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It’s all about tape.

I have been using tape echo units since the very beginning of my music career, kicking off in 1976 with the then ubiquitous Watkins Copycat, but soon graduated to an HH Electronic ’slider’ unit, which I used for many years until it was left on the curb following a Whitefire gig at The Derby Hall (now The Met) in Bury, England.

Following a dalliance with a Roland Space Echo RE-201, my next unit was the Maestro Echoplex EP-3, which my hero Jimmy Page used extensively.

What is an Echoplex?

The Echoplex is a tape delay effects unit, first made in 1959. Designed by engineer Mike Battle, it set a standard for the effect in the 1960s, and it is still regarded as the benchmark by which everything else is measured. The Echoplex was widely used in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly by guitarists but also by other performers.

Background

Tape echoes work by recording sound onto a magnetic tape, which is then played back; the tape speed and distance between the recording and playback heads determine the delay time, while a feedback variable (where the delayed sound is fed back into the input) allows for multiple echoes.

EP-2

The first valve/tube Echoplex units had no numerical designation, but this model was retroactively designated the EP-1 after the first revision was dubbed the EP-2. These two units were noted for their warm, round, thick echo and the sound quality of the valve/tube preamplifier section. Two of Battle’s improvements over earlier designs were key: the adjustable tape head and a cartridge containing the tape, protecting it to retain sound quality.

EP-3

Market Electronics, who originally manufactured the Echoplex, held off on using transistors while other companies made the transition. Nevertheless, in the late 1960s, they set Battle and Dixon to the task of creating the first transistorised Echoplexes.

Once the two were satisfied, the solid-state Echoplex was offered by Maestro beginning in 1970 and designated the EP-3, which offered a sound-on-sound mode plus a number of minor improvements.

The EP-3 enjoyed the longest production run of all the Echoplex models, being manufactured until 1991. Around the time of the public introduction of the EP-3, Maestro was taken over by Norlin Industries, then the parent company of Gibson.

Our EP-3

Over the years, I have bought and sold many of these units: the latest being bought from a friend in the UK. It was originally a 120V version with a separate transformer. We decided to fit an internal unit to step down the voltage from 240V to 120V, and after consulting with the wonderful Luke Horlick of T4Transformers—based in Margate, England—we fitted one of his transformers with the expert assistance of my guitar tech and great friend from the Isle of Man, Dave Swindells.

It’s unusual.

I use old-school amps with no master volume and like the sound of a guitar amp’s output section pushed into breakup, which presents a serious problem when using time-based effects.

When delays, reverbs, or modulation effects are run into the front of a distorting amp, the saturation smears the repeats and textures, often resulting in a muddy or cluttered sound.

Being a studio musician for more years than I care to think about really changes the way you feel about this, as I almost always use these effects post-recording in the mix.

It’s a struggle that clean-tone icons like Johnny Marr or Dumble clone players—and who the fuck can afford an original—avoid entirely; by using effects loops for time-based effects or pedals for distortion, they keep their echoes pristine and separated by not overdriving the output valves/tubes.

Over the years, I have developed a unique approach to creating my live guitar sound, which is unconventional, and I share this concept with a few players, notably Larry Carlton. I am going to write another article about how I deal with this issue, so watch out for it!

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Pedals.

Even though we have piles of pedals, I rarely use them when recording and mainly use them playing live when trying to recreate the sounds from our records with limited amps, et al. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and the Echoplex is one of them. For me, it’s an always-on effect.

Yes, when you push the power stage of the amp into distortion, the echo from the Echoplex seems to be compressed into the guitar sound, but blooms when the note dies away as the power valves/tubes come out of clipping; very much like an analogue version of the ‘duck delay’ setting on our vintage TC Electronic 2290. It’s pleasing, and I can live with it—in fact, I can’t live without it.

There is also nothing like the sound when you push the level and feedback to maximum and frantically jiggle the bar which governs the delay time: total uncontrolled bedlam.

The magic.

There are two distinct benefits for using a tape echo: the preamp and the sound of the tape delay.

Eric Johnson is a devotee of the Echoplex, but due to reliability issues uses the preamp section, sending the output into a digital delay. Some do a similar trick but using a solid-state, bucket brigade analogue delay.

Among Johnson's secret tone weapons are a pair of Echoplexes modded by Bill Webb of Austin Vintage Guitars. Webb has removed the tape loop and bypassed it to allow Johnson to use other effects, including a Catalinbread Belle Epoch Tape Delay and MXR Digital Time Delays, in place of tape and still get the sweetening the devices' preamps deliver.

This is cool, but you do lose the wow and flutter of the tape passing the heads, which is caused by a fucked tape, worn record/play/erase heads or dirty pinch roller—and let’s face it, nobody wants a dirty pinch roller…

On its own, these ‘imperfections’ sound very funky, but when mixed with the original signal, it creates a chorus-type effect with random detune. It’s unpredictable, and that’s the joy.

I have used it—and will again—on our recordings. Stick vocals, guitars, drums—basically anything—in an aux send on the board, then return it to a channel and boomaroono!

We are Radial Engineering artists, and here is an unashamed plug. If you want to use unbalanced guitar/bass effects in your studio or rig, you must have the EXTC stereo guitar effects interface, which also doubles as a reamper.

Emulations.

There are literally hundreds of pedals that claim to replicate the whole sound, and some that only emulate the preamp section. Apart from the Catalinbread Epoch Boost, which is championed by Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, I have tried the best-reviewed ones, but found them sadly lacking.

The one that I believe sounds closest to our Echoplex preamp is the ChaseTone secret preamp, which I have owned for many years. Kyle Chase has done a splendid job in recreating the circuit, but even though it’s good, it still doesn’t sound like mine. Why is that?

It’s all about tempering.

Any bit of analogue gear has been switched on, off, heated and cooled thousands of times, hence the components drift out of value, and therefore each one sounds different.

This is the issue I have with pedals and plugins. They may sound like the ones they have modelled, but they don’t sound like ours.

I have had many a heated discussion about this, generally with people who have never even seen an original, never mind used one in anger. It’s the same with compressors and other rack-mount studio gear. “Oh, this Urie 1176 plugin sounds just like an original”.

Every fucker seems to manufacture a digital emulation. Strymon attempt it in the Timeline and El Capistan, but having owned both, they just don’t sound the same. Pedals can be great, but with the notable exception of the OTO Machines BIM—which makes a great job of replicating the Lexicon Primetime (although with a uniquely French counterintuitive designed user interface), emulations and copies are mostly arse.

Vibe.

In isolation, they sound OK, until you compare them with an original, record them or use them in a live set, IMHO, lacklustre nonsense.

It’s not just the sound. It’s the physical connection you get with a vintage item that makes you feel different, and creativity is all about feel.

Watch Daniel Lanois work with his Lexicon Prime time, and you will see what I mean.

This seems harsh, and thousands of world-class players will disagree with me, but I can hear and feel the difference.

Digital.

A little digression here, as we do use alternative delay units both live and in the studio.

We have in our studio, the Supertone SonicLab, an OTO Machines BIM, vintage TC Electronic 2290, Eventide Eclipse, H3000 and H90, Line 6 DL4 MkII (on ’s live board) and a most excellent Meris LVX.

Talking of Starlite, she writes for Bass Musician Magazine and has done a great series on her bass journey, featuring all her gear. It’s called Walking The Bass Line and is worth a read if you have the time.

In my live rig, I currently use the H90, BIM and LVX in a wet-dry-wet configuration, but as I mentioned earlier, that’s for another article.

Tape echo reproductions.

I would be remiss not to include modern reproductions of the tape echoes.

Echofix EF-X3R Chorus Echo

We own a rack-mount version of this superb device. It’s an accurate clone of the original Roland Space Echo RE-501 Chorus Echo. The chorus effect is to die for and has a few really cool features which represent a genuine improvement over the original, such as the automatic turning off of the motor when not being used, thereby saving tape and head wear, plus individual outputs for all the tape heads.

Fultone TTE (Tube Tape Echo) / SSTE

Sadly, these models are no longer produced as recently Fultone was bought out and they have not reappeared in the product line, probably as they were very expensive to make and known to be temperamental.

We are still looking for a valve/tube version to add to our collection, or even better, find a reasonably priced EP-2 original.

Maintenance.

Maintaining these buggers is tricky, and I have to say, on a long tour, I would certainly take two.

Regular cleaning of the tape heads, pinch roller and replacing the tape is essential. I use Isopropyl alcohol on the heads, making sure it’s totally dry before rethreading the tape. I remove the roller by taking off the surclip with long-nosed pliers, then sliding it off. We have a special pinch roller cleaner which doesn’t dry out the rubber and ensures all the tape deposit is removed before replacing. A drop of light sewing machine oil on the spindle (the same stuff we use on our Hammond M100 organ tonewheel spindle) and off you go.

Degaussing.

Degaussing is not a form of sexual experimentation, but a process of demagnetising the heads, which I do every few months. This is common in regular maintenance of multitrack tape machines, but you have to be very careful, as improper use can be disastrous.

It’s all about the tape.

EchoFix sells replacement bits, including the precut to length tapes, but the cartridges are trickier to obtain, and the EC-1, which also fits the Fultone TTE/SSTE, are available from Soundgas in the UK.

We have a lot of experience with tape editing and bought a reel of 1/4” from the beautiful people at RTM, who are based in France. It’s much cheaper to buy it this way and takes about an hour to replace and reload each cartridge.

So is it worth the grief?

In a world of digital convenience, wrestling with vintage-style delays and cranked amps can feel like an uphill battle. We don’t use this gear because it’s easy; we use it because it has a character that nothing else can replicate.

Ultimately, great music is about more than just ‘correct’ audio; it’s about the feeling that a perfectly saturated tape delay or a cranked valve amp inspires in the player. That emotion translates directly to the performance.

So, for the sake of the music: yes, yes, yes—it is absolutely worth the grief.

See you next time.

Much love

Simon

It’s been a while, but it’s good to be back. Last year was a bit of a steep climb, and I had to step back for a while to focus on the essentials. Thankfully, things have calmed down, the coffee’s hot, the beer is cold, and we are officially back in the saddle.

2026 is looking like a cracker—I’m releasing my first solo album, and there’s a lot more in the works from Starlite & Campbell, the VIBRATIONISTS, and my session work for the lovely Trent Chapa.

I’ll be getting stuck into the bass side of things shortly, but first, in case you missed it, here’s a New Year’s greeting to celebrate a brand new chapter with you all.

All about the bass…

If you happen to stumble across this article, and to understand where it all started, it may be worth reading Walking the Bass Line #7, which is the first in my series for new bass players, or, if you want to deep dive, check out all the articles about my bass journey by hitting the red button below.

All about bass guitar

You can also find the article and other great bass-related stuff at Bass Musician Magazine where I am a regular contributor.

Let’s start a little theory

Before we continue the chronological journey through my bass career to date, we need to confront a little theory, whilst not trying to fry your head.

Track breakdown | Blow Them All To Pieces

As I mentioned in my previous article, I was hoping to do a full breakdown of two tracks for you this time, but things have been a bit of a squeeze with our current workload. Instead, I’ve dug out a video from a couple of years back where I’m playing Blow Them All To Pieces from Starlite.One. I’ll be sure to do the full ‘behind-the-scenes’ talk soon—stay tuned for that!

Working with the chords

The most important thing about the bass part in Blow Them All To Pieces is the melody and how it works with the chords, which I will be covering in the next edition. For now, let’s look at the basis—I was going to say bassis, but that would be far too cheesy—of my thinking.

I’m all about the melody—as soon as I hear a few chords, a tune pops into my head straight away. It’s how I write everything, from the songs themselves down to the bass lines.

To be honest, it can be a bit of a nightmare technically, especially when I’m doing session work. You haven’t got the luxury of sitting around for hours treading water and ‘finding the vibe’. You’ve got to be sharp, get stuck in, and nail the part right then and there. No hanging about.

When I first started playing bass, I had a bit of an epiphany: you’ve got to master the ‘safe’ notes within a chord and wrap your head around scale harmonisation. It sounds like academic heavy lifting, but once it clicks, it’s a total game-changer for your playing.

Take a piece in G Major. The major scale is G, A, B, C, D, E, F♯, and these are the likely root notes of chords you will find in the song.

When you stack these into triads (three-note chords), the landscape reveals itself: G, Am, Bm, C, D, Em, F♯m♭5 (that lovely, bruised half-diminished sound we’ll dive into next time), and back home to the G major octave.

If a song is in G major, these are the chords most likely to show up. Your ‘safe harbour’ notes for each chord are the root, the third (major or minor), and the fifth. Now, you could just stick to the root and fifth—it’s the ‘reliable’ choice, but frankly, it’s a bit pedestrian. We’ve all heard a million country tracks that don’t dare to stray further.

Make your bass lines cool

The real trick I picked up early on? You aren’t tethered to the root. It’s far more evocative to lean into the third, the fifth, or even a cheeky seventh—which I will discuss next time. It adds a bit of grit and character to the line.

For example, take God Only Knows by The Beach Boys.

The bass line is famous for avoiding the root notes. Brian Wilson (who composed the part exactly as played) used two bassists, Ray Pohlman (electric bass) & Lyle Ritz (upright), to highlight inversions (putting the third or fifth in the bass). This creates that famous sense of ‘suspended’ emotion, where the song never quite feels like it’s landing on solid ground until the very end.

Fun fact. While many associate bass on the Pet Sounds sessions exclusively with the legendary Carol Kaye, on this track she played 12 string guitar!

If you want to try something more straightforward, try While My Guitar Gently Weeps, by The Beatles.

Remember, when playing the line, look at the underlying chords and understand which note from the chord they are using in the bass!

But that’s quite enough theory for one session.

Before we leave though, take a look at what Kid Anderson has to say about George Porter’s much-discussed note in The Meters’ track, Cissy Strut. Very, very funny and always makes me laugh…

Endorsements #2

As mentioned in my previous article, I endorse several products, but in the real world, what does that mean?

Firstly, I only endorse products I love and use. In exchange for the endorsement, I receive discounts on the products, ranging from modest to mind-bogglingly great!

Currently, I am lucky enough to be working with Curt Mangan Strings, Matamp, Scott Dixon Cases (which have saved my basses more time than you can believe), HiWatt, Fylde Guitars, Bergantino Audio Systems, TWS Pedals, Radial Engineering, ACS, Sequential, Hipshot, Mike Lull Guitars & Basses, Hudson Electronics, Headway Music Audio, Supertone, Lehle and our wonderful friend Jez Levy of Eyes on St Albans.

So, how do you do it?

You always have to remember that a commercial organisation will want something in exchange for preferential discounts, and therefore, you must have something to offer them.

If you are a famous session musician like Guy Pratt, Pino Palladino, Gail Ann Dorsey or Rhonda Smith, it’s easy. Even easier if you are a world-famous artist: I am sure companies are falling over themselves to encourage the likes of Justin Chancellor (Tool), Joe Dart (Vulfpeck), Paz Lenchantin (Pixies) and the wonderful Laura Lee (Khruangbin) to use their products!

For me, it’s just about loving the product, then contacting them. If they think you can help their brand, they will come back with an offer of some type, which usually includes promotion of the products at live gigs, social media and…

Interviews

Over the years, I have been interviewed many times, first by Joel McIver for the now-defunct Bass Guitar Magazine (Bass Guitar) in November 2018 and July 2022, I was featured on the Wonderwoman section of the ‘No Treble’ website with a feature-length article and 60-minute video interview with the wonderful Britanny Frompovitch.

2025 saw me becoming a writer for Bass Musician Magazine and the editor, Raul Amado, interviewed me. Take a look!

It’s this type of thing that encourages suppliers to work with you.

Take a deep dive by visiting the equipment section of my website by clicking the red button below.

Deep dive into my gear

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Buy me a pint

A big surprise

I haven’t given birth to children, but on marrying my musical and life partner , I inherited two fully grown and well-trained sons, James (Jim) and Joseph (Joe). In the 13 years since we have been together, they have both married, and we now have three grandchildren: who’d have thought it, eh…

We have always lived in Europe together, but visit them as much as we can.

Several years ago, the band were staying in Brixton, London, hanging out with Jim for a couple of days after playing a gig at The Half Moon in Putney.

We had just opened our first adventurous beer of the day when in walks Jim carrying his 1974 Fender Precision and proceeds to place it in my hands, saying that he would like me to have his bass as he doesn’t play anymore, and I will make more use of it! What an amazing gift!

Here is a detailed piece on my website…

Check out my vintage Fender Precision

My amps & cabs (part three)

As mentioned in my last article, I like to play loud on stage using valve (tube) amps and big cabinets. The funny thing is—which I haven’t gotten my head around yet—is that a 200W valve amp sounds louder and more present than a more powerful, solid state (transistor) based amp.

If you have any ideas, please comment below. I am keen to find out!

Over the past few years I have seen the resurgence of lower powered valve amps, such as vintage 100W Fender Bassman stacks on stage replacing the ubiquitous—but still wonderful—Ampeg SVT. Perhaps it’s because stages are getting quieter, I don’t know.

Sunn have rereleased the legendary 60W 200S and no Nashville studio is complete without a vintage 25W Ampeg B15N Portaflex.

Bass players still love the sound of the mighty valve!!

A little history about British valve (tube) amps

In the early days, British amps were trying to be ‘clean.’ You had brands like Selmer and Watkins (WEM) popping up, but the real game-changer was Vox. Dick Denney at Jennings Musical Instruments (JMI) created the AC15 in 1958. When bands needed more volume to be heard over screaming fans, they doubled it to create the AC30 championed by The Shadows and The Beatles.

As the decade progressed, players needed more grunt. Remember, this was in the days before great PA systems, with bands relying on guitar and bass amps on stage to be heard.

Jim Marshall, a drum shop owner, started building amps because American imports like the Fender Bassman were too pricey. He took the Bassman circuit, tweaked it for British components (like the KT66 and later EL34 valves), and created the JTM45 and later SuperLead/SuperBass 100W and Major 200W models as demand for more power became prevalent.

While Marshall was all about saturation, other builders focused on clarity and military-grade construction. Enter Sound City—known as the proto HiWatt and HiWatt.

Dave Reeves’ Hiwatt amps were the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of the amp world. Used heavily by guitar and bass players of the time, they offered massive headroom—they stayed clean and punchy even at ear-splitting volumes. Yes, that’s why I own a HiWatt DR201 (200W) from the 70s and wrote about it in edition #8 of this series.

Matamp & Orange

Matamp has one of those classic British origin stories that starts in a garden shed and ends up on the world stage.

The foundation was laid by Mat Mathias, a German-born engineer who moved to the UK during WWII. Around 1945 or 1946, he started a business called RadioCraft in Huddersfield. At first, he was basically the “Radio Doctor,” fixing anything electronic, but by the late 50s, he’d opened a recording studio and was experimenting with his own amplifier circuits because he wanted a different sound from the ubiquitous Vox amps of the era.

The name we know today appeared in 1964. Mat partnered with a hi-fi engineer named Tony Emerson. This is when things got serious. They released the Series 2000, which caught the ear of a young Peter Green. Green used his Matamp to record much of the early Fleetwood Mac catalogue, giving the brand instant ‘holy grail’ status among blues-rockers.

In 1968, Mat teamed up with Cliff Cooper, who owned the Orange music shop in London. For a few years, Matamp actually manufactured the amplifiers for Orange (the legendary Orange-Matamp units) used by Wishbone Ash, Free and Led Zeppelin, amongst others.

By 1971, the partnership split because Orange wanted to move to mass production, while Mat wanted to keep things small, hand-built, and high-quality.

The Supertone Matamp 200

I love my HiWatt but it’s 42 years old, and although ultra-reliable, touring with just one amp is a dangerous business. I also needed a new sound, something bigger at the bottom end and a more prominent mid-range.

Simon has known the current owner of Matamp, Jeff Lewis, for many years. He is a troublesome Yorkshireman, in a very cool kind of way and always swayed by a pack of chocolate biscuits! Simon was having a customised 120W amp made for him, and when we met, I asked him if he could build me an old-school Matamp 200. Their current model is the Green / Matamp GT200 mkII, which features a mid-cut control, but I really wanted the original preamp circuit with a few personal tweaks.

Jeff and his amp tech Hayden Minett, built this for me under our Supertone brand, and it is available to buy :)

It’s built like a tank, totally beautiful and can be played at any level—but beware, it can tear your head off...

Another couple of pedals

If you delve into the previous articles, you will see that at this point in my career, I was using a Sonic Research ST-300 TurboTuner, Supertone Custom Bass FUZZ, Ernie Ball Volume Pedal Jr., and ElectroHarmonix POG2 polyphonic octave generator running through a Lehle RMI BassSwitch IQ DI.

Grit…

Listening to Lemmy (Motörhead), Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath), and Chris Wolstenholme (Muse), motivated me to explore ‘edge’.

