Monday, January 24, 2011

Our Gear.

So at the moment, me and my band are more a "studio" band as we have more of a fanbase outside of our own country.


I am the guitarist of the band, at the moment I dont actually have a guitar, I sold it to invest in professional recording equipment. I usually play a Les Paul (I have played/owned both the studio and custom versions) and on recordings these guitars sound amazing (even the Epiphones!) I play these guitars through two different amps, so far, I have only used one of these amps in our recordings and the amp that is used in our recordings is a Marshall MG100HDFX with a Marshall MG-412A cab. I have used this Head a Cab combination in all of my bands YouTube recordings and the amp sounds amazing! The second amp that I am yet to record with is a Jansen 150W Invader Series head and a Fender FM412SL in Grey. I have only ever played this Head and Cab during band practises as this is really the bassists own amp (not for bass obviously!) but this amp sounds amazing! I am going to try and record with the Jansen head and Fender cab tomorrow and see what sort of sound I can get!


As I am getting more into recording than live shows just at the moment, I am looking at selling my Marshall cab and head, to invest into something called the Eleven Rack, this is a very very cool piece of guitar equipment. Gun's n' Roses guitarist Slash uses this both live and in the studio, it does carry a reasonably hefty price tag of $899.00 USD. The Eleven Rack is designed by the same people that have created ProTools, so Eleven Rack and ProTools basically work hand in hand together. I have never had the chance to play the Eleven Rack, I have played something called the Line 6 Pod, basically the same thing, although the Pod is a more entrance level sort of "Amp Designer".


For bass, we have a Rockit 120 Head and a Rockit 115 Cab, I got this off of TradeMe for $300 NZD which is just over $200 USD and I have never really used this for recording, just live gigs, and to be put in black and white, this amp kicks ass! it is insane, I believe that Rockit is a New Zealand brand, and these would be extremely hard to a quire overseas.


For vocals and recording guitar we use a sennheiser E845 and for vocals and guitar this microphone has handled extremely well, very little clipping with any performances. We have gigged with this microphone several times and it has never let us down, it always comes off with a perfect sound! To record drums we use a Drum Mike Set from Samson 5 Kit, I have only had these microphones for a short period of time, and tonight I will do a very basic drum demo with them to show their sound (Im no drummer!).


We record all of these instruments and mikes through a M-Audio Fast Track Ultra audio interface which is hooked up to my Macbook running ProTools HD 9.

Pros of the Marshal Head and Cab: It can handle loud sounds perfectly
It has built in effects
It is a head and cab so it looks awesome on stage!


Cons of the Marshall Head and Cab: It is a head and cab so it is extremely heavy to lug around
It does not have a noise gate in it so feedback is an issue


I hope that helped you! Any more questions, feel free to ask!


:)

15 comments:

  1. Nice nice I used to use all peavey tube amps but then I sold everything I owned and bought a matching mesa head and cab! I play a les paul style Ltd that I fell in love with and I will never play anything but an ltd ec1000!

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  2. ahhh! Mesa I love them :) amazing heads and cabs :) do you guys do all your recording yourself?

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  3. No we record with Phil Druyor from I am Abomination. We are looking for management and sponsors so we can start spreading our music everywhere.

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  4. ah! awesome! YouTube, is an extremely good advertising tool! Im not sure what you think of this idea, but I will do a post about it, do some covers! Ill explain more in a post shortly!

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  5. my old band did a cover http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lyy-OEA5wg it's the same band as illusions but we have a new bassist and screamer.

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  6. thats a really good cover!! Like really good!

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  7. The Jansen amp head is also made in NZ aswell as the rockit cab, which makes them realy rare and as there is only 3 of the Invader Series left, i've had offers for around $3000 for the head alone. - I'm the bassist, Hamish btw.

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  8. haha thanks dude! I'm coming to your country and I'm going to get famous!

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  9. Haha, no probs mate! Yeaaaaa where still currently going down that path, chris has been working real hard on getting us some good recording equipment which has left him out a guitar, lucky i have 4 spare ;)

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  10. haha, Chadd, YouTube, it is more powerful than most people believe it is. Find a target audience, do some of their favourite artists/songs put it on youtube, and blend some originals in there!

    BTW, dont come to NZ to become famous... if you become famous in NZ the chances of making it big outside the country are tiny! I would recommend Australia :P

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  11. So what time is it there? I'm from michigan and right now its 1:30 in the afternoon.

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  12. hmmm right now it is 8:15 in the morning! I am waiting for something to arrive :D

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  13. That's not a huge time difference I hated the postal service they always take longer than estimated. So what bands do you listen to?

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  14. I ordered the wrong size kick skin -.- haha and I listen to quite a lot of bands, my biggest few would be Short Stack (an Australian band) blink 182, sum 41 and all time low =] I also used to listen to older rock like the who, led zep, ramones etc :) wbu?

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  15. I listen to Of machines, Asking Alexandria, I am Abomination, We came as Romans, The color morale all those bands are sweet through.

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