BIO: My Gear
I did this page to avoid silly questions about my gear. I hope all your questions are answered.
GREG BENNET GIBSON SG REPLICA
Standard tuning; 2 humbuckler pickups; red/black. One of the best SG replicas there are — better than the Epiphone. I like the crunchy sound the SG has and Greg Bennet’s SG replica has an even crunchier sound. It could almost be “too” bright, but that’s possibly an advantage more than a problem (eg hiss is reduced by cutting the high frequency range). I use Rotosound 9 to 42 strings for their warmth, which is useful on a trebletastic (in a good way) guitar like this one.
MARLIN “STATE OF THE ART” SERIES FAKESTRAT
Pseudo baritone tuning; 2 humbuckler pickups; sunburst orange/red. I use this guitar for baritone sounds. It already has a very deep bluesy tone, so it is quite good at the whole pseudo baritone thing.
EKO RANGER VI
Flattened tuning (Eb, Bb, Gb…); 4 chambers; all wood. Very nice acoustic guitar, which belonged to my mother. It is very old and has a very age matured deep sound.
WESTONE FRETLESS BASS
Standard 4 string tuning; 2 single coil pickups; black. It is a fretless bass and has a soft bass sound. There is not much else that needs to be said. Why fretless? Well, listen to it. Note, I do not play it on every song! You can hear it on certain tracks from the Misanthrope album, such as A Night in Her Bed. Cool trivia: I used it for the baritone lead sound on The Morning After due to problems with the electrics on my Marlin pseudo baritone guitar at the time of recording (with excellent results I think!).
KORG 05R/W SOUND MODULE
Little black box of a synthesizer sound module. Early 1990s synthesizer with early 1990s synthesizer sounds. I particularly use its classic ethereal pads and cheesy fat leads. Keyboard and synthesizer nerds can listen out for classic Korg patches made famous by Korg’s flagship M1 and Trinity synthesizers, such as: Operators, Vibrabell, First Snow, Lite Voices, Death Stars, Starburst, Half Moons, Rezolution, Sunrise, Busy Boy, etc.
SM-AUDIO TB202
Two-channel tube/valve preamp frontend, complete with equalizer and optical compressor. I feed live vocals through this (microphone to channel 1 to delay pedal to channel 2 to desk/mixer/PA). It is also my studio/recording frontend for anything miked up (acoustic guitar, vocals, etc).
LINE6 PODxt PRO
Guitar amp modelling and effects unit for live and studio/recording use. This is how I get so many different guitar tones and effects live. I have a library of “patches” stored on the unit that the unit calls up, so I can call up the patch titled “HELL YEAH CRUNCH” and get a signature heavy Marshall crunch stack (some might say slightly akin to The Manic Street Preachers’ heavy guitar sound). In recording, I disable the cabinet modelling on the PODxt and use software convolution processing to open up more possibilities for mixing several cabinets from the same amplifier feed — one of very few useful features the PODxt does not implement.
BEHRINGER FCB1010
Grey MIDI floorboard with two expression pedals. Unlike most Behringer hardware, this actually works (I suspect because this particular one was manufactured just before the company was bought leading to the “cheapening” of its products and manufacture process). Essentially, this sends patch change commands and effect control commands to the PODxt Pro unit. The two expression pedals are set up for output volume and wah pedal, respectively, on all programmes. Each of the ten numbered buttons is a programme. There are ten programmes per bank and banks can be switched with the bank up/down buttons. Most of the ten programmes on each bank will send a patch change command to the PODxt and the programmes are arranged on the floorboard into banks by the type of patch (rhythm, lead, etc) they call up on the PODxt. However, on all programme banks:
- BUTTON 7 — always loads the “KILL SOUND” patch on the PODxt (which mutes the system completely
- BUTTON 8 — enables delay effects (stomp or post depending on particular patch)
- BUTTON 9 — enables modulation effects like chorus, flanger, etc (stomp or post depending on particular patch)
- BUTTON 10 — flicks on the “manual” wah pedal effect (there is an independent autowah effect under stomp effects on the PODxt).
DEAN MARKLEY ACOUSTIC PICKUP GRAND
Small, black, harmonica sized woodblock that sits in the hole of an acoustic guitar and picks up the sound. Not used for recording (good microphones are better, obviously), but great for live since it reduces feedback etc. Live, I run my Dean Markley pickup into my PODxt for equalizer, compression, reverb, etc.
ROCKTEK ADR-02 DELAY
Dirty black/purple 1990s analogue delay stomp box. I use it for live vocals (yes, vocals and not guitar!) and kick it in and out in places. Thanks to it being a dirty analogue delay, the “echoes” have a wah-like “megaphone” colour. I use this to add depth to live vocals in certain places, not so much as an effect — though the psychedelic analogue colouration is worth smiling about. It is amazing what you can buy on eBay!
THOMANN T.BONE UHF RECEIVER AND TRANSMITTER
In-ear monitoring setup. The monitor feed from the desk (or any line-out, eg effect send) is sent to the transmitter (big black box). I wear the battery-powered diversity receiver and jack some earphones in (good earphones that double as mediocre earplugs and, more importantly, STAY IN!). With the compression and tube/valve clarity/colouration of the SM TB202, as well as my use of effects on vocals, feedback is a certain problem. That problem is eliminated by removing foldback monitors in favour of in-ear monitoring. This is just a basic, low priced in-ear monitoring setup, but has great advantages.