Loud is one thing, but getting the amp to the point of breakup is quite another. As discussed in edition #8, I have a Supertone Fuzz, which is fantastic for solos and specific parts, but I did need something for grit that would not have my band members and the audience being sonically disembowelled.

Enter the…

Hudson Broadcast

I have never played through a classic British broadcast console of the 60s, but we do have a similar type of preamp in the studio: the H2 Audio 2120. This is a faithful recreation of the preamps found in the first Helios consoles, probably best known for the installation in Olympic Studios, London and the recording of Led Zeppelin 1 along with many others including the Rolling Stones, The Who and David Bowie.

When you plug in and raise the gain, the transformer saturates, and components start to overload, giving a fabulous, gritty tone.

The Broadcast is similar but uses a discrete Class-A germanium pre-amplifier (I am not a tech head and know nothing of this; it’s straight from the Hudson Broadcast website).

They go on to say:

“In the low-gain setting, the Broadcast can cover everything from sparkling clean boost through to transparent overdrive, all with a healthy dose of volume available to push your amp. The Broadcast features a specially selected Triad steel-core transformer and a Germanium transistor. Advancing the gain on the Broadcast starts to saturate the transformer and the pedal’s discrete circuitry, giving rise to a gentle and dynamic compression coupled with subtle thickening of the mid-range. With the gain switch in the high setting and the trim control wound up, the Broadcast starts to deliver heavier distorted sounds with a warm and fuzzy edge to them.”

It’s all Japanese to me. All I know is you plug it in, turn it up, mess with the controls and hear the beauty. It’s featured right from the start of Saving Me from our latest studio album Starlite.One.

Compression

99% of every recorded track you hear featuring bass guitar or upright bass will feature compression, to a greater or lesser extent.

But what the hell is compression, and why do we need it??

To explain it in the simplest way possible: imagine you have a tiny, super-fast sound engineer living inside your amp with their hand on the volume knob. Think of a compressor as an automatic volume smoother.

When you play the bass hard and cross a certain line (the Threshold), the ‘engineer’ quickly turns the volume down. When the music gets quiet again, they turn it back up.

So basically, it squashes the difference between your loudest notes and your quietest notes. It makes your playing sound more consistent, allowing it to ‘sit in the mix’. It also adds sustain to a bass or guitar because, as the note naturally fades out, the compressor is effectively ‘turning up’ the tail of the note.

Warning: compression also make any ringing notes, pops, squeaks, or thumps louder, so your technique has to be spot on.

Origin Effects Cali76 Bass Compressor

In the studio, we tend to use rack-mounted studio compressors. Simon favours our vintage DBX 165 and Urei 1176, but there are plethora of pedals available for use in a live scenario. After testing many of them, the Origin Effects Cali76 Bass came out on top.

As you would expect from the name, the Cali76 is inspired by the world-famous Urei 1176.

They are a bit tricky to set up, and not wishing to go over old ground, there are plenty of YouTube videos out there that can help, but as far as I’m concerned its a very usable effect that really tightens up the sound.

There are two very useful controls in addition to those found on many more basic compressors.

The ‘dry’ knob varies the amount of uncompressed signal through the pedal (known as parallel compression). So, you can compress the bass heavily then add some of the original signal which allows the dynamics to shine through! It’s very useful and often used in studio as compression is like a drug; you always want more, but overuse can take the dynamics out of your tone.

The other is the ‘High Pass Filter’ (HPF), which allows you to vary the amount of bass frequencies (0-400Hz) that is allowed through the pedal without compression.

If you think about it, it’s usually the transients—god help me like those created by slap bass techniques—pick attack, and increase in volume and thinness of tone/increase in volume as you move up the neck (especially on the D and G strings) that need controlling. You want the lows to breathe!

Again, I plug it in and mess with the controls until is sounds the way I want it, but you do need to know some technical stuff to get the best out of it! Watch the video.

I always have this on and adjust the amount of signal going into it using my GigRig ATOM switching unit to accommodate my different basses, which have a huge variety of outputs. But more of that next time.

Headroom

The unit allows a power supply to deliver from 9-18V DC. The higher the voltage you give it the more headroom (the amount of level you can put in before distortion) you have. This got me thinking about power supplies: time to speak to Simon, who has been using pedalboards for most of his career. I run this at 12V, as that’s what I have.

And finally

Next month, I will feature my approach to session playing, a new big speaker cabinet, my own signature bass and of course, more pedals.

Please comment below. I look forward to hearing from you!

Much love

Suzy

Those of you who know us will understand how passionate we are about music.

When we first got together twelve years ago, we asked ourselves a tough but important question—what kind of lifestyle did we want to live? Importantly, not what we thought we could achieve, but the life that we ‘dreamt’ of.

No one knows how many ‘time coins’ we have left to spend and having met later in life, we were intent on spending those ‘time coins’ wisely—getting the most bang for our buck!

So what did we want?

This is the footer in Starlite’s email correspondence:

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.” Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

In a nutshell, to live a meaningful life, overflowing with music, creativity, people, and to travel the world, learning from other cultures, to laugh and love deeply, and not, when we come to die, regret a thing.

Subsequently, we have lived in France, Spain, the Isle of Man, Germany and are now based in Portugal—what a European ride!

Living here, we have learned so much about the Portuguese people, their history, and their customs. We even went back to school twice a week to learn the language, and now have our first certificate in Portuguese. OK, we now have the speaking age of a four-year-old, but it’s a start.

During this time, we had also been searching for a place to settle and put down roots—to find kindred spirits and to contribute to and be part of a creative, nurturing community.

Caldas da Rainha

In a serendipitous meeting back in September 2024, we were chatting to our friends and super-talented animators David and Jo Mourato about looking for somewhere to move to and they invited us up to Caldas da Rainha, offering to give us a guided tour of the city! Once we started walking around, we immediately knew we had found our new home.

Caldas da Rainha is also a UNESCO City of Culture, and we were blown away by all the cool people we met. It’s full af artists and musicians—it just felt right!!

Foz do Arelho

In a double serendipitous affair, that morning we also viewed a potential property fifteen minutes from Caldas in the coastal village of Foz do Arelho.

The house had six bedrooms set out over three levels with a separate flat on the top floor (now the Sky Deck) which contained a double bedroom, bathroom, lounge and balcony. On the ground level (Ocean Deck) the vast living room had a triple-height ceiling—perfect for recording drums—with a long balcony that connected all the rooms so you could walk straight out into the sunshine. The lower garden level had a large room perfect for the recording console (now the Engine Room) plus a garage which is ideal for storing flight cases.

The garden was massive with a decent-sized swimming pool, and the added bonus was the separate balcony with a built-in BBQ adjacent to the kitchen; we love to cook outdoors, and this was in our top five things we were looking for.

Admittedly, it was dirty and very neglected, having not been lived in for years, just rented out as a summer party house—but we could see the potential for our next studio adventure. The major selling point to us after the space seemed workable was the breathtaking view from the house across the Óbidos lagoon and the Oceano Atlântico. It made your heart skip a beat—a slice of paradise and absolutely stunning!!

Why open a recording studio?

When we first moved to France, we wanted to live with our equipment rather than have a separate studio. We rented an old farmhouse near Duras, outside of Bordeaux, and quickly realized that the studio was where we felt most at home. Despite having bedrooms upstairs, we decided to sleep there. After all, a room is just a room, and you get to decide its purpose. We had a futon that worked perfectly as both a bed and a sofa, so it never felt strange—it felt right.

Waking up in the French countryside, surrounded by vineyards and our instruments, with our Labrador, Hummock, snoozing at the foot of the bed, was one of the most magical periods of our lives.

That way of life felt completely right. The inspiration of living and working in our studio sparked an idea: why not open a residential recording studio? By sharing this unique experience, we could put our passion and equipment to work, helping other artists transform their creative visions into something real, tangible, and truly unforgettable.

Supertone residential recording studio, Spain.

The weather in France was not so good, and there was no nightlife nearby, so we decided to move and fancied living life in Spain for a while to see how it went.

Within a year, we rented a beautiful house in the mountain village of Estivella, just outside of Valencia, where we opened our first residential recording studio. We learned a great deal and had an amazing experience during our time there; for four years, we hosted and recorded some fabulous musicians from all over the world, including American Grammy Award nominees and renowned jazz musicians.

You can record anywhere; in a studio on an industrial estate or a room in your flat, but when you live the communal life of a musician in a fabulous part of the world, the experience is so different. You are different. You change. The music changes.

Watch the quick tour video below to give you an idea…

Welcome to the new Supertone Sonic Lab // 2025

We’ve been working really hard over the past six months, cleaning, repairing the house, and creating the recording spaces.

Now in August 2025, and via France, Spain, the Isle of Man and Germany, we are thrilled to introduce you to the newly opened Supertone Sonic Lab. A world-class recording studio set in a slice of paradise in the coastal village of Foz do Arelho on Portugal’s stunning Silver Coast.

Our coastal muse

Our location was chosen not just for the sunshine, but for the unique character of Foz do Arelho, where the serene Lagoa de Óbidos meets the Oceano Atlântico. This picturesque village, with its golden beaches and clear waters, offers a wonderfully relaxed Portuguese lifestyle. The best part? It's just an hour's drive from Lisbon Airport on quiet motorways, ensuring your artistic escape is both seamless and spectacularly rewarding.

Beyond the studio, a short drive offers plenty of culture. Just 15 minutes away is Caldas da Rainha, a UNESCO City of Culture known for its vibrant music and arts scene. A bit further, you'll find the medieval town of Óbidos, a true jewel crowned by an ancient castle—it's like stepping back in time. We recently attended the Óbidos Medieval Market, a brilliant experience where the cobbled streets were filled with knights, maidens, the scent of BBQs, and the sounds of ancient music.

A sanctuary for sound

Like the world's most renowned residential studios (think the immersive environments of Miraval or La Fabrique), the Supertone Sonic Lab offers more than just equipment; it's a profound creative experience.

This warm, characterful space, nestled in natural beauty, is crafted for you to relax, leave stress behind, and focus completely on your music. It's an invitation to an inspirational, memorable and rewarding life experience, where environment and acoustics intertwine to foster unparalleled creativity.

A relaxed atmosphere

To ensure a truly special, stress-free environment, our four friendly Labradors, Hummock, Bobby, Edith and Françoise, are always ready to offer a warm welcome and a little extra relaxation.

Perfect climate

Our location boasts a hot Mediterranean climate, reminiscent of Los Angeles, making it ideal for both creative work and relaxation. When it's time to cool off, we have a choice: take a dip in our swimming pool, or walk just three minutes to swim in either the tranquil lagoon or the invigorating Oceano Atlântico.

The Engine Room

The Sonic Lab features two primary recording spaces.

Situated on the lower garden level, the heart of the studio resides in The Engine Room, home to our magnificent 48-channel CADAC J Series analogue console, affectionately known as Betty (after Starlite’s Nana). Renowned for its rich, expansive sound, Betty delivers unparalleled depth and character to every take, a testament to authentic audio capture.

The room has an abundance of natural light and breathtaking views of the Oceano Atlântico and is equipped with ATC and vintage Tannoy studio monitors, an array of vintage outboard, plus serves as a dedicated cinema and features a green screen area for video production; a versatile space offering a unique sonic character.

The Ocean Deck

Adjacent to this, the Ocean Deck, with its impressive four-meter-high ceiling, provides an ideal acoustic environment for tracking both acoustic and electric instruments, allowing for natural resonance and clarity.

Check out our website

Outdoor sessions

For truly unique tones and an immersive recording experience, we also record directly in our beautiful garden, capturing the natural ambience and inspiring setting of Portugal's coast.

Inspired by cuisine

We think good food and good company are just as crucial as good sound. That's why our kitchen is the heart of the house, leading out to a large balcony with a proper Portuguese charcoal grill. It's the perfect spot to cook dinner, share stories about the day’s session, and just chill out.

Cooking and eating together is a huge part of the creative experience—it's often where a lot of the magic happens!

We live for the music…

Much love

Suzy, Simon, Hummock, Bobby, Edith & Françoise.

All about bass guitar

You can also find the article and other great bass-related stuff at Bass Musician Magazine where I am a regular contributor.

Two more influences

I’ve never been a great fan of standard teaching approaches when it comes to developing my musicality and learning more about bass guitar.

YouTube offers hundreds of seemingly quick routes, but I wanted to follow the path of the old-school musician, pay my dues, and stand on the shoulders of giants in the hope of finding my musical voice.

In the last Walking the Bass Line article I discussed John Paul Jones and Andy Fraser, the first two badass bass players I studied when I first picked up my low-end love.

The other two are:

1. Jack Bruce | Cream

2. Carl Radle | Eric Clapton (and others as a session player)

Jack Bruce

When I was a teenager in the early '80s, Cream was a band that wasn’t really on my radar—I was that bit too young and my older siblings preferred listening to a real mixed bag from the Jackson 5 to Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, ELO and Roxy Music.

Listening to music with a focus on what the bass was doing was a whole new experience for me and not something I’d ever consciously done before. I would only ever notice the bass if the groove or riff was insanely catchy and jumped out of the track.

Now, I was listening to music in a completely different way and this time I actually knew the name of the bassist - hehe - in this case that would be Jack Bruce.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, the about section on his website is a great overview of such an innovative and inspirational musician:

Hailed as one of the most powerful vocalists and greatest bassists of his time, his improvisational skill and utterly unique, free-spirited approach to composition and performance would forever change electric music.

He was inspired by jazz and classical bass, including James Jamerson and also loved Paul McCartney’s playing, especially on the song ‘Rain’.

This made me chuckle when I read an interview in Forbes magazine when Jack was chatting about guitarist Jimmy Page who started off on bass guitar when he joined The Yardbirds

Bruce: “Yeah, he used to play bass. Again, I remember Jimmy Page from being a session musician. That's why I never took Zeppelin seriously. They were a bunch of session musicians that we kind of looked down on. We looked down on everybody [laughs]. We looked down on Mick Jagger and Keith Richards early on when they used to come along and try to sit in with us. We'd tell them to piss off: "Go away, learn to play and then come back" [laughs].

It’s strange when you read about people’s stories and experiences many years later. How could you possibly tell who out of the people you knew in your 20s would go on to become mega-famous, or despite their insane talent, achieve zero commercial success?

Playing music is not just about talent, it’s very much connected to that moment in time—that’s when the magic happens!

Now Jack says that he avoided solos! It seems to me that in Cream Live Volume all the instrumental passages were improvised lines that changed from night to night in reaction to Baker and Clapton’s playing. Suspiciously like solos to me :)

If you read my previous article you will know that I learned my chops by playing twice a week for two years in a covers band with my husband and a selection of drummers on the Isle of Man. We even tackled three or four of the songs from Cream Live Volume II including White Room, Crossroads and Badge.

Rather than improvise, which at the time I wasn’t confident about, I learned all the songs by ear, note for note and attacked them with suitable ferocity utilising my Gretsch ThunderJet and HiWatt amp on #loud.

Bruce has a unique style and really puts you through your bass-paces and I love the energy he brings to the bass line - especially on Crossroads - he’s up and down the neck like a bride’s nightie.

Watch this video of Cream playing White Room!! Sensational!!

Carl Radle

They call him the musician’s musician - a role model of a classic multi-genre bassist.

Radle was the consummate sideman who has worked with an impressive list of artists including Leon Russel, Dr John, J.J.Cale, John Lee Hooker, Art Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, George Harrison and Joe Cocker.

It was his gig with Delaney & Bonnie opening for supergroup Blind Faith that changed things up for him when he first met Eric Clapton, which led to him playing on the Derek and the Dominos's album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

I first heard Carl’s bass playing on Clapton’s E.C. Was Here and I had no idea how beautiful bass lines could be. The motifs and melodies he played were sublime and brought to mind a picture of dancing across rocks navigating your way downstream in the middle of a fast-flowing river. His tone also. Rich and deep, a real bass sound.

Sadly Carl died at the young age of 37 but you can find out more about him on Wikipedia

Watch this video of Eric Clapton, Carl Radle and George Terry on second guitar playing live on The Old Grey Whistle Test to get a feel of their vibe!

Another favourite of mine is Have You Ever Loved A Woman from E.C. Was Here.

Radle is so chilled back - the space - the melodic counterpoints - it’s simply brilliant. The feel… and his cheeky little runs.

Alternatively, you can…

Buy me a pint

Developing your skills

Session playing

There is nothing more terrifying than having to perform on someone else’s record. It’s their work and they are always passionate about it and how it sounds.

Apart from recording with my band, I had also done quite a bit of session work before providing backing vocals (BVs) on several sessions for my husband Simon’s solo record The Knife, Cartesian Jetstream, The Mighty Revelators and Joe Marshall.

Even though I had only been playing four strings for a few months I ended up playing bass and singing backing vocals for the soundtrack to Ground Pilots animated film The Race - A Magical Boy, gasp. There is no doubt that this focuses the mind and steps up your game!

Watch the video they made of the recording session when our Supertone residential recording studio was in Spain (reopening in Portugal in January 2025).

I’m playing bass, changing things up on the fly in response to direction - and my husband Simon, who engineered the three-day session, played guitar - on his knees!

Endorsements #1

I am amazingly fortunate to have business relationships with various cool manufacturers which all started with Mike and Spencer Lull at Mike Lull Custom Guitars and Basses.

I have found the bass community to be supportive and appreciate the love I have been shown over the years. Getting to know the people who help you make the music is really cool and adds another layer of meaning to your artistic work.

Bass Guitar Magazine

In September 2018 I was featured in Bass Guitar Magazine with a front cover mention and in-depth interview about all things bass!

It was a bit of a shock as the magazine’s editor and prolific rock author, Joel Mciver emailed me out of the blue! There’s nothing like an interview to get you thinking about what matters and why you do stuff.

Sadly the magazine is no more.

Bass guitars (part two)

As you may recall from my first article in this series, my first two basses were the Gretsch ThunderJet short-scale and the Mike Lull M4V.

One more bass I definitely knew I needed for my low-end stable was an acoustic. There’s something quite beautiful when you play an acoustic bass with an acoustic guitar - the tonality is rich and authentic - like wisdom speaking through the wood.

I also wanted a guitar I could play that I didn’t have to plug in to make a sound out of as sometimes I just want to pick up a bass and play without any kerfuffle.

The Fylde Guitars King John bass

I have an acoustic folk-rock background touring the UK with my band Megiddo in the 90s. 

When I met Simon on the Isle of Man we started playing acoustic duo gigs together, playing our own original material. We were both songwriters and hadn't started writing together at this point.

Double harmonies and two acoustic guitars; very much a case of I'll bring the bread and you bring the cheese - a musical tapas of influences. 

We moved to Spain and started touring as a duo after the release of Simon's second solo album The Knife - a mix of Americana, blues and contemporary folk. The set-up consisted of acoustic guitars, electric bass, piano / Mellotron, harmonica and Cajon. Some of the songs really needed the touch of an acoustic bass but that was for another day... maybe.

Out of interest, Simon contacted Roger Bucknall MBE, an English luthier who owns Fylde Guitars which is now based in Penrith, England. You can't get better than a Flyde hand-built instrument and can see Roger's craftsmanship played by the hands of outstanding musicians such as Martin Simpson, Eric Bibb and Gordon Giltrap.

Simon wrote an article about his—and subsequently our—relationship with Fylde which is certainly worth a read.

VIBES

My journey with Fylde Guitars

When people from England hear the word Fylde, they associate it with Blackpool, its tower, beach, kiss me quick hats or perhaps Fleetwood, Fishermen’s Friends and Lytham St Annes…

Read more

3 years ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Simon Campbell

Roger said there was a two-year waiting list for him to build a new bass guitar but mentioned that he knew of a second-hand  King John Fylde acoustic bass for sale by musician Joss Clapp. What to do? 

I called Joss about the guitar, really got on well and came up with an agreement; we would pay a deposit now and collect the guitar in a year's time. Joss was willing to wait to give us enough time to save up the rest.

So twelve months later, true to our word, we rocked up at Tebay service station near Penrith in the UK and met up with Joss. 

We had a lovely chat and it was clear he really loved this guitar; it had a lot of history: Sting had played it, Joss had toured with Kathryn Tickell and other bands (being a mighty fine player in his own right) and it had also graced the stage of the Royal Albert Hall.

I reassured him it was going to a good home where it would be well treated and that I was really looking forward ‘us’ getting to know each other (the bass that is).

We went to his van, collected the bass and drove off. It felt like a scene from a movie. 

When I returned home I picked up the guitar and wow - what a sound... it is absolutely out of this world, like the echoes of an ancient civilization. Alive, full of history and wisdom, the wood feels like it sings stories of times gone by, of the earth, the people and the stars...  

It also has to be noted here that my King John Fylde bass is huge; the neck is so long you have to take a taxi to the low F!  

I tried playing it standing up with a guitar strap but that was an abject failure as we fell about laughing... the guitar sticks out so much I couldn't see the front of the guitar and all that was missing was a sombrero!

