WinterMute

Geddy Lee set the bar for me in the late 70s, stringy twang played aggressively with distortion to suit, I employ that tone now, on both fretted and fretless, I went through a stage in the 80’s of clean and powerful, but have always come back to pre-amp/valve distortion. 34” scale with heavy bridge orientated pick-ups. Latterly I’ve come to love rosewood fingerboards, but I played a wenge/bubinga Thumb for 20 years. Loved Pastorious’ tone, Les Claypool, Jack Bruce in places, anyone who didn’t just want to fill in the LF...

Another one for Sadowski, thought it was well built, sounded great, didn't think it was anything really special. Had a Wal Pro 1 fretless, loved it, couldn't get on with the series 2 5 string, not that I've ever owned a series 2 5 string mind...

Not a fan of the "pig in a drainpipe" vocal at all, have a soft spot for Rammstein, but rarely go much heavier a bit of Korn, SoaD maybe, really like some of Stone Sour's work, but not much of Slipknot, go figure. I'm still of the opinion that there isn't a much better sound than overdriven guitar, but there's a lot of scope there.

Ah, chorused distortion or distorted chorus... If you like the sound of a chorus, put it after the sans amp, if you're into tonal change that doesn't lessen the distorted edge, put it before.

That's what the DFA fader is for.

One of the PRS ofter the strat type, occasionally the Les Paul, once in a while a V2 Explorer, but only if his back is up to it...

PRS mainly, but as his formula for the correct numbers of guitars is (number of current guitars)+1 then anything might turn up. He'll be playing too loud with everything cranked up...

I've done exactly that, I downsized from a Barefaced Big Twin and a Crown XLS1500 amp with the XT pod Pro to a stomp with a QSC K12.2 which is just a brilliant solution for studio monitoring and even small gigs should I ever go back there.

I kept my old Boss Bass Chorus, nothing sound quite like it, otherwise everything else went when I got the original Pod XT, now the Stomp is my main unit. I think if you have interesting and unusual pedals in your collection they should work well with the Stomp's abilities.

I'd need a much longer moustache and maybe some wax.

Used my Barefaced Big Twin as a plant stand for a while...

We already have a name for these people, they're called amateurs... Most live sound is mono still, some bands do stereo and surround effects, Prink Floyd had a 24 track tape machine to fly all the surround effects in for The Wall live! Most pro engineers I've known or taught will be more than happy to build studios from piles of kit, many will build kit from piles of parts, every sound we make is chain of processors and effects, very mix a balance of thousands of individual components, I have no issue with the term engineer, I have an Mmus but I don't go around calling myself a Master, maybe I should buy a cape and start.

You can call me whatever you like provided the rider is filled and the cheque clears.

I have one, replaced a Pod HX Pro rack with it, I also have the old Pro bean pod. It's a big improvement if you want to do the full amp/cab modelling thing, which I do, it updates with the HX releases and they keep adding functionality to it. It's a bugger to use live without a MIDI controller mind, not enough switches. It sound great but you'd better be able to use the software editor as the screen is very limited as to what you can see at any one time. The Pod Go is a great live alternative, but doesn't share the HX architecture.

Is this a public service you provide? What a selfless fellow you are.

I took some time to decide, I've had ebony board fretless in the past and I prefer the look of a lighter board, my other SR5 has an epoxied rosewood board. I'm good with that Bubinga.

A couple of weeks ago Alan sent me some options for how the book matching for the front and back should look, I chose to go with these front and back: Today he sent me these fresh out of the press: Awesome figuring that's so well fitted to the shape of the guitar. I'm proper excited now...

Don't know what your setup is or how you work, but the best bang for the buck for sonic improvement is to get into Universal Audio's hardware supported plug-ins, they sound so much better than almost anything on the market IMO, and are MUCH cheaper than hardware. WA are good kit though if you want to stay in the real world.

Their units are generally very good value for money, are well built and sound great, they don't always nail the signature sound, but it's always pretty close. Their LA2A clone is brilliant, but it's not an LA2A by some way, I can't see the SSL clone being such different, it'll do the job but it won't be a match for the real thing.

Not so much a mistake, but the lyrics to the break after the solo in Welcome to the Jungle weren't complete and Axl Rose ad libbed the ""where do we go now" lines, they liked it and it made the record. Hope it's not an urban myth. It's still a cracking tune and his performance on that album as a whole is first class.

This is where it's at generally, the choice lies in how far you want to recreate your live sound in the studio or vice versa. Some bands go to extraordinary lengths to reproduce their studio sound live, Rush did for many years, same arrangements etc, others don't, Counting Crows songs are sometimes almost unrecognisable live, Alan Holdsworth used to play a couple of bars of a song to remind people what is was then go off on flights of improvisation. You want to jam it live in the studio like the Chillies or Foos do? Fine, but you'd better be well rehearsed. You want build it piece by piece, bar by bar like Steely Dan or Trevor Horn? No problem, but you'd better have the character and identity of your songs well developed. Recorded music is music, it's just recorded.

They are entirely correct that recorded music is a poorer version of the original performances, as it relies on mics, speakers and psychoacoustics to recreate the original in an inferior manner, however, I can't actually fit a symphony orchestra or Rush in my living room or car, much less have them play for me on a packed tube train, so what are you gonna do? Purists gonna pure. Speaking as a veteran audio engineer, the worst possible start to a session is some musician saying "can you make it sound exactly like it does live" the answer to which is invariably "no". We can certainly approach that vibe, but even binaural recordings of performances are artificial recreations of a moment in time. The moment a microphone is involved the music becomes a different animal. We accept the conventions of recording as a necessary evil so that we can enjoy the music we want to listen to, when we want to listen to it. Even the mighty Deusche Gramafon record to Protools and edit bar by bar these days.

I like your thinking...

If you make a mistake, do it again, people will assume it's deliberate... Miles Davis said that I think.