Equipment
This page gives an outline of the equipment used for RedStick's gigs, from the guitars to the PA system.
The equipment was purchased over a period of time as the funds became available
allowing the system to be slowly refined and improved.
Guitars
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| Tristan Funnell playing his Gibson SG |
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For all of his guitar work Tristan played his trusty
old faithful Gibson SG. For those of you that have ever wonndered,
the SG stands for Snaps Good. After rehershals one
evening, Richard was packing up some guitar leads and accidentally
knocked over Tristan's guitar. Unfortunately, being of a fragile
nature, the headstock of his guitar virtually snapped clean off.
Thankfully a good guitar doctor lived nearby and a fortnight later,
with a little glue, some cherry red laquer and some TLC all was well
again - you can't even see the join now!
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Richard played an altogether more substantial instrument :-) as his
main guitar - a 1962 vintage re-issue Fender Stratocaster (generously
bought by his wife Lynda for his 30th Birthday).
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| Richard Farrar playing his Fender Stratocaster |
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| Richard Farrar playing his Ibanez Roadster |
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Richard also played an Ibanez Roadster guitar as his
second / reserve instrument.
This guitar has a locking tremelo
system, an extra fret (22 in total) compared to the
Stratocaster and Seymor Duncan "single coil" hum-bucking pickups.
All these features made this guitar useful for certain songs as well
as being an invaluable spare in case of string breakages on the other
guitars during a gig.
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PA System
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The PA system all revolved around a custom-built rack (shown in
the photograph on the right). This rack was hand-built from MDF by
Richard to house all of the 19" rack equipment.
The rack box had removable front and rear covers and sturdy side handles
enabling it to be carted to and from gigs while protecting the equipment
inside during transit.
All of the equipment in the rack was permanently wired in, both
audio and mains power. Thus set-up times at gigs were greatly
reduced, saving much stress and the potential for forgetting a vital
piece of equipment or connecting cable.
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| PA Rack |
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| Microphones |
2 off Shure SM58s mounted on boom microphone stands. Both wired
in balanced configuration to reduce electrical noise pickup. |
| Guitar Processors |
2 off Peavy ProFex IIs. Guitar multi-effects
processors, both wired for stereo output and
using speaker simulators to simulate the sound of a traditional guitar amplifiers
through the PA speakers. |
| Reverb |
1 off Alesis Midiverb II. Stereo digital reverb / delay
unit used for vocals. Different reverb and delay settings were used for
different songs. |
| Mixer |
1 off Frontline 8 channel stereo mixer. Used to mix the
stereo backing tracks with the 2 stereo guitars and the 2 vocal sources. |
| Power Amplifier |
1 off ElectroVoice P600. 600W stereo power amplifier. |
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All of the backing tracks were generated from midi files on a PC using Cakewalk software and an external midi module - the Korg 05/RW. These backing tracks (minus the guitar and
vocal lines) were then recorded onto minidiscs in stereo using a Sony MDS-JE510 minidisc
player. The same player being used at the gigs for playing back the backing tracks.
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| PA Speaker |
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The final link in the chain was the speakers.
These were a pair of Peavy HP-305s
incorporating a 15" Peavy Black Widow driver in each cabinet.
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