I changed the strings to Thomastik-Infeld flat wounds and together with the Headway under-saddle pickup, my bass is the most enchanting of guitars. Yes, it’s a little battered by its many years on the road but that’s because it has travelled and been played - the reason guitars are made in the first place - not just to be hung up on someone’s living room wall looking perfect. Who wants that? That’s like being a bird and never singing.

When the old man John and I are together, something magical happens.

You can read more about the bass on my website via the button below.

Check out my King John Bass

When Simon and I wrote It Ain’t Right a track from our second studio album The Language of Curiosity it was a natural choice to play the King John acoustic. The bass line has a lot of movement in its melodic cycles and perfectly compliments the vocals.

Lyrically it is a protest song - listen out for the gigantic vocal harmonies - I envisaged hundreds of people gathered together on a hilltop singing in unison as the sun rose on the horizon.

My amps & cabs (part two)

I like to play loud on stage and at bigger venues using valve (tube) amps and big cabinets.

Shortly after I started playing I decided I needed a small amp as well and bought the Littel Mark III for my ‘practice rig’. Perhaps that is an unfair description as I do use it for small acoustic concerts when my valve/tube amps would be too much and overpowering.

Mark Bass // Little Mark III

I needed a practice amp which could also be used for smaller acoustic gigs. The MarkBass is on paper, more powerful and feature-rich than either of my valve heads and to call it a practice amp is a bit of an insult!

There is no doubt it’s a professional tool however I love that valve sound. It is very light with good EQ and fits in a small compartment under the speaker in its flight case known as R2D2!

My favourite feature is the speaker emulation control which rolls off the top end. FAT!

I may be upgrading my sound soon to the new Bergantino Forte’ HP2X amplifier with its rich harmonics as we are planning a Starlite & Campbell acoustic tour for 2025. I will need more versatility in my sound to suit the variety of musical styles we will be playing. 

Bergantino HD112

I needed a cabinet to match and there was really only one choice - the Bergantino HD112. Yes, it has a tweeter but there is an attenuation knob on the back of the cabinet which I have wound down to zero—see my previous article to understand why!

It’s small, relatively light with good power handling and sounds massive with a tight creamy low end, perfect for fingerstyle playing. The HD112 is my cabinet of choice for smaller gigs and has been used all over Europe; from outdoor concerts in Germany and Spain to intimate acoustic gigs in the UK - it’s simply a great piece of gear.

EHX POG 2 Polyphonic Octave Generator

Electro-harmonix (EHX) only came onto my radar when Simon started talking about the Big Muff, whose name I have always thought was a little saucy.

EHX always seem to have gear at a reasonable price point and at the time I was starting to explore the higher registers of the bass and thought it might be cool to buy an octave device.

I had no experience with these and looked into both analogue and digital pedals.

The EHX POG 2 Polyphonic Octave Generator is digital and seemed a good alternative as it has not only one or two octaves down but also an octave up and filters.

It tracks OK with flat-wound strings (that is how well it follows the original note) but is better using round-wounds. Naturally, your technique comes into play here - it’s essential to keep the notes ‘clean’ as any fluff will cause it some problems.

They have also just released a POG 3 which looks superb!

It hasn’t made it onto a recording at the moment as Simon tends to use a DBX subharmonic synthesiser—doesn’t that sound cool—or our Eventide Harmonizer H3000 for octave/harmonizer FX in the Supertone Sonic Laboratory. However, I do use it live which is great fun to change things up a bit.

I need a great analogue octave pedal. Any suggestions?

And finally

Next month I will feature my approach to two original songs from my band, a surprise gift from our son, another valve amp and more pedals.

Please comment below, I look forward to hearing from you!

Much love

Suzy

The other day a new bass-playing friend asked me for advice on the best exercises to improve his playing.

I have to admit I’ve never been a great fan of the standard teaching approaches of recent times. There are hundreds of seemingly quick routes on YouTube but I decided to go as old school as possible.

What to learn is half the battle and depends on what floats your boat. YouTube has given us access to some very good, and very bad, tutorials on how to play our favourite songs.

Legendary bassist Carol Kaye said that simply learning ‘scales’ will ruin your ears from a Jazz musician’s perspective. Although not conversant with jazz, I agreed with her and chose to learn songs I loved which featured bass players I respected.

1. John Paul Jones | Led Zeppelin

2. Andy Fraser | Free

3. Jack Bruce | Cream

4. Carl Radle | Eric Clapton

Today I feature John Paul Jones and Andy Fraser with Bruce and Radle coming along in the next episode.

All about the bass…

If you happen to stumble across this article, and to understand where it all started, it may be worth reading Walking the Bass Line #7 which is the first in my series for new bass players, or, if you want to deep dive, check out all the articles about my bass journey by hitting the red button below.

All about bass guitar

You can also find the article and other great bass-related stuff at Bass Musician Magazine where I am a regular contributor.

John Paul Jones // Led Zeppelin // The Lemon Song - aka Killing Floor

Lemon is great for killing parasites on raw chicken. It is also a zesty addition to a large vodka and tonic but in a musical context the playfulness of sexual innuendo in Blues music.

Back in 1929, Joe Williams sang “You Squeezed my lemon/Caused my juice to run” in the song I Want It Awful Bad.

This pales into a smoothie of citric insignificance when you consider the mightiest lemon of all time for players of the electric bass guitar – The Lemon Song from Led Zeppelin II played by the legendary John Paul Jones (JPJ) and recorded in 1969.

The song borrowed heavily from Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor. Copyright holders for Chester Burnett (Wolf’s birth name) ended up reclaiming the tune in an out-of-court settlement in 1972.

JPJ

Before Led Zeppelin, JPJ was a much sought-after London-based session musician playing hundreds of sessions with a variety of artists, genres and styles giving him great versatility.

Learning to love the lemon

Word has it that he improvised the whole song, adopting more of a funk-oriented approach rather than your typical walking blues lines.

Starting at the beginning I would play a phrase of the song over and over and over again trying to work out what notes/chords were being played, then tried to cross-reference with any half-decent videos that were out there to make sure I was playing in the right place of the neck.

Then unlearning phrases because I had made a pig's ear of it and made things doubly difficult (at times impossible) for myself …and so it continued for months! And by months I mean half a year!

I fell asleep with the bass line running through my head – and woke up with the same blinkin’ line there to greet me - it almost drove me crazy!!

Don’t get me wrong, I love playing but this was an absolute brain mangler at times, especially dissecting the faster parts; it made me feel like I was spinning on a never-ending mad fairground ride!

It’s all about the tone…

Part of learning the song is emulating the ‘sound’ of the bass in the track. This is tricky as only a small part of the tone comes from the gear, the real sound comes from the way you play the part - yes, your fingers.

I love that ‘60s/‘70s sound and am the proud owner of a ‘70s HiWatt DR201 valve amp which I use with a selection of cabinets.

Early on with Led Zeppelin, JPJ used HiWatt and Marshall amps, moving on later to the more powerful Acoustic 360 bass head paired with a 361 cabinet - the stack of choice for bass players in the ’70s, including the mighty Jaco Pastorius.

Flats

From the tone, I suspect that he employed a Marshall or HiWatt plus his trusty 1962 Fender Jazz Bass with flat-wound strings in the recording of The Lemon Song. I use flats on most of my basses born from an early recommendation from Andy Seward, and later reinforced by JPJ and Andy Fraser. They were right, flats are punchy, thick and gorgeous!

Anyway, enough of the chatter, just listen to this badass track…

Andy Fraser // Mr Big // Free

Andy Fraser was the bass player and co-composer in British rock band Free which he co-founded in 1968 with vocalist Paul Rodgers, guitarist Paul Kossof and drummer Simon Kirke - he was 15 years old - so young!!

That same year he had been kicked out of Grammar school for refusing to have his hair cut and enrolled at Hammersmith College of FE where he met Sappo, the daughter of Alexis Korner, a pioneering bluesman and a hugely influential radio presenter. Alexis became like a father figure to Andy who came from a broken home and was influential in him joining the legendary band John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

Sadly Andy died in 2015 of a heart attack at the young age of 62 and John Mayall died a few days ago at the ripe old age of 90. Read his obituary in The Guardian newspaper to get an overview of his influence and achievements.

“Andy was the most amazing musician. As a bass player he was up there with Jack Bruce. But as Andy would say, if he was around now, he wasn’t just a bass player, he was a great all-round musician. He had this amazing ability to listen to something and play it straight back.” - Simon Kirke, drummer with Free & Bad Company

The list of Andy’s musical influences comes as no surprise - Paul McCartney, Bill Wyman, Stax, Motown, James Jamerson, Carol Kay and early Stevie Wonder. Jack Bruce also played a big part in the early days of Fraser’s tutelage. Amongst others, his band ‘Free’ was based on ‘Cream’ with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.

What I do like is that he mentioned specific stand-out songs to check out:

• The Rolling Stones version of I Wanna Be Your Man (composed by Lennon & McCartney) with Bill Wyman on bass

• John Entwistle's bass break in The Who’s My Generation

• Marvin Gaye's What's Going On with James Jamerson on bass

If you want to find out more about Andy’s life, read his autobiography ‘All Right Now… Life, Death and Life Again’.

Special thanks to Andy’s daughters Jasmine and Hannah Fraser who sent me the colour photographs of their Father to use in this article.

Valve power

As was the de rigueur in those heady days, Andy used amplifiers by Marshall, Matamp and Orange plus 4x12 speaker cabinets. It’s now easy to discount this setup but know from experience, that it sounds great both live and in the studio.

His basses were always short-scale fitted with flat wound strings, the Gibson EB3 being his weapon of choice, just like his hero Jack.

Watch this live video of ‘Free’ when they played at Granada Studios in Manchester, UK in July 1970. Andy has a fabulous bass tone - like a big stomping elephant.

British rock at its finest…

My amps & cabs

I started playing with a tour booked and an album to record on so my gear trajectory was set. No pressure!

In last month’s article, I wrote about my first two bass guitars and first pedal board setup which was simple and designed for a tour of the UK with my husband Simon.

Where do you start when buying your first amplifier & cabinet?

It all depends on what kind of sound you are looking for - there are so many to choose from in all shapes and sizes and it can be a bit overwhelming.

Are you planning on playing live or just in the bedroom? Do you want to rehearse with friends? Are you concerned with weight, size and portability?

All these factors will determine your selection, but like any gear, buying the best you can afford is important.

Choosing second-hand from a reputable source such as REVERB (which does have customer protection) and/or paying via PayPal is always a good plan.

I would be happy to give specific recommendations so please feel free to comment below and I will come right back to you.

It’s all about the space…

One thing that influences the sound of any bass amplifier is its position. You will always hear more low end if the cabinet is on the floor due to half-space loading. If you want to mash your brain, check out this article.

An easier and more pleasurable way is to try it yourself by comparing the difference by lifting the cabinet off the floor and putting it back again: you will be surprised!

The Hiwatt DR201 & Bergantino NV610

I met music producer and bassist Andy Seward back in 2014 when he was working on my husband Simon’s second solo album The Knife and knowing what I was up to, suggested I buy a Bergantino NV610 to match the 1974 HiWatt DR201 which I had picked up in the UK - my first amplifier.

The NV610 is cool and here is a precis from Bergantino’s press release:

Unique in the Bergantino Audio Systems line of speakers are the New Vintage NV series of bass guitar speaker cabinets. Designed by Jim Bergantino (who is a really lovely chap) the cabinets are sealed (rather than the traditional ported design) which provides the NV cabinets with a tighter and more immediate bass response

The NV620 with six - 10 inch speakers, comes with ‘tilt-back’ casters and full-length amp glides on the back to facilitate loading and unloading. It also has side mounted recessed handles (at the right height to lift these onto any stage).

The cabinetry employs a precision-tuned cabinet architecture with the enclosure built from the finest 100% Baltic birch plywood. It is covered in traditional tolex for durability and has a rigid black grille to protect the drivers.

The NV series is a favorite of both finger style and pick players because of the tight-creamy low end.

If you want a little more clarity and open sound, but don’t like tweeters? This is THE cabinet for you! It sounds great with tube amplifiers (pull out the V4B, Model T, Hiwatt, etc.) and this cab will make you smile. Vintage heaven!

I bought my 610 from Bass Direct in the UK when Jim and Holly Bergantino produced a limited run back in 2015, deciding to buy the version without the tweeter as my style doesn’t require the extended top end.

Many bass players still love these cabinets and they are very hard to come by and hoping they will do another production run again soon.

Unusually, Jim Bergantino uses ceramic (sometimes called Ferrite) magnets in a lot of his speaker cabinets because he prefers the sound. This adds some weight to the finished cabinet but I’ve always thought that this is my sound and part of the sonic ritual of my setup. However, if lighter is the way you want to go, Bergantino also produces a range featuring neodymium magnets and lighter, smaller cabinets.

Check out their website and take a look for yourself.

From big rigs to no rigs

This move to smaller and smaller gear - the ultimate being the modelling pedal - and in-ear monitoring saddens me somewhat. Even though I love technology and keep up with many of the advances, there is nothing like a valve head and a big cabinet with heavy ceramic magnets.

Watch this video when we played a very rare cover of Free’s Mr Big at The Met in Bury, UK with Starlite & Campbell. Warning - bass solo at 3:55.

Gear employed: Gretsch ThunderJet bass with TV Jones pickups fitted with Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Bass (JF324) short-scale flat-wound strings // Supertone MinCap ‘A’ cable // Lehle RMI BassSwitch IQ DI with all FX disengaged // 1974 HiWatt DR201 bass head // Bergantino NV610 bass cabinet mic’d with no DI.

Second pedal

My second pedal on my board whose name sounds like the son of a comedian - the Ernie Ball Volume Pedal Jr. It’s a sturdy piece of gear made from aircraft-grade aluminium housing which is virtually indestructible.

It gives you a smooth foot sweep that does the job and doesn’t break the bank. I use it to swell in the sound smoothly, which along with a delay device (echo unit), is especially effective in creating atmospheric soundscapes.

I used this on our song Hello which we played live at the Head for the Hills Festival (Ramsbottom Festival) whilst touring the UK with my husband Simon. It’s a 28-minute song which we are releasing later this year.

The eagle-eyed reader will notice that this is the 25K version which is suitable for active electronics. Apart from my Fylde King John acoustic bass - with an under-saddle transducer - all my basses are passive. So whats that all about? The answer: it’s always in a buffered FX loop!

The importance of good technique

Understanding what chord you are playing under and your left-hand fingering shapes are super important to give a smooth performance. Once dialled in, this allows you the freedom to improvise over a chord when writing a part for yourself.

Listen to the part

How is the bass line sitting in the track? Is it serving what the song needs? Am I crashing the vocal? Is the line too busy and confusing the track or is it not giving the movement by not being busy enough? Is this major third working with the bass synth? Do I need to play that note an octave up or down? And most importantly is it working with the drums??

All these are vital but fade into the cheap seats if you have poor technique.

Recording an electric bass guitar

One key aspect that has benefitted my bass playing is working in the recording studio. I started tracking bass on various projects virtually from day one, which helped me understand both the role of the bass in a piece of music and also my technical ability - or lack thereof.

When recording with a multi-speaker cabinet, you need to mic up the best-sounding speaker. Of course, they should sound the same, but that isn’t always the case. Usually, you find one that sounds better than the rest and once you’ve found the best one, move the microphone around the speaker cone to find that sweet spot: there always is one!

Try it out and listen for yourself.

Keep it clean

I’ve learned a few harsh lessons from recording and can’t stress enough how important it is to record your bass from the very beginning. It allows you to hear, in detail, what you sound like and if you are playing clean notes.

If you are a real low-end dweller, mostly below the seventh fret and working in a typical live rock band, it’s tricky to hear the real details of your playing. Ringing notes, clacking and buzzing strings are all camouflaged by the racket created by the band; when recording everything is revealed - warts and all.

OK, you think you’ve recorded a groovy take but something isn’t quite gelling! The producer is trying to work out what’s going on and through a process of elimination, listens to all the instruments separately until that fateful moment when they solo the bass track!

Yeah, baby - solo bass - just the bass - on it’s own - usually heavily compressed which brings out every tiny detail - and you, on your own! It feels like you are standing there naked in that moment of truth.

Oh shit!! That doesn’t sound at all like I thought I’d played it - strings are ringing here and there and a sort of growling, humming low-end dissonance and unwanted harmonics in places because I’d not always managed to dampen/mute the other strings. It’s a harsh, but necessary lesson.

Watch this video where I bare my soul and go acoustically naked live on camera.

Also, check out Simon’s article How to record an electric bass guitar which is part of a series on Analogue Recording Techniques.

And finally

Next month I will feature two songs from Jack Bruce and Carl Radle, my practice amp setup - you will be surprised - and another pedal.

Please comment below, I look forward to hearing from you!

Much love

Suzy

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2 years ago · 2 likes · Starlite & Campbell

Today is all about the bass

Suzy Starlite (my wife and musical collaborator) started playing bass nine years ago and is a woman possessed. If you want to see the depth of her obsession, take a look at her series of articles detailing the journey.

Recently, she was asked to write a monthly column for Bass Musician Magazine and thought it would be a good idea to make a video on how we record electric bass guitar to accompany her next article.

Under the bonnet (not the hood)

To complement the video, here are a few things that I want to cover in more detail.

Recording medium

The first in this series on analogue recording introduced the concept of the patch-bay and in this latest video, we are using it in a real-life situation.

We use a 95% analogue signal chain, but recording and playing back through an Avid HD/IO digital interface sampling at 24-bit 96Kz and bouncing down at 16/44.1 for the video upload.

Suzy and I are still saving up for an upgrade to 32 channels of fabulous RADAR converters, but it’s a very expensive business and takes a while.

Tape

People constantly ask me why we don’t record to tape.

If you have read any of my technical articles you will know that recording to a Studer/Ampex 16 track, 2” tape machine is my dream ticket, but the harsh budgetary reality makes it impossible for us right now.

RADAR comes very close and we trialled 24 channels last year: it sounds ace, not to mention my spirit animal, Daniel Lanois, uses this system and he makes great, natural-sounding records.

Setting up the Pro Tools session

There are hundreds of excellent YouTube videos on the subject of creating a Pro Tools session so I will only detail this particular recording.

• I set the bass guitar microphone/DI inputs to the three preamp inputs detailed in the video. 1 & 2 being the API 512C (transformer balanced inputs) and 3 the DAV BG501 (electronically balanced inputs). I used the transformer based preamps for the microphones as they add a certain ‘vibe’. The Rupert Neve Designs DI already has an excellent transformer designed by Rupert himself and hence no additional ‘vibe’ was required

• The Avid HD/IO outputs are routed to the channels 10, 11 and 12 on the console with a 20dB pad

• You will see one plugin (gasp) on the session - the built-in EQ3 1-band - which I used to noiselessly change the phase on the bass during the playback. The console tends to crackle when you do this so I resorted to a plugin

• I always add a subgroup (aka aux input track) for all three inputs sources just in case as when a session builds it’s easy to run out of channels (we have 32 returns from the Avid HD/IO). The eagle-eyed viewer will notice it’s not in the chain

• There is a click track, but Starlite didn’t use it as she was working with the Sequential Tempest drum machine

• There is an inactive iZotope Ozone plugin on the main mix out which I use occasionally to get an impression of what the mastered track will sound like

• The Tempest was DI’d using a two-channel DAV P48V unit directly into channels 21-22 of the console, phantom-powered, panned hard left and right with a 20dB pad and brought back into channels 29-30

Recording with EQ and compression. Yes or no?

I will cover this subject in more depth in my next video, which will be about the use of outboard analogue compressors. But briefly, there are two schools of thought on this.

EQ and compression are applied before you record - which to me, unless you have a totally clear vision of the final mix, is fraught with danger. Remember this isn’t an ‘in the box’ recording and hence you can’t go back and change your mind - it’s committed to the recorded track.

Having said that, thousands of classic records were made this way in the halcyon days of recording before the advent of truly flexible multitrack recording (ie, more than three or four tracks).

The Beatles early work is a case in point, but they are the Beatles and Geoff Emerick was a fucking genius.

Or…

Record the instrument with no processing - just getting the best sound by positioning the microphone in the optimum place and if multiple microphones are used, checking the phase before you record which of course can be done later, but I like to get it right from the outset - one less thing to consider when mixing

I met the mighty George Massenberg some years ago and he told me he usually does it this way but records two tracks from the same input with one a few dB down just in case the player gets a bit excited and peaks. George is cool…

This is also my preferred option.

Routing

The microphones/DIs were plugged into a stage box connected to a 50m multicore which in turn was plugged into the patch-bay.

I patched these into the inputs of the outboard pre-amps (for the bass) and directly into the console inputs for the drum machine.

The output of the preamps were routed directly into the Avid HD/IO inputs 1, 2 and 3 and monitored through the console.

And finally…

Shit in = shit out

Recording is easy if you have great players using top-class gear.

I am not talking expensive, as a great musician can make almost anything sound good and there are times when you need a shitty old guitar on a track.

