we could present it to our customers as an and what are your advisors doing to help you
alternative to the traditional stereo setup. avoid making them.
[Grant] I enjoy thinking of ways to route a [Mikey] It’s great to have people with
pedal board and build boxes to suit, more experience in business guiding us. Some
than I do actually playing guitar (sorry guys). really good advice we’ve taken on board is
ready to explode. There was a boundary of only one amp where I understanding our position in the market and
normally played guitar, so I got to thinking about how to think and operate outside of traditional
[WM] Mikey, when we met up you seemed the best way to run a hybrid rig. How could I norms.
GUITAR TALK
continued from 16
portion of a circuit and take hours or days to
find why it won’t work the way it should. When
I’m having a day like this, Mikey generally
doesn’t talk to me because he knows I’m about
pretty excited about the sonic benefits of
use a tube amp but then also use a DI to get
more out of my rig? Mikey and I chatted about [Grant] The biggest lesson we have learned
the best way to pull this off for weeks. I brought is that thinking small will get you nowhere.
the idea to the production guys at my church We started with the dream of being able to
and they were up for experimenting. I built the support our families. Now we have a vision
rig to have dry effects (compressor, Electro- for Goodwood and our future that would be
Harmonix POG, overdrives) sent straight to my laughable if I were to say it out loud. We believe
evolution to this approach? AC30. That same dry signal would also feed we have a purpose that is much bigger than
two Eventide H9’s in parallel. The H9’s would just the two of us and that we can actually use
[Mikey] A few years ago we built Nigel a rack also be fed by a tube pre-amp and some sort this company to make a very positive impact on
of cab simulation. This meant I could run my our immediate and external sphere of influence.
dry effects to an AC30. and my wet effects to The biggest mistake I see other boutique
a DI via amp simulation. FOH could now mix companies make is assuming they can only
my dry and wet signals independently, and I ever achieve a one-person operation that will
could have a monster sound in my ears with allow them to scrape by at best.
mic’ing up one amp for your unaffected, post
pedalboard signal and using something like a
Cab Zeus to run your effected signal direct to
the FOH board so the soundman could get a
great amp tone, and in turn blend in effects to
taste. Can you guys tell us a bit more about the
system which included the option to run wet/
dry/wet. I’d never experienced anything like it
before. The sound is absolutely massive! Being
able to isolate clean and overdrive tones through
one amp creates a very strong foundation for
wet effects to sit on top, but of course, lugging
three amps to a gig is no small feat. The last
few years have seen the emergence of cab
simulators and so we figured, if we can prove
to ourselves the viability of being able to run
wet/dry/wet with only one amp and a cab sim,
18
one amp.
[WM] Thanks again guys – our readers have
[WM] Mikey, when we met up in Australia, you loved your contributions to the magazine over
mentioned that you guys are working with some the past couple of months, and I have as well!
business advisors. What common mistakes do
you see boutique companies your size make,
October 2017
WorshipMusician.com