Equipment guide as of 14th May 2009
I will be re designing the equipment guide page very soon into catagories to make it easier and quicker to get the info you want.
Here you will find all the information on gear I own and use either live or for recording. Hang on to your seats this is a big ride.
The guitar I use for recording is a Line6 Variax 700 in transluscent blue. Alder top and mahogany body with tremelo arm. I have added an extra spring which cured the initial tuning problems when using the wammy bar. I also changed the tuners for the same stock schaller ones but of the higher quality locking type. The added spring also has the effect of retaining tuning on strings which are not being bended. The variax plays somewhere between a Strat and a Les Paul and is quite generic but very playable. The quality of the 700 over my original 500 is evident by the decent woods and finish which are to higher Japanese standards than the Korean made 500. With the Line6 Workbench software, I can now edit the guitars on the Variax to achieve even more unique weapons of musical warfare. My favoured guitar models are the Teles and Strats, these sound bang on.
For the acoustic guitar based songs on the recent CD, I used a Line-6 700 acoustic. These are amazing guitars for live use too and no feedback. I use the nylon strung model for the guitar solo in Steve Harley'
s 'Come up and see me make me smile' to great effect. I also used the acoustic 700 to record my latest songs where acoustic is required as the sounds are more natural and improved than the Electric 700. The 12 string models are particularly good.
This is my recently purchased Warmoth Strat and to say this is an incredible guitar is an understatement. It features a Warmoth birds eye maple neck and a book matched quilted top over an Alder back in the style of a Fender Strat. Also fitted is a super smooth Wilkinson Trem as the strings are in perfect straight line past the nut to the locking tuners. The set of active EMG pickups al la Dave Gilmour are perfectly balanced across all pickup selections and the string balance is perfect. A mid range control knob in the centre provides excellent tonal variation of the mids and the easy pull out tone knob acts as a coil tap on the humbucker.
By far, my fave axe
Amplification for Live work is the awesome Vetta combo which has been upgraded to full Vetta 2 specification.This is Line6's flagship amp and features the 2 amps at once system for really individual tone. I mostly couple this up to a Line6 4*12 closed back speaker cab for a monster sounding unit. When separated across the stage one amp can be delivered to the Vetta speakers and the other amp to the 4*12 speakers for a trully amazing soundscape but mostl
y I just stack them and use it in split stereo straight left and right. The Vetta 2 specification was achieved by not only upgrading the firmware but also by installing the digital interface. This took me about an hour to install because the amp had to be taken apart to make all the required connections.The digital interface not only provides digital connections for recording but something which has revolutionised ease of use for live work, a Variax socket has been added to plug a Cat5 cable from the Variax straight into the interface so that the guitar models can now be selected with the chosen patch for amp models. This dispenses with the power supply or batteries. This means for instance, that patch A on bank 1 on the floorboard might be set to Les Paul guitar hooked up to a Marshall JCM800 on amp 1 and a Mesa Boogie Dual Recto in the other amp and then with one button press on the floor pedal the guitar could then be a Strat on the neck pickup through a couple of Fender amps completely individually setup. This is the ultimate for live use and is what allows me to play such a variety of tones on even just one song. In fact I have set up whole banks of patches just to cover one song though not in every case. I bought the Armin mod which is a software download that allows you to see the amp names as what they are supposed to be ie Mesa Boogie Mk1 instead of Cali Crunch and the Cabinet sims are vastly improved too. Picture of digital interface:-
The floor board is a miracle of modern science and costs a bloody fortune but is entirely necessary for Vetta use. It can control all manner of things on the amp and works perfectly well with the X3Pro too
Below is my kick arse Ibanez 2170 Prestige in Bubinga. Totally awesome guitar in every respect and detail. I have overlooked these Japanese guitars for way too long. The Ibanez and the monster amp rig, may not be quite so versatile as using a Variax but more than makes up for in terms of playability. The modelling technology is pretty close to playing through a whole load of valve amps and most people wouldn't notice the difference anyway. What does smack you square between the ears is an immense sound scape that is not struggling to be heard in the mix and has to be heard to be fully appreciated. For practice and Jam sessions I like to use my Mesa Boogie Nomad 45, all valve and 3 individual channels of classy Mesa tone. Everyone who hears this amp say how good and luscious it sounds. I love it especially now that I have the M13 (see below) which allows me to add effects which don't kill the amp's tone. The M13 sits right in the amp's effects loop after the pre amps to add a touch of all manner of reverbs and delay at the press of a switch. Just re-valved the little beast with Groove Tubes, more groovy and in my opinion sound better than the stock Mesa tubes. Here is another option when I need a tad more spread of valvedom, Mesa Boogie Nomad with the extra air moving cab is a great combination of tone and raw niceness. 
