Dan G

that guy's stuff is pretty good as well, although fuck me you can tell he worships Travis Smith. In the same way John Dyer Baizley is basically Pushead Mk2... It's in a similar vein to a lot of my stuff too, which is moderately Travis-influenced...(not meaning to hijack your thread ) Last one is for a take the piss band Brieseed... MySpace.com - BRIEseed - UK - Death Metal / 2-step / Melodramatic Popular Song - www.myspace.com/brieseed

Spot on Christoff.

i'm assuming you don't mean travis smith at seempieces!? He did the most recent november's doom stuff - as well pretty much all the devin/SYL stuff, nevermore, opeth, katatonia - and heaps of others. He's a proper legend. I'm guessing you're meaning someone else though?

Buy the Melissa Cross DVDs. A lot of pro screamers swear on them.

Don't worry Scott, I know you're just jealous of my new Bogner head and Diezel 4x12 cab that I got from ebay.

I am desperately looking forward to this album, although I think it will be rubbish, quite frankly. But I live in hope. Other than St Anger, I think everything Metallica have done has been decent on some level (even Reload). ...And Justice will always be my favourite Metallica album, and the black album - love it or hate it - was a landmark album that millions of bands have tried to emulate in terms of songs and production. I just think they don't know how to be Metallica anymore, which is a great shame in light of Megadeth and Testament recently producing really good albums that at least stand proudly next to their earlier, classic works. Up until Reload, metallica did whatever the fuck they wanted and it worked. But St Anger was a badly failed attempt at being relevant and being something that they are not, i.e. pants nu-metal. Now that 'classic' metallica-influenced metal has been made popular due to the likes of trivium and bullet for my valentine, they are trying to be 'classic' metallica again. We shall see.

Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about... You bought a Behringer bass combo, chopped it in half, and then stuck a mesa sticker on the top half, and an ampeg sticker on the bottom. I took a photo of your rig last night... How did your Encore 'ripper' copy play?

Get a behringer like Scott has...

Horses for courses. I love great solos, but there's definitely a "does-it-ADD-something-to-the-song" element about it. Some people hate any form of guitar virtuosity whether it's benificial to the song or not, and some people like lots of solos even if it's just self-indulgence, soul-less wank. Ultimately a solo has to have feeling and a point to it - and even the odd bit of shred amongst a well written/played solo can do wonders for dynamics. Back in the day every song I wrote would have a minute or so designated for soloing, but I'm well past that and realise that isn't particularly great songwriting. Some songs just scream out for a solo though, whether it's 2 bars or 20. I try and mix them up as much as possible though; simple solos, occasional shredding, exotic modes and scales, different rhythms and key changes under the solo. And I fucking hate it when you hear the same cliched sweep-picking patterns played by someone who can't do the simplest of niceless phrased passages. Sweeping should probably be the last skill to master on the guitar, and used sparingly for good effect. Even the absolute masters of this (Malmsteen for example) bore the tits off me after about 5 minutes.

A Polish cloth? Is that one that you can for dirt cheap, but it still does a much better job than the britsh ones? ho ho.

Not trying to be on any side of an argument here - But good cables are a very important of a quality set-up, from a reliablity & hassle-free point view as well as, most importantly, tone. I never understand it when someone has a really expensive rig connected up with 10 cheapo cables. Planet waves cables are great; they have a lifetime guarantee which is great for regular live gigging musicians, they never crackle or hiss even after regular abuse. When you have people standing/accidentally kicking/dropping gear on your cables gig after gig, it's reassuring to know that you'll get a free quality cable if one actually does get fucked.

I had 2 tracks of bass recorded onto the computer; one the clean signal, and the other through the sansamp. I EQd the two tracks differently in protools.

Well the reason mesa's etc sound so much better is due to the quality of wood etc to build the cab. The resonance of woods differ, and therefore alter tone significantly. I think marshall cabs are made of plywood whereas mesas are a more expensive and dense wood - and therefore fucking heavy. You'd probably be better trying to stick a V30 in a cheaper cab than make your own from scratch to be honest... but I'm not a total expert on the subject. I have the B2, which was 1600 - although that was 2 years ago - think they are 2k now as well as a two year waiting list! Here's a photo of it in action:

Borrowed Alex's music man for just a day. I'm gonna ask to borrow a warwick, out of interest, next time...

