The Guitar Diaries Part 3: Epiphone Riviera (Jan 1998 – April 1999, March 2015-Present)

I considered the Riviera to be the Holy Grail of guitars at this point, because I’d seen Noel Gallagher playing a cherry red one on the Live By The Sea and There And Then videos. So of course, I had to have one. I ordered it from the Flying Pig Instrument Supply Company and was ecstatic when it arrived. One of the best things about this guitar was that it was loud enough to play acoustically in the bedroom. I used this guitar a lot on my four-track recordings from that period, and really began to develop my picking technique with it. It had a wonderful cherry finish that had a deep lustrous lacquer. Considering it was a budget instrument, and essentially a copy of an ES-335, I never considered it to be inferior.

Although it had nice thick humbucker pickups, it sounded best when it was being played gently, and with effects added. At this time I began to experiment using delay and chorusing and maybe not piling on the distortion quite so much. At this time I was listening to the Stone Roses a lot, and listening to some of the demos from the time I can hear that coming through.

I honestly thought I would never sell this guitar, and of all the ones I’ve owned, this is the one I wished I’d hung on to. However, in late ’98 I bought a genuine Gibson Les Paul and a few months later I found I just wasn’t using the Riviera as much, so I sold it to a guy at university. Also, the Les Paul was pushing me into harder rock territory, with the Riviera didn’t seem right for. I still remember the serial number – R97E 0304 – I put this into Google a few weeks ago out of curiosity and saw that at some point in 2012 (last year) it had been for sale on EBay. I wished I’d known, I would have snapped it up without hesitation! When I was in Penguin Steak a few years later, my friend Gav got an Epiphone Sheraton – essentially the deluxe version of the same guitar – and I really got to see what I was missing out on. Just swap the electronics on one of these later 90s Epi Semis for Gibson parts and you’ve got something as good as a contemporary ES-335.

2022 Update

Unbelievably, a couple of years later I did actually track down this very guitar to Barry Island in Wales (the seller had helpfully listed the serial number). I paid £350 to get it back, which is probably what I paid for it in 1998. As my last sentence in 2013 said, put top end hardware in one of these and it's as good as a Gibson, so that's what I did - I changed the bridge, put two new pickups in by Mojo pickups, and changed the tuners for grovers. It made it into an absolutely brilliant guitar. Despite the 16 year gap between ownership, it still felt familiar although somewhat worn in - thanks to it's many previous owners. I put a Bigsby on it at one point which I loved, but it would never stay in tune so I took it off and sold it - now there's a couple of small holes to show for it.

With value and sentimentality taken out of the equation, I'd say this is probably my favourite of my three remaining electrics. I used it live for a couple of jam nights about seven years ago, and in the unlikely event I'd ever play guitar in a band again it's the one I'd use - best sounding, lightest and lowest nickability. I was jamming a lot in 2016-2019 with a mate and this was the one that usually got used. However, it's been laid up for a little while, partly because I wanted to restrict myself to using my Jaguar, but it's in need of some professional attention. It requires a refret and a proper set up. I could tackle this myself, but after seeing what my Les Paul was like after someone with competence did some work on it, I'll be sending it off to get the work done. Fantastic guitar.

The Guitar Diaries Part 2: Epiphone Les Paul Custom (Sept 1997 – March 1998)

The now long gone Route 66 guitars in Hanley had an Epiphone Les Paul Custom in black, and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it. The deal was quickly worked out and I part exchanged the Encore. I took my friend Nick with me (Later of Stoke rockers LiViD) who was more knowledgeable about guitars. I’d really taken very quickly to guitar playing, I knew I was going to be doing a lot of it, and I wanted an axe that I would feel good about playing. After we made the exchange we went back to Nick’s and had a little jam before I got home. That evening I went to Exeter to see Oasis play the Westpoint Arena, so I didn’t have a lot of time to play on it until I got home a couple of days later.

This was a truly great guitar and I often regret parting with it. It felt and looked good, as for the sound I was not very experienced at all in those days. My main beef with it was that it sustained too much, and I just didn’t have the knowledge to control what I was doing – I just used to think piling on the distortion meant I was getting a great sound. At this time I wasn’t playing through an amp and was instead using a Zoom 510 driver pedal, which looking back wouldn’t have given the best of sounds. Nevertheless, I did use it on some very early 4 track recordings.

I liked the LP enough to not part exchange when I was looking to get my next guitar, an Epiphone Riviera. However, after a few months of owning both at the same time, and coming to the conclusion that they sounded exactly the same (because I knew no better), the time came to chop in the Les Paul. Somewhat stupidly, I was aware that this was not a Gibson, and therefore not the ‘real deal’ – again a youthful folly.

