Guitars

Well I have a number of guitars that I play as you can imagine, you tend to pick them up over the years and sometimes you fancy a change and others you go back to the old faithful’s.

Above one man and his Steinberger

The guitar that I have used the most is a Charvel 375 that I have had since 1990 it has an over the top 80s pointy headstock a humbucker and 2 single coil and the obligatory Floyd Rose vibratio system. It’s a great guitar and serves me well, though I haven’t taken it out live much lately.

Above Charvel 375

Epiphone Les Paul Standard – This I’s the most recent addition to the fleet, what is different is that I have fitted a Fishman powerbidge to it so its effectively an electro acoustic as well, Pete Townshend has been doing this for years with his Strat, and it’s a great sound to mix acoustic with electric, I tried this using acoustic simulator pedals but it never worked, this way does.

G&L Tribute S-500 In a nutshell it’s a Strat with a coil tap, great sounding guitar and the guitar I do most recording with these days.

Steinberger Spirit OK its not a FULL Steinberger it’s a budget version, but it’s a fantastic guitar ever since the 80s I’ve always wanted one and I managed to get mine in 2006 it always stays in tune, its got a fantastic action and I was always a fan of the EMG select pickups, even though they are not though of as much these days to me, they

Roland GR-300 Analogue guitar Synth, sounds brilliant think early Marillion, though with a few effets creates a massive sound. 

Amplifiers

For me valve is best, always has been though in the early days I could never afford a proper valve amp, the only exception was I did have an old Elpico AC-88 head, and I recently found another one via ebay and it sounds as good as it ever did though I need to replace most of the capacitors at some point. Playing live I started with a Fender PRO-185 combo that I still have and occasionally use live, it’s a decent sounding 2x12 solid state combo with spring reverb, and has lasted over 20 years with me.

Above my Elpico AC-88 great amp same basic design as the 20w Marshall heads and the orange Tiny Terror.

My main live amp is a Marshall 1959SLP Plexi 100w amp the classic simple design Marshall head, works very well and sounds perfect clean or distorted. It goes into a JCM 800 4x12 1960a cab. I also just picked up a cheap Marshall 1x12 Cab that was designed to go with the mg combos as an extention cab but sounds fantastic with the plexi.

Marshall 1959SLP Re Issue

Above on stage in London, a Les Paul and a Marshall

New Cab small cheap and sounds great

For rehearsal and recording I have an Epiphone valve special combo, This is basically a larger version of the well know Valve junior amp except it has a 12” speaker and some digital effects. I never use the effects, I replaced the speaker with an Eminence 10” driver and changed the valves. As a combo it sounds great I have even gigged with it, though had to mic it up, but going into a 4x12 for recording its amazing, that’s probably because I love the sound of an EL84 based amp and why I really want to get hold of one of those elpico amps again.

Recording

I started multitrack recording using a Sansui MR6 cassette machine that I bought from Thatch Cottage Audio (remember them?) it opened my world to recording, and I made several recordings on it that made it to CD release. After we made the first All Living Fear album we made enough to get a Fostex E-16 ½” recorder at the time we thought we were the bees knees. The thing was we didn’t haven’t  all the kit to go with it, no Compressors, Mixer, decent mics etc so our recordings ended up sounding not much better than what we did with the cassette machine!

Above I still own the E-16 but it only really gets used for archive transfers.

Computers well this is something that I have been slow on really, I have been using Cakewalk since 1996, initially as a MIDI sequencer, though to be honest I never really knew it very well and I should have been able to sync it to the E-16 but never figured that one out either. By 2003 I was recording audio on the computer again I never really knew how it worked properly and never had a PC powerful to run plug ins. Recently I have been running Sonar with a fairly chunky PC with a great ASIO M-Audio Delta 1010 sound card interface, I’m using a lot of plug ins and getting a million times better sound now than I have ever done.

Outboard and effects

I have probably owned 60 ot 70 effects units in my life and I still own the first pedals I had, namely a Frontline Flanger and an Arion distortion pedal. I have never been a fan of multi fx units, most sound horrible and are a beast to programme. I have owned a Frontline X4, and Steve Williams in All Living Fear has one, all analogue its like 3 pedals in a box. I also had a Peavy Ultraverb II which was good for reverb and chorus. One Unit I still own is a Korg A3, it was £1300 when it was new, I paid a LOT less than that I can tell you, but basically it’s a bit rubbish, It was meant to be what the Sisters used to  do the guitars on Vision thing, but I really cant see how though if Mr Eldritch would like to send me a list of his patch settings that would be good to try!

All my early recordings had a Boss DRV100 reverb, and I eventually got an Alesis 3630 Compresor. Though neither have been used for

Recording wise all my effects are nearly all plug ins (for everything except electric guitars)

Guitar Pedal Board

My pedal board has been worked on quite a bit the last couple of years and goes something like this.

Above pedal board in its case

Jim Dunlop Cry Baby Wah, Electro Harmonix White finger Compressor into a Boss Tuner, Boss DS1 Distortion  that feeds an EHX Screaming Bird treble boost then 2 more EHX pedals a Worm Phaser / tremolo followed by a Poly Chorus, That then goes into a Boss DD-3 Delay and finally an EHX LPB 1 power boost. You might that that’s it, but no there is more, I have an EHX Delux Memory Man that sits on top the amp so I can wind in the analogue delay howell!!

Since the above photo was taken I have an Electro Harmonic Germanium Fuzz pedal

Above my practice set up

Synths

I have a few, though the main one I use that isn’t a plug is Yamaha CS-10 and I have an Obeheim Matrix-1000 that is driven by a small midi keyboard that I use for live. At home I have a Korg M1, Roland Juno 6 and a Rhodes 660 that has some great string sounds.

Above Top the Yamaha CS-10 Below the Juno 6

As for drum machines for All Living Fear it started with an Alesis SR-16, then in 2003 drums were of a Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard in the PC, but for Fifteen Years After we went back to the Alesis. Now I use soft synth drums.

Plug in wise, the MTron Mellotron plug in I use a lot as well as Korg Wavstation and MS20. and for Drums Ez Drummer.

Bass Pedals

I just bought a set of Roland PK-5A Midi bass pedals, they are very easy to use and at the moment Im using my Korg Symphony module with its Bass guitar sound going through a bass amp with all the top end frequencies down and it makes a great noise you can see a video of me playing them here.