Archive for the ‘Guitar’ Category

The Queen of Hearts

Here’s a video of one of my favourite love songs, filmed last year in my front room. Click here to see it

In My Life …

#3
I had a meeting with Martin and I left him a demo CD with a selection of songs and when he had listened to it he called me and said he wanted to do it. He sorted out a studio and engineer and worked out some costs. I told Susie and she said ‘lets do it’, so we did.

We started a few months later with a production meeting and then we went over some material with a couple of guitars. I then started to put down the songs at Andy Seward’s studio. We went to Keith Angel’s and recorded his drum and percussion tracks, then it was back to Andy Seward’s. Next was Andy Cutting’s session.

We spent an hour talking about great lasagnes Andy had eaten at my old house! Then we recorded the waltzes live on fiddle and melodeon and then Andy did all his other parts. Martin had done various parts on different days and when he’d finished, Hugh Bradley did all the bass parts. I did my final vocals and that was it, 18 months later, it was all ready to mix.

Andy Seward made a fantastic job of recording the album and mixing and mastering it. Martin liked the material so much that he played on 8 out of 10 tracks, and he has played some brilliant dobro and guitar.

The arrangements are all built up around my acoustic guitar parts and on one track, Now I’m In Limbo, Martin played all the guitar parts. When I heard what he’d done I re-wrote the song and it took on a new dimension.

Recording was not as easy as it could have been due to all of us being away and not all available together and I had a virus that affected me for almost 8 months and knackered my voice up. My Dad was very ill during this period and he died just as we were finishing the album. It was sad and I dedicated the album to his memory.

Looking For An Amp

I’ve been playing my Fender Squier Telecaster guitar through an old Woolworth’s “Audition” solid state amp. It must have been made in the late 60’s, I bought it years ago at a car boot sale.

My Squier sounded great through it, it was a bit like listening to an old car radio. I liked the cheap sound and I used the old amp at gigs.

Sound checks were always good for a laugh, watching the sound engineer search the amp for a line out, sometimes after I’d explained that there wasn’t one.

Recently I got an old Fender Telecaster and I had an old set of Seymore Duncan pick ups fitted. When I plugged into my old “Woolie’s” amp it sounded like it was permanently on the verge of feeding back. I’ve managed to tame the sound a bit, but at all volumes it’s on the edge and sounds really tinny.

A friend pointed out that Woolie’s Guitars weren’t very good and so my Woolie’s amp was probably designed to make cheap guitars sound good and can’t really cope with a good guitar with good quality pick ups.

I need to get an amp that will cope with my new old tele’, I want the old valve sound plus reverb. I’m looking at Vox AC 15’s at the moment, unless I pick up something special at a car boot sale . . .