If you are a guy, than perhaps your father or your older brother gave you this sage advice, “Always carry protection.” Of course the meaning may have been focused on limiting your chances of untimely procreation instead of discovering the best method of protecting your laptop computer and recording gear stored inside. However, the idea that you need to seriously consider how you protect your “valuables” is the consistent message, isn’t it?
What Is The Cost Of Protection Worth?
Indeed, for the musician, producer or DJ that may be carrying a laptop computer, microphone, headphones, audio interface, cables, external hard drive, and even a MIDI controller or keyboard, it is not just about the replacement cost of all the gear if a strap should break and your stuff crashes to the sidewalk (and that cost could be considerable), but about your time, energy and passion in putting together the music and performances residing inside. What is that really worth? Yes, you should have backed up, but often there just isn’t enough time and we go on our way with the best of intentions… and that we will back up later… tomorrow…
Keeping that reality in mind, we need to really examine the bags or backpacks that we use to transport our “musical life” and irreplaceable performances. How thick is the padding? Is the bottom of the bag even padded at all? Are there appropriate spaces to store all of your gear? How does the bag fit on your body and is the bag ergonomically designed for comfort?
The beauty of the advance in technology is that now the professional recording studio has become extremely portable. We really can take our portable recording studio anywhere and turn out quality recordings, but the danger in this flexibility is in the transport of your equipment.
Meet My Kitchen Table Drummer
I am a musician and songwriter, as are most of the people involved with
Namba Gear, and I have been recently recording on my own music project. In order to keep costly studio time to a minimum, my percussionist and great friend, Koorosh Daryaie, has been coming over to my house with his laptop for us to do drum programming.
KD has both Pro Tools and Ableton Live on his laptop and we will use either Digidesign’s Strike Drums or Native Instruments’ Battery to do my drum parts. It takes us about 3-5 hours per song to program drums, which KD drops into a Pro Tools session that can be transferred directly into the recording studio’s larger Pro Tools HD system. KD shows up at my house with his backpack (currently from another manufacturer), which holds the laptop audio interface, MIDI controller, and cables and I hook him up to a pair of my studio monitors on the kitchen table and we go to work. Unfortunately, I think KD has gone through three of these backpacks in as many years.
If You Are A Wal-Mart Shopper, Namba Gear Bags Are Probably Not For You
Let’s face it, bags and backpacks that will hold your laptop computer are “a dime a dozen” and it is easy enough to do down to Wal-Mart or Target or even Guitar Center and buy a $39 backpack or messenger bag. So if you are that “Wal-Mart shopper” Namba Gear bags are probably not for you. That is not what we are about.
Namba Gear bags are designed by working musicians, tested by working musicians, with the musician’s life and lifestyle as well as the transport of his most precious work in mind. Namba studio laptop bags are superior quality, heavy-duty products and are about giving you the protection and piece of mind that you, your laptop computer, and your music or recording gear deserve. Isn’t your music worth protecting by getting the best studio laptop computer bag or backpack on the planet? (OK, that last line was a bit of shameless, self-promotion as a result of passionate typing, but damn-it, it really is true.)
By the way, Koorosh is one of our (now very happy) Namba Gear testers.
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