I hate advertising with a passion, so I don't list all this stuff lightly. I have spent years shopping for stuff online, and here is the result. I get absolutely nothing from any of these guys.


Xaviere XV-550. I used this in Xaviere test, sitting on top of the world, swing low. This is truly an awesome guitar. It is my main go-to guitar now. It is also probably one of my cheapest. I play it all the time since it surprises you so much. I thought I hated humbuckers but this is just as sensitive and wonderful as any single coil. GFS pickups, I think, are really quite good.

Schecter Diamond Series C1-elite. Most of the other songs not listed. This guitar needed radical EQing to get what I liked. This guitar taught me that electric guitars don't need to made out of solid Mahogany, string thru design etc... and all the other superstitions that seem to make sense but for some reason aren't that important. I think the most important thing is a good pickup. Put that on a log - as Les Paul originally wanted but his friend Leo Fender actually did - and that should be fine.

PRS SE Custom double cut. I got this to play out, for high distortion stuff. It is very sensitive to even slight pressure variation on the fretboard.

PS SE EG single coil. This guitar is not truly a strat but rather a very nice bright version of the PRS SE. The necks on these guitars are the best I have tried. They are excellent for doing fast work. A good non-buzz neck is very, very hard to find on most guitars, even at a variety of prices.

Martin DX-15. This is a solid Mahogany, very warm and mellow sounding and cheapest of the solid wood Martins. It is a beautiful guitar. However, in recording it can rapidly be drowned out, which is why so many people probably end up getting a spurce instead of Mahogany top.


Carl Martin Classic Opto Compressor. I have tried the Boss, the Dgitech, the MXR Dyna comp. This beats all. See this great page for compressor comparisons.

MXR 10 Band EQ. Works fine. No noise. Necessity.

VOX Tonelab ST This is the best to my ears of all the distortions and overdrives. It's best sounds are a lot of different types of clean, mellow just on the edge distortions. They say the tube inside makes it great, but I have given up trying to understand these things. Most of the songs use this pedal. It also does syrupy Johnson and Santana as well. And it has a setting for 'Metal'.

Digitech GNX3. This is older Digitech pedals. I used this on 'It's all Good'. I wanted to make the guitar sound like it was in a trash can or just picked up in an alley somewhere. It worked. After many years using distortions, I found that the Boss were the worst for my type of music, even though I think they are most possible. I sort of hate metal music.


Roland GR-30 Guitar Synth. All the other instruments in the songs (except drums) use this. This is truly a godsend. The flute and Organs are near perfect. The Bass is very good. The sax and horns are great for background, as is the piano and even banjo, but you have to work on it. The hardest is the Violin/Cello. No, you can't sound like Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis. But you can get some great sounds.

Klipsch 2.1 Pro Media I think these are great computer speakers to use. The bass is very nice. For the price you get a very heavy and nice sub, plus two solid bookshelves. You can also adjust the bass on the remote pod.

Cakewalk Sonar 5. I tried a lot of different software programs. Some froze up. Some wouldn't read my sound card, some didn't sound too good with a mic. Some, the latency was bad. Others couldn't read the plug ins. Some had effects that were too slow or just didn't do the job.I just coming back to this one.

Delta Audio 10/10T Sound Card. This is the oldest piece of equipment I own. The price is the same when I bought it. It still works, year after year. Driver after Driver, operating system after operating system. It lets you record 10 different inputs so you can record an entire band(?) at once.

CAD M179 multi band condenser mic. One the greatest superstitions around is mic quality. It dawned on me that you can really tell if you switch from Cardiod to omni - and that this difference really swamps other differences within the range of mics I can afford. If you are a bad and sloppy singer, singing into a Cardiod mic can be a problem if you tend to move around a bit. Also, the heavy deep sound when you get up close can really be horrible. The CAD M179 is an affordable mic that you can swith from one end of the spectrum to the other.