Now this is some funny shit!  In case you didn’t know, when I’m not rockin’ out with megaphone, I pay bills as a freelance lighting director.  In that line of work, there’s really no better way to make the big bucks than to work in the corporate market, lighting everything from dinner parties to big corporate general sessions.  So here I am working a show for Lockheed Martin, with a production company that I’ve never worked for before, next to a sound engineer that I just met.  In our conversation, of course I mention that I play guitar in an unsigned band (I’m not afraid of some shameless self promotion!) called megaphone.  He says, “If you’re a guitar player, you might find this funny” and opens up his laptop to show me this picture.

My first reaction is, “yea, that’s pretty funny”, but then I quickly realize that I’m looking at a picture of MY GUITAR RIG!!!  He goes on to tell me that this picture has made it’s way around the internet in the circle of production techs that he knows as a fowarded email.  The community of production techs across the country is pretty tight knit and it’s not very hard to count the degrees of separation from one lighting guy, to another video guy, to another audio guy (crewspace.com is a good demonstration of this).  Considering that my first reaction to this photo was to think, “someone has no idea what they’re doing”, I can only imagine how many of my friends, associates, and acquaintances have seen the pic and thought the same thing.  Since it’s my gear, and I ABSOLUTELY know what I’m doing, I feel like an explanation in my defense is in order.  I never FAIL!

First thing to point out is that this picture was photoshopped.  The Sennheiser 421 was pointed at the front of the Marshall head (which contains no speakers, which is what makes the photo funny, in case you didn’t know).  The contraption holding the microphone that is pointing at the Marshall head is called a Z bar.  My mic set up for my guitar rig is two Z bars, taped together facing in opposite directions.  The top Z bar holds the 421 in the picture, and usually mics my 1964 Vox AC-30, and the bottom Z bar holds a 609 that mics the Marshall speaker cabinet below.  This bottom Z bar has been edited out of the picture, but part of it was left in as shown in figure A.  To take it a step further, in figure B you can see where the mic cable attached to the 609 on the cab has been cut out of the picture as well.

figure A

figure B

At this particular show, we had an opening act that was going to be using a Marshall 4×12 just like mine, so rather than load the stage up with a bunch of gear, making change over take a little longer and leaving the band before us with a little less room on stage, I suggested that they just use my cab.  I removed my Vox amp from the top of my cab, and he put his head in its place.  When I was asked if i could remove the 421, I explained that the Z bars are taped together and I was not down with removing the tape only to have to replace it after the band was done with their set. That was a small price to pay for not having to lug another guitar cabinet onto the stage! You’re welcome.

Now I’m all but certain that I’ll probably receive some comments from the peanut gallery about this blog post, and all I can say is that this is absolutely the truth. I have never attempted to mic up a Marshall head.  To whoever the photoshop genius is, I have two things to say:

1. Tight work!  That shit was funny.

2. Thank you for not attaching my name, or my band’s name to the picture.  As funny as it is, it would have been a drag to be associated with something like that without a proper explanation!

I realize that I probably took this a little more seriously than I should have, but being a little OCD, I felt compelled to defend myself and my gear!  I’ve owned that Marshall cab since I was 12 years old and seeing a picture of my old friend with the word FAIL! printed below it made me jump on the defensive.  Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I need to get back to filling out my application to Full Sail!