The Guitar Diaries Part 1: Encore Hunter 644 (August – September 1997)

After a small amount of internet research, it turns out that my first guitar was an Encore Hunter 644, a cheap Superstrat copy.  If my knowledge of this guitar seems limited, it’s because I only owned it for six weeks. I bought it from Marie who was a friend I worked with at a part time job. I’d been thinking about getting a guitar for a few months, having lived through the Britpop era. Initially I only wanted to get an acoustic, but Marie persuaded me to go electric, probably because she wanted to shift this axe. Along with the guitar I also got a cheap solid state amplifier to go with it.

My friend Andrew from college helped me out stringing and tuning the guitar and getting a few extra accessories. On this guitar I learned my first basic chords and songs. The first time I ever played a song all the way through was when I managed Oasis’ ‘It’s Good To Be Free’ after maybe two or three weeks of practicing.

Marie loved 80s hair metal and also things like Metallica, and being about five years older than me had got the guitar in her early teens. Looking at a few pictures on the internet, it seems it had the usual Superstrat layout of three pickups (Humbucker in the bridge), and it also had a Floyd Rose type tremolo. I knew none of this at the time, but looking at the pictures now I can remember it.

This guitar’s day were numbered on 28^th August 1997. I had gone to town to buy tickets for a U2 concert that evening in Leeds. I was there too early for the tickets, so bought a guitar magazine and sat on a bench in the town centre. In these pre Internet days (or at least before it was widely adopted), magazines, especially ‘The Guitar Magazine’ were the main sources of information about pricing and availability. I knew that the Encore didn’t suit my aesthetic and was incredibly uncool in the Oasis era, so I then began to think about getting a Les Paul. A Gibson would be too expensive, but the reviews were saying how good quality the Epiphones were… I also had a little walk around the music shops (they would be seeing a lot of me over the next year) and looked at what they had in the window, and amongst other things it was the first time I ever saw a Rickenbacker 330 – a 12 string, red with black binding. More of Rickenbacker later.

Business as usual

It's been a busy few weeks in the studio, with a few changes to the gear.

The first and most significant addition has been an Orange Tiny Terror guitar amplifier. Beleive it or not, I have been without an amplifier for years, and certainly haven't used one since the last time I played with my old band Penguin Steak back in 2004. Everything I have recorded has been either through my old Digitech RP200 pedal or more recently DI'd and then run through a guitar amplifier modeller.

I've used some of the major guitar amp modelling programs in the last 5 years or so, Amplitube was probably the best one, Guitar rig was also okay, Mart used UADs Nigel on the Thursday Night EP which gave some decent sounds too. Since switching to Reason about a year ago, I had been using the Line 6 amp modelling software that come with it. It wasn't great to be honest, but then again I don't think I've ever really liked any of them - to my ears the sound always sounds processed and sometimes chords or other heavily layered sounds just don't seem to resolve properly.

Anyway, I'd read a few articles about miking up amps and I just thought why the hell not - I've got three nice guitars so why not let the tone shine through? So I did a little research and it seemed the Orange Tiny Terror was a decent bet - highly regarded, but with a fairly generic approach which meant it shouldn't be dificult to cover several bases. Clean sounds are important o me, all the way up to medium distortion. But I don't really need metal-like tones, so it's lack of very high gain wasnt' a problem.

At the same time as ordering the Tiny Terror (TT from now on), I bought a Shure SM57 mic, mainly for miking the amp, but also because everyone seems to have one and they are reputedly very useful for all kinds of sounds!

Nine Killer Bees


Work continues on my songs as time allows. In the last week or so the idea has come together to group some of them together as an album. Nine Killer Bees is the working title, and was the name I gave at the time to my collection of songs I wrtote between about September 2005 and April 2006. Listening to the old demos recently made me think how they all fitted together, both in terms of sound and theme, so it would make a good album. I have five of the nine complete or almost complete at the moment. The plan is to finish tracking by the end of January and mixed and on soundcloud by the end of February. We'll see!

Back to Earth

In September 2008 I got my first (virtual) analog synthesizer and a few months later I got the FM8 VSTi from Native Instruments. I'd dabbled with electronic before, but this was the first time I'd made any serious commitment of time (and money!) in the gear to do it. Back to Earth was the first song I made with this new equipment, and was written around the keyboard riff you hear in the chorus.

As an aficionado of 80s music, the song sort of developed around that sound, like a pop song from the mid 80s, right before the point that dance music begun to influence pop. The intention was for the song to be all electronic and the obvious choice would have been to put a synth bassline on it. However, for some reason I jammed the bassline on my bass guitar and it sounded good to me, so I thought I'd stick with it.

