Now everything is clear for me... from the JTC Website :
For the many thousands of you that have watched or purchased Guthrie Govan’s ‘The Late Night Sessions 2′ series then you will most probably have noticed that he is using the incredible Fractal Audio Systems Axe-FX II throughout. Here is a reminder:
Now, we imagine that many of you would be thinking just how we got those incredible sounds out of Guthrie’s guitar. Of course, the player helps….but, due to the power of this incredible unit we took a few of the simplest factory presets and modified each of them with just one basic tweak -- i.e. removing all the reverb and delay so that we would have the option of adding those effects separately (with outboard gear or plugins) which we did for the final mixes. Just a touch of delay and reverb was all that was required.
So, here are the factory presets used for each track:
East City Central Lights -- Friedman HBE
The Open Highway -- Friedman HBE
Seal The Feel -- Plexi Treble
The Best of Times -- USA Lead
Time to Let Her Go -- Class A 15Watts TB
We hope to get the SysEx files for Axe FX customers who have both the new package download and an Axe-FX II in the near future, so keep an eyes out on the newlsetters for this.
And for those that have not yet got their copy of the Late Night Sessions 2…what are you waiting for?!? Click HERE to go buy!
As a fan of HUGE fan of
Guthrie Govan for the past 4-to-5 years, I've seen him live three (3) times and listened to his
Erotic Cakes LP and his more recent
Aristocrats fusion-trio LP (with Bryan Beller and Marco Minneman) over & over, and I've transcribed a couple of his tunes & solos (BTW, NO I CANNOT play them up-to-tempo - LOL!) and I can never get enough of Guthrie's playing and music! Sure a lot of people will hear him at times playing very "note-y/busily" and accuse him of "over-playing," but for the most part, I disagree with that assessment of Guthrie's playing! Sure he brings the N.P.S's like few before him, BUT it's NOT how many notes he plays per measure, but rather
HOW he phrases them and how brilliantly he plays through a myriad of changes! Guthrie may occasionally remind listeners of
Steve Vai (when he plays over Lydian Tonality especially - LOL!) or
Shawn Lane (musical note-density,) or
Steve Morse (staccato alternate-picking with clever use of chromaticism,) or
Brett Garsed (killer hybrid-legato,) or
Derek Trucks (killer bottlenecl/slide-guitar!) or even
Jeff Beck (with his AMAZING ability to uniquely phrase a single note or just a few notes in a very vocal-like inflective way through outrageous whammy-bar control or just amazing finger string-bending applications!) That all said, at the end of the day, the more one listens to
Guthrie Govan, the more you realize that he has develped an incredibly diverse and phenomenally skilled & articulate "voice-of-his-own," and his "cheeky" Brit-humor and extremely high intellect ALL come out (in droves!) in his music/playing. Guthrie is an extremely intelligent, friendly and funny man (IMO) and (like most great musicians) his personality comes out
"loud-and-clear" in his playing.
Now that y'all know EXACTLY what I think of
Guthrie Govan, I will also attest that he is very old-school (as evidenced in the minimalist-rigs he used when I've seen him live)
Cornford Half-stack with a couple of pedals the first two (2) times I saw him at
The Middle East Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts - U.S.A. in 2009 & 2010, then a
Suhr Badger-30 with a 2x12 cab (I think?) and a few pedals when I saw The Aristocrats show in September of 2011 at The Berklee College Of Music Peformance Center in Boston, MA - U.S.A. FWIW, I thought his tone was much better with the Suhr Badger-30 amp at Berklee, but then again Berlee's Performance Center sounds way better than The Middle East Club, so that could be an unfair "apples-to-oranges" comparison - LOL! BTW, Guthrie is what my colleagues and I like to refer to as
"Old-School!" He rides his volume-knob incessantly whilst playing (very dynamic!) and NEVER uses any sort of amp channel-switching. He uses really solid - single-channel EL34 type-amps, and his idea of achieving his go-to five different sounds
(with an infinite number of subtle variations in-between each of these tones) while performing is shown below (again - all utilizing one single-channel amp):
Clean-Funk: Suhr GG Signature Series Guitar Volume on 3 into amp, (sometimes with an inexpensive auto-wah kicked-on.)
Clean-Chords: Suhr GG Signature Series Guitar Volume on 4 into amp, (sometimes with a chorus-pedal or phaser kicked-on.)
Edge-of-Breakup/"Malcolm Young": Suhr GG Signature Series Guitar Volume on 8 into amp, NO EFFECTS!
Hard-Rocking Rhythm/Single-Note Melody: Suhr GG Signature Series Guitar Volume on 10 into amp, (sometimes with a delay-pedal kicked-on, *if playing melody.)
Full-Shred/Maximum-Overdrive: Suhr GG Signature Series Guitar Volume on 10 into Boost/OD-pedal (like a KoKo-Boost) into amp, (barely-there/low-mix delay kicked-on.)
*NOTE: Sometimes if Guthrie's hands are tied-up, (playing) he'll use a volume-pedal instead of his guitar's volume-knob.
That's it folks! So to hear that Guthrie is just taking a few solid-prests on the
Axe-FX II and just disabling the reverb & delay as well as boosting the treble a bit in the amp-block. I've always thought that Guthrie likes his tones generally "brighter" than most! I will say that his tone with the
Suhr badger-30 at Berklee Performance Center in Boston, MA - playing with The Aristocrats in 2011, was less "spikey" in the high-end/treble than I remember his Cornford rig when he was playing with The Jon Finn Group at The Middle East Club in Cambridge, MA in 2009 & 2010...but then again, the differing rooms could've influenced those perceptions!
I just think it's incredibly exciting that a player of Guthrie's caliber, who (up until using/trying the
Fracatal Audio Systems Axe-FX II) was (probably) a self-confessed
"tube-snob!" This is just yet ANOTHER example of a great-player lending
"street-cred" to the
Axe-FX II as a great guitar-tool as far as I'm concerned. This will probably eventually translate to added (and much-deserved) business sales for "Team-Fractal," so good for them!
Congrats to Fractal Audio Systems!...You now have the blessing of one of the world's greatest
(albeit, not as well-known as some) electric guitarists in Guthrie Govan!
Bill