Willie Nelson’s ‘Trigger’ is not a shitty old guitar but a Martin N-20 nylon-string acoustic dating to early 1969. It has however seen a lot of action, is beaten up with a huge hole in the soundboard so ‘technically’ it shouldn’t sound great.

‘Trigger’ isn’t Willie’s secret weapon – it’s his only weapon and to me, sounds perfect.

There is no doubt, if it sounds shit in the room, no amount of post-production can get it right: finger noise, ringing strings, badly tuned drums, bad setup (e.g. intonation on a fretted instrument), crackles, crunches, humming and buzzing can make your life a misery.

Regardless of what system or equipment you are using when recording a musician, capturing the best performance and microphone positioning are by far the two most important factors.

Check out my YouTube channel

Please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell icon to be notified of new videos when they become available. Your support is very much appreciated.

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I hope you enjoy these articles and as ever, if you have any questions pop them in the comments section below or on the specific YouTube video.

See you next time

Much love

Simon

Suzy and I love analogue

If you read anything about us, it quickly becomes clear that we love all things analogue (or for our friends in the USA analog), from vinyl records, physical art, paper books, film photography and the tools of our trade - musical instruments and equipment.

The democratisation of music-making by the use of computers has come with a cost in that the skills of recording using analogue equipment are quickly being lost and so I have decided to share my take on playing and recording music the old-school way.

Brass balls

Through a combination of sheer fluke and brass balls, I managed to get into the Manchester session scene not long after I first picked up a guitar. It was around 1976 and studio work was abundant. Sessions and teaching by day - gigs almost every night.

I always hung around after the recording sessions as I loved the studio vibe and was curious about the recording process.

Abbey Road was released in 1969 and arguably the greatest records ever made were created in the mid-60s to mid-70s, consequently, studio engineers and producers were at the top of their game. I was learning from the best.

The conversations in the pub were just as valuable as time in the studio. I must have been a right pest.

My knowledge of how to solder and put together equipment came later from a stint working with legendary Michaels Spratt and Huck at Wigwam Acoustics, David Solari at Autograph in London and a very long conversation with one of the most respected audio engineers of all time, Rupert Neve.

So from this combined experience and with the expert video assistance of my wife and musical collaborator Suzy Starlite, I am publishing the series on my own YouTube channel.
Don’t forget to subscribe and hit the bell icon to be notified of new videos when they become available.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel

Some videos…

This is the latest video - an introduction to patch bays - which are the heart of any analogue recording studio and provide the interface to quickly connect the recording console to outboard units such as compressors, gates, microphone preamps and time-based effects such as reverbs, delays and other devices. It also provides easy access to tie lines and microphone inputs from all around the studio.

Lockdown

During the COVID-19 lockdown, the Supertone studio was located in Germany and we recorded four guides that until today, were available only to our subscribers. In light of the new series, we thought it was a good time to make them available to all.

An introduction to microphones

Miking guitar and bass cabinets

Creating musical parts and sounds to serve the song

Microphone preamps

And finally…

I hope you enjoy these little snippets and as ever, if you have any questions pop them in the comments section below or on the specific YouTube video.

See you next time

Much love

Simon

There was the harmonica, my favourite sound to inspire random dogs to ‘howl’ along with a simple tune. Then followed descant and treble recorders, my friend Jill’s piano (and anybody else’s come to think of it), the school organ at lunchtimes and a brief awkward dalliance with a cheap violin. Finally, through Hobson’s choice, I settled on the last instrument standing in the school’s musical armoury - an old, unwanted and completely battered French horn. C’est la vie!

I really enjoyed this unusual curly-belled instrument and had lots of fun playing in the school orchestra and brass band, learning a lot about parts and how all the other instruments wove in and out of each other and the incredible melodies and emotions that followed. I was also a member of the school choir in the ‘alto’ department and fell in love with harmonies - it’s just the best!!

Sadly my dalliance with the world of brass had to stop with the installation of fixed ‘cheese-grater’ dental braces. Subsequently, I moved on to the acoustic guitar which allowed me a good deal of independence enabling me to sing and accompany myself with some cool chords. It also ignited my passion for songwriting. I also played any piano I could find.

If this is the first article you have seen about my bass journey you can find more by heading over to:

My bass related articles

Being heard

In the early 90s I moved to the north of England to study Media & Performance at Salford College (now University) and after singing some of my original songs in a lunchtime concert under the moniker of a band called I Never Used To Like Brussel Sprouts I ended up as one of the founding members of a contemporary folk band called Megiddo with some great guys off the degree course in Popular Music and Recording - namely John Smith, Tim Allen and Alan Lowles.

We wrote and performed all our original songs, self-recorded and released an album called On The Outside and toured the UK folk circuit. In those days if you wanted to test out new songs, a good place to go was our local folk club which was based in a pub in a slightly dodgy area in Higher Broughton.

There were no microphones or amplification of any kind - nothing electronic. Everything was acoustic and au natural. You listened to everyone else playing and when it was your turn - you stood up where you were sat - that was your stage.

Of course when we were booked for the bigger gigs we needed amplification for the instruments and vocals to be heard in these vast spaces - but we didn’t use any overt effects or added jiggery pokery with our instruments (two acoustic guitars and a fretless bass - we sounded natural - like us, but louder.

A few years later, touched by the hand of fate - in a happy, groove-laden serendipitous happening - everything changed and I accidentally got hooked on playing the bass guitar.

I hadn’t been playing that long before my first professional gig, which happened to be with my husband Simon when we toured the UK to promote his second solo album, The Knife.

Simon is a pro and I was in the band because he loved my playing. You can read all about those experiences and what I learned in my previous articles.

It’s all about the sound

Moving forward to today - music is not just about being heard anymore. I’m on a new and exciting trajectory, this time experimenting with my bass guitar making different sounds. From pedals to amplifiers to the big cabinets that house the speakers - you could say I’ve become a ‘cosmic explorer of the sonic palette’!

It sounds extra-terrestrial / inter-dimensional - and sometimes feels just like that!

In the beginning

My first bass guitar set up for the tour with Simon back in 2016 was simple: Mike Lull M4V bass guitar - plugged directly into my Sonic Research ST-300 TurboTuner (a guitar tuner) using the Supertone Mincap ‘A’ guitar cable then with a second cable to the back of the stage where it was plugged straight into an amplifier and speaker cabinet provided for me by the gigs/venues.

Since then I have had two different setups and have gradually added a few more bass guitars to my stable… Oh, and some stunning keyboards too.

What’s all the fuss about pedals?

What are guitar pedals and why use them?

This whole saga began in 2018 when we were touring our debut Starlite & Campbell album ‘Blueberry Pie’. Simon and I had formed a new band and had co-written and produced our first album together.

During the recording process, I played two different bass guitars. A Mike Lull M4V and a black Gretsch ThunderJet, both fitted with flat-wound strings.

You may not be familiar with these two beauties (check out the photos below) but as you would expect they have different sounds (aka tonal characteristics) and volumes (output levels), one being lower (quieter) than the other.

In the studio, you have time to set up each sound and when recording our first album together, Blueberry Pie, I needed a gritty, dirty, fuzzy sound for the solo section of You’re So Good For Me.

For this purpose, I employed the kickass assistance of the Supertone Custom Bass FUZZ by DWJ pedals - which I’ll explain more later - just know that I love it!!

FUZZ!!!!!!!

On tour, however, I needed to use this fuzz and swap between two different bass guitars for certain songs. This is where the wonders of technology, pedals and effects start to help you out.

Watch this video of our Starlite Campbell Band concert at The Met in Bury, Manchester to hear the ThunderJet in action. Geek alert: bass solo at 01:56 minutes.

Bass guitars

It’s probably a good place to give you some information on the two basses in question.

Gretsch ThunderJet

This was my first ever bass, chosen because I've got really small hands and it has a shorter neck - hence the term short-scale (shorter scale = smaller distance between the frets). I also wanted to have that short thumpy 60s sound, similar to Jack Bruce (Cream), Andy Fraser (Free) and Paul McCartney - (I think you may know which band).

The ThunderJet has a semi-hollow body so it’s not too heavy and has a big fat distinctive and punchy sound.

It's also one of the best-looking sexy basses Gretsch has ever produced with a throwback to their vintage models and often people will ask me about it after gigs... upstaged or what?

Technical stuff

• Mahogany body with arched maple top

• Ebony fingerboard

• Semi-hollow body

• Dual TV Jones® Thunder’Tron™ pickups

• Space Control™ bass bridge

• 30.3-inch scale

• Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Bass - JF324 - flat wound strings

Mike Lull M4V

This guitar is ultra-special to me. Not only was it my wedding present from Simon but it was also made by the late great Mike Lull himself.

This is my old friend, the guitar I had imagined, which has been with me from almost the beginning, through endless hours of learning, making mistakes, jumping around with me when the music takes you high. We recorded most of the songs on Blueberry Pie with this bass and have played many a festival stage together, flown on planes and travelled around the world and back again.

The low end has a big attitude for rock and an elegant versatility that lets you slide up the neck as if you were on your knees sliding across a well-oiled floor! Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine it's an upright double bass too, the sound and thud of the strings taking me to that smoky downtown bar.

The M4V evokes a fantastic classic vintage vibe with all the wonderful attributes of a 60/70s Jazz bass combined with passive electronics, all in a slightly downsized body shape.

Technical stuff

• Fitted with Hipshot Ultralite tuners with drop D

• Custom Wound Lindy Fralin Single Coil Pickups

• Hipshot Aluminium Bridge

• Mahogany Body

• Graphite Reinforced Maple Neck

• Rosewood fingerboard

• Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Bass - JF344 - flat wound strings

Technical terminology/gear

At this juncture, I also needed to get my head around a few basic technical terms and learn about how things work.

The guitar pick-up

Have you ever wondered how electric basses make sounds in the first place? It’s a fascinating process and the most important part of your electric guitar's plugged-in tone. Below is a simple explanation:

Guitar strings are made out of a magnetic metal.

Underneath the strings sits the ‘pick up’ which is fitted into the body of the guitar.

The pick up consists of a coil of wire wrapped around a magnetic pole piece (or pieces).

When you pluck/hit a string - it vibrates which generates a voltage in the coil.

In a passive bass (more of this later), the pickup(s) are directly connected to volume and tone controls which are then sent to the output of the instrument.

The signal chain

The signal chain is the order in which you place any effects/pedals. At first, I put my tuner first in the chain after the bass guitar the signal can be easily muted for silent tuning.

The pre-amp

This electronic device amplifies a weak signal, such as that from a passive bass.

These are found in bass/guitar amplifiers, studio mixing consoles, domestic HiFis, sometimes within the bass itself (referred to as an active bass) and as external units in the format of a pedal.

There are many different specifications but some are capable of driving a power amplifier (the second stage which amplifies this intermediate signal level to one which can drive a loudspeaker) and/or can be used before the amplifier to modify the sound, volume and tone of the instrument - I will explain more about this in the next instalment.

This brings me to the third pedal I owned.

Lehle RMI BassSwitch IQ DI

The Lehle RMI BassSwitch IQ DI was the centrepiece of my first pedalboard (a metal frame where all the pedals are organised). It was exactly what I needed at the time to help me sort out the technical challenges of playing two different basses with different sounds and volumes

The unit had two channels with separate volume controls enabling me to set the level for each bass by using a foot switch to select channel A or B.

Channel B also has very natural sounding tone controls (or equalisation - EQ) which allowed me to change the tone of the bass in channel B to complement the bass in channel A.

Two effects loops

The unit also has two effects (FX) loops, one switchable and one in all the time for both channels. In the switchable loop, I placed the FUZZ (so I could switch it in and out using the button on the Lehle) and my rarely used Ernie Ball volume pedal in the unswitched.

If you want to see the possibilities of routing and an explanation of FX loops, check out the manual.

The all-important mute switch

My tuner is connected to a dedicated ‘tuner output’ and the Lehle’s output can be muted via another footswitch.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, this mute is critical which enables me to tune up between songs silently as there’s nothing worse than someone audibly tuning up on stage - it’s messy and unprofessional.

The Direct Inject output

There are two outputs from the Lehle, one for the amplifier plus a very high-quality Direct Inject (DI) output which is compatible with mixing consoles, allowing the sound engineer to take the signals right from your pedals before they get to the amplifier.

My bass tone comes from the amplifier and speaker cabinet combination and I always insist it’s miked up for a performance.

There are some instances however that you need the signal to be sent to the live sound system (PA). For example, my Fylde King John acoustic bass is better using this direct method rather than going through the stage amplifier and again, more of this in the next edition!

It is a high-quality piece of kit that you come to expect from Lehle (although now sadly discontinued) and has never let me down. The only thing I have to watch out for is operator error when I'm wearing my big kickass 'Boots of Rock'.

And finally…

I hope you are enjoying these bass-related articles - if you have any questions or any feedback, it’s free to subscribe and it would be cool to hear from you.

Next up in Walking the Bass Line - I’ll talk a little more about amplifiers, cabinets and another pedal.

Big love

Suzy

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This brief video shows Ray Charles being interviewed on the subject of multitrack recording for the superb rockumentary The Language Of Music about the life and work of legendary engineer/producer Tom Dowd.

Ray’s right. Forget the technology, what does it sound like?

Many years ago, I was honoured to have met one of the giants of the professional audio world, the late great Rupert Neve. He is credited with designing the modern recording console amongst many other technical achievements. When he died I wrote a piece about the experience.

VIBES

Rupert Neve

Earlier today I learned that Rupert had sadly passed away. He leaves behind a huge legacy of equipment, knowledge and legendary recordings that were facilitated by the electronics he designed. I was very fortunate to spend a couple of hours talking with Rupert in the late '80s and vividly remember the conversation. It was around the time he was a consulta…

Read more

5 years ago · 2 likes · Simon Campbell

We had a great chat, discussing his fascinating history and philosophy, including the subject of ‘air’.

Without this mixture of gasses, life as we know it would not exist on Earth, but the ‘air’ to which Rupert was referring is the term applied to high audio frequencies1 that allegedly most people cannot hear - the mysterious inaudible ‘air’.

In musical terms, frequencies relate to the pitch of an instrument, from bass guitar and kick drum (low) to the shimmer of a cymbal (high). Frequency is measured in Hertz (Hz) and thankfully, nothing to do with the car rental company.

According to research, humans in laboratory conditions can hear between 12 Hz and as high as 28,000 Hz (28 kHz) but most of us mere mortals can only hear up to 16 kHz, which drops off quite rapidly with age and even quicker if you are a rock ‘n roll musician.

Bats, porpoises (yes, you read it correctly, porpoises) and people with gifted hearing2 will appreciate that Rupert designed his audio equipment with ‘air’ in mind, ensuring that electronics pass a massive range of frequencies, far beyond what conventional wisdom would deem necessary.

To put this into context, here are the frequency ranges that musical instruments operate in. The top bar shows the frequencies from 20 Hz - 20 kHz.

As you can see there isn’t a right lot above 16 kHz so what’s all the fuss about ‘air’?

Is it horseshit?

Many studies have been conducted about the potential benefit of extending the bandwidth of musical recordings above 16 kHz and the results have mostly been inconclusive3. However, Rupert Neve and many other industry luminaries think it is beneficial, if not essential4.

Even though my ears have been ravaged by monstrously loud guitar amps and Edward Byron Taylor III (the drummer in my first band Whitefire), beating the shit out of his 20” Paiste China-type cymbal, I believe that I can still ‘feel’ these frequencies.

Now, before you get all agitated and tell me I am speaking horseshit, read on.

Harmonics and overtones

Harmonics and overtones5 are generated by all musical instruments and are what differentiates them.

For example, a middle C (256 Hz) on a piano doesn’t sound like a middle C on a guitar. This is because of the overtones and harmonics, which make the timbre of the sound unique to the instrument. Two similar guitars playing the same note will also sound different for the same reason.

The frequencies of these harmonics and overtones can be well above our 16-20 kHz hearing range. When you attend a concert without amplification you will hear the full range of the instruments.

“I once heard a story about a specific transformer-based mixing console channel that sounded way better than the other channels of the same console... more ‘air’ etc. The reason? A capacitor was causing a frequency boost well above 20 kHz in that preferred channel. This channel had become the ‘vocal’ channel for all recordings, it just sounded...better.” | Duco de Rijk, founder of D&R Audio

When you listen to music that has been recorded or amplified ‘air’ can be, and is mostly lost.

Recording ‘air’

A recording console is a device which enables you to mix many audio signals together and has been around since the dawn of radio and recording. Originally these were based on old-school electronics (analogue) but it all changed in 1987 when digital consoles appeared on the market.

Analogue

Despite the dwindling market, several companies still manufacture analogue consoles. They are big and heavy, consume a lot of electricity and require regular maintenance. However, many devotees of analogue technology (us included) are prepared to live with these issues because we just love the sound.

Vintage recording consoles, all the way back to the 50s are still in daily use. Top recording studios worldwide boast of owning CADAC, Neve, API, Trident, Sphere, Electrodyne, MCI, Sound Techniques, Studer, Calrec and Helios models which are revered by their owners and clients alike.

In the context of this article, the important feature of all these consoles is their extremely wide bandwidth (range of frequencies) which allows the ‘air’ frequencies to pass through.

For example, the CADAC J series console (aka Betty) residing in the Supertone studio in Portugal boasts a bandwidth of 5-65 kHz +/- 0.5db and weighs in at 450 Kg - that's a lot of ‘air’ and a lot of effort to move around.

When writing about his new eight-hour organ piece, 268 years of reverb, musician, composer and inspirational sound experimentalist Johnny Greenwood of the bands Radiohead and The Smile wrote:

“Melodies in Indian music are often thought of as circular, rather than linear – you’re climbing on to a moving wheel, not starting and ending in silence. 

This is why the first and last chords of 268 years of reverb incorporate notes below/above audible frequencies. In this way, the music passes across the room as it passes across the audible spectrum, in the same way a rainbow is only the narrow range of the visible spectrum amongst all possible frequencies of light.”

Humans cannot hear or see everything - illustrated by the throngs of lobster-red British sunbathers who think those sneaky, ultraviolet rays don’t exist because they are invisible to the human eye.

Take a sample

Firstly, let’s be clear we are not talking about stool samples but ‘audio’ samples.

As soon as we move into the digital world things become more complex. We no longer discuss manipulating electrical signals, but instead the binary world of ones and zeros.

This isn’t the place to discuss how digital works, but if you want to blow your brains out, read this Wikipedia article.

Digital technology: the physics

Digital consoles for professional use have ‘bit depths’ and ‘sample rates’ capable of capturing the ‘air’. But what the hell are bit depths and sample rates?

Sampling

In short, when analogue audio is recorded digitally it is sampled thousands of times per second and converted to binary code: ones and zeros. Look into this further and figures such as 24-bit, 96 kHz will pop up.

96 kHz refers to 96,000 snapshots taken (samples) of the audio every second. This sampling rate can reproduce audio frequencies up to 48 kHz6 (the Nyquist frequency), well into Rupert’s ‘air’ territory.

Dynamic range

The ‘bit’7 part of the equation is about the resolution of each sample, specifically the signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range (defined as the ratio of the loudest peak to the quietest) which is important to maintain the integrity of audio that goes from the very quiet to very loud.

For instance, a 16-bit recording system provides 65,536 discrete values to represent the amplitude of a sound wave and 24-bit has over 16.7 million levels.

Cutting it off

I am not getting into the full Nyquist-Shannon theorem8 as that even freaks me out, but to put it simply, if you feed into digital converters frequencies higher than the Nyquist frequency (half the sampling rate), you may get unexpected results that are both audible and unpleasant, known as aliasing.

To avoid this, designers of digital systems add low pass filters before ‘digitisation’ to remove those frequencies. If we are talking about a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and hence a Nyquist frequency of 22 kHz (the rate for all CDs) we cut off the precious ‘air’.

Oh shit…

Breathe, breathe in the air…

Unlike analogue, digital has rigid, physical limitations to the bandwidth it can capture. If ‘air’ is truly unimportant, why do most professional studios set their systems to record frequencies that mere mortals cannot hear?

Manipulation

Recording at higher resolutions (over 24-bit, 96 kHz) enables musicians, producers and recording engineers to perform complex functions with the audio which is not possible if you record at a lower resolution.

In addition, the audio gremlins (aliasing) which I discussed earlier, will be pushed well out of the audible frequency band.

Of course, the added benefit for us audio mountaineers is that these higher rates allow the harmonics of the music to be recorded using digital technology. You can record the ‘air’.

Does this matter?

Music is about emotion. It’s everywhere and has been around since the dawn of man. Although now totally undervalued, it is an essential part of being human. I believe that the ‘feel’ of recorded music is down to, and in this order:

1. the composition

2. the performance

3. the recording quality

4. the reproduction

The recording quality is immaterial if the composition and/or the performance are poor.

Imagine this scenario - we are in the studio. We have great musicians, a fabulous song and want to record it.

