Even though gear has gotten smaller over the years, hauling all the necessary stuff to gigs can be a pain. Try cramming everything in a backpack, and everything gets lost, and taking a milkcrate of gear on a bus or plane, good luck with that! Orbit Concepts have brought the portability of an everyday carry bag, with the capacity to hold everything for a gig.
First off, it’s size: 8” deep, 12.5” wide, and 17” tall. It’s like a scaled-down airplane carry on. The outer skin is a water resistant black nylon, with really nice quality zippers and pull tabs. The shoulder straps are fully adjustable, with plenty of back padding, well-designed buckles, and a chest strap. Each strap has an expandable hook for attaching items that might need to be grabbed easily, like a flashlight. There’s plenty of padding for comfort, as well as a padded handle, and luggage tag.
Inside is a bright orange liner throughout done in ripstop material. Why orange? Well considering that 90% of all the gear we use is done in black or dark colors, fumbling around in the dark looking through a black bag, for a black piece of gear would just not make sense.
Now it has plenty of compartments, as this was designed as a DJ/EDM performer bag, there are slots for fill size vinyl, as well as a CD tab, and a pocket for a turntable needle. It can handle a full size set of headphones, a laptop, cables, power supplies, hard drives, as well as smaller format portable samplers and MIDI controllers too. There are zip-up mesh compartments for little items that might get thrown around. Everything has its own place.
Now while it may have been meant as a DJ bag, traditional musicians could easily adopt this for their own. Putting in a smaller format multi effects pedal, like a Line 6 HX stomp, or even a small pedalboard, like a Pedaltrain Nano and its associated cables and power supply is a great idea. Merch like CDs and LPs can easily slide in. Mics, patch cables, all the stuff that seems to get spread around instrument gig bags and pedalboard cases, can easily find a home here, too. Think of the emergency supplies that go to a gig: strings, fuses, tubes. Even small tool kits like Cruz Tool’s guitar kit! Small format guitar stands like the ones from D&A (see our review in this issue) can fit in here as well.
Overall it’s a well-made and well-designed backpack that is meant for organized travel and gigging. If you’re a DJ, it’s meant for you, and for you traditional musicians, this can easily work for live gigs. Pros don’t throw their gear in milk crates, and neither should you.
PROS:
well designed, quality materials, functional pockets & compartments
CONS:
none
STREET PRICE:
$159