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STUDIO

For all you guitar and recording gear aficianados, hear it is, the low down on the stuff I use to record my music with, with lots of pretty pictures, too! It's all there in my home recording facility, Easter Island Studios, which has been serving up sonic madness since 1997 here in Yano, a spectacularly dull suburb of Hiroshima in Japan.

GUITARS

Gibson SG Standard

Got this little beauty in Fukuoka, Japan. Apparently they only made four hundred of these in white, which convinced me to get it. I was all set to go with the Les Paul Standard, but this guitar has all the sustain and sounds of that icon, but about half the weight. It just sings. I don't know why, but every time I pick it up these AC/DC riffs just fall out of it...

Here's a YouTube video of me playing it (badly):

Fender Jazzmaster

This is the 'Made in Japan' version, about sixty percent cheaper than the US version. It plays really well - great action, straight out of the box. Except that it didn't come out of a box, it was in one of those cheap plastic cases. It sounds great distorted on the neck pick up, which is strange because I usually never use the neck pick ups on any guitars. It has the traditional Fender twang, but very little sustain, so soloing isn't really an option on this. Nice colour, though, eh?

Fender Telecaster

Another Japanese Fender, I absolutely love this guitar. The maple neck is beautiful, and the brittle twangy trebley sound makes the perfect rhythm guitar. It compliments the SG very well, and sounds great distorted as well as clean with chorus and echo.

Yamaha FG720S-12

Always wanted a 12-string, even though it's not exactly every day you need one and they're a pain in the arse to tune. This Yamaha was ridiculously cheap (about $350), has a fantastic low action and is consequently very easy to play. Sounds great, too. There's nothing like strumming a 12-string - even the simplest of chord sequences sounds amazing.

Academy BOV-105C

This is the oldest guitar in my collection. I bought it in Munich in 1991. Got it cheap, as it has a crack in the lacquer on the front. It's basically a Korean knock-off of an Applause, which is itself a copy of an Ovation. Yep, that's how poor I was in those days. I never liked this guitar. The action is horrible, and these plastic round-backed efforts are so awkward to balanced on your knee. The built-in electronics died years ago. Still, it has appeared on a lot of my songs.

Epiphone Les Paul Custom

The first semi-decent guitar I bought. At this time the Epiphone Les Paul was pretty much identical in shape and design to the real thing - nowadays they have a different, crappier-looking headstock. When I got this I thought it was amazing, and it has served me well in the studio for many years. However, the moment I got the SG, the difference was obvious. The Epiphone sounds weak in comparison, and just doesn't have the sustain. Still, it still looks pretty cool, even though I never use it any more.

BASSES

Rickenbacker 4003

The pride of my collection! I first wanted a Rickenbacker bass in 1979 when I was into The Jam. Then the bass player in my band got a Hondo II copy, and it was amazing - I was really envious. In the early 90's I got to use one in a recording studio, but it wasn't until 2007 that I actually managed to get one for myself. Partly because of their scarcity (they are hand-made), and partly because of the high cost ($2200). The story of me finding this is nothing short of a miracle. There's an 18 month waiting for these things if you order them from Rickenbacker, and if they ever show up in stores, they never stay long. Anyways, I went up to Tokyo in August 2007 and scoured all of the stores in the hope that one might be around. I'd done the same the previous year, and there were none to be seen. On the last day, I found a shop I hadn't checked, and there it was - not only a Rickenbacker 4003, but a rare blueburst one. Bought it instantly. As you would imagine, it's suberb. Nothing matches the raspy growl of a Ric.

Here's a highly-acclaimed YouTube video of me doing a few Joy Division basslines on this beauty:

And here's another one!

Fender Jazz

Another Japanese Fender. I never liked the Jazz previously - thought it was the ugly cousin of the Precision, but this one is beautiful, with a bound maple neck with rectangular markers and an amber burst body. The sound is great, too - in fact it is way more versatile than the Precision, since it has two pick ups. You can get dub-like rumble or biting treble growl, and a lot of things in between. Very nice!

Fender Precision

Like the look of the Precsion, but this Japanese one never played well. The action is pretty bad, even after having adjusted the neck a couple of times, and the sound is fairly limited with the one pick up. Not used any more since the advent of the Jazz and the 4003.

AMPLIFIERS

Marshall Valvestate 2000

I never play live, so I only need a small amp for recording, and this little Marshall fits the bill perfectly. It's a fantastic amp, and has the same sound as its big brothers. Amazing crunchy overdriven sound, even at low volume levels - no need for distortion boxes any more.

Marshall MB30

In buying this I'd hoped to be getting something as awesome as the Valvestate 2000, but it doesn't quite measure up. Nice built-in compressor and a choice of 'classic' or 'modern' channels, but the sound is not clear enough (or maybe I should mount it on breeze blocks or something to eliminate the muddiness and vibrations that are coming from somehwere...)

HARDWARE

Yamaha AW2400

The main recorder at Easter Island Studios since March 2007. It's 24 track with fully automated long faders. On paper a fantastic machine, but in reality it's seriously flawed. I had a hell of a lot of trouble with this at first. The biggest shortcoming is the fact that you cannot master CDs on this, like you could on the old Roland VS1680. Songs sound good when you're listening on headphones, but burning them to the built-in CDR sounds like crap - very low-level and weedy, even with compression cranked up. In the end I gave up, and now send the finished songs over to the iMac via USB for mastering on Logic Express.

Roland VS1680

This was used to record all of my music from 1997 to 2007 - ten years of solid service. A classic machine, great sounds, easy to use, and the CD masters burned on it were powerful and muscular. The only drawbacks were the limit of 16 tracks and the lack of USB for backing up to computers. I would have carried on using this forever, but the CD burner broke and could not be replaced, meaning that data could no longer be backed up and songs could no longer be mastered.

Korg X3

I bought this back in 1993, and it's been my main keyboard ever since. It's been used for background sounds on my Stavka tracks and also on some of the later Easter Islanders tracks, where I used its in-built sequencer. It's not a fantastic synth, but it does the job and some of the layered sounds are quite impressive, so I've never thought about upgrading to anything else. As long as all the keys still work, this will continue to be the default keyboard in the studio, even if in the future it may only be as a MIDI device to trigger the sounds contained within Apple's Logic Express 8 which I've recently been dabbling with on the iMac.

Korg S3

This weird hybrid drum computer and sequencer came out in 1991 with a hefty price tag, and apparently bombed, hence me picking it up for a song (no pun intended) in 1993 in a closing down sale in one of Hiroshima's electrical goods emporiums. I love this machine. Initially I used it as a sequencer for my early techno experiments, but now it is employed solely as a drum computer, a role in which it excells. I have several other drum computers, but none of them come close in terms of sound or ease of use. The Korg S3 is the only one which sounds so natural that the lay person is fooled into thinking that my songs have a real drummer banging away in there. The sound samples are superb, but what raises it way above any other machines are the velocity-sensitive pads used to key in the hits. This insures that each snare hit is slightly different to the others, which overall leads to a 'human error' like effect mimicing the natural world. I have no idea why other drum computers don't have this. Sadly, my Korg S3 has been used so much that some of the control buttons are dificult to operate, but I will soldier on with it until I'm forced to seek out another one on eBay.

Other Gear

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