The sound engineer will use one or more microphones plugged into a preamplifier(s), which boosts the weak microphone signal to a higher level and then records either to magnetic tape - or in the digital world, through an Analogue to Digital converter (A/D), which converts the sound from analogue waveforms into streams of binary code before committing the information onto a hard disk.

Once the recording and overdubbing9 is complete, the reverse takes place and tracks are mixed either fully in the digital domain, or through an analogue mixing console like our very own ‘Betty’ the CADAC.

Eventually, the sound ends up again in the analogue domain - reproduced by speakers of various sizes and shapes: nowadays designed directly to put inside your ear holes.

Recording option #1 - digital

Almost all professional studios now record to digital. Some also have tape machines, but ones and zeros now rule.

There is a bewildering array of A/D (Analogue to Digital) and D/A (Digital to Analogue) converters out there and the pro-audio community rage about the best in class, but most convert at the golden rates of 24-bit, 96 kHz and above.

In 1979, the first digital pop album, Bop Till You Drop by Ry Cooder, was recorded in 50 kHz, 16-bit linear PCM using a 3M digital tape recorder. Before this, analogue tape10 machines ruled the audio roost. It was a mature technology.

When I listen back to this wonderfully performed record it sounds a bit crunchy and harsh, as do many of those early digital releases. This is down to the crudeness of early A/D D/A converters, sample rates/bit depth employed and the technology surrounding them.

Recording option #2 - tape

I can wax lyrical for days about the ‘sound’ of the lovely Studer 2” 16/24-track and Ampex 1/2” two-channel tape machines, but not so much about the pain in the arse and expense of buying the tape, aligning, calibrating and editing physical pieces of plastic..

“But there I was waist deep in 2” tape, sick, up all night trying to make sense of all these pieces of tape, china marked with arrows and instructions about which way to glue them all back together” | Daniel Lanois, from his excellent book Soul Mining.

Yes, they sound great but when you look at the specifications they quote a bandwidth of 20-20kHz (+/-). So, what happens above 20 kHz, well nothing really, as they gracefully roll off and the ‘air’ is still there.

There is a lot more to ‘why’ tape sounds so good and if you want to know more, please ask me in the comments section below. I can bore you to death on an individual level.

Even now, in a very digital 2024, many recording studios, audio engineers and record producers such as Nigel Goodrich and Steve Albini still record to tape as they believe it sounds better.

We would love to have the tape option in our Supertone recording studio, but the difference is that Nigel and Steve can afford it; sadly we can’t.

However, we record digital using RADAR converters which we consider the best of the bunch, reaching the dizzy heights of 24-bit, 196 kHz - that’s a shedload of ‘air’!!

Listening options

Audiophile listeners have been around for many years and professional music recordists are flabbergasted by the utter bullshit that is talked about, and extortionate prices paid, for everything from power and speaker cables to phono pre-amps.

There is great esoteric stuff available to buy but a note for hi-fi enthusiasts - take a look at the equipment professional studios use to record music and buy that instead. You will save a LOT of money. And I mean a LOT!!!!

Your most critical purchase is the actual ‘player’ as this is the limiting factor for reproducing great sound. You can have the best amplifiers and speakers in the world but they can only do their job if the source is of the highest quality.

Different strokes

I won’t go into detail here about the actual equipment used, just the limitations when it comes to ‘air’.

Files

The most accurate - but not the most pleasing - way to listen to music is by playing the high-resolution files supplied by the mastering engineer in a .wav or .aiff format.

You will need a computer and a high-quality D/A convertor similar to those found in the recording studio. Bang the analogue outputs into a great amplifier and speaker/headphone setup and boom, off you go.

Many bands now supply these files through their label or via providers such as Bandcamp (our favourite at the moment) and are usually 24-bit, 96 kHz which gives you plenty of ‘air’ but as you will see later watch out for CD resolution of 16-bit, 44.1 kHz.

Streaming, compression and lossless formats

There are an increasing number of companies offering lossless streaming. Tidal HiFi, Amazon Music HD, Deezer, Qobuz, and Apple Music support lossless audio. The minimum specification for lossless is CD quality and consequently little ‘air’.

Apple’s Music catalogue is available in resolutions ranging from 16-bit, 44.1 kHz to 24-bit, 192 kHz depending on the artist and album.

Remember here of course the quality depends on the D/A converters and you will still need a great interface to hear them in their full glory and not the headphone socket on your computer or phone.

Apart from FLAC11 and a few lesser-used lossless formats, compression12 totally ruins the audio experience sucking the life out of any track.

Reel-to-reel tape and cassette

These days, reel-to-reel tape machines are a rare sight in a domestic setting but cassette machines are on the rise again.

As mentioned before, maintenance and calibration are expensive, but if you are dedicated and have the financial wherewithal, reel-to-reel machines made by Studer, Ampex and Revox are the best way to listen to recordings.

Of course, you have to be in a privileged position to own the actual master tape (the original final copy of the music) or a first-generation copy. The only problem here is the more you play the tape, the more degraded the sound becomes as the tape simply wears out, but at first, there is all the ‘air’ you need.

Sadly cassette machines are just not great.

At their height, the Nakamichi Dragon was the best domestic machine around but regardless of manufacturer, the frequency response is poor, noise reduction technology needs to be employed and high-frequencies boosted to make it sound anywhere near half decent.

In the studio we have a great old Denon DR-M44HX three-head machine which is pretty top end, but not a patch on a reel-to-reel so don’t be fooled by the current hype.

The Compact Disc (CD)

Specifications for the CD13 were jointly devised back in 1979 by engineers at Philips & Sony and originally aimed at a playing time of 60 minutes.

Allegedly, Sony vice-president Norio Ohga suggested extending the capacity to 74 minutes to accommodate the recording of Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting Ludvig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the 1951 Bayreuth Festival.

The physical constraints of the CD allowed for 74-80 minutes and dictated a sample rate of 44.1 kHz - equating to a maximum reproducible frequency of around 22 kHz with a dynamic range of 16-bit.

These limits were put in place for practical reasons - determined by how much information could be stored on a CD as opposed to being guided by principles such as the sonic integrity of the material!

If a CD cuts off at 22 kHz what happens to the ‘air’?

Where does vinyl fit into all this?

We love vinyl and mix all our music to sound great when reproduced on this fantastic medium - the royalty of sound reproduction.

Scientifically, vinyl shouldn’t sound great, but it does14.

When you want to release a project on vinyl, the recording studio or mastering engineer sends a master tape or high-resolution digital file (usually 24-bit, 96 kHz or above) to the person who then cuts the vinyl lacquers using a very expensive and increasingly rare disc cutting lathe.

Even though this technology by today’s standards is viewed as prehistoric, there is no hard roll off of frequencies with vinyl and providing the stylus/cartridge is capable of reproducing the frequencies, the ‘air’ will be there.

How we listen

The all-important question is, do we walk the walk and feel the ‘air’?

Yes, most definitely. We live in our recording studio and hence have access to all the goodies that provide playing back at whatever resolution we need, but for our listening pleasure, we prefer to listen to our music on vinyl.

We have a Rega RP3 turntable, Ortofon red cartridge into an 80s vintage Quad 44 preamp, Meyer Sound CP-10 (to equalise the room acoustics), Quad 405-2 power amplifier and a pair of 70s Tannoy HPD 315A drivers in our own design Supertone cabinets.

Playing vinyl records is an enriching tradition and ritual giving added meaning to the listening experience, complimented by great company and a good bottle of Portuguese red.

Our current musical inspiration on the Supertone turntable is the limited edition blue vinyl of The Smile’s second studio album ’Wall Of Eyes’ which can also be downloaded from Bandcamp at the lovely 24-bit 96 kHz resolution.

This year we are making time to live well, eat well and embrace life with all its promise - it is good to take some time out, relax, breathe deeply and feel the music in the ‘air’.

If you have just stumbled across this article, it’s best if you start by reading part one first (below) which gives you the essential information you need and lays the groundwork for the exciting culmination in the second and final part of the process involved in commissioning a custom guitar.

VIBES

Commissioning a new custom electric guitar: part one

As with most of the gear we own, I treat instruments as tools and rarely become emotionally attached to them. There are of course notable exceptions, one being my first ‘real’ guitar - the Gibson Flying V - but in reality, not that many. Our armoury of musical equipment gradually changes and morphs in response to both our musical direction and studio nee…

Read more

3 years ago · 3 likes · Simon Campbell

Stage four - final sanding and finishing

The guitar had a final sanding and was then finished using traditional nitrocellulose lacquer with a small amount of plasticiser (to prevent it from being soft and sticky). Only the first base coat was sanded to provide a smooth flat source for the subsequent coats. This was followed by many thin coats of colour, then clear which was left for three days to dry. It was then sanded, buffed and ready for the hardware.

Stage five: electronics, fret dressing and final assembly

I love the attention to detail. The electronics are laid out and soldered on a jig before fitting in the guitar and the soldering is really neat. The capacitors used are Mallory style by Cornell Dubilier which sound wonderful and work well with the 500 KΩ CTS potentiometers with very smooth roll-off.

Under the machine heads, Mikael used graphite cards by GOTOH which evens the pressure of the housing screws and makes the axis a bit more stable.

The Vibrola tremolo did cause a few issues as the angle from the preferred manufacturer varied from batch to batch and when folded back, wouldn’t go flat enough to fit in the case. The solution was found by using a ‘short spring mount tremolo’ unit from Advanced Music Products in good old Nashville.

The final stage was the fret polish/dress and then on to shipping which both the maker and client fear the most! Fortunately, the guitar arrived safe and sound via the fiendishly expensive UPS.

The pickguard

I wasn’t going to have any motif on the pickguard as it’s not an exact replica of the Gibson Firebird, but as my other recent custom guitar - the Drake SC6 - has a monogram inlaid into the fretboard I thought it would be cool to add it. It ended up being a tough job as there is a lot of fine detail but Mikael persisted and the result is wonderful.

Tiago Cruz, our graphic designer laid out the SC monogram design and as a joke, added some extra text - Daniel Lanois is my spirit animal - as he knows how much I respect him as a producer and musician.

I decided to leave it on there as Daniel Lanois IS my spirit animal.

Complete!

The arrival

Mikael Springer was a joy to work with and as per the plan, the guitar arrived on the last day of August to great excitement.

The demo

I wax lyrical about the guitar in the video but want to emphasise a few points.

The build quality of the guitar is exceptional. Everything about it oozes quality. The machine heads are great, smooth and easy to tune - plus they have the Fender style hole for the string to go into making it a sinch to change strings. The Vibrola, natural bone nut and bridge assembly work great together and I have had zero tuning issues. Zero!

The instrument arrived with Springer’s custom strings (made by Skull) which were a little heavy for me at the bottom end (11-15-18-32-42-52). I then tried 10-13-17-26-36-46 which were too light and finally settled on Curt Mangan NickleWound 11-48 which worked beautifully.

Of course when changing gauges the truss rod needs to be adjusted. Mikael sets the neck with almost no relief, almost straight - around 1.25mm at the high E string, 12th fret and 1.5/1.75mm at the 12th for the low E string. He tells me some people like a bit more relief that brings a more even action on the whole neck length but it was all cool for me and the truss rod ended up with the original tension. I always do a whole quarter turn at a time so I know how to get back.

Being so light it has a very good unplugged sound, resonant and feeds back very well. As per part one of the article, there is a lot of bullshit talked about tonewoods of solid body electric guitars, but there is no doubt the way they feed back when loud is directly related to the wood.

The natural sustain is immense all over the neck, which when I play loud just carries on going, and when you move over to the cab it starts to feedback in a most pleasing way.

Finally, I have never played an electric guitar that is so in tune all over the neck. Even the feared major third sounds sweet.

I am very, very happy. Well done that man.

Watch the demo recorded in the Supertone studio.

Signal chain (for the mega geeks)

• Supertone MinCap 6m cable

• Gig Rig Three2One (no buffer)

• GigRig G3 with input buffer enabled

  • Loop 1

    • Fultone Clyde Wha (off - true bypass)

    • Hudson Broadcast with a tiny bit of hair on it

  • Loop 6: Danelectro ‘The Breakdown’ (unity gain on position six)

  • Loop 8: B.K. Butler Tube Driver

  • Loop 10: Maestro Echoplex 1974

• Amp one: Germino Classic 45 (KT88) through straight front Germino cabinet fitted with 4 x Celestion G12M Heritage (20W)

• Amp two: Germino Club 40 (EL34) through Supertone/Matamp cabinet fitted with 4 x Celestion G12H Heritage (30W)

• Microphones: two Royer Labs R-122 ribbon microphones into API 512C preamps direct to AVID HD/IO converters at 24/48

• No outboard FX, compression or plugins (what are those)

And finally…

I hope you have enjoyed this article and look forward to receiving your thoughts and questions. It’s easy, just subscribe - for free - and comment!

If you want to see the machine in action we will be releasing a live video of the multimedia event we played at The Met, Bury, England. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell icon to be notified of our latest videos.

Join our YouTube channel

Finally, here is the music video for The Voting Machine - the second single from our new album STARLITE.ONE which features both the Springer Firehawk and Suzy’s Mike Lull Custom Guitars Starlite T-4. Enjoy!

I always enjoy talking gear and would love you to give me your thoughts in the comments section below.

Next week, part two of…

VIBES

Diary of a touring musician: in the beginning

We live to the northeast of Lisbon in Portugal and have to be very committed to travel by road the 21 hr 28 min and 1,375 mostly-toll-road miles to our first gig. It was total madness but we hadn’t been to the UK for two years and wanted to introduce our new alb…

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3 years ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Starlite & Campbell

Working on: catching up with the blog articles, some external producing work and starting to mix the new live record!

What’s cooking: Nothing! We are out to dinner at our favourite restuarant, Alcochetano which is suprisingly enough in Alcochete, a small village on the Tagus Estuary. It’s inexpensive, full with locals, few tourists and great fish - a real Portuguese experience.

Listening to: Billy Cobham’s Spectrum after seeing him perform and meeting him at the Porto Drum Show. Lovely bloke.

I was chatting to Kevin Johnson from No Treble magazine about the release of our new album - STARLITE.ONE - and he suggested I do a play-along video with an interview for the magazine.

Having never done one before I was filled with trepidation but after a couple of days, thought is was a great idea so we set up the studio and went for it!!

I chose the track Blow Them All To Pieces as there is plenty of space and easy to see what I am up to! I did neglect to mention in the main article that I am using a drop D for the song.

The album has not been released to any audio-only streaming platforms like Tidal, Apple Music or Spotify, so here is the Bandcamp link to the original track.

I love Bandcamp as sales go directly to each artist so you know where your money is being spent and for audiophiles, you can download in whatever quality format you prefer. Of course, our analogue sensibilities make us passionate about vinyl, so I present to you a shameless link to the physical merchandise.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the Q&A section from the article with the play-along video and a link to the full thing at the end.

Enjoy.

The bass line for “Blow Them All To Pieces” has so much space but also helps move things along. How did you go about writing it?

The songwriting process for the new Starlite & Campbell album STARLITE.ONE evolved from a combination of collaboration and experimentation in the studio with my husband and musical partner, Simon Campbell.

We are so obsessed with serving what the song needs we really don’t mind who sings lead vocals or writes the verse, chorus, or lyrics, usually co-writing everything together.

So unusually, “Blow Them All To Pieces” was written by Simon in fifteen minutes following a heart-wrenching conversation with our postman. It transpired that he was Ukrainian, and when asked about the war, he confided that he was beside himself with worry as he had not heard from his parents in some time who still lived in Ukraine.

With the story and meaning in mind, the approach to writing the bass line was one of tender sobriety, responding to the open-tuned guitar chords and Sequential Prophet-5 with a sympathetic rhythm that provided an almost rocking movement – as if in the arms of your parents or loved one.

The A part started with the guitar and guide vocal, then bass. I filled in the gaps with those almost BladeRunneresque synthesizer chords. There is a lot of peddling going on, as I love the tension that creates and also melodic use of the major third on the bottom.

I am honoured to be a Mike Lull artist, and for this song, I chose to use my Lull M4V, which is strung with flat wounds. When played sensitively, it can sound like an upright double bass, and that’s what I imagined when I was playing.

The melodic bass line responds to the vocal melody and compliments with a counter melody to provide emotional tension and tell the story of the heart that words alone are not capable of. When I write those lines, they just appear – I rarely think of what chord we are playing or what note (unless I’m stuck) – my heart sings a melody, and my fingers do their best to follow.

The timing is all-important in this song – the two-spliff back feel where it’s sloppy, loose and unhurried, sensitive with the occasional flourish, and then, of course, there are those little breaks where it appears to lose time – almost a 6/8 feel.

There is so much space in this song. The intro has everything, and then the first verse drops starkly naked to a dry vocal and guitar, which accentuates the emotion.

The B part again began with Simon’s Fylde custom six string, which he later overdubbed with his Fylde 12 string. We wrote the synth motifs together, and I played them on the Moog Matriarch. I was totally stoked to be playing my Aulos FIfe that I had bought with tips from my Saturday job when I was 15! It felt like those days of battle when soldiers marched, playing drums and flutes. And when the drums kick in – the bass kicks in – the engine room unites for a few moments of rhythmic rocking out together in the heat of battle before the bass dances a short motif to bring the piece to a close.

The intermittent distortion at the end is our Gamechanger Audio plasma rack that we had recorded a couple of weeks before, which accidentally played at the end of the track when I was recording the fife overdub, I played in response – totally improvised.

Were you trying to channel any of your favourite bassists in your approach?

There are some songs you write you think, ah, this has that kind of groove from a certain style, and then you will think of the bassist associated with that feel, like James Jamerson for Motown, Tina Weymouth for Talking Heads, Chris Squire and Greg Lake for progressive rock and Carol Kaye for basically everything!

When we were writing the album, we started off by creating a playlist of inspirational songs called “Six Friendly Monkeys Living Under the Stairs” from a dream I had – you can see the influence on the album cover collage artwork. We soaked our souls in music from John Cale, Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker, Os Mutantes, Arvo Pärt, CAN, Low, Stereolab, The Flaming Lips, Joy Division, Robert Wyatt, Fontaines DC, Wet Leg, Daniel Lanois, Queens of the Stone Age, Black Midi, Jacques Brel, Bowie, Matt Munroe, Trisomie 21, Radiohead, Miles Davis, The Smile, and The Fall et al.

There are certain grooves that really turn me on from our Friendly Monkeys playlist, but I guess I don’t really think about other players per se. Sometimes for inspiration, I’ll play a similar feel of a song and learn about what is possible from a bass line perspective, but it’s more geared towards the song than a person. I’m always learning, and the joy is still there!!

What bass and gear did you use to record?

There are two guitars that I used on the recording of STARLITE.ONE

The Mike Lull M4V for this track is strung with Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Bass JF344. Having tried a fair few other brands, I always come back to these as the gauges just feel perfect, they have a fabulous tone… and they last forever!

The second is my signature Mike Lull custom Starlite T4, which has monstrously powerful humbuckers that really make it sing; it feels like plugging into your flying dragon – like the one in the Avatar movie.

STARLITE.ONE is an ArtRock / ArtPop album and required something different from the bass. For the first time, I have moved away from Thomastik-Infeld flat wounds to Curt Mangan Nickel wound light 100 round wounds - the T4 is my first bass with round wound strings.

The pick

I started using a pick on the last album - The Language of Curiosity - playing my 1974 Fender Precision with flat wound strings and an Ellio Martina BassMute.

Believe it or not, it was the first time I had ever played using a pick - and I was only persuaded to do so after, shall we call it a ‘healthy and intense’ conversation with Simon following his suggestion that he wanted that 60s studio sound al la Carol Kaye for a track and it was the only way to achieve it.

Being totally honest I freaked as, deep down I thought I couldn’t play with a pick as I had tried it years ago with my acoustic guitar and I never got on with it - it just didn’t feel a part of me!!

We both reasoned we should give it a try but most importantly I had to find a pick that I connected with and felt the most natural in my fingers. So we went about the process methodically with Simon giving me a range of picks to try from his Pick-Sweet-Tin and eventually, I chose the yellow triangular Jim Dunlop 0.73mm Tortex which is brilliant and works all ways round.

I like it too because aesthetically it looks happy and together we have become friends which I didn’t think possible. So once again I was reminded of that wise adage ‘Never say never!’

Amplifiers & cabinets

On the amp front, I have been using our custom-designed Supertone ‘Matamp’ 200W valve (tube for our American friends). It’s very similar to the very first Matamp’s, which then became Orange Matamp. It has a modified guitar preamp as opposed to one dedicated to bass, so I suppose it’s similar to my 1974 vintage 200W HiWatt DR201 in that it could be described as ‘general purpose’.

In both, the transformers are enormous and, hence, fiendishly heavy, but that iron really allows the amp to bloom. On Blow Them All To Pieces I used the HiWatt.

