These past few months seen a flurry of little activities in my basement jam room. At long last, I finally got the room a small PA back in March as we’ve been struggling to satisfactorily hear the singer cutting through the mix during jam seshes. The local music shop had a second hand 4-channel 100W Peavey PVi4B power mixer going for less than £200. It came with two speakers, robust stands and two mics. The Peavey was pretty lightweight (8 kg!) and we could fit everything in the car. On top of this, all I originally needed was two mic leads, but I have always wanted an SM-58 for a while now and they had one in stock.


All four channels were working fine – each channel with XLR mic and line inputs. Connected an iPod as an audio source to the mixer yielded a pretty nice sound, tweaked to an optimum quality with its three-band EQ. Once I was happy with what it could do, the amps were rearranged to create a better distribution of sound within the room. The Behringer bass amp was placed centrally and this was flanked by the Marshall on one side and the Orange (when I bring it down) on the other.

The new PA was soon christened by an impromptu jam sesh later in the evening. Of rock kapak tunes. I could only watch. ^^


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The next few weeks saw an increase in guitar and drum covers in buangruang. I’ve played around with mic-ing the Orange and Marshall before, but I had a crash course in utilising my overdrive/distortion pedals and amp mic-ing with my brother which helped me a great deal. Since buangruang is pretty soundproof, might as well do the covers properly. The first cover following this new-found knowledge was a SCANDAL B-side called Rainy. Covering this tune at this time meant a lot as not only I have learnt a great deal more with recording the guitar using a mic-ed amp, I have also practised my arse off in using my pinkie to execute octave chords, especially when the octave note is on the 1st or 2nd string. All thanks to HZKGT!

For Rainy, I initially wanted to use my Mesa Throttle Box, but despite tweaking it, I just couldn’t nail MAMI’s tone. Until I decided to purely use the Marshall, only then I realised I could nail it as close as I possibly could to her original tone. And why should that surprise me? MAMI uses a Marshall! I don’t even know why I bothered playing around with a pedal that has a more American sound to it. The Marshall amp setting was like so on OD2:


This was also the first time I used my monitor headphones I bought in Shinjuku, Tōkyō – an Audio-Technica ATH-M50x. I just realised that this headphone was pretty much godsend, as tweaking the amp using this meant I get to record exactly what I can hear on this pair of cans. And here is what the cover sounds like:


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Next in part 2: The V-Drums – covering 「お願い」 and new acquisitions.