As for electrics, I really liked using my 2SMV in stacks. It's got the inner gain dial turned up a little and it just really does some sweet stuff to the overall tone/eq of the guitar. I keep amplitude and speed both very low, so the vibe isn't really noticable, but it's still adding some fatness to the tone. A lot of times I feel like beefing up tone adds a lot, but it's at the expense of something. With the 2SMV, I only hear delicious body and tone added and it's not really at the expense of anything else.
I love to play with all of my BJFs and my MPs, but when it came down to recording, it's permanent, so I really had to pick tones that I wanted to use very carefully as I'll be living with (and hopefully loving) the recording for the rest of my life. That being said the pedals that I used most frequently were PGC, SYOD, HB, 2SMV, and the SBEQ. Between MP and BJFE pedals there were about 22 for me to choose from, so lots of options and those 5 were the major winners for me. I was using my Tweed Fender Deluxe clone, so a different amp most likely would have pulled my SYOD out of the mix and put something else in there, but that SYOD with that amp is definitely a match made in Heaven.
One of my session players is a super talented guitarist and was searching for a low gain tone and just fell in love with the HB. He's one of those players that could make you fall in love with the sound of a Boss pedal and some crap amp because his playing is absolutely ridiculous. If any of you are into jambands that did the whole techno beat type stuff, the guy that recorded some of the electric parts is Rick from Brother's Past. He was their drummer (super insane, would play like 150 BPM beats for 2 hours straight!), well he's actually equally as good at guitar if not better than he is at drums, so it was a great pleasure to record with him. My songs are sort of geared towards the college radio format....... definitely not pop, definitely not rock, but sort of a fusion of different aspects of pop, rock, reggae, hip hop, and jazz, all packaged together in a deliciously palatable songs
Point of saying that is that he recorded some amazing parts that aren't going to make the cut because they were Bop Jazz solos over a more laid back groove where we got the musical message out a little more simply than he put out there. I'll have to isolate some of those tracks that he did and post them on here. It is some top-notch stuff with all sorts of fun BJF MP stacks. We didn't tell him it was too much when he was recording because we just loved hearing him play so much. Just kept asking for more takes for our own auditory pleasure. You've heard that the SWAW can sound like a trumpet, now imagine that with a killer jazz guitar player playing bop lines, pure awesomeness!!! We did reign him in on some tracks and ended up with some awesome guitar tracks on 2 of the 4 songs. I should correct that, all his tracks were awesome, so much better than anything I could ever play, but once we got him in the pocket that I needed he nailed 2 very usable tracks for me!I guess that's another message, of course could be different depending on what you're going for when you're recording, but I spend hours and hours and hours messing with awesome BJF MP stacks in my room at home, but those awesome stacks turned out to be overkill for the studio. I definitely used stacks, but it was more like stacking compression > od > 2smv > eq >amp as opposed to stacking a fuzz into a distortion and then an od as well, or even distortion into od was avoided except for one song where we were dialing in a distortion sound like the band Cake uses for a lot of their lead lines. Other than that we pretty much kept it simple and I think that worked greatly to our benefit in this recording session. For one of Rick's guitar tracks we pretty much just had him with PGC > HB > SBEQ and it sounds great.
All in all this recording session was a great success and I can't wait for you all to hear my tracks. Basically the music that I had always dreamed of creating is beginning to be created now, so I've got the studio rush going full throttle now. I've had some of the songs in the works for 10 years and they deserve to be done up properly because they're like family to me after all these years (these songs have gotten me out of a lot of stuff and put my life on a good path) and the EP will give you a taste of that and there'll definitely be more to come once I move down to New Orleans!
I'm also feeling incredibly grateful for all the BJF/MP pedals that I have. Watching great players come in the studio and plug in through them and just dial in all sorts of killer tones, it was so great to see their expressions at how easy they could dial in these perfect tones with these pedals. Watching them fall in love with those BJF tones was awesome and made me really appreciate what I've got. I am so grateful for what Bjorn does, the tone quest can be sooooo hard, but Bjorn makes it easy on us and I'm very very very grateful for that!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well if you've read all the way down to here, thanks very much for reading my very late night ecstatic ramblings about my recent time in the studio recording with my beloved BJF MP board!!!!!
I would love to hear about others studio experiences especially as they pertain to BJF's and MP's in the studio. What BJF/MP pedals and stacks do you like to use when you hit the studio? Anyone else try the acoustic mic'd guitar panned with acoustic guitar amp and BJF effects? Any BJF's or MP's that you can't live without in the studio? Anything else come to mind when you think about recording BJFs? Tips, pointers, experiences, and questions.......anything and everything welcome in response to this thread. It's now 4:25am so I should cease my ramblings and go to sleep so I can finish packing for the move to the 'big easy' tomorrow
