What I Play
Guitars & Basses
Customised Ibanez RGR570IPT
My recently purchased "dream guitar", which will be my main instrument from here on in. There is a lot of hype about the Ibanez "Wizard" necks and LoPro-Edge trem system.......and it's all true ! The neck is flat, wide and incredibly thin and feels like no other guitar on Earth to play. The floating, double-locking trem system is recessed deep into the body and is smooth, stable and very responsive. All this, combined with a 5-way switchable H-S-H pickup configuration (allowing you to split the humbuckers with the middle single-coil pickup), which gives an amazingly wide tonal range, makes this a monster of a guitar ! Mine is a 1998 Japanese-manufactured model in an "iron pewter" finish (pictured). Just to make it even better, I had the stock humbuckers (very loud, but lacking in character) replaced with DiMarzio Air-Norton and Tone Zone pickups (fans of John Petrucci will be very familiar with the sound of this combination). (The guitar and pickup replacements were all sorted out at the excellent A1 Music shop in Preston, England). Forget the insulting "super-Strat" tag: these guitars have nothing in common with the so-called "original" and are in a different league altogether. If you've ever wondered why Satriani, Vai, Petrucci and Gilbert all play signature Ibanez guitars....play one and find out !
Peavey EVH Wolfgang Special
After much deliberation, I decided to trade in my Gibson "The Paul" for a Wolfgang Special: a good decision, since this guitar fells better and sounds a whole lot better than the Gibson! Edward Van Halen's own design, "signature" guitar, the Wolfgang has won many industry awards and is the favoured instrument of an increasing number of pro guitarists. It is very comfortable to hold and has a beautiful assymetric, oiled maple neck that EVH himself describes as "buttery"....play one and you'll get the point. The Special is a stripped-down, "budget" (i,e, "only" about £1000!!) version of the original (and very expensive) model; lacking the arch-top and and a tone control. Many people say that it is simply not worth the extra £1000 to get the luxury model....I would go further and say that having compared the Wolfgang and Wolfgang Special, the latter sounds every bit as good as the former and on the ones that I compared, the Special actually felt better to play! The guitar sounds like a dream, with quite superb "EVH" pickups...it has a nice warm tone, but is much more open than a Gibson........great for screaming artifical harmonics! Using the pickup selector and the very effective volume control, you can get just about any sound you would every want. I had it modified by using a push/pull volume pot to split the neck humbucker, just to give an even wider range of tones.
1986 American-made Kramer Baretta
This was my main guitar for the heavier stuff and for soloing, before I got the Ibanez. This guitar came equipped with an original Floyd-Rose locking trem (floating, but not recessed), a single DiMarzio X2N pickup (must be the highest output passive humbucker in existence !) and a single volume control. It is quite obviously designed for one thing only (CRUNCH !!), but it does that extremely well and besides, it is a piece of guitar history. Yes, this is the original Eddie Van Halen model upon which modern rock guitar playing was re-invented in the mid-70s. My example has a goldy-greeny-yellowy metallic finish, like the picture, except with a black head-stock and had a DiMarzio X2N, rather than the Seymour-Duncan shown there. I recently upgraded this guitar by replacing the pickup with a DiMarzio Tone Zone and a new push/pull volume pot, wired to a coil-tap function.....giving the instrument a much improved sound with some variation in tone now available.
Kramer unfortunately went bust in 1990, partially due to the dubious quality of the later Korean-manufactured instruments. You can still pick up used models for very good prices (I got mine in Stockholm for £200, which is ridiculously cheap for a pro-standard guitar), but make sure that is an American-manufactured model. There are still a lot of Kramer enthusiasts around and many of them collect these guitars. Check out the excellent Kramer Krazy" website for details (they can even trace the date and place of manufacture of your guitar from the serial number). Gibson recently bought the rights to the Kramer name and have started manufacturing some flashy-looking rock guitars that carry the some of the old model names.......these should not be confused with the original pro-quality American Kramers from the 1980s!
Ibanez AE30MS acoustic/electric
Recording acoustic guitars remains a tricky and expensive task. A good electric/acoustic (i.e. a "real acoustic" with a transducer pickup built in) is a simpler and cheaper alternative to splashing out on a really good acoustic guitar and the capacitor microphone you'll need to do it justice at the recording stage. This Ibanez guitar fills the role perfectly. The body is made completely of maple, with a very nice-looking flamed maple top, in a "marine sunburst" finish (see the picture of my actual example) and has the patented Ivorex saddle which gives extra depth and sustain comapred to standard bone-made models. The body cavity is a little thinner than a full-sized "dreadnought" acoustic, but plenty big enough to sound good even when un-amplified. The guitar really shines, however, once you plug it in to an amp or recording desk...the electronics on this baby are top-notch! The AE30 is equipped with a Fishman piezo pickup (Fishman are probably THE leading makers of acoustic pickups) and a three-band active EQ system with an additional presence control. This allows for a very wide-range of tones, from booming bass to jingly highs and all of these with a very even balance across all six strings (which wasn't the case with earlier guitars of this type!). This guitar looks great and sounds superb. It also has lots of typical Ibanez innovative little touches, like a very cleverly designed easy-access battery change system for the active EQ and the location of the cable socket inside the rear strap button. This guitar is a huge improvement on my old Kramer Ferrington, which I part-exchanged in for the Ibanez.
IbanezSoundgear SR506, six-string bass in a natural amber wood finish.