When I play live and sing backing vocals, I used the tried and trusted Shure SM58 Microphone. If I mike up a cab, say, when I use either of the Mesas then I would use the SM57 for that purpose. The Vetta amp uses top notch balanced stereo outs for front of house applications.
Plectrums, I prefer Jim Dunlop picks .72.
In the studio I use a plethora of gear for recording which includes:
Line6 X3 Live (above top) and short board (above bottom) for use with Pod XT Bean. I also occassionally plug in the EX1 expression pedal to either of the boards and use it to change parameters on the fly such as how many delays or how big the reverb etc controlled in real time. Groovy.
Korg MS2000 synthesiser Have a play with one of these if you get the chance, It is effectively a Moog but without all the patch leads. I don't suppose there is a sound that cannot be created with this unique bit of kit. This is my amazing new synth from Korg. it's an X50 and is the direct upgrade from the X5D and boy what a difference a few years make to technology. I may keep the X5D but at the moment I can't really see the point. Although great fun I pretty much used it as a drum module which it does very well though not as good as the DTExpress2. I often take it to jam sessions and does a pretty good job when no real drummist turns up with a proper kit. Hook up to the PA and instant drums. Has two foot controllers as well for bass drum and hi hat. Audio Technica AT3525 studio microphone with mesh screen Phantom powered and the quality is really quite excellent. However, it does not make me better singer, bugger. Melodyne VST Plugin software takes care of the pitch. Studiomaster Trilogy 12 track desk with Trilogy 140 EX add on desk 22 mono tracks in all plus 4 stereo pairs. Six aux sends. A really quiet desk and trouble free. I have had this years and it has proved to be one of the best bits of kit I ever bought. Designed for the live performer and thus far never been out of the studio but I will use it live one day. I bought the added attachment which allows me to fix it to the mike stand and the footswitch for bypass and reverb etc. Quality stuff. This is a clever little gadget for all things echo, delay and looping. Electro Harmonix Memory Man with Hazarai, you can hear a demo of one on the Electro Harmonix website. It sounds great and is dead easy to use. It is a stereo unit but in the photo I have it wired through the Mesa Boogie Combo effects loop in mono. It works particulary well in the loop of a Pod X3Pro and better still on the main outputs of the X3 Live Latest purchase is this beast of an effects pedal for the live guitar player, it is the Line6 M13: This is a wonderful box of tricks that can be hooked up to the Mesa Boogie using a fancy 4 cable connection technique so I can use the amp channels and have effects in the loops only. I've been waiting for this for years. This is my new Gator 8U road rack. In the rack - Top :- Mesa Boogie 50/50 stereo tube poweramp. Mid :- Line 6 flagship Pod X3 Pro Bottom :- Sony MDS-E58 rackmount Pro mini disc recorder. And finally, the awesome combination of a Pod X3 Pro through a Mesa Boogie 50/50 Tube amp into a 300watt Flat Response 4 speaker cabinet. Gotta be up there with the best in stereo systems. What more could a guitarist ask for? Probably just another cab, a bigger van and a stronger back although mine is on castors, the cab of course not my back. Zoom 16 track digital hard disk recorder with CD\RW drive, brilliant for recording live performances too. Cubase 4 (dongled) recording software, Melodyne pitch correcting software installed on a purpose built PC for recording and it has a Quad Core processor, Gigabyte EP45C-DS3R motherboard, 4 Gigabytes of RAM and 2 Terabytes of storage, Plextor and Pioneer Super Writemaster CD/DVD DL burners. I love Cubase and have used it since the mid to late 80s first on my old Atari STE which I still have and in fine working order with 4 megs of RAM, 200Mb SCSI hard drive and multisync colour/mono monitor. They were the days of pioneering and experimentation. Cubase 4 is just an amazing piece of programming and will take some time to get the most out of it like most things complicated. Now of course there is version 5 but I think I will persevere with version 4 for a while at least.
Roland JV-1010 module. I have had this some years now, but still an excellent piece of kit for very quickly reviewing downloaded midi files. The sounds in it are still excellent today
Yamaha DD55 drums
Yamaha DTExpress2 digital drum kit with additional crash cymbal and ride cup for the ride cymbal. Before I bought this I could not play drums for toffee, now I have some toffee.
Yamaha Rev100 rackmount reberb unit at the top (no longer used) and a STA 96Khz 24bit ADC&DAC2000 8in and 8out recording rackmount kit/sound board for recording audio.
Digitech Vocalist Performer
Korg vocal harmoniser. This is especially good for hooking up to a keyboard via midi. Play a chord on the keyboard and vocal harmonies are created on the chord, super duper. 
