SAXON GEAR
A look at the gear that was used for the making of A FOREST IN YOUR MIND.......
THE STUDIO
SAXON SOUND is my home studio - tucked away in the woods of West Milford, NJ. The studio is built in two small, unused bedrooms: one being the control room, and the other a booth for drums and vocals. Of course, there's nothing stopping me from recording a guitar in the kitchen if necessary, so the entire house is used on occasion. The neighbors are friendly, and the remote location provides a unique peace of mind that contributes to the recording experience.

My studio is based around the Roland VS-880 - a dinosaur by today's standards - but it's proven to be a powerfull recording system that sounds great, and never runs out of possibilities. In a sense, it can be considered a 4-track unit, because no more than four tracks can be recorded at one time. But it has unlimited "virtual" tracks that require only a bit of imagination to make the 880 perform like magic. Most of the songs on "Forest.." have no less than 30-40 tracks - the challenge being, to get them down to eight final output tracks.

In order to make the 880 sing, the studio is equipted with an assortment of outboard gear that allows me unlimited flexibility, and the chance to operate in a hybrid analog/digital manner. A Mackie SR24.4 manages most of the routeing, preamps by Behringer, Joe Meek, and PreSonus, and an assortment of processors by Behringer, Aphex, BBE, Delta Lab, Antares, and TC Electronics are always at hand to shape the sound as desired. A Neutrik patchbay provides the main highway between the 880 and it's outside world. Monitoring is handled by an Alesis RA-100, and a Crown DC-300A through Event 20/20s and SM-150s respectivly.

The booth is a small room - maybe 8X10 - that provides just enough isolation to stay quiet, but remains less-than-dead. Most of this is accomplished with the help of packing blankets and Sonex. Communication is provided by a Samson headphone amp, and several ATH-M3X headphones. Cables are snaked between the booth and the control room.

Mics include: SM57s (guitars,snare), AT-3035 (vocals), Oktava MK012s (overheads and acoustic guitars), CAD E-100 (acoustics and guitar amps), Oktava MK219 (amps), AKG D112 (kick), and an AKG C1000S (acoustics). On at least on occasion, a Radio Shack PZM was used for effects.
GUITARS, AMPS, AND NONSENSE....
Most of the "crunch" on the songs, was provided by a combination of the Dusenberg guitar and the Behringer Vintager GM110 amp. This amp has Analog Modeling similar to the Sans Amp GT2...and I got all the crunch I needed from it. The Dusenberg is a great playing, but odd sounding guitar - I thought the combination was interesting. For the most part, this amp was close mic'ed useing the Oktava MK219.

Most of the songs feature my Rickenbacker 360. This is a difficult guitar to record, and it's sound is interpreted many ways. I tend to favor the Roger McGuinn sound - so there was always a lot of compression applied. The Vox Pathfinder 15R turned out to be the perfect amp to use with the Rickenbacker. It was clean, and provided just the tone I was looking for. Again, the Oktava MK219 was used for most of the tracking.

The bass tracks were recorded using a Fender Jazz Bass - mostly through a Sans Amp Bass Driver DI. There are a couple songs where a Fender Frontman was used (useing the D112 to mic), and on one song, a Matchless simulator was patched across the track. For the most part, the internal 880 compression patch was used on the bass tracks.

For the cleaner Tele tracks, my G&L ASAT Tele was used along with a Marshall AVT20. This gave me a clean-er sound, but avoided the classic Tele sound - which tended to clash with the Rickenbacker at times. Other guitar tracks were done on a $75 DeArmond useing the Marshall drive for texture. The Marshall sounded better mic'ed with an SM57.

There's a lot of "unconventional" guitar sounds in all the songs - mostly for effect. Some of these were provided by an old, beat up Kort guitar, played through a WEM Copycat, and a Danelectro Dirty Thirty. Other "spacey" effects were made on a Binson EchoRec, and a TEAC 3340 Reel-to-Reel. There are one or two tracks where either a Sound City Custom 120, or Tour Series 120 were used. These are my "babies"!
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