I have a few cabinets at hand and the whole of this record was made using the Bergantino 610 (no tweeter). On past records I have used the Supertone ‘Matamp’ 4×12 loaded with heritage Celestion G12H, which are made in the UK.

The only pedal I used on the album was a Hudson Broadcast - set to stun! It can be very dirty indeed, but I just used it to grind up some of the tracks on the record, the lead single from the album Saving Me, being a good example as the bass is pretty exposed at the beginning. As I mentioned before I do play loud and the amp distortion is a part of my sound. When I’m playing live, engineers are not allowed a DI box anywhere near the bass – microphones only!

Recording

The cab was mic’d with a vintage Neumann U47FET and a Sennheiser MD421. Some of the time I recorded the bass into Pro Tools directly via a Rupert Neve Designs RNDI and API512C preamp, set pretty hot and occasionally straight into the amp, but I play very loud to really make the amp work, which does cause an unacceptable amount of leakage… and damage to the foundations.

I rarely use the actual DI signal, choosing instead (if we have just DI’d the bass) to re-amp using a Little Labs multi z pip 3.0.

We have a number of vintage compressors, but usually Simon’s choice for bass is the DBX 165 which we use on each of the microphone channels. Currently, we never EQ or compress on record. The album was mixed on our CADAC J Series console, and we use the exceptional three-band EQ.

On the subject of guitars, all my electric basses – the two Mike Lulls mentioned before, 1974 Fender Precision, Gretsch Thunder Jet – are passive, and the cable that goes from the guitar to the preamp is really important!

We use our in-house manufactured Supertone MinCap “A” cable featuring Sommer SC-SPIRIT LLX wire which has the lowest capacitance around, and gold-plated Neutrik connectors – the business end switching. You can’t believe the difference when compared with a regular cable.

I also have a Fylde King John acoustic bass, which has a Headway active under-saddle pickup up, where, of course, cable impedance isn’t critical to the sound.

Touring this album is going to be tricky, and I recently sold my trusty Lehle RMI Basswitch IQ in favour of a GigRig G3 Atom with a bunch of pedals.

My setup is constantly evolving; the latest state of play can always be found on my website, and I will update with my latest touring setup when we return in November.

What advice do you have for bassists going into the studio?

I had to laugh the other day when I watched a video interview with Leland Sklar and Rick Beato where Lee talked about his special ‘producer’ switch on his bass for studio work. I won’t spoil the story, but it’s definitely worth a watch, and he has some great stories about working in the studio.

I’ve been recording from almost day one as a bass player and have learned a few harsh lessons. It’s crucial that you really listen to your sound, how the bass line is sitting in the track, and whether it’s serving what the song needs.

If you are a real low-end dweller, mostly below the seventh fret and working in a typical live rock band, it’s really tricky to hear the detail of your playing; ringing notes, clacking, and buzzing strings are all camouflaged by the overall sound of the band but when recording everything is revealed – warts and all.

Am I crashing the vocal? Is this major third or fifth working with the bass synth? Do I need to play that note an octave up or down? All these are vital, but fade into the cheap seats if you have poor technique.

The bass is unforgiving, and the thing is, you don’t always hear it and need to train your ear to listen out for this stuff.

Muting or dampening strings is an essential technique that I am working on with every new song we write, play, and record. I think that’s what I like about growing as a musician and bass player, you never just arrive – it really is all about the journey.

If anything – the main thing that I would say when working in the studio is that your priority is working as part of a team and serving what the song/project needs – don’t ever lose sight of that – the song is your true north.

Oh, and the most important thing… Work with the best drummer you can find.

Check out the complete interview here

And finally…

I hope you are enjoying these bass-related articles and if you want to leave a comment below, it’s free to subscribe and it would be cool to hear from you and feel free to ask any questions.

We start on our UK tour on September 29th so keep an eye on for updates on the Notes section of our blog.

See you next time!!

Much love

Suzy

It seems like an eternity since I wrote my first article as a new bass player - eight years to be exact.

VIBES

Walking the Bass Line #1

The hardest part about playing a new instrument is trying to work out what direction to go in and really where to start. When I decided to play the bass guitar this problem was promptly taken away from me as I was thrown into a bath of ice-cold water overnight, becoming the bass player in…

Read more

10 years ago · 2 likes · Suzy Starlite

A lot has happened and thought I would revisit this post and tell you what I have been up to: it’s been a fascinating, challenging and rewarding few years.

I have written a few other bass-based posts, which can be found in this very blog and if you fancy taking a look, have listed them all at the foot of this article.

The engine room

My father was an agricultural engineer based in Ross-on-Wye which is in the wonderful county of Herefordshire, England - the land of Hobbits. With this DNA, it should have been obvious that my musical adventures would lead me to work in a band’s engine room!

I really like working with drummers and guess that comes in handy as between us, we are the engine that drives the band.

Listening

One of the most essential things I’ve learned as a bass player is that you really do have to listen to what the drummer is doing and Jedi mind-groove-meld together.

It still surprises me today how many bass players don’t listen, or work together as a team, playing away in their own low-end bubble, perhaps not being aware that the music is missing out on its wonder-mojo-moment!

Harmonious timing

A good analogy I like to use is the engine in a motor vehicle.

Sometimes an engine develops a fault and stops running smoothly; you can hear it ‘spluttering’ or as we say in England ‘misfiring’. This is usually caused by timing issues, where the moving parts are not synchronised properly.

In the halcyon days of motoring, the skilful mechanic would adjust the different elements until they heard and felt a harmonious engine purr. Nowadays, the engine can be plugged into a computer which highlights and corrects the issues. Another skill lost - but that’s another discussion.

It’s exactly the same with the bass and drums - it could be one of you is out of sync or you’re just not listening to each other and it’s your job, as a team, to work out what’s happening, why and then sort it out.

Taking the analogy to its conclusion, the engine (aka rhythm section) must work in the vehicle and once tight and grooving, the other musicians have a great bed to work upon.

But, who is the driver? The singer? No, the song of course, because serving this is the most important job for us as musicians.

The pocket

OK. We are synced with the drummer and band now, but what does it feel like?

The most important thing about playing bass in the engine room is finding what we call ‘the pocket’.

The pocket is the specific place in time when you should pick a note. As the name implies, the pocket has a certain “size” or should we say timeframe. When you play ‘in the pocket’ means that you are hitting the notes at just the perfect time to groove well with the drums and the rest of the band.

I think this ability defines whether or not you really are a bass player.

Can you teach it? I’m not so sure…

Can you feel it? Abso-fuckin-lutely!! The Pocket is feel!!

Recording

Above all else my bass playing has been defined by working in the studio and recording from day one. This experience has taught me what I really sound like.

That may appear obvious, but do you remember the first time you heard your recorded voice played back to you? Most probably you sounded quite different to the way you imagined: I know I did, and it’s the same with bass.

The importance of good technique

I’ve learned a few harsh lessons from recording.

It’s crucial that I really listen to my sound, how the bass line is sitting in the track and whether it’s serving what the song needs.

Am I crashing the vocal? Is this major third working with the bass synth? Do I need to play that note an octave up or down? All these are vital but fade into the cheap seats if you have poor technique.

If you are a real low-end dweller, mostly below the seventh fret and working in a typical live rock band, it’s really tricky to hear the real detail of your playing; ringing notes, clacking and buzzing strings are all camouflaged by the overall sound of the band but when recording everything is revealed - warts and all.

Keep it clean

OK, you think you’ve recorded a really groovy take but something isn’t quite gelling! The producer is trying to work out what’s going on and through a process of elimination, listens to all the instruments separately until that fateful moment arrives when they solo the bass track!

Yeah, baby - bass solo. It’s just the bass - usually heavily compressed which brings out every tiny detail - and you, on your own! It feels like you are standing there naked for that moment of truth.

Oh shit!! That doesn’t sound at all like I thought I’d played it - there are strings ringing here and there and a sort of growling, humming low-end dissonance and unwanted harmonics in places because I’d not always managed to dampen/mute the other strings.

The bass is unforgiving and the thing is, you don’t always hear it and need to train your ear to listen out for this stuff.

Muting or dampening strings is an essential technique that I am working on with every new song we write, play and record. I think that’s what I like about growing as a musician and bass player, you never just arrive - it really is all about the journey.

Practice

The legendary cellist Pablo Casals was asked why he continued to practice at age 90? He replied, “Because I think I’m making progress.”

I try practicing a groove with a metronome playing ahead, on and behind the beat, then adding a drum machine to spice up the groove a little then, if rehearsing a set, playing around with the stems of the tracks, with and without bass.

And a top tip - using headphones and a compressor really helps.

If your ears and muscle memory are conditioned, you have a good chance of keeping your shit together in the heat of battle on stage when it’s very easy to lose concentration.

Listen with your ears

My husband Simon and I have a saying in the studio ‘Listen with your ears’ and before the advent of digital recording, that was all we could ever do.

Now, it is almost inescapable to see the data and waveforms on screens to inform you about what your instrument ‘sounds’, or more accurately ‘looks’ like - and many musicians, engineer and producers ‘listen’ with their eyes’…

For various logical and practical reasons, most people now record to a click track (an electronic metronome) which is played back to the drummer. Once an instrument is recorded, the individual instruments are displayed on-screen in a grid-like format showing bars and subdivisions thereof. You can see where in the bar the beats or notes fall and it’s very easy to slavishly look and move stuff around so it matches this grotesque grid!

Be authentic

The recording process is not a painting-by-numbers, tick-box exercise so most of all, be authentic. - authentic to yourself.

Dare to be you and find out who you are!

That’s where the studio is a precious transformative space. A place for sonic alchemy, experimentation and adventure. Of course, every project is different but when we can, that’s how we choose to spend our time in the studio.

At the end of the day it’s all down to you

A producer or fellow band member can help you to think about a track in a different way or make suggestions but at the end of the day use the force! Your force and be prepared to argue your corner!

• What does it sound like to you?

• How does it make you feel?

• Do you have a vision for the sound and if so, are you there yet?

• If you don’t know, why not play it again until you feel it’s right?

• Alternatively, come back the next day, listen again and see what you think.

It’s all about the tone

OK, we have covered stuff about what and how you play, but the third critical element is your sound. Does it sit mellifluously in the track and should it sit mellifluously in the track?

This all depends on what the band is trying to achieve. The likes of Carl Radle, Adam Clayton and John McVie generally sit in the track, whereas Peter Hook, Mark King, Chris Squire and Flea are up there in the lead instrument territory.

So once you have decided where you want the bass to sit, there are a number of choices involved in order to achieve the tone you are looking for.

It’s essential to experiment and get to know your gear - playing different basses, pedals and amp combinations plus messing around with the knobs - whilst listening and understanding their sonic chemistry.

This is the essential list:

• What bass guitar are you playing - the tone you need will inform what to choose

• What strings are you using? Flats or round-wound really change the atmosphere of the instrument

• Are you playing with your fingers or using a pick?

• Whereabouts on the bass are you playing? Closer to the neck or the bridge

• What amp (if any) are you using?

• Are you miking up your bass cab

• Are you using a DI and playing straight into the desk?

All these things affect the way you sound before you put your groove into the equation.

Over the next few weeks and months I will cover all this with real life examples, sound clips and videos.

I love my bass

Nothing has changed about the way I feel about playing bass. As soon as I put that guitar strap over my shoulder and get a hold of my bass in my hands, plug in and turn up - that’s it - I’m away!! Something spiritual and perhaps even chemical happens to me.

I do play quite a few instruments and don’t believe that playing bass defines me, but it is an essential part of my creative language and I guess you could call it my spirit instrument.

Check out my website

And finally…

Simon and I are working hard at the moment rehearsing and prepping for our two-week Starlite & Campbell UK headline tour at the end of September to support the release of our new concept album STARLITE.ONE.

So next time, I thought it would be fun to write about the process starting with the bass guitars in my stable - especially my new custom Mike Lull Starlite T4, then building my new pedal board and learning how to use the different bits of electronic wizardry needed for our new sonic adventures.

To give you a low-end flavour of my bass playing, songwriting and musicianship - have a listen to the lead single Saving Me from the new album.

Warning: for geeks only

Because this is a geek-oid kind of post, I might as well go through what gear I used on this particular track, Saving Me.

• Mike Lull T4 Starlite bass guitar fitted with Curt Mangan nickel wound light 100 round wound strings

• Dunlop Tortex 0.73mm triangular pick (happy yellow)

• Rupert Neve Designs RNDI into our CADAC J series analogue console then direct to Pro Tools at 24/96

• Re-amped - very loud - through a 1974 HiWatt DR201 (normal and bright channels linked) and Bergantino 610 cabinet using a Hudson Broadcast Germanium pre-amp pedal

• Mic’d with a Neumann U47 FET and Sennheiser MD421 then both channels compressed in the mix with two vintage DBX 165s**. Some of the DI signal was mixed in parallel with the two compressed channels.

** We don’t do plugins

Please share your stories!

If you want to leave a comment below, it’s free to subscribe and it would be cool to hear from you and feel free to ask any questions.

As promised here are the other articles I wrote when I was just kicking off as a bass player.

See you next time!!

Much love

Suzy

VIBES

Keeping it Simple

“If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Isaac Newton, 1676 A lot of music leaves me feeling detached and unengaged because, putting it simply, it doesn’t make me feel anything. Sometimes it’s just that the song is not that great, but there are plenty of times when that has not been the case…

Read more

10 years ago · 2 likes · Suzy Starlite

VIBES

Squeezing Lemons with John Paul Jones

Lemon is great for killing parasites in chicken, a zesty addition to a large vodka and tonic and also apparently an age-old tradition in the playfulness of sexual innuendo in Blues music: way back in 1929, Joe Williams was singing “You Squeezed my lemon/Caused my juice to run” in the song ‘I Want it Awful Bad…

Read more

10 years ago · 2 likes · Suzy Starlite

VIBES

Rockin’ the Path to Bass Enlightenment

I didn’t start out playing bass as my first instrument and the funny thing is, a lot of other bass players didn’t either… Lemmy had just joined Hawkwind as a guitar player when he found out he was surplus to requirements due to Dave Brock deciding he was going to play lead guitar instead. But when the band’s bass player didn’t show up for one of their fr…

Read more

10 years ago · 2 likes · Suzy Starlite

Our armoury of musical equipment gradually changes and morphs in response to both our musical direction and studio needs, selling and buying as we go whilst trying not to succumb to a nasty case of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome).

In January, I published a similar piece about my acoustic journey with Fylde Guitars which our readers seemed to enjoy and thought it would be fun, plus hopefully informative, to talk about the rationale and methodology behind the commissioning of a new electric instrument.

Published in two parts - welcome to part one.

Starlite.One

On our new album - STARLITE.ONE - I used a variety of acoustic and electric guitars but principally the Duesenberg D6 Baritone, Fender Custom Shop Nocaster relic, Gordon Whitham custom Stratocaster and Gibson Custom Shop, double cut, Les Paul Special (P90s); all of which feature bright, single coil pickups.

The best way of illustrating of course is by listening to what I am talking about and here is - Saving Me - the first track from the album featuring the Nocaster on the opening riff, Tarantino-style Stratocaster in the middle eight and the Les Paul on the last section and the single note chorus motive - recorded very fucking loud!

Suzy captured me recording the outro on the Les Paul - parental warning - I am wearing a skirt, but WTF, I am of Scottish blood.

Moving swiftly on…

For the next couple of years, we will be touring the album and want to reduce the number of guitars taken with us. I will need the Duesenberg D6 baritone for sure, but required something that could cover most of the other bases.

I use extensively use a vibrato arm (sometimes, but incorrectly called a tremolo arm) on chords and am using a lot more gain/drive pedals for some of the tracks.

Single coil pickups can be noisy - especially in conjunction with high gain pedals and the fact that I play very fucking loud (did I mention that before) plus when rocking up at unknown venues where the earthing, power and/or lighting rig can be a bit dodgy - so humbuckers are the preferred option.

Style

The new album is Art/Progressive Rock and part of the whole Starlite.One concept, hence the live visuals are really important.

Suzy is a Mike Lull artist and has her very own thunderous T4 Starlite model, which is based on a Gibson Thunderbird but with better balance.

All of this leads us to the Gibson Firebird as it fits the tone bill and thought it would be great fun to have the same colour and body shape as my wife.

Serendipity - form and function!

The Firebird

If you know anything about rock ‘n roll history, the ‘minds eye’ image you are likely to have of this eclectic instrument is of Johnny Winter rocking the shit out of it.

Gibson had made forays into radical body shapes - the Flying V and Explorer in the 1950s - which met limited initial success. The president of Gibson, Ted McCarty, hired car designer Ray Dietrich to design a guitar that would have popular appeal.

Under Dietrich, the Firebird took on the lines of mid-50s car tail-fins. Dietrich took the Explorer design and rounded the edges. The most unusual aspect is that the guitar is ‘backward’ in that the right-hand (treble) horn of the body is longer than the other. Thus, the original Firebirds were unofficially referred to as ‘reverse’. | Wikipedia

This iconic instrument has been featured on many great recordings and used by a bevvy of beautiful guitarists.

Eric Clapton famously used a Firebird I in Cream and Blind Faith. Tom Petty and Mike Campbell, PJ Harvey, Steven Stills, Keith Richards and Brian Jones have all played them, but for me, the most iconic image is that of Phil Manzanera with the original and dare I say greatest lineup of Art Rock giants - Roxy Music.

I have never owned a Firebird and only played one a couple of times but it looks like I am in good company.

The pickups

One totally unique feature of the Firebird is the pickups.

Most people think these are the same as the mini-humbucker that you would find in say a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. This is not the case. They are a totally different design and have a very distinctive tone.

It’s all about the magnets

Mini-humbuckers are appropriately named since they are just a smaller version of the ubiquitous PAF humbucker. They consist of a single magnet underneath each coil, adjustable pole pieces, and a ferrous metal bar under the assembly.

Instead of external magnets, Firebird guitar pickups have bar magnets for each coil inside the bobbins, with one coil wound south up and the other north up. They have a thin ferrous metal plate for both bobbins and two maple spacers between the bobbins and the bottom plate for the braided lead wires. The difference in the magnets gives this unique pickup a much different magnetic field shape, resulting in a brighter sound.

Neil Young

Famously, Neil Young has a Firebird pickup in the bridge position on ‘Old Black’ - his main guitar, which even has its own Wikipedia page!

Use seven minutes of your life wisely and watch a live version of one of my favourite Neil Young & Crazy Hoses tunes featuring ‘Old Black’.

Killer.

Gibson or custom?

I remember somebody commenting a few years ago that I had a very eclectic guitar collection. I don’t own a standard Les Paul or ‘real’ Fender Stratocaster and tend to select things that do the job, finding great joy in having custom guitars made for me.

The secret to having something built is to really know what you want. This sounds easy until you try and do it and dig down into the detail.

Due to my big fat fingers, one thing I always request is a wide fingerboard and thin C/D or soft V-neck profile, the thinner the better. The Fender Nocaster mentioned above is a like a baseball bat and difficult to play, but the tone is truly wonderful and worth the considerable pain.

Weighing it up

So, when looking for a Gibson Firebird the first thing I did was research the potential problems:

1. Neck dive: the headstock and tuners on Gibson are massive and heavy. Suzy’s T4 was designed by the late great Mike Lull to avoid that problem and is balanced beautifully

2. ‘Glassy’ sounding pickups: of course, I want the sound of a Firebird but they can be like an ice pick in the ears and believe the latter, more affordable reissues, feature Alnico V magnets which can be very bright and have quite low output

3. Tuning stability: The banjo tuners on the originals are not the greatest. The combination of these and a Vibrola vibrato arm is not a match made in heaven

Considering all the salient points above and after much deliberation I decided to go the custom route.

The Springer Guitars Firehawk

A few months ago I happened to be chatting to the wonderful Nick Huber from Huber Guitars and mentioned the custom build I was looking for. Huber don’t make this type of instrument, but he did suggest a small, one-man operation in France - Springer Guitars.

The one man in question is Mikael Springer and I contacted him to discuss the possibilities. We discussed the project and set the specification…

Guitar specification

• Body: solid body, Spanish cedar, belly cut

• Neck: set neck, Spanish cedar (neck profile: thin ‘C’ -tapers from approx. 21-23 mm

• Headstock veneer: Black fibre, two-steps black/red design

• Fingerboard: 25" scale, aged Indian rosewood with 12'' radius, no binding, cream dot inlays and nickel silver, extra hard frets

• Pickups: two Firehouse pickups by House of Tone

• Tuners: Kluson style

• Bridge: ABR-1 Style with a short Vibrola

• Electronics: two volume, two tone with 500 kΩ potentiometers, .022µF Mallory Mustard capacitors and 3-way toggle switch

• Colour: Cardinal red, nitrocellulose, high gloss

• Pickguard colour: vintage white/parchment with custom logo

• Hardware colour: gloss nickel

• Nut: unbleached bone

• Case: Springer/Boblen hardshell case

Pickups

As you will read later, the most important tone decision made in a solid body electric guitar is pickup selection and I love custom wound pickups, with many of my guitars fitted with Lindy Fralin’s.

