RotM #6 - Chat

steamabacus · January 2015

spark240 said:

@steamabacus...great sound you have there, whats your setup?

I did this all 'live' on my looper (Digitech JamMan SoloXT) and recorded onto minidisc - I find it so much easier to be creative when I don't have to switch on the computer.

The drum loop comes from an american drummer I know via SoundCloud called Steve Mauro. He often posts free improv drum recordings and is always open to collaborations, so I extracted a couple of bars from one of his pieces as the basis for this (I actually recorded this a couple of months ago). By the way, Steve often posts as 'Steve the Mad Drummer', my name is Steve too so the track title is a bit of a play on all that.

As far as the guitar goes, it's my Ibanez AGS-83B semi (on the left in the photo here) and I record everything direct.

As you can see, I'm lucky enough to have a permanently set up 'studio' (also my 'office', 'workshop', 'reception room', ...etc.) and I can throw a couple of switches and be playing (and recording) in literally seconds. Nothing is particularly state-of-the-art (my studio computer runs Windows XP) or high-end but I'm very familiar with stuff I've slowly built up over the years.

The actual guitar set up is pretty complex as I've built up a stereo setup with whatever equipment I've got - keeping it simple I have a 'preamp board' with my drives, etc that goes into a Blackstar HT-5 and then the fx send of the HT-5 goes into a second 'delay board' with my delays, looper etc. That is then split in stereo. At the time of this recording, the left channel went back into the Blackstar's fx return and then out if its speaker emulated output. The right channel goes through an Award-Session JD-10 preamp (with speaker sim) and a MicroFX compressor. I have reverb on the desk aux send from a Lexicon MPX200.