Trusty Gear You Can't Live Without?

[ChrisPandora]

I am curious as to what pieces of gear you have always make it onto your recordings. That specific pedal, guitar, microphone, etc that is so reliable and versatile that it's fingerprints are all over your work.

For me, I have a Fender Jaguar Bass with Flat-wound strings that just sounds so consistently good. Great warmth that gives me a plucky Motown sound when I use a pick. Been using it for years!

I also have been really impressed with my Blue Bluebird condenser microphone. It has done a wonderful job capturing vocals and basically all the vocals for my past two albums have been tracked with it.

What do you swear by?

[Thegypsycaravan]

We use Schecter basses, Fender Stratocaster, PRS guitars, Pearl Master
series drums, a great sounding mix of Zildjian and Sabian cymbals, Marshall
amps, Vox amps and Peavey amps just to name a few

[MTN-Jer]

I've always been a synth guy. Owned an original Yamaha CS-60 around 1980 (the baby brother to the famous CS-80). Wish I'd never traded it for some "latest and greatest" synth that came along, but so thrilled that the Arturia synth collection does a very good job of emulating that synth. So, I use a lot of the Arturia synths, but my favorite software synth is Native Instrument's FM8 (which is basically an old Yamaha DX7 on steroids). FM8 just seemed easy and intuitive for me to program and I've had hours of fun creating melodic as well as ambient sounds with it. It shows up in a lot of our songs, especially if I need a swoosh, bells, chimes, or evolving pads. 

Jer of the band Mitch the Needle 

[JohnVPandora · Accepted solution]

The Synth world is so cool! There are so many types of synths to geek out about!

[JohnVPandora]

Seems like your band has a pretty robust set of trusted names for the gear you're working!

[BlankBrothers]

My Elektron Analog Rytm mkII is an incredible piece of gear. The amount of functionality and the richness of the sound make it indispensable. 

[clarelynnrose]

For me it's Neumann mics. Great, warm sound. Precise without sounding clinical

And Elixir strings. 🙂

[ChrisPandora]

Ah nice @clarelynnrose! I'm saving up for one of those...it may take a while though hahaha

[TNTRecords]

Well there's the stuff I use at home to write and produce demos.  It is just my collection of guitars, a mac with Digital Performer, and a bunch of synth plugins plus a Korg Kronos. 

But I'm not a good enough engineer to produce radio quality recordings and I'm a lousy pianist so I have an engineer/pianist I hire to produce the final track from my demo and project file.  

He also uses DP and we share a lot of plugins but occasionally we have to find a similar thing on his rig. When it goes to him we start over, retracking everything and for instruments I either bring something if it is weird or, more often, I just play one of the ones in his studio.

Not really tied to any particular gear.  I use whatever is at hand.  I guess the real answer is Digital Performer.  It is the only thing common on everything we do.

[clarelynnrose]

@ChrisPandoraI got a pair around 20 years ago and remember it was a big decision as they were expensive back then. Even more so now!