I was quite happy with it initially, but I fell out of luck with it quite quickly, as I wrote Don't Break My Heart, A Lie and Let it Ride not long afterwards and it sat in demo form until this year. I wanted to track the song in Record 1.5/Reason 5, and exported the bounced filed of the synths from Cubase, as R&R didn't support VSTs (quite rightly!) nor did MIDI out for the Nord Lead (not so happy about that...). The drums were originally done with the drums in Cubase's Halion device, but I changed to one of the high quality kits in Reason's factory soundbank. The moog-style synth solo was added in at the end from the Nord Lead, and played freehand. Unfortunately, the song was a little bit too high for me to sing so I left it a little while until Reason 6 was released - essentially combining Record 1.5 and Reason 5 plus some extra new devices and features, one of which was audio transpose! I dropped everything down by two semitones and it was easier to sing.

The bassline is retained from the original demo. I kept it partly because I thought I'd done a decent job, and partly because I wanted to experiment using Recycle and Reason's Dr. Octo Rex device to effectively audio quantise the part. Thankfully, on my original demo I'd recorded the signal dry, then sent the recorded signal to my outboard Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro. I was able to find the takes of the original dry signal, import them into recycle for slicing, then load each part (verse, bridge, chorus and middle 8) into one instance of Dr. Octo Rex. Finally, I quantised each slice to tighten it all up. I was happy with the results. And it's so far the only time I've ever played slap-bass!

The version currently on soundcloud is a rough mix, but I would like to return to it in the future and really polish it, and despite all the work I did with the bassline to recorded it properly and more cleanly.

Back To Earth (Rough Mix) by Ligumo


I wrote the song not long after I'd quit a rather soul-destroying job to work for myself. The first few months were  difficult but I decided to stick with it. The song is about my thoughts of my old job, sometimes wondering whether I'd done the right thing, and resolving to stick with what I'd done.

The First Day and Better as Friends

Over the last few months it's been difficult to find the time to devote to music. In september I left for India for 6 weeks for work, and while away I came up with a lot of ideas for music, both for news songs and the will to complete older ones.

An acoustic guitar is an important instrument for the recording artist - believe it or not I'd never had a proper one until last week! I'd made do with either borrowing other people's or getting by with a very cheap one which I gave away a few years ago. I'd been promising to get an Epiphone J200 for about 5 years and last week I finally decided that the time had come!

The First Day


I wrote this song at the start of a very productive streak in the Autumn of 2005*. It was recorded the week I bought my Rickenbacker 330 - in fact I think recording was already underway when I bought it - so I like the trivial fact that this new version has been completed in the wake of another guitar purchase.

Though a demo has been knocking around for 6 years, and Mart Owen also did his Electronic Cowboy remix of the song, this (unintentionally!) slightly slower recording is basically the same as original, just recorded cleaner and with the benefit of several years recording experience!

The song was basically about waking up somewhere after completely leaving your old life behind, and how the world woul be full of new possibilities, but also with a slight tinge of what's been left behind. The ambience sounds that bookmark the track are from some recordings I made of Diwali celebrations in Kolkata, October 2011.



Better as Friends


I've always loved the Beatles since a child, and I know that when I wrote this I was listening to them quite a lot and trying to copy some of their songwriting techniques. This was, I think, the first song I ever recorded that was in 6/8 time signature.

Again, this is a complete re-record from scratch although essentially a clean up of the original demo. I took a lot of care with the drums on this, and for the first time I've used the very natural natural sounds of Jason McGerr's refill for Reason 6. I also changed the bassline, paid a lot of attention to the rhythm guitars and took some time to get the best out of the SM58 microphone I bought for vocals but hadn't really used a lot up to this point. Vocals aside, I haven't paid much attention to micophone use before, but I'm having a lot of fun learning how to use them properly.

However, the guitar solo is lifted from the original demo. It was recorded well enough and sounded fine... so why not?!

I was inspired to write this song by a colleague I worked with. He was always breaking up with his girlfirend and having stupid fights with her. I remember going up Hanley to do some shopping one saturday afternoon and having the basic idea for the song - I came home and got it done!



At the moment I've got time on my hands and the will to record, so I hope to have more songs online soon!

*From Sept - Dec 2005 I wrote and demod Operation Nightfall, Something You've Not Got, The First Day, Canyon Song, Better as Friends, Mister G and Anytime. It must have been an inspirational time!

A cover of a Depeche Mode song

I've just moved into a new home, so there's been a break in my musical activities. I eased myself back into recording last week with a simple cover version of Depeche Mode's Somebody.

Though I find myself having to do it from neccessity, I'm not a natural vocalist - but I was quite happy with my vocals on this track.

Somebody (Depeche Mode cover) by Ligumo

I've been back in the studio this week working on some more original material, and I hope to have something new online by the end of the week!

Alex