Working on getting broader, more complex guitar sound with the gear in the basement. Tonight, I mic’d my Epi Valve Junior Combo (Bitmo Spanky’d) and my Valve Junior head running into a Marshall 4×12 cabinet with a pair of Blue Ball mics, into my little mixer and out into an old Sony consumer-level DAT recorder.

My Tele plugs into my Electro-Harmonix pedal collection (more on that later); near the end of the chain is a Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai with left and right outputs. Left goes into the Combo, right goes into the Valve Junior Head.

When the Memory Man is in bypass, the same signal feeds both amps; the Combo delivers the highs, while the Head delivers a fuller sound (thanks to the 4×12 cab). Together, it’s a great tone.

When recording, I pan one mic all the way right, the other all the way left. The way they’re set up, they pick up most of one amp and a little of the other. The sound is quite remarkable…and gets very loud!