After having played bass for 8 months or so on my Yamaha Attitude 5-string, I had a better idea of exactly what I wanted for playing and recording bass.......and this happened to be "it"! I was looking for a bass which was a)active, since you normally record bass parts direct into the studio and having a preamp inside the instrument really helps and b)was in a "natural" type of finish, since I just happen to think that basses look best that way. The fact that it was an Ibanez was also a plus, since they make a really good quality bass for the money. I had been thinking of getting a 5-string, but since this appeared second hand at a reasonable price, I figured that having an extra string couldn't hurt! This bass plays really nicely.....the action is excellent and it doesn't buzz anywhere on the two-octave neck. The Ibanez Soundgear bass series have very thin, sleek necks in general, so the transition from 5 to 6 strings wasn't so difficult as it might have been (although being a six-string, the neck is still fairly wide!). With two passive pickups and a three-band active EQ preamp, the range of sounds is very wide and the bass boost in particular really gives this instrument a kick. It also looks really good, with its varnished amber mahogany body and sleek lines (see picture).
Amps and Effects
Line6 POD digital valve amp modelling/direct recording unit
The latest addition to the recording arsenal......and a very valuable one too! The "POD" is probably the most important new technological breakthrough for the guitarist for quite some years (or even decades). It is a software-based digital modelling system which reproduces all the sound characteristics of specifically chosen, classic valve amplifiers, from the 50s to the 90s. This modelling extends to specific speaker cabinet emulations and even takes into account the tonal changes made when miking-up the speaker cabs! This makes the POD a complete dream device for home recording purposes: almost perfectly reproduced valve amp/cab sounds direct into your recording unit (the neigbours will really appreciate this!). The unit also comes equipped with an excellent chromatic tuner, some fairly high quality digital effects (the compressor in particular is good) and has nice, big, easy-to-use control knobs for technology-challenged guitarists! The unit can be easily programmed with 36 different combinations of amp models and effects, or used in manual mode. If you don't have access to a computer, then the POD is a bit limited, especially in how much you can control the effects combinations, optimise the noise gate and mix and match amps and speaker cabs. With a computer, however, you can use the provided SoundDiver software to perform "deep editing" on your POD.....which means that you can tweak just about every possible function and call-up some nice additional amp models, such as the the Roland Jazz Chorus and Mesa-Boogie Mark IIc. If you are a guitarist and don't own a POD, then you should probably get one....it's a !!
Laney Tube Fusion TF200, 65W valve/solid state hybrid combo
Although we have generally recorded guitars D.I., via the Digitech, it is also good to have a decent amp. The RP7 is great for lead guitar sounds, but I've never come up with a rhythm guitar sound that I'm 100% happy with. This amp is a three channel, 65W combo with a 12-inch speaker and while it is basically a FET solid-state design, it has a valve pre-amp stage for the drive channels. The clean and two drive channels have independent volume, EQ and reverb facilities (a good feature!), there is a cabinet emulator-type of circuit that supposedly makes the amp sound more like a 4x12 speaker stack (certainly has a big influence on the sound) when engaged, an effect send/return loop, a line-out facility and headphone socket. It has all the features you could require and sounds great! It extremely loud (you can't really use the volume settings much above 1.5 in the house), has a nice warm tone on the clean channel and some great overdriven sounds....largely thanks to the valve in the pre-amp, I suspect. With the Digitech unit (see below) plugged into the effects loop, acting as a noise-gate and volume pedal controller, it sounds really nice. The amp would also be easily powerful enough for playing live. Laney are a British firm with a very good reputation and count Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert and Toni Iommi amongst their endorsing artists.
George Dennis GD-30 Wah-wah pedal
As mentioned above, the wah feature of the Digitech RP-7 is not very good (not everything sounds better in digital!). I got this wah pedal for a very reasonable price and it is actually very good indeed. It works via an optical/electrical mechanism, so there is no wearing-out problem further down the line and it has a great basic wah sound, a true bypass switch (needs some pressure to activate....so stand up when using it!) and a very solid construction. I compared it side-by-side with a Dunlop Crybaby (didn't like the sound or the feel) and a Morley Steve Vai signature "Bad Horsie" (similar to the George Dennis, but three times as expensive!!). For the money involved, there was no contest and this pedal does the job very well.
Zoom 506 Bass Multi-effects unit
A small, compact unit that acts as a nice preamp unit for direct recording of bass tracks (miking bass amps is not usually recommended). It has various preamp, compresser/limiter functions, together with extras like autowah, chorus/flange, reverb/echo and "bass synth". Several of these features are unlikely to be used much by anyone who isn't completely derranged and the factory presets are largely terrible, but you can get some nice basic (ouch !) sounds if you set it up yourself and use it to get good recordings
Crate BX-25 Bass Combo
All of the bass track recordings are made either direct into the 4-track studio, or via the Zoom 506 unit, so the bass amp is for purposes other than recording (such as jamming along to "scratch tracks" to work out bass lines for new songs). A 25W combo with a 12 inch speaker, "sound contour" control and built-in limiter (thereby avoiding the dreaded " speaker syndrome"), this little wonder sounds terrific. I tried about six or seven different small bass combos before settling on this one: this was the best by far. Most of the other small bass combos on the market (and I'm talking about major amp manufacturers here) are all but useless......of all the others I tried out, only Laney came close.Other equipment
I also sometimes use an Alesis NanoCompressor and Alesis Wedge on recording guitar and bass tracks, but those things are dealt with on the home recording page. For occasional keyboards, I use a Yamaha PSR-220; thanks to the kindness of my partner, Gail :-)
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