Player feel, mic placement, and your recording room are the real secrets to getting soulful, compelling performances. Spend time understanding them before you push the button.
In a world saturated with plugins, presets, and post-production wizardry, it’s easy to forget the most important part of the recording process. I call it the “Red Light Trifecta.” It’s a simple, powerful concept that can transform your recordings from sterile to soulful—regardless of your gear, your room, or your budget. Tighten up your belts, the dojo is now open.
The Red Light Trifecta refers to three interdependent elements that define every recorded sound: the player (of which the instrument is merely an extension), the microphone (and its placement), and the room. If you’re lacking in any one of these, your recording suffers—not just in fidelity, but in feel. When all three work in harmony, the red light on your recorder becomes a doorway to magic. Below, we’ll explore the steps to achieving this.
1. Feel First, Gear Second
It’s easy to get lost in the gear conversation. The internet is full of passionate debates about preamps, converters, boutique mics, and vintage/new guitars. But none of it matters if the performance isn’t compelling.
When you press record, you’re not capturing a tone; you’re capturing a human being’s interaction with an instrument. You’re capturing intention, emotion, and energy. The touch of a player’s fingers on the fretboard, the timing of a right-hand mute, the bend at the end of a phrase—these micro-decisions are what form the soul of a recording. And they’re specific to that player.
“When you press record, you’re not capturing a tone; you’re capturing a human being’s interaction with an instrument.”
If you’ve ever plugged into someone else’s rig—same guitar, same amp, same settings—you know how uncanny it is that you still sound like you. Conversely, a truly great player can make a pawnshop guitar sound like it came from a boutique luthier’s bench. That’s not mysticism; it’s muscle memory, control, and mindset.
So the first rule of recording is this: Start with the player (even if it’s you)! Are they connected to the music? Are they playing with purpose? No amount of EQ or compression can fake that.
2. The Mic: Placement Over Price Tag
If the player is the heart of the performance, the mic is the conduit. There are thousands of microphones out there; some with reputations so mythic they practically glow in the dark. But a great mic in the wrong place will still result in a lousy recording. Conversely, a modest mic in the right spot can yield professional, even breathtaking results.
Mic placement is where your ears matter more than your eyes. It’s about experimenting, listening, and adjusting. Moving a mic an inch can dramatically change the tone—less boom, more clarity, tighter low end, softer transients. You’re not just pointing a mic; you’re sculpting a sound at the source.
Want a quick way to test your placement? Record a short passage, then move the mic slightly and record again. Compare. Listen to not just the tone, but the space, the balance, the emotional impact. Don’t be afraid to break rules or try unconventional setups. Your job isn’t to copy someone else’s sound—it’s to find the best version of yours.
Remember: It’s very easy to make an expensive mic sound cheap. But with care, it’s also possible to make a budget mic sound exceptional.
3. The Room: The Invisible Instrument
The third member of the trifecta is the most misunderstood—and the most revealing: the room. Every space has a sound, whether you’re aware of it or not. Some spaces are flattering. Some are brutal. But all of them are recorded.
Think of the room as your invisible instrument. It contributes resonance, reflections, and tone. It shapes the reverb tail, the attack, and the decay. If the room is boomy or boxy, your track will sound that way—even before you add any processing. If it’s too dry, you might find your recordings feel lifeless or anemic.
That doesn’t mean you need a world-class studio with floating floors and golden ratios. It means you need to understand your space. Clap your hands. Walk around while playing. Record from different spots. Learn what your room wants to do naturally and work with it, not against it.
Sometimes, the best solution is to change the instrument’s location by a few feet. Or use furniture as gobos. Or hang a blanket. Or lean into the room’s quirks and let them define the character of the track.
The Trifecta in Action
When all three elements align, you get a vibe. You get a performance that resonates emotionally, and sonically. And in the end, that’s what we remember: not the mic model or plugin chain, but how the music made us feel. Until next month, namaste.
Bold aesthetics and simple but flexible controls make this extroverted 2-channel amp a star.
When it comes to aesthetics, most modern amp design has been lacking for a long time. Go way back to the middle of the 20th century, and you’ll find amps with serious flair. I’m talking about cute little vintage lap-steel combos cranked out by Valco for brands like Oahu, mid-mod-styled early-’60s Gretsches, short-lived watermelon-and-tree-bark ’50s Ampegs, and Fender’s early woody amps, which presaged the bachelor-pad era. By the mid ’60s or so, amp designs coalesced into an assortment of black boxes and have, with some exceptions, remained that way.
When Philly-area amp tech Josh Strange started building his own Strange Audio combos, their candy-colored cabs and technicolor grilles quickly caught the eyes of the Instagram set. The sheer variety of offerings, from grille-cloth options that range from floral to cloud-cover to cowboy, had some of us non-builders wondering, “Has it really been possible to make an amp look this coolall this time!?”
