The picture below shows the setup for WillSongs Unplugged; the idea of being unplugged is that it is just me and my guitar--with a little help from my technology friends who I couldn't resist bringing along. From here it is easy to see why I call it "WillSongs Unplugged...Well, Almost" since there are more wires in the picture than guitar. The three toys in the picture aren't actually part of the setup; I share the "studio" with a couple other--um--creative persons.
The guitar is the Taylor 414CE-L3. It plugs into a Boss OC-3 octave pedal (for bass lines). From there, the bass line goes straight to the mixer, and the direct out goes to Mission Control--the fully programmable do-it-all super-effector (A Digitech RP20). From there the signal goes to the mixer and through the Lexicon JamMan, controlled by the MIDI foot pedal (lower right). But the MIDI foot controller also sends MIDI data to Mission Control for real-time effects like the wah-wah pedal. Dynamics are smoothed by a dbx266XL compressor.
By the way, the recordings are made as follows: the dry vocal is panned hard left to sub-group 1, and the output of the JamMan hard right to sub-group 2. The sub-groups are combined into a stereo mini-plug (courtesy of many trips to Radio Shack) and fed to the computer sound card's line input for recording on PowerTracks. The sub-groups are also assigned to both sides of the main mix mix along with the reverb where I listen on headphones while recording. So I get to hear a great mix, but dry signals are recorded separately then mixed afterward.
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updated 8-mar-2006