This time I asked House of Tone Pickups to custom-make a set specifically for this project. Based in Chester, England, House of Tone (what a great name) is the brainchild of Matthew Bascetta and quite simply, they make sonic works of art.

A couple of years ago, he personally rewound the four pickups in our Mosrite Ventures model 6/12 double neck.

More recently, he custom-made two Heavy House P94’s for the Duesenberg D6 baritone that I record through a real Leslie 145, which has a very thick low end. I mentioned this issue to Matthew who subsequently sent us components and a circuit diagram for a passive bass roll-off control which works perfectly, thinning out the monstrous tone so it sits wonderfully in the mix. Loving his work here.

I love this guy as he spends lots of time discussing your requirements and then coming up with the goods with no fuss - on time - every time.

Firehouse

I am still ruminating about what amps to use on tour, but will probably go for two 1960 Vox AC30s (a 1964 and 1968 top boost) or two Germino heads (Club 40 and Classic 45) and 4x12s.

Either option can be pretty toppy and as I mentioned earlier, Firebird pickups can also be bright and need to ensure the combination doesn’t give the first five rows of the audience an unexpected and probably unwanted haircut!

I am considering running in stereo and sorting the pedalboard as I go along, which will be the focus of a future article.

Having talked with Matthew we decided to use Alnico II magnets which are clear and punchy with sparkly treble and a nicely rounded low end - just like the early Gibson designs.

Due to the bobbin size, the maximum resistance using 42 awg wire is 6.5 kΩ, but the tight, concentric wind increases the inductance and capacitance, making them a bit smoother and hotter than the Nocaster bridge pickup.

Timber

Before the specification was agreed we discussed wood.

Correct choice is vital in semi-solid and acoustic guitars but amongst musicians and luthiers, there has always been a great deal of hoo-ha about timber in solid-bodied guitars.

My opinion is that the only difference it makes is the weight and possibly the tendency to resonate when using controlled feedback (which I use a lot).

There is a grey area when it comes to a guitar with pickups mounted on the scratch plate as there is a resonant chamber underneath and the guard itself vibrates and at high volume. I know, my Flying V does this.

Mikael uses Spanish cedar because it’s very stable and lighter in weight than most Honduran mahoganies. As far as I am concerned, providing I can get it through International customs and not fall foul of the CITES1 regulations, it’s good enough for me.

My normal preference for fingerboards is ebony but Mikael suggested a special old rosewood as ebony tends to be brighter and from what I can gather, we don’t need any more bite! It appears that my new guitar also comes with some special and apt words - he related this story to me:

The fretboard is the old rosewood which had been stored for years in Germany laying on some newspaper and the printing ended up being ‘transferred’ on the wood, so as I cut the fretboards out of it a few years back, each board end had a small piece of French wine reviews in German language printed on them.

Stage one - the neck and body cutout

It’s now the end of July and Mikael sent some pictures through of the body blank and neck, pre and post fingerboard.

Stage two - dry fit then glueing the neck to the body

A couple of days later checking the neck joint dry - before the glue was applied to check the fit - then gluing and clamping.

So, that’s where we are right now. The instrument should be ready by early September and will publish the second part when I receive it.

Excited? You bet…

Addendum

For ease, here is a link to the second and final part of the story. Added November 16, 2023.

VIBES

Commissioning a new custom electric guitar: part two

If you have just stumbled across this article, it’s best if you start by reading part one first (below) which gives you the essential information you need and lays the groundwork for the …

Read more

3 years ago · 2 likes · Simon Campbell

And finally…

I hope you have enjoyed this article and look forward to receiving your thoughts and questions. It’s easy, just subscribe - for free - and comment!

If you want to see the machine in action, join us on our 16-date UK headline tour starting on September 29th, 2023 at the Pioneer Club in St Albans and ending at Coolham Live Music Club on Saturday, October 14th which is already sold out (holy shit).

STARLITE & CAMPBELL UK TOUR DATES

Working on: the set for the tour - rehearsing and getting the sounds together, plus of course recording our weekly podcast and writing these articles!

What’s cooking: Home made Chinese with turkey, ginger, fresh red chillies, Pak Choi, carrots, red and green peppers, yellow onions, garlic, fresh root ginger, a strange variety of king oyster mushroom and lashings of black pepper and soy sauce.

Listening to: Blur - The Ballad of Darren

Firstly, I need to apologise for not creating my regular bi-monthly post. We have been mixing our new record and it’s been very intense, to say the least! But now onwards…

I started to listen to music seriously around 1972. I was 14.

Quickly becoming gripped with the guitar I spent all my waking hours between school lessons playing and trying to emulate my heroes: Jimmy Page, Richie Blackmore, Andy Powell, Tony Iommi, Carlos Santana, Alvin Lee and David Gilmour - the latter giving me a full-on introduction to the weird and wonderful, otherworldly timbres of Pink Floyd.

How did bands create the strange and mysterious sounds? There was no internet, hence no Wikipedia or YouTube and I had to rely on articles in the music magazines at the time to glean my information.

At boarding school I was deluged by music: everyone was listening to something cool and had a favourite, keen to share their new discovery with anyone that would listen. This is where I bumped sonically into Genesis and Emerson Lake and Palmer (ELP).

In the early 70s, the live scene was very hot and virtually everyone who was anyone was touring medium-sized venues and I became addicted to live gigs.

Being at school in Southport, my local venue was the Empire in Liverpool. It was here I saw Pink Floyd in 19741 and around the same time ELP and Genesis.

All three bands really turned me onto the sound of the synthesiser, but it was Keith Emerson who really got me.

I saw him unceremoniously dump one of his two Hammond L100s into the orchestra pit whilst his other was screaming two notes held down by the famous Nazi dagger that Lemmy had given to him whilst working as a roadie with Emerson’s former band, The Nice.

This was pure spectacle, but it was the Mini Moog and monster modular synthesiser that captured my imagination. Soaring lead lines, thunderous noises and things that went ziza, ziga, ziga. Accompanied of course by constant tuning up: heat and early analog synths didn’t really mix that well!

When I returned to school, I dreamed of those sounds, but like some love affairs the feelings waned and I continued on my guitar-playing odyssey, until…

The Flying V incident

My first proper guitar was a Gibson Flying V that my parents bought for me for my 17th birthday. I was a lucky lad.

Inspired by Andy Powell of Wishbone Ash, I played it to death. So much so that after just two years I had Ted Lee re-fret the instrument and had it refinished in translucent red and a Maestro Vibrola fitted, just like Andy’s.

My first original band was hard rockers Whitefire, which morphed into a punk R&B band called Roadrunner with the same lineup: the late, great Jim Beswick (bass), Eddie Byron Taylor III (drums - real name) and Tim Wright on vocals.

After many years on the road we decided to call it a day and Tim and I struck out to find a new direction, and a record deal.

We practiced at Jamm Studios, a dedicated rehearsal studio in an old mill in Bolton, Lancashire which had a musical instrument shop above it. I remember going up there one day, post-rehearsal and saw an Oxford Synthesiser Company OSCar - I managed to fire up the arpeggiator and fell in love. Big, thick analog sounds and perfect for our new EuroPop direction, so guess what, I part exchanged the Flying V.

My dad went berserk - as only Joseph Campbell could - his bald head going completely purple. I told him it was the right thing to do: we were going electro-pop.

Well, it wasn’t the right thing to do (he was usually right) and a couple of weeks later I went into the shop to buy it back only to find they had sold it on to a shop in Northwich. Holy mother of fuck!!!

I hot-tailed it down there to see it on the wall and negotiated a deal to return it to its rightful owner, i.e. me.

OSCar in hand I regularly drove over to Tim’s house to write and he often came to us. This was the embryonic start of the band Little Brother.

I can’t remember how and why I sold that synth - drugs are a dreadful thing - but I remember it being fantastic and wish I still had it.

The drum machines

We finally were offered the deal we wanted and the band invested in a Yamaha RX-7 plus a four-track TASCAM Portastudio for demos.

By this time Tim and I had been joined by keyboardist Steve Dowd, who brought in his Yamaha DX7 and Roland Juno-6, the former using FM synthesis - and all the rage back in the 80s.

Tim, Steve and myself would make our demos and then send them down to Derek (Lawrence) and Big Jim (Sullivan) for feedback. I gravitated to the drum programming as I seemed to just ‘get it’.

The time came to record the album and Big Jim was doing a lot of programming on his ATARI ST - remember those? - and we were joined by drummer Graham Middleton and bass player Gary Short.

Things were getting serious and Steve bought a bunch of AKAI S900 samplers and Oberheim Matrix 1000s plus, if my memory serves me correctly, an AKAI ASQ10 hardware sequencer, known as the highly important box, without which the gig couldn’t go ahead. Those were the days.

Sadly after the album was completed the band split for various reasons that we won’t go into here and I returned to the world of guitars, bass and drums.

Electrolite

Fast forward from the early 90s to 2010 when I encountered my now wife, Suzy Starlite, on the Isle of Man.

Not long after we met, I encouraged her to take her acoustic-based songs into a full band environment. You guessed it - drums, bass, Starlite on acoustic guitar and me on electric.

We agreed that I would produce some demos. When we were recording, that synthesiser feeling came over me again and we promptly enlisted our good friend Mark Cleator to play with us who has a wonderful array of old analog synths. Once finished, we decided to create a side project Electrolite - with Suzy, Mark and myself.

I was just finishing my second solo album - The Knife - at the wonderful Chairworks studio in Castleford, England and booked another few days to record the material we had been working on.

Mark came over from the Isle of Man with a massive array of keyboards jam-packed to the roof of his vehicle and along with the gear that was already in the studio, we had a totally amazing time making the EP.

I was producing the record and along with electric and Moog guitar, added some bass - using a Dave Smith Instruments (which became Sequential) Mopho - and programmed the drums into our newly acquired Sequential Tempest drum machine.

This was a first for me, actually playing a keyboard. I liked it.

Of course with a real Mellotron in the house, it had to be used. This is a quick video of Mark laying down the parts to Take Me Now.

We were delighted with the songs and released the EP on the classic format of 180g vinyl at 45 rpm.

Here is a track from the session and the one Starlite and I used to walk into the ceremony on our wedding day.

Sequential

We sold our original Sequential Tempest drum machine to fund, if I remember correctly, a compressor that was needed for the studio. It was a hideous mistake as we were writing a lot of material at the time and there is nothing better to assist the process of composition than a cool drum box.

One day I am going to write an article on all the gear I have sold and regretted later: it will be a long one.

Before we sold it, Suzy and I recorded this - our first dalliance with electronic drums as Starlite & Campbell - look out for the 35Hz Tempest kick.

Anyway, a while later we contacted Sequential who, hearing what we were doing, asked us if we wanted to become Sequential artists. Holy shit, of course! The new machine arrived and it felt like an old friend.

What I didn’t really get the first time around is that it can be used as a great polyphonic synthesiser as well, but I will get to this in a bit.

Starlite & Campbell

The Language of Curiosity was the second studio album from the Starlite Campbell Band where, from a songwriting and production perspective, we moved one step on from our first, Blueberry Pie.

I employed the Tempest on two tracks - It Ain’t Right - blended with Steve Gibson’s lovely drum part and to beef up the snare in Ride On Cowboy.

Making a debut on the record was our new acquisition, the totally analog Moog Minitaur which featured in the psyched-out middle section of Said So and a ‘duga duga’ sound in Ride on Cowboy - I think you can see where I am going here.

Starlite.One

In line with our new multi-media project Starlite.One, Starlite and I wanted to create something really different on the new studio album and put together a really eclectic playlist to inspire us. It contained everything from Silver Apples to Os Mutantes, Low to Ryuichi Sakamoto, Arvo Pärt to Roxy Music and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Starlite named it Six Friendly Monkeys living under the stairs.

We wanted to create a more textured production, with guitar motifs rather than solos, synths, grinding bass and ratcheted-up acoustic drums, bringing in Hugo Danin - probably the best drummer in Portugal, if not Europe - who contributed a more jazz-rock-afrobeat fusion groove to proceedings.

So here it is, the love affair is rekindled!

In addition to the Sequential Tempest and monophonic Moog Minitaur, we acquired four new instruments: a polyphonic Waldorf STVC and new Sequential Prophet-5 plus paraphonic Moog Matriarch and a vintage, non-MIDI, Moog Opus 3.

I am of course principally a guitar player but really buckled down to practising some piano and teaching myself how to get a good noise out of these instruments - programming the drum machine, creating arpeggios, playing the synth bass and lead lines but sensibly leaving Starlite to deal with the chords, pads and stabs - i.e. the tricky stuff.

So Tempest, Matriarch and Minitaur for me; Waldorf, Opus 3 and Prophet-5 for the Starlite.

Talking of Starlite, she is a brilliant musician and multi-instrumentalist - take a look at the credits on the album - in a very organic way but always with impeccable timing.

She doesn’t do theory, plays seemingly simple songwriter piano/guitar and had never touched a synthesiser before this record, but rose magnificently to the challenge by creating great lines, tight chords and melodies.

We didn’t use any quantisation on the MIDI recording, choosing, as we do with vocals and other instruments, to play them live.

Technically, it’s been an enormous challenge having never dealt with MIDI to any great extent before and getting everything working with Pro Tools has been an ‘interesting’ experience.

Being a rock ‘n roller, I have never produced or engineered anything so complex and we are knackered. Writing, arranging, playing, setting up the mics and gear, producing, engineering and mixing. Phew…

So, for the time being, my love affair is in full swing and we are dating regularly, Starlite and I just need to work out how we are going to play these songs live as a three-piece.

And finally…

We release a weekly music-inspired chat show about songs and the people who make them. Over the past few weeks, we have featured bands from the cities we are playing on our UK headline tour in September/October and for the next nine weeks, we are playing one track from the album. Episode #126 features Saving Me where you can hear these lovely instruments in the context of our music.

VIBES

Episode 126: The Supertone Show with Suzy Starlite and Simon Campbell

Listen now (60 min) | Presented by award-winning artists Suzy Starlite & Simon Campbell, it features an eclectic mix of music from their vinyl collections, plus special shows focussing on inspirational people who have influenced and changed the sound of modern music. A 'must listen' for all music lovers and artists…

Listen now

3 years ago · 2 likes · Starlite & Campbell

I would love to hear your stories about analog synthesisers, just drop them in the comments below.

Next week we are back to normal with Starlite in the hot seat.

Much love

Simon

Working on: Arranging material and working out how to play the new songs for the UK tour in September!.

Listening to: Starlite & Campbell: Starlite.One - of course!!

What’s cooking: Chargrilled turkey with assorted salads

I haven’t written anything technical for a few weeks and thought it would be a good idea as we are currently recording the new Starlite & Campbell album - Starlite.One - and Suzy and I are marinating ourselves in new sounds.

This article isn’t just about the Eventide Harmonizer - more of that later - but about producing interesting and engaging records.

It’s all about the sounds

From the very beginning, musicians have sought to create new sounds by developing alternative instruments. More recently they have taken traditional instruments and modified the sounds with effects.

Joe Meek with The Tornados and Telstar, Les Paul and Mary Ford with their homemade multitrack tape machines and echo devices, Geoff Emerick and Sir George Martin experimenting with The Beatles, The Beach Boys with Good Vibrations, all the Pink Floyd records and every 50s SciFi movie you can dig up. Roxy Music, David Bowie, Robert Fripp, Radiohead - the list is endless.

These artists used a dizzying array of instruments and techniques, but they all have one thing in common - their love of manipulating time.

Now we are not talking about Dr Emmett Brown of Back to the Future fame or Doctor Who whisking the likes of Thom Yorke or David Gilmour off on some time travelling adventure but about ways of adding richness to their music using time-based effects.

But, what are they and how do you make them?

Reverberation

We all sound so much better when singing in the shower. This is an example of reverberation (reverb) which is caused by sound bouncing off walls and hard surfaces in a very complex way. The sound comes out of your mouth and then arrives at all the different bathroom surfaces, bouncing back to your ears at different times.

People for years have tried to emulate this on records and in live concerts. Even to this day, studios have specific rooms, known as echo chambers, to create reverb where you place a speaker in an acoustically live room (similar to your bathroom) playing back say a vocal track with microphones to pick up the natural reverb which is then mixed into the final track.

When recording at Abbey Road Studios in London the Beatles extensively used the studio’s legendary echo chamber to add a natural reverb to their recordings.

Since the 1930s musicians and recording engineers have tried to electronically emulate the sound of a bathroom or concert hall by using transducers on massive metal plates and in guitar amplifiers, spring reverb tanks. Take a listen to Dick Dale to get an idea of what a spring reverb sounds like.

Echo

Echo is a little different. Imagine a gunshot in a mountain range. The sound travels a long way and is then reflected back from the hard surface of a mountain back to your ears and you can hear distinct repeats.

Early on echo (delay) was emulated in the studio by the innovative use of tape recorders, lengthening the distance between the record and playback heads by running tape all over the control room, around microphone stands or other bits of furniture. Slowing down the tape machine also has the effect of making the delays longer.

John Lennon didn’t particularly like the sound of his own voice and insisted he had a slapback (a very short delay) on his voice most of the time. Take a listen to Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) for an excellent, pronounced example of the effect.

Robert Fripp, along with Brian Eno, developed his ‘Frippotronics’ sounds based on two Revox tape machines to make delays and repeating loops of sound. Using this technique, he went on to work with both David Bowie (Heroes and Scary Monsters), Blondie, Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel.

One Of These Days is a fabulous example of innovative use of the delay effect and features Dave Gilmour and Roger Waters using a Binson Echorec echo unit on a bass guitar to create a rhythmic pulse.

The Binson is an electromechanical device which records a sound onto a magnetic rotating drum. Varying the speed of the drum and/or the placement of the playback head on the drum causes the delay. The length of the delay can be varied and the balance between the original signal and the delayed signal can be adjusted.

Live and in the studio, I use a 1974 Maestro Echoplex which is a similar device but works by recording the original signal to magnetic tape with a moveable head picking up the signal from the tape and playing it back.

Both these units still sound fantastic but are sometimes temperamental and troublesome but are both time-based effects.

Digital

The examples above use natural rooms and electro-mechanical devices to create delay and reverb, but in 1971 Eventide Clockworks Inc. came up with the DDL 1745 which was a fully digital delay and later in 1976 German company Elektromesstechnik (EMT) - which was famous for making original plate reverbs - brought out the EMT 250 digital reverb.

These devices changed everything. Gone was the need for specific rooms to create the effect or huge slabs of metal plate, tape recorders and springs as it was all done in the box using electronic emulations.

It fucks with the fabric of time

The device that Tony Visconti was referring to was the Eventide H910 Harmonizer.

The hand-wired, pre-production prototype of this legendary device was unveiled at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) in 1974 with the production model released soon after in 1975.

This totally blew people’s minds because it allowed you to change the pitch of a note in real-time: if you put 30 seconds of audio in, you would get 30 seconds out but at a different pitch. Awesome.

Also, combined with the machine’s delay and feedback tools, the Harmonizer created a new universe of far-out effects with which musicians and producers could bend, shape and expand sound in ways never before possible.

Prior to this, artists like the Beatles would lower the pitch of a record or vocal track by slowing down a tape machine, but of course, as you slowed the machine down, the length of the piece would increase.

The first H910 customer was New York City's Channel 5, utilizing it to downward pitch shift I Love Lucy reruns that were sped up to create room to run more advertisements. Speeding up the reruns had increased the pitch of the audio, and the H910 was able to shift that pitch back to where it originally had been.

Frank Zappa and Jimmy Page added it to their guitar processing rigs. Producer Tony Visconti used the H910 to create the snare sound on David Bowie's album Low (1977), as did Tony Platt on AC/DC's song Back in Black (1980).

Chuck Hammer in 1979 used it as an integral part of his guitar synth rig on tour with Lou Reed and in 1980 with David Bowie.

Another popular application was to use two H910s slightly detuned with a small delay. Notable users of this twin Harmonizer effect included Eddie Van Halen, who used it for his trademark guitar sound, and Tom Lord-Alge, who used it for the vocals on the hit Steve Winwood song Back in the High Life Again (1986).

Recognizing the popularity of this application, Eventide later recreated it as the ‘Dual 910’ program in the H3000 UltraHarmonizer released in the late 1980s. The H910 was also one of Eventide's first devices to enter the world of film, and was used on the voice of R2-D2 in Star Wars. - Wikipedia

The way this device works is grounded in the delay effect but is really (REALLY) complex using algorithms based on short-time Fourier transform (STFT). If you are totally bonkers and want to know more, start with this paper by Théo Royer: Pitch-shifting algorithm design and applications in music.

Tony Visconti

If you don’t know much about the legendary New York producer, read his book - Tony Visconti: The Autobiography: Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy - it’s a fascinating and engaging read which gives his whole story. In the context of this article, however, it’s his work with David Bowie on Low which is important.