Strange’s latest, The Eloise, comes in a head-and-cab form factor that is stunning. More importantly, Strange’s knack for design goes well beyond the visual. The Eloise’s original circuit design, with switchable preamp tubes and a unique EQ, meets the demands of both players who want a straightforward plug-and-play amp and those who need to capture a wide range of styles or prefer a pedal platform scenario.
Outside the Box
The 35-watt Eloise head is eye-catching for its red vinyl covering and multi-colored starburst grille-cloth, but also for its more subtle but still noticeable control set. There are a pair of triangularly arranged control sets for the bite and bold channels, each of which include tone, gain, and mid knobs. The channels are selectable via a switch on the panel or a footswitch. There’s also an attenuator that brings the power down to about 7 watts, and a 3-way meaner/cleaner/both switch.
The Eloise is ruggedly constructed using top-notch components, including Soursound transformers, and capacitors from Jupiter, Vishay, and F&T. Strange offers matching cabs in 2x12 and 2x10 configurations. I demoed the 2x12, which was loaded with a pair of Weber Legacy Series ceramic speakers.
A pair of 6L6s power the fixed bias circuit, and there’s a GZ34 tube rectifier. Channel switching determines preamp tubes, however. The bold channel uses an octal 6SL7, delivering a robust voice with deep lows, warm mids, and rounded highs. The bite channel utilizes a 12AX7 for a brighter, more cutting high-mid voice. Within each channel, there’s a wide range of tones to explore via the tone control and a unique mid control. The tone knob controls high/low balance, while the mid knob sweeps the midrange voice from scooped to boosted.
Boosted and Balanced
Within each channel, the tone, mid, and volume controls work in conversation with each other, not unlike the tone and volume controls in a tweed Fender, which balance lows, highs, and mids, but also push the circuit to a saturated, overdriven state. As such, I spent lots of time with all three controls pretty near to full-on, manipulating the amp with my guitar volume or playing dynamics.
The meaner/cleaner/middle switch fine tunes output by adding or subtracting negative feedback and a preamp stage bypass cap. Cleaner selects negative feedback with no bypass cap, offering the most headroom; middle offers a medium amount of gain with neither negative feedback nor the bypass cap; and meaner has the least headroom and delivers the most overdrive by adding the bypass cap.
Between these options, the voicing of each channel, and the versatility of each channel’s controls, I dialed up a very wide range of tones. I could find saturated, cutting lead sounds using the bite channel in meaner mode and cranking all three controls, or throaty, neck-pickup tones with the bold channel in cleaner mode, the mids in the upper range, and the gain pulled back to about 60 percent.
Since The Eloise is a cool 35 watts, the natural overdrive is loud enough to hang alongside a rock rhythm section, but not so loud that you’ll get kicked out of the band. And there’s enough headroom that The Eloise can serve as a pedal platform and deliver effect-driven distorted and fuzz tones. The attenuator is effective, too, for keeping overdriven tones ripping without sacrificing tone at lower levels.
The Verdict
The look of The Eloise—and the entire Strange Audio line—helps set a high bar for amp style, and hopefully more builders will take note. Its unique control set and approach to channel voicing is compelling, and the interactivity between the controls gives it a wide range of tone options that are fun and intuitive to explore.
At 35 watts, The Eloise hits a sweet spot for those who want to push their amp while keeping volume manageable. Ultimately, Strange strikes a nice balance between familiar 6L6 territory and a novel approach to how to widen the sonic playing field.
Tight spacing between pedals calls for a tighter cable approach. Gator Cableworks now offers a space-saving option with the launch of Flat Patch Cables, available as part of its Composer Series collection of high-quality audio cables.
The Composer Series Flat Patch Cables are built for musicians who demand premium signal integrity and efficient pedalboard management. Each cable features slim, compact connectors that fit into tight spaces and adapt to a variety of challenging pedal layouts, helping reduce clutter and maximize usable surface area on crowded boards.
Engineered for high performance, the cables feature 99.99% oxygen-free copper conductors to ensure clear signal transmission. The 24 AWG low capacitance construction helps preserve tone while minimizing interference, and a double-shielding layer delivers a 100% shielding factor to guard against noise and RF disruption.
Each cable includes TS male right-angle ¼-inch connectors with nickel-plated housing and 24K gold-plated contact tips, providing optimal conductivity and corrosion resistance for long-term reliability.
The Composer Series Flat Patch Cables are available in the following sizes and pack options: 3-inch, 6-inch, 12-inch and 24-inch lengths, as well as 3-packs of 3-inch, 6-inch and 12-inch models. All Cableworks cables are backed by a Limited Lifetime Guarantee.
The first thing most guitarists think of when they hear the phrase “hybrid picking” is undoubtedly twangy Telecasters. While that may be the most common use of hybrid picking, it is far from the only application. Diving into hybrid picking opens a whole new world of control, timbre possibilities, ideas, speed, and more.
