Mike's Musical Instruments
and Recording Gear

Acoustic Guitar
Mike uses a Takamine acoustic guitar named Paco. This guitar has a pickup and a place, in the stern, to plug in a cable. Mike routes the cable from Paco straight into the mixer, and so far, hasn't been struck by lightning for his heresy, the way you might think. He bought the guitar new in about 1983, and it has been banged around a bit on boats and beaches over the years, but still has a great sound. A great friend. Click here so see the closest thing Takamine now offers to this guitar.

Brady Anderson, an Olympia area master luthier, does the adjustments and repairs.

Electric Guitar
Ms. Renzi is a Burns Brian May Signature Red Special. Burns and Mr. May collaborated on this project to make available an affordable and reasonably well-crafted copy of his famous Red Special. For amplification, Mike uses a "wear-it-on-yer-belt" battery-operated Korg amp and effects modeler. For what Mike does with this guitar, the modeler seems to do the trick, and it fits in the carry-on luggage!

Here are a couple of the many other Brian May Red Special copies.

RS Guitars

Guyton Guitars

Microphones
All of Mike's voices (minimum one per personality!) and the occassional "mic-ed" guitar enter the recorder/mixer via an Audio-Technica AT3035 Capacitor Cardoid microphone.

In an effort to avoid a lot of techno-speak, we'll report that this is an affordable mic that seems to "work" with Mike's voice.

Mike also has an industry standard Shure SM57 mic. The Shure is for propping, slightly off-center, in front of a Vox AC30, which Mike doesn't own, but it's always good to be ready for these things.

Mixer / Recorder
For recording all of the song projects on this site, Mike used a Korg D1200, "studio-in-a-box." It does everything. It records. It mixes. It bounces. It burns CDs. If has effects...lots and lots of them! Even plays drums. It's been a good teacher, and a great listener.