On a mid-’70s conference call with Bowie and Brian Eno, the duo asked Visconti what he could bring to the table for the next album. He told them he had a machine that “fucks with the fabric of time.” The duo got so excited that they dropped their phones and began cheering.

The trio went into the studio to record Bowie’s 1977 LP Low, on which Visconti used the H910 to create cascading effects on the drums of Dennis Davis. Take a listen to the metallic-sounding snare on Breaking Glass and the pitch bend on Sound And Vision.

Tony Agnello, who designed the H910 said “[Visconti] started using it in ways that I never imagined”.

In interviews, Visconti talked about other producers asking how he achieved that drum kit sound on Low - but of course he wouldn’t tell them.

Daniel Lanois & Brian Eno

These guys have worked together for many years and suspect Lanois found his love for the Eventide Harmonizers from Eno via Visconti.

In any event, the pair have made some amazing records U2's Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree being two from a very long list.

As producers, they are known for working on sounds and loops in the morning before the band arrived, presenting them with an innovative bed in which to create new material. Many of these were created by the later development of the Eventide Harmonizer, the H3000.

Lanois went on to use this device on many of his productions with Sinéad O'Connor, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson and many others: check out Lanois’ Wikipedia page.

My particular favourites are Acadie (Daniel Lanois), Oh Mercy (Bob Dylan) and Yellow Moon (The Neville Brothers) - all recorded in 1989 plus Teatro (Willie Nelson) and Wrecking Ball (Emmylou Harris).

Supertone Records

Inspired but these giants of the audio world I have been using Eventide for years as a producer, but only since we opened our first commercial studio in 2014, as a ‘prengineer’ (my name for the record producer and engineer).

They have featured in all the Starlite Campbell Band records to date and are now heavily utilised in the brand-new Starlite.One material. Who doesn’t want to fuck with the fabric of time ehh?

And finally…

I hope you have enjoyed this piece and would love for you to share any stories you have in the comments below.

Next up is Suzy. Have a great week.

Working on: Guitars, vocals and synthesisers for the new Starlite & Campbell album, Starlite.One

Listening to: David Bowie - Low

What’s cooking: Chicken Tagine with prunes and almonds in the style of the Rif mountains from the superb book, The Food of Morocco.

When people from England hear the word Fylde, they associate it with Blackpool, its tower, beach, kiss me quick hats or perhaps Fleetwood, Fishermen’s Friends and Lytham St Annes.

Mention it to guitar players and they think of the work of Roger Bucknall MBE and his team at Fylde Guitars.

First, a little about gear

Even though I have accumulated a lot of it, I have little emotional attachment to ‘gear’, treating each item as a tool to perform a certain task.

Over my 49-year career if an item ceases to become creatively useful, I have had no compunction slapping stuff on Loot (remember this), or more recently on eBay and Reverb.

There are notable exceptions and have made some monumental mistakes which, if you are interested, may explore in another article (leave a comment below).

OK, now let’s get on with it.

A dalliance with acoustics

Until recently, I have never been a ‘real’ acoustic player, always a wannabe, with electric guitars being my main thing.

I was hugely inspired by Jimmy Page - with whom I share my birthday. After listening to ‘Babe I'm Gonna Leave You’ and ‘Black Mountain Side’ how could I resist the lure of the acoustic guitar? Saxon, Eko 12 string, Lowden, Rodríguez, Fylde, Guild - six and twelve - have all been bought and sold.

My stable now contains National Resophonic, Collings, Larrivée and more recently returning to Fylde, which is the focus of this piece.

This is my Fylde journey…

The University of Salford Contemporary Musicians' Society (CMS)**

Miraculously, I managed to scrape a degree in Chemistry from Salford University as during this period in the mid-70s, I was a full-time musician and didn’t attend very often. When I did, the focus was sharing my obsession with all things guitar, rather than twiddling test tubes and co-founded CMS along with Lester and Kim Peckover

We made various boozy trips, one being to Fylde Guitars, which was at that time located in factory premises in Kirkham, West Lancashire and organised by myself, Paul, John, Lester and Kim - all from CMS.

It was a looooong time ago and I have forgotten most of the details but do remember the piles of maturing wood, dust and meeting Roger who had tremendous enthusiasm.

In the early 80s I bought my first Fylde instrument, second-hand from the late, great Keith Hand, who had a music shop in my home town of Bury. I can’t for the life of me remember the model and sadly, don’t have any pictures.

Back then effectively amplifying acoustics for live gigs was tricky and as my main studio and live work was with electric guitars, I eventually sold it - probably to buy some piece of ‘must have’ electronic wizardry.

** Simon’s edit: My old friend Lester Peckover read this article and suggested some corrections based on his excellent memory as opposed to my drug and alcohol distorted recollection.

The King John bass

Fylde gradually disappeared off my radar until a few years ago when Suzy, my wife, decided she needed an acoustic bass. We looked around for something really cool and bespoke.

Following a deep trawl of the web, we saw loads of production line instruments, but then Roger’s name popped up and after having a good dig around the Fylde Guitars website, gave him a call.

He had a long waiting list but told us there was a bass for sale which was owned by renowned acoustic bass player Joss Clapp. Suzy called him and came to a deal, saved up and finally collected the lovely instrument from him at Tebay services, near Penrith in Cumbria - the full story is told on Suzy’s website.

It is an amazing instrument which got me thinking.

The walnut mandolin

I have always loved mandolins and remember in my youth taking my very first one to parties and annoying the guests with furious Rory Gallagher style playing.

I can’t remember what happened to that instrument but my longing continued and Suzy bought me an ‘Oakwood’ as a surprise for my birthday. It was a cool instrument but lacked a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ and following a ‘diplomatic’ discussion with my wife, sold it as I had decided it was a good idea to commission one from Roger.

It arrived, a beautiful thing that sounded amazing but I struggled to play it due to my big fat fingers. I really tried and achieved some level of competence, but decided eventually to let it go to someone who had the digitus’ to do it justice.

I may try an Irish bouzouki next…

The Classical

Our artistic move to contemporary folk / art-rock dictated that we needed a classical guitar. When I was teaching regularly in the 70s I did have a Rodríguez, but sold it (you see a pattern here), to buy some new gizmo that was at that time ‘desperately’ needed.

Now I required something that was more suited to a steel string / electric player and after speaking to Roger, decided to give the Fylde Classical a go, but with the slight twist of a cutaway.

This type of guitar normally joins the body at the 12th fret and although I am not one that frequents the dusty end of acoustic guitars, the accessibility is very useful.

It features Indian Rosewood back and sides, Englemann Spruce top, three-piece laminated neck, Ebony fingerboard and bridge, no position markers, gold plated Gotoh tuners and Rosewood bindings.

Pickups on nylon strung guitars are always problematic as the string tension is very low for an under saddle pickup to work correctly, so we decided on a K&K Pure system which features three pickups glued to the underside of the bridge. They are passive and I combined it with a ‘Pure’ preamp, also from K&K, which has volume, bass, middle and treble controls. Sounds great!

I was very happy indeed when I collected it from his workshop in Penrith, the experience enhanced by dinner at a local pub with Roger and his wonderful wife Moira, numerous pints of bitter (that’s a British style of beer for our international friends) and great conversation about, you guessed it, guitars.

I have since used this wonderful instrument frequently in concert and in our series of live-streams which were broadcast in the first six months of 2022. Can’t wait to record it on a full blown song.

Before leaving, he very generously gave me a copy of the latest edition of his book, ‘Wood, Sweat and Tears’, which over the space of three weeks voraciously consumed - reading, not eating - over morning coffee.

It’s a great story and well worth buying.

I also tried a prototype steel-strung guitar model he had designed alongside the legendary Martin Simpson. It was a short scale, joining the body at the 12th fret with a cutaway. Amazing.

Necessary evil

12 strings are a necessary evil in my armoury as sometimes only that sound will do and have been through a few. Why evil? Well, I have never owned one that was really a joy to play.

The classic, but horrible, Eko acoustic, then more recently a Gibson ES335-12 (fingerboard too narrow for my fat fingers - same problem as the mandolin), which I picked up from Wildwood Guitars when we were over in Colorado (now sold) and currently, a double neck 6/12 Mosrite ‘Ventures’ model electric, with pickups rewound in a P90 style by the wonderful Matthew Bascetta of House Of Tone. It’s featured on the title track of our latest studio album, ‘The Language of Curiosity’. It’s white, it’s odd, it’s a bastard to play but it sounds great.

Some years ago I bought a Guild 512 - the classic 12 played by everyone from David Gilmour to Tom Petty. It sounds good and looks very cool but playing it is always a chore as even though the action is reasonable, the string tension is high, even with a set of ‘10s’.

After experiencing the ‘Simpson’ short scale (the production model version of which is called the Fylde Orleans), I wondered what a 12-string would play and sound like, conversing at great length with Roger about the design and build.

He tells me now that I hold the record for the number of emails exchanged over a custom project - yes, I am a pain in the arse.

I had already decided that I wanted a standard six-string in this configuration and - guess what - am selling my Guild and one of the Collings’ (TBA) to fund the project.

It’s all about the wood

I am not really into guitar bling, preferring to fund time spent on the construction and appropriate wood, as opposed to non-functional adornment.

We settled on Indian Rosewood for the back and sides, an Alpine Spruce top, custom width Ebony fingerboard and a simple LR Baggs Element under-saddle pickup with an extra jack output on the six-string for a magnetic pickup. I own a Sunrise which is excellent but currently open for new options: comments and any ideas are greatly appreciated!

Forward wind 18 months (and that’s a short lead time for a custom Fylde Guitar) and we visited the UK to collect both instruments. I was overjoyed with the sound and playability of these amazing guitars.

The sound is very ‘British’, which of course is impossible to define, but they do have a certain presence and attitude which gives them a totally different character to an American build. There is no doubt that there is a little of Roger’s energy contained in every joint and carve.

One of the wonderful things about these guitars is the very low string tension and hence the ability to bend. You would think that this would compromise drop tuning, but no they really work well and so sensitive you don’t need to play, more caress the strings.

Ban the bass

Many players love strong bass in their acoustic tone but, unless used as a solo instrument in a recording, I think it’s more for self-gratification than practicality. Even playing un-amplified, the bass is lost to the audience who are listening more than a couple of metres away. It’s simple physics; bass frequencies are omnidirectional and the higher the frequency, the more directional they become.

As a ‘band’ player, in the studio and on stage, I almost always roll the bass off. This allows the guitar to sit beautifully in the mix, without muddiness (high pass filters are the most used controls on our CADAC analogue board). In a live setting, this also prevents feedback, especially with heavy compression.

Following ‘another’ conversation with the very patient Roger, he opted to make the bodies thinner - around 90mm on the six and 100mm on the 12 - resulting in both instruments displaying tight bass and low-mids with delicious high-mids and treble: to my ears, they are very well balanced guitars.

String it

The six is pretty conventional and came with 12-16-24w-32-44-54 and has now been restrung with identical gauges in my favourite string brand, Curt Mangan (PhosPhor Bronze - medium light).

The 12 certainly isn’t conventional with 11-11-15-15-17p-8-28-10-40-24-48-28 (yes, that is a plain third). I LOVE the gauges and making up custom sets as we speak.

More bitter

Bitter in more ways than one.

We visited during one of the coldest periods the UK had experienced in some time; bitterly cold with snow and ice everywhere but of course, we had to celebrate ‘new guitar day’ and paid a visit to ‘The Old Crown’, in Hesket Newmarket which is Roger & Moira’s local pub: a cooperative and in which they have a stake.

Great food, gripping conversation - and not just about guitars this time - countless pints of the pubs own brewed bitter, then topped off at Chez Bucknall with a fair few ‘not so wee’ drams of outstanding single malt whisky before crawling off to bed.

And finally…

I haven’t recorded the classical, six and 12 strings instruments yet, but I will certainly let you know when I do.

I hope you have enjoyed this piece and if you have any burning questions on this or any other post, please comment below and I will get right back to you.

Feel free to subscribe to receive updates and new posts and if you like gear, take a look at my website where almost everything is listed and described with sound samples from real, released music.

See you in two weeks!

It's an absolute honour to be featured in this month’s ‘Wonder Women’ series in 'No Treble' online magazine in the USA.

It’s the second time I’ve had to really dig deep about my life, music and the bass for a solo interview in an international magazine and again learned a lot from the process!

“I’ve fallen in love with the bass, and the bass is the language I use to serve the song.”

Huge thanks to Brittany Frompovich for guiding me through the interview experience which such fun and thoughtful care - we both love Star Wars too!!

Also my sincere thanks to CEO Corey Brown and Managing Editor Kevin Johnson for believing in me and giving me the opportunity to share my story!

Big love and thanks to my bass family; Spencer Lull of Mike Lull Custom Guitars & Guitarworks, Jeff Lewis at Matamp, Jim Bergantino at Bergantino Audio Systems, Moira & Roger Bucknall at Fylde Guitars, Thomastik-Infeld, Hipshot Products, The King of Eyewear and my stylist Jez Levy of Eyes on St Albans, Jason & Karen Kirk who make stunning eyewear at Kirk & Kirk, wonderful designer Veselin at VirginSkin 4U and my fabulous and inspirational husband Simon Campbell who is my world!

I hope you find a little inspiration for yourself somewhere in all of this!!

Read the article here.

The modern recording studio (for this purpose say from the late ‘60s) can be a very strange environment. Many are pretty cold and sterile, not just the decor but also the ‘sound’ of the recording space. Dead and lifeless acoustics seems to suck your soul and combined with a bland interior, does nothing for the creative spark.

Technically there is a good reason for the acoustic treatment as it makes the engineer’s job easier by reducing sound ‘leakage’ (usually referred to as bleed) from one instrument into the microphones of others. For example, the microphones on an acoustic piano will almost certainly pick up drums, bass and electric guitars if all playing in a small untreated room.

There is no doubt a 'clean' track without anything else present is easier to manipulate.

Bigger rooms with high ceilings, tend to have less of a problem as you can space everything out and judicious use of ‘gobos’ (moveable acoustic screens) help prevent unwanted bleed.

These larger rooms tend to be acoustically 'live', with more natural reverb giving the studio a better 'feel'. Just think how good you sound singing in the shower with all the lovely reverb in your bathroom!

This reverb, sometimes referred to to as ambience or just 'room', can also be desirable when mixing a song as it gives a natural 'feel' to the music.

Generally speaking artists who are comfortable and relaxed will produce a better performance, and let's face it that's what we need more than a technically perfect recording!

Two fine examples of large rooms are Abbey Road and the now sadly closed Olympic studios, London where the spaces are/were quite reverberant.

The picture below of B.B. King recording at Olympic is a good example of this setup - note the blanket over the grand piano!

Some of my all-time favourite albums were made in modern acoustically designed studios where a 'dead' room achieves stunning results. A masterclass in utilising this type of room to the full is 'The Nightfly' by Donald Fagan (what a great record), but…

Bleed is our friend

I have always preferred the sound obtained in a big room where bleed become a part of the music. This does require a different technique when it comes to mixing as the tracks become interactive. For example if there is vocal present in a piano track, you have to sonically weave them together and mix these as one.

I adore live albums where the environment is even further out of the engineers control and the feel present in bucket loads. Take a listen to Deep Purple's 'Made in Japan' or Bob Marley and the Wailers 'Live' - both fantastic albums which draw you into the performance and sound vibrant and exciting.

Two of my industry heroes, Daniel Lanois and Glyn Johns feel the same way about the concept of bleed and environment.

In his book ‘Sound Man’ Johns talks of the death of recording with the introduction of acoustic designers and SSL consoles. He knows his shit as early in his career was the recording engineer on 'Led Zeppelin I' where bleed and ambience of the Olympic studio is integral to the sound of the recording. Together with Jimmy Page as producer they defined the sound of rock music.

Lanois uses a variety of normal spaces to make his recordings. For example his masterful grammy winning trilogy ‘Oh Mercy’ (Bob Dylan), ‘Yellow Moon’ (Neville Brothers) and his own debut album ‘Acadie’ were all recorded in property rented by Lanois in New Orleans and recorded in normal untreated rooms but with a cool vibe.

The big pink

So what’s this all got to do with the pink house?

Well, this article all came about as I was walking our two labradors and passed the house pictured below. It reminded me of the house shared by Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson in West Saugerties, New York where most of ‘The Band’s’ first album - ‘Music from the Big Pink’ was written.

The album itself was recorded in studios in New York and Los Angeles in 1968 but their magnificent follow-up ‘The Band’ (aka the brown album) was recorded at the pool house of a home rented by the group in Los Angeles at this time owned by Sammy Davis, Jr.

They have the same issue - it’s all about the feel…

The Supertone studio

Over the years before Suzy and I got together we had collectively spent tens of thousands of pounds hiring recording studios, most recently when recording my two solo records, ThirtySix and The Knife.

Following moving in together we decided to totally go for it and invest everything into making and recording music, culminating in the fabulous, semi-mobile* recording facility which we use to make our music and is available to other artists.

* I say semi-mobile as our CADAC J series console weighs 450 kg and the Grotrian-Steinweg upright piano a cool 500 kg.

The four of us - that's Suzy, our studio hounds Hummock, Bob and myself - have moved six times in as many years trying to find a perfect space and country in which to record our music and set up the studio to give us and clients of Supertone Records a great place to be creative.

The main room is 100m2 with four metre high ceilings with the console situated in this one space so everyone is totally connected. We have placed our acoustic panels to give different sonic flavours in the room and Suzy has done a remarkable job on the interior design.

The recordings so far sound great and we are loving the vibe: the pool house in LA and Lanois’ rented property in New Orleans has come to Portugal - but this time it's white, not pink.

Whilst still in lockdown we are continuing writing/demoing material for the next four albums (yes, you read it correctly four albums) which we will be releasing over the course of the next couple of years but sadly, we have to wait until we can fly in our drummer and keyboard player to finish the recordings.

Post lockdown the studio will also be open for business!

So, that's all for now…

Much love, Simon

Earlier today I learned that Rupert had sadly passed away.

He leaves behind a huge legacy of equipment, knowledge and legendary recordings that were facilitated by the electronics he designed.

I was very fortunate to spend a couple of hours talking with Rupert in the late '80s and vividly remember the conversation. It was around the time he was a consultant for AMEK who were based in my neck of the woods - i.e. up north.

Meeting an audio legend like this was tremendously exciting as over the years I had used a selection of his consoles on both sides of the glass.

He must have been asked a million times but I couldn't resist enquiring as to how he came up with ‘the’ inductor-based EQ circuit found in the Neve 1066 console. With a twinkle in his eye, he told me it was a gift from God.

One night he had a dream and the higher force came to him with the design. In the morning he woke up and scribbled the circuit and values on a serviette. Sitting across a table from Rupert it was impossible to doubt his sincerity or faith.

We went on to talk about all things consoles, the importance of very high frequencies when designing an audio circuit and a particularly deep conversation about the merits of transformers for balancing, which of course was his trademark passion.

Since then I have used many more of his 'works of art'. Every time I rotate a control and hear the beauty of the design, this story, his beaming grin and childlike enthusiasm come to mind putting a big smile on my face.

If you are reading this you will probably know of Dave Grohl’s film Sound City which is the story of the legendary studio and its centrepiece console - the Neve 8028. Watch this and you will understand how important Rupert was to the world of rock n roll.

One very cool man and inspirational electronic engineer. Rest in peace.

The cable that links your guitar to the first effect or amplifier input is the most important part of tone retention. The greater the capacitance per metre of cable, the more top end you will lose, as essentially, the cable is acting as a tone control; the longer the cable, the more top-end roll-off you will hear.

Some people like this effect, but I like to choose how much high-end I roll off.

Once engaged in the circuit, almost all FX Pedals change the high-impedance signal from the instrument to a low-impedance signal which is not subject to deterioration by cable capacitance. So, provided the effect is turned on (i.e.and not bypassed), you do not need a low-capacitance cable to link your FX. If however you have a series of FX with true bypass and you sometimes bypass all the FX, you will need our cable on every connection and onto the amplifier.

I have been working for years to sort this problem out as you will see in my upcoming article, an update on the four previous articles I have written on the subject.

It's been a long process and some years ago I started using George L's cable, which at the time was the lowest capacitance cable out there. This is great sonically, but the connections can be unreliable and the cable easily damaged. I still use these for patch cables as they are quick to make and are reliable in a pedalboard situation.

Supertone has sourced the lowest capacitance cable in the world, even lower than George L's and manufactured by SOMMER Cable in Germany.

It is rugged and worthy of any stage. Supertone are putting these together ourselves using a choice of Neutrik angle or straight gold plated 'silent' jack plugs.

There is lots of bullshit out there on this subject and people charge crazy money for cables!! These are the best out there and have deliberately kept them within the financial reach of the working musician.

Treat yourself. It's the cheapest and most effective way to improve your tone!!!

P.S. Message me if you want a chapter and verse or a bit more information.