As beginning guitarists start to move into the intermediate level, they typically build speed by practicing alternate or economy picking. It makes complete sense–especially to someone who’s new to the journey–that if you’re holding a pick, that’s what you should strike the strings with. I grew up learning how to play taking a slightly different route. Personally, I found it easier to be faster–and cleaner–to hybrid pick phrases, lines, and solos. It clicked with me and therefore was the technique I homed in on when growing from a beginner to an intermediate player. My alternate and economy techniques still aren’t as comfortable as hybrid picking, so here are some ideas from a guy that learned things from a bit of a different perspective. If you feel like your playing has plateaued, this might help you to keep climbing.
Small note: I use the pad of my fingers when hybrid picking and not the nail.
Step 1: Focus on the Small Differences
In Ex. 1 you’ll find what I consider to be one of the main benefits of getting comfortable with hybrid picking. I pick every note of the phrase on the first pass, but hybrid pick it on the second. On the second pass, the root note (open 4th string) is the only note the pick hits. I generally like to approach hybrid picking with an “each finger is assigned a string” method, meaning in this example the middle finger picks the note on the 3rd string and the ring finger picks the note on the 2nd string. Listening to the same two phrases played differently, you’ll note that there’s a tad more feel and nuance the second time through. These are subtle but can make all the difference in the world when it comes to creating, playing, recording, or performing parts. The combination of a mountain’s worth of small differences like this are what sets the pros apart!
Step 2: How to Play Chords with Hybrid Picking
Ex. 2 is how I love to use hybrid picking when comping. In this example the pick is handling everything on the 5th string while the middle finger picks the 4th string, the ring finger picks the 3rd string, and the pinky picks the 2nd string. Not only does hybrid picking this groove allow for a ton of control, it allows the pick to rhythmically separate from the rest of the fingers, creating a faux bassline. Again, using the middle, ring, and pinky fingers give a softer touch to the upper end of the chords, creating a more nuanced feel.
Step 3: Time to Go Low
Taking the idea of the pick handling the low end of the chords and giving the notes focus while the fingers contribute to clarity and softness on the upper end of the chords, we get Ex. 3. The pick only strikes the 6th string, while the middle finger picks the 3rd string, and the ring finger picks the 2nd string. This example of hybrid picking is widely used by guys like John Mayer and allows a player to have a ridiculous amount of control over what strings are being struck when playing something clean such as this.
Step 4: Let’s Get Sweeping
Applying this concept to lead playing, Ex. 4 replaces what would typically be an upward sweep with hybrid picking. The pick strikes the A note on the 7th fret of the 4th string. Then, the middle finger picks the C# on the 6th fret of the 3rd string, the ring finger picks the E note on the 5th fret of the 2nd string, and the pick strikes the F# on the 7th fret of the 2nd string. This is followed by a downward sweep of the same notes in reverse order. To end the lick, I pick the open 4th string. That’s when hybrid picking allows me to play a rolled Dmaj7 chord. These two embellishments are highly useful when both soloing and comping, and once again are a small touch that provides some “spice.”
Step 5: Enough with the Clean Stuff
Ex. 5 is a lick I use (I should probably say abuse) consistently. My sweep picking skills are abysmal. In part because I haven’t dedicated the appropriate time to practice them, but also partly because I tend to hybrid pick as a cheat or workaround. The lick is based on a G major arpeggio beginning at the 10th fret of the 5th string. I then pick the 4th string with my middle finger and the 3rd string with my ring finger. From there, I gather for a few notes with the pick on the 3rd string and repeat the pattern again across the fretboard. However, the second hybrid-picked part of the lick begins by striking the 9th fret of the 3rd string with the pick, then using my middle finger to pick the 8th fret of the 2nd string and my ring finger to pick the 7th fret of the 1st string. To end the arpeggio, I strike the 10th fret of the 1st string with the pick. The last bit of the phrase is a garden variety blues lick ending.
Hybrid picking is an extremely valuable tool that I think every guitar player should have in their arsenal. A player can have more control, feel, and timbral options compared to only using a plectrum, and it’s an easier way to add velocity with very minimal right-hand movement or tension. Try hybrid picking different grooves, licks, arpeggiated chord shapes, and even pieces of lead lines you already know to begin exploring how the technique can work for you.
Continuing to shatter the boundaries of what is possible within the analog time-modulation domain, Mr. Black is proud to announce the all-new Mod.One - Analog Modulator. The Mod.One combines chorus, flanger and “high-band” flanger into a single compact pedal, readily capable of creating each effect independently, and further expanded by its ability to seamlessly morph between these processes on the fly, bridging the gaps between the classic, related modulation sounds, while affording all-new tones and possibilities.
Hand built and individually calibrated, the Mod.One also includes Click-Less relay true-bypass, six waveforms and precision tap-tempo, delivering premium analog modulation in a built-to-last compact and handsome package.
Key features:
• 100% analog signal path
• Wide range of LFO speeds
• Six waveforms
• Tap-Tempo
• Click-Less True-Bypass
• Powered by “Industry Standard” 9VDC
The Mod.One carries a MAP of $249.95 and is handmade, one-at-a-time in Portland, Oregon U.S.A. Available at: www.mrblackpedals.comand retailers worldwide.