My newest addition!

“How to record guitars when you can’t crank the amp loud enough?” The eternal question for home studio users!

I have mic’d up my amps in the past, but never loud enough to get the power tubes working. I have used Guitar Rig software alot with some success, but I’d prefer to use my amp heads.

So instep Palmer Germany with the PGA 04 speaker simulator and load box. This seems to be a great bit of kit. You simply take a speaker cable out from your amp into the PGA04 and then a mic lead from the balanced output of the box, and into your recording interface.

There are lots of controls to simulate different types of speaker cabs and you can mix in the unfiltered direct signal of the amp, to add a bit more bite. There are also unfiltered line outs, so you can send a pure DI signal to you recording interface, to then process separately in something like Guitar Rig.

I’ve only used it for a couple of hours so far, but it seems to be pretty useful. I mean, having the ability to drive a 50 watt head at even half volume on the master, and record it silently, has got to be good!

I hope to do a video at some point….

This is the current state of my pedalboard

But it will change soon! First new pedal is the Greer Amplification Southland Harmonic Overdrive. I’ve been wanting one of these for a while but I couldn’t find a UK dealer. But Joe’s Pedals stepped in, to help me spend my money!!

The Southland will be my main overdrive pedal but I need to see which of the Wampler drives I have, will be the best pedal to stack into it.

Second new pedal is the Keeley Electronics Aurora Reverb.

My Morgan amp doesn’t have any reverb built in so I had been looking at pedals to add some. However, I’ve been happy to use delay only up until now and this pedal ended up being a bit of an impulse purchase. Don’t get me wrong, it sounds very good, but I’m not sure if it will make it onto my board permanently. It would be a case of fitting 7 pedals, into the 6 loop Quartermaster.

Any finally (phew) to hopefully improve the sound of the board further, I’ve invested in an Evidence Audio pedalboard cable kit, courtesy of the lovely people at thegigrig.

These are solderless like the George L’s cables I’ve used for years, but the end of the cable screws into the jack, making the connection very secure. I’ll have some more updates on these as the new pedalboard is built.

Greetings!

There is alot happening in the world of guitar geek at the moment.

Firstly, I will be moving to a new studio shortly. All my gear has been packed up in readiness, hence why I’ve been a bit quiet. Normal service will be resumed soon, including some riveting new videos!

As you may know, I have recorded guitars on two songs for the new Straight to Video album, the brainchild of my good friend Bob Lane. I’m super happy with the results, and its definitely worth checking out. I’ll hopefully have the songs up on my site shortly. In the meantime, click on the link above, or head over to their facebook page.

The Nightwires have also started recording a new album. This will be alot different to the last album but I’m not going to give too much away at the moment, with it being such early days. Drum tracking has commenced, but I’ll keep you updated as we progress. Every band says the current release they are working on, is the best thing they have done, but in this case, I really think it might be true.

However, the BIG news is that I will soon be able to offer guitar lessons on a full time basis. This will probably start in early March, so stay tuned to the Lessons page of the website for more information.

These are exciting times for me and I approach the year with a new found positivity!

#livingthedream

Yes, I shall have exciting news in the New Year. Honestly!!

In the meantime, have a merry whatsit and a happy new thingy

Another Wampler pedal has arrived today. The Clarksdale Delta Overdrive is a tubescreamer type pedal, but with lots of flexibility. I’ve not had this type of drive pedal for some time, so I’m excited to see how I get on with it. Tone report to follow…..

Here is Riff of the Day Part 2, a sample of my new song “Octave Boogie”

I know I’ve already done a few videos featuring my TC Electronic Ditto Looper, but I enjoy doing them so much, I thought I’d start a regular series.

So here is “Going Loopy – Part 1” There is so much you can do with the Ditto, I’ve only scratched the surface so far. I picked up the idea of playing a drum beat on the strings over the pickups, from Guthrie Govan. If only I could pick up the rest of his technique….

Enjoy!

This is the first of an occasional series of videos, highlighting one of my riffs. This first one also shows that you CAN use a delay pedal, in front of a high gain amp.

I might find a song out of this 😉

I recently purchased a Wampler Euphoria Overdrive pedal. Playing drop D riffs with a “natural, transparent overdrive” pedal, is probably not what it was intended for. But what the hell, I liked the sound!!

The video for this was filmed on my iPhone, with the audio from a Shure SM57 on my amp.