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<a name="guitars"></a><p>
Guitars - Like Jim, I have two and switch between them for different
songs. Again, as with Jim, one of them is a humbucker-based guitar and
the other one isn't. My humbucker guitar is a gorgeous Gibson
hollow-body. I saw Mark from Sparklehorse playing one and I thought "I
want one of those". Perfect for the songs that rock, it has an organic
and old-fashioned sound. I don't really deserve it - I'm not a good
enough guitarist to do it justice.<br>
The other one is my red Fender Strat. I don't like it as much as the
Gibson, although I do like the colour... It's a lot more precise and
clear-sounding than the Gibson and it has more of an attack to it. I
tend to use it for the songs that I used to play on acoustic, because
the Gibson is too dirty sounding for most of those guitar parts.
<br><a href="#top">top</a><br>
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<a name="vib"></a><p>
Vibrato - if you see me stamping on something with no obvious result,
it's this pedal which switches on and off the vibrato. Can you hear it?
Sometimes I think the only person who can is Nigel, whose in-ear
monitors are filled with a throbbing which is out of time with the rest
of the song. Sorry mate!
<br><a href="#top">top</a><br>
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<a name="muff"></a><p>
Big Muff - the other "louder" pedal, I like this because it's made in
Russia and looks like it's been recycled from an old tank. The knobs and
other pieces occasionally fall off it, but I like it even more for that.
No doubt you can do all sorts of whizzy things with it, but I stamp on
it and my guitar sounds louder. Cool! Apparently John Martyn wrote a
song about this pedal.
<br><a href="#top">top</a><br>
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<a name="amp"></a><p>Vox AC-15 - Compact and lovely, this is half-way between being a proper
amp and being one of those practice amps you see buskers wearing on
their belts. There's something nice about the way it sounds when it's
being worked a bit too hard. We bought the grown-up version (AC-30) for
me to use but I couldn't recreate that effect because the AC-30 is just
too powerful. So the AC-30 is now in the able hands of Jim.
<br>
<a href="#top">top</a><br>
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<a name="dad"></a><p><b>
Daddy-O - one of two pedals I use to get a louder and more distorted
sound.
<br><a href="#top">top</a><br>
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<a name="ab"></a><p><b>
A-B Switch - try not to get too excited about this pedal, which I use to
switch between the amp and the tuner, so I can tune my guitar on stage
without it coming blaring out of the amp. Sometimes I even do this
mid-song, and sometimes I mess it up - that's when you'll suddenly hear
an out-of-tune note coming from my guitar at some sensitive point in the
proceedings.
<br><a href="#top">top</a><br><hr width=100%>
<a name="mic"></a><p><b>
Mic stand - holds the microphone, but I'm not going to tell you about
the microphone(s) I use because frankly that's Matt's (our sound guy's)
department and I know even less about it than I do about pedals and
stuff. If you've noticed that I tend to adjust the height of my
microphone so I'm kind of leaning over it, it's so that I can sing, play
guitar and see what my pedals are doing all at the same time. It's no
mean feat and I would have installed a small mirror half way down the
mic stand to achieve the same result, but I reckon that would look
stupid.
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