and his teacher squatted on the dirt floor of the shop, a chicken and a dog casually meandering around us, the other craftspeople carving or painting instruments, I was able to record this impromptu music lesson in CD quality. (Listen to some of these recordings at the Extras page of the GAL website: www.luth.org.)

A few nights later I recorded the famous Bali Monkey Chant dance, with its wildly percussive, rhythmically complex vocalizations. It is formally known as Ketchak, and that is the main syllable I could discern. (The sound is “tchak!” I suspect they use a silent “Ke,” just like in English.) Wonderful music.

I have made a few recordings of guitars and I plan to record as many of my guitars as I can get my hands and ears on. They will be available on my website for my potential customers to hear and for me to refer to as I wish to remind myself of my former glory.

The H4 is not the only small digital recorder out there. Several companies make them. The H4 (retail price is $499, but I’ve seen them online for as little as $253 — shop around.) is affordable, well designed, and as far as I can tell the only one that can be used as a USB interface.

The H4’s light weight may also translate into fragile. I wouldn’t drop it too often or from too great a height. I did drop mine from about four feet. After reclosing the battery compartment it worked just fine. Also, as I said, I wish the earphones were more comfortable. The H4 can run on two AA batteries or the included wall wart adaptor. I would have liked it if the adaptor could be used to charge rechargeable batteries, but you can’t have everything. I almost forgot to mention the little foam windscreen that can be either placed over the mikes to cut wind noise, or placed over the nose to garner cheap laughs.

At a recent Northern California Association of Luthiers meeting, one of the topics of greatest interest was the potential of using small, affordable recorders to gather data as well as record and post to websites. For many of us, the H4 will simplify these tasks. I, for one, plan to take mine to the beach and record the surf late at night. ◆