Ok, first, increasingly I’m thinking I’m no longer on track for a 2025 release. Couple reasons, but the biggest is that I’ve just had a very, very busy late summer and fall, including a massive cycling event I had to dial back the recording to train for, and then a two week vacation in Greece, which was amazing, and I’d never taken two straight weeks off work before… but between the trip and some woodshedding to get my calluses back into shape, that sidelined me for the better part of a month.

One of the other side-effects of that trip is, I got some time to really sit and listen to my VST-amp rough mixes on the flights, and while most of them sounded great to me, “At The Top of My Lungs” wasn’t ready. The lesser issue is I’m back on Dunlop Ultex Flow picks because I loved the feel of the nylons but the attack just felt too soft in recordings, but the bigger one was I wasn’t entirely happy with the performance. It didn’t sound confident enough, and the more I listened, the more the second prechorus (where in the demo I just echo the first) really needed some fills and variety to make it work.

So, last week, I went back to the drawing board. I didn’t scrap the original takes entirely, they’re still muted in the project file, but I re-recorded all of the lead parts I’d used my Suhr on (the Strat parts still sound great to me), and I’m much happier with the “feel” and “vibe” of the new performance.

Here’s what the pre-chorus sounds like now, after the main solo:

Beyond that, I did some mic experimenting here. The SE Electronics VR1 I’d used for half of the acoustic guitar tracks was one I’d originally bought to use in conjunction with a SM57 as a cab mic, after hearing some amazing sounding tones done with this combo. For whatever reason (and I figure it must have been user error, I can’t think of anything else) I was never happy with how it sounded and ended up sticking with my MD421, but the other night I tried it out again, went through my usual process (get the SM57 right,, then throw the second mic out of phase and make it sound as bad as possible, then flip phase), and absolutely loved what I was hearing.

This is where I had the two mics (the VR1 is roughly where the MD421 was, I just pushed it sideways to make room) positioned:

I’ll have to do some experimenting to see whether this is the better sounding pair for rhythm playingor if the MD421 on either rhythm or lead and this pair on the other ultimately sounds better than just one set alone, but I think, for a quick and dirty clip with just some delay on it, I think this has a LOT of potential as a guitar tone.

Great to be working again, after that hiatus!