Boss BR Guitar Centric Workstation (Bodger Edition)

[WarpCanada]

Just wanted to share the evolution of my Boss BR 600 based "guitar centric" songwriting station.

Here's a picture:



Current setup:

1.  To get songs out of the Boss BR series recorders, one needs to have a PC with USB at a convenient distance from the Boss BR.  As my Guitar area of my music room is far from my DAW and Keyboard area, which is its own busy crazy Bodger Build (another post on that later, it's a bunch of bodged together shelving made from construction grade plywood atop a very vanilla L shaped office/computer desk), you can't see that part of my room from this part.  The guitar side is a wall of amps and guitars hanging up.   The shelf is a bodged together bit of plywood and a 2"x4" bolted to a stud in the wall, at a height that makes using the keyboard and mouse on this laptop impractical. The laptop has three main duties:  Connect to the Line6 Pod Go for patch editing, uploading, downloading and firmware updating,  connect to the BR600 to get songs off it, and to put backing tracks onto it, and to run the BR600 editor software. For that reason it runs Windows 7.   I use a remote server program (TightVNC Server) to actuall get into the machine from my main DAW pc, so I don't have to use a keyboard and a mouse that are five feet up in the air.

2. The BR 600 is bodged onto a tilted shelf below the laptop.  I work interactively with that while singing lyrics into the built in condensor mics, or playing guitar backing parts or solos.

3. Below that is my main home-use amp (Blackstar HT5R) atop a custom bodger stand that also holds 1/4" TS and XLR cords, and all other manner of home studio cabling nonsense, and my pedal board rig attached with four cable method to permit the amp's built in tones (glorious tube preamp crunch, and all out marshall plexi scream) and the pod go modeller tones to meld in a lovely way.  Some of my pedals only sound good into a real amp and don't sound good into a modeller, so I find this hybrid "pedals, and real amp, plus pod go modelling" keeps me full of fun possibilities.  The PodGo recently had a firmware update which added a bunch more effects so it's like having bought more pedals without having bought more pedals.

Now some words about iteration:

A.   If I'm going to work at a PC anyways,  then the BR600 is not that useful.  The PC in this setup is there just because getting things out of the boss was annoying. I used to have to unplug all the cords and everything, move the thing over to my PC, OR unscrew the Compact Flash card door, and then pull the CF card out and put it into a CF reader.  I found this was too much of a pain so I just didn't bother and songs stayed on the BR and did not get off there onto my PC.

B.  I actually don't plan to ever mix or  RELEASE most of the recordings I make on the BR. That's my demo and songwriting station.  Once the songs are written, I force myself to re-record them.  I leave song ideas on the BR and periodically go back and revisit them, to see which parts I want to save.    It's not that the re-recording ups the production quality, per se, the boss does a fine job of recording it, it's just that I feel I need a second go at my vocal takes after I've let them sit in the can for a few weeks, and once I'm adding synth parts and better drums, I figure, may as well re-record the vocals and the guitars too.

C.  The best feature on the BR is you turn it on and you press record and you just go. Your brain is not thinking about DAWs or anything else, just thinking about songs.

D. I'm actually NOT mic'ing up my guitar, I'm using the blackstar HT5R's cab emulated headphone/line-level recording output to record the guitars, and it sounds fantastic into the BOSS BR600's LINE INPUT.  This is perhaps the best tip in the whole post:  If you have an emulated line level OUTPUT, attach it to the BOSS BR LINE LEVEL INPUT even if the cabling to do that isn't immediately obvious to you.    Out of the PodGO, or out of the amp (I chose the latter), the line level output is pristine and perfectly recorded.    Into the mic/instrument inputs, I can not get even close to a decent quality guitar recording, from the PA outputs, the headphone or emulated cabinet outputs on a modeller, or a practice amp.

I also want to make a special note of the Bodger level quality (abysmal) of screws and plywood and cheap and dirty hacks, whatever it takes to get things in the place where I want them held, while I work.  There was a time when I would have been embarassed at the low quality of the "workmanship", now I just grin, and say "works, doesn't it?", just like my Grandfather Charlie would have said.   See Grandpa, the line of Bodgers and Kludgers in our family tree has not died out.

If you have not auditioned the difference it makes by the way to lift a 10" guitar speaker cabinet making a "tiny" 5 watts of total power,  off the floor, and point it at your ears, while seated, and then listened to it, you should do so.  Bodge something together and get that amp 2-4 feet off the ground so that the speakers line up to your face either at your preferred seating or standing position, and you'd be amazed how much better a 5 Watt Practice Amp sounds.   You can get incredible sounds out of these modern 5 watt high quality hybrid tube amps.  I do not find it worth doing for my 150watt head into a 2x12 cabinet, however, that one can shake your world with the dials at 9 AM.  My wife gives me the most clearly understandable looks when I do that and she's not gone away for the weekend, though, so that can't happen all the time.

Another use for a laptop like this, attached to a PodGO, which has its own audio interface is to use the audio interface to play backing tracks from your PC directly out through your monitors. 

I also have a bass guitar and a bass amp, and I have the OUPUT of the Boss BR600 going into a Fender BASS 15W practiceamp, which has an aux input. This allows me to jam without headphones, while playing lead guitar, over top the bass guitar and rhythm guitar and the backing tracks.  I believe I have it cabled up so I could also directly record PC audio output into the BR 600, so I can get a blues backing track off youtube without fussing with some PC based way to rip audio off youtube.

The thing is that which is made easy to do, you will do more often.  The idea is to reduce friction from "idea in my head" to "demo, however terrible sounding", and also to be a place where I can quickly experiment with bass and guitar rhythm ideas, until something sounds good.

[WarpCanada]

Turns out the display on these things is hard to read at that low angle, so I angled the shelf to about 30 degrees away from vertical, instead of about 30 degrees away from horizontal.

Much easier to see.   With my bodger-iffic woodworking skills that's just a bit of screwing and sawing and boom, done.

[des0free]

Very nice.  I can see that quite a lot of thought and organization went into that and it is utilitarian.  I unfortunately do not have a permanent set up, or place in the house for one, so am always dragging equipment out, attaching wires, and maybe putting away or maybe leaving a temporary mess...