GUITARS Blackmachine custom Gibson Explorer Jackson 10XD Ibanez SZ720 EFFECTS Maxon OD808 Overdrive Boss NS2 Noise Supressor Boss TU2 Tuner Ibanez DE7 Delay Boss GE7 Graphic Equaliser Roland MIDI footswitch controller (for VH4) AMPS Diezel VH4 Peavey 6505 Mesa 4x12 oversized cab (with V30 speakers) I have some other stuff but the above is the gear I use live.

Are you referring to the incorrect use of YOU'RE?

It's all to do with the producer/engineer rather than the DAW etc - Protools is very user friendly and the learning curve is great. i've never used anything else so can't comment, but comparing recordings will be futile. Eg. you might be a great engineer using cubase for 10 years who has recorded guitars with a Bogner rig and drums in a pro studio, and I might be rubbish on protools and have used a 10W Crate combo for guitars and used crap drum programming. Therefore seeing who's sounds best won't really be the best judge of whether cubase or protools is better! I'll post up something soon though, just for interest

I would tend to agree with you about line 6 gear... however the pod Xt is pretty good for demos - and a lot of bands have recorded entire albums with them. In your position, you pretty much have 2 options: You can spend under 200 and with a bit of work get results as good as this guy - (listen to the song 'legatta') MySpace.com - Bulb(New Song: Legatta)BUY MY RARE SPECTOR GUITAR! - BETHESDA, US - Metal / Experimental / Rock - www.myspace.com/iambulb Or get a guitar with good pick ups and run it into an Orange stack (for example). It really depends on how much money you are willing to spend, and exactly how good you want you recordings to sound! Regarding bass, like Tooms says, with a Sansamp (and a decent bass) you can get really good results by direct recording - which can also help omit some of the nasty boomy low end from attempting to mic up bass rigs. I was experimenting with this recently, recording one take of bass into two inputs; a clean signal and the sansamp driven signal. Then using the clean DI for the nice warm natural low end, and then EQing the Sansamp signal for some really gritty mids, and a touch of highs. After finding the right balance between the two I had a sound that fills out the low end but has a nice bit of presence to sit with the rhythm guitars. Getting a good sounding recording is 99% knowledge and ability of recording, and how good the players recording it are - NOT good gear. Good gear helps obviously... and I'd recommend getting a good guitar rig as it helps for playing live, and also it is just good to own/fun to play! But as mentioned before, it's all dependant on how much you want to spend and how good you want your stuff to sound.

next time I get a second of free time I will! (mbox2 has protools LE, rather than M-powered - not much difference though)

Yeah I agree with Scott - 6505s are crushingly heavy amp. Love the tone. Although the clean channel is fucking awful... (unless you are after the afore mentioned lo-fi dirty cleans) I reckon cranial are more after clearer, warmer and sparklier cleans (eg. tool/floyd) than the lo-fi thing... But you don't buy a 5150/6505 for the cleans... you buy it for the most awesome punishing metal tone there is. Especially with a tubescreamer in front of it, and a cab with V30 speakers. It's also great value for money.

I would get a Line 6 POD xt. You can more than decent enough recordings with a bit of fiddling and know how. 190. Unless you own/buy a 1000+ amp/cab rig, and then mic (Shure SM57 - 80, is industry standard for rock/metal pro recordings) and then appropriate cables etc. etc. etc. you won't do too much better than the POD. And then comes the technical know-how of micing up an amp to get a nice clear tone, which you can bypass with a POD. (of course if you want to start learning about audio engineering then its worthy venture getting into micing up cabs etc...)

Wasn’t it Pie shop that did the songs/voices for the band ‘Lovefist’ on the Grand theft auto vice city?

I have 10 years worth of metal hammer magazines (every single one, other than one issue I think) Also about 40 issues of total guitar mostly from between 99 and 2005. All kept in great condition. I wanted to keep them but I'm just running out of space... is there any interest in this sort of thing? (even on ebay if not here?!)

Cheers, that was me! Although our chug-chug etc bits are easy to dismiss as lowest-common-denominator-metal, they are actually pretty rhythmically complex. It's all off beat, syncopated and either polyrhythmic or ever changing time-signatures. If we tuned lower those bits would get compared to meshuggah... Ultimately though, if you don't like them, you don't like them. However, I like those bits as much as I do thash riffs, guitar solos, dissonant chords and ambient soundscapes so they will always crop up at some point in my songs What a useful comment