Studio Sessions - Take an insight

Guitar Set Up

We finally managed to progress with our record. The drums and percussions are done. The last two weeks, it was all about guitars. In this section, I will talk about our electric guitar set up.

Basically, we use my Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier amp with my Marshall A1960 cab. The sound settings for each chanel (clean, vintage for rhythm, and modern for drive) remained the same. So, I didn't change the sounds for this record.

What's changed, is the pedal board. Because of the fact that my brother and I play the same system in studio, we need to have a set up that suits both of us. That's why, we added in addition to my pedalboard, my brother's Morley Marc Tremonti Wah Pedal. And as well, we lose the wireless and work with wires again.

As a short overview, the following list shows which pedal are used.

• Morley Wah Marc Tremonti
• MXR Red Compressor
• MXR 90 Phaser
• MXR Zackk Wylde Chorus
• Bogner Ecstasy Blue Pedal
• Boss OD-1
• MXR Smart Gate
• T.C. Electronics Flashback Delay

That's basically it. 

The guitars we use, are few. I play my PRS McCarty and Fender Telecaster Mexican. Julien uses his PRS Custom 24. Though we play through the same system, you clearely hear the difference of the sounds by the two PRS. That's very important to creat a nice stereo sound.

Let's talk about the microphones we put in front of the cab. As you know, we are not fans of creating computerized sounds. Therefore, the sound of our guitar needs to be created directly by the amp itself, and of course its effects. So, we didn't worked with DIs. To catch the right tone of our amp, I put at one side of the amp, in position of 1/4 of the radius of the speaker, the Shure SM 57. That mic pushes the deeper and higher frequencies. I like that a lot. But to have also the nice warmth of the Mesa Boogie Heavy Metal sound, I put at the other side of the cab the Shure SM 27, in position of 1/2 of the speaker. Just listening to the sounds by these two mics in raw, makes you feel like your sitting in front of the Mesa amp. Bellow, you'll find pictures about the set up.

Julien is hitting for some songs his TalkBox. As usual, he playes it through his Mesa Boogie set up. We catch the sound coming through the hose with a Shure SM 57.

Julien and I share all parts - rhythm or clean. Same for soli. Sometimes, he does them, sometimes I do. Just like Myles and Mark do.

Hope, you enjoyed another insight into our work. Hopefully, I will be able to talk about the bass-guitars, accoustic guitars, piano and stuff the next time. 

Until then, take care and keep on rocking.

Enjoy Seasplash!