[Lowboy]

Thanks guys. I learned a lot in those nine months and am still learning.

While I achieved a pretty good harmonica sound in the studio, I am finding it hard to do well in a live situation. Given the boost I need at each pedal to achieve the distorted sound, and given the loud stage volume of a live setting, I am finding the bleed from the other instruments into my mic is also be boosted and distorted. So this distorted bleed is also being feed into my monitoring system and to the main PA. In my monitoring system, the band sounds distorted and all of the sound has the delay effect applied to it. So it can be a big garbled mess in my monitor unless I turn down some of the distortion/boost, in which case, I no longer have a distorted Chicago Blues sound. Plus sending this distorted bleed to the main PA is not helping the overall sound either.

So there are times when I will use this sound, but I also like a clean sound and have nearly perfected my approach to getting a clean sound where the character if each melodica really comes through–rather than, as Alan noted on one of my recording, you could hardly tell the difference between a Suzuki and Yamaha because there was so much processing going on.

I will tell you about my new approach soon. I think I have finally got the clean sound down where each melodica’s character shines, stage monitoring and mic bleed are solved, and where I get a really full deep sound from all the melodicas. Hint. Less is more and the microphone type is a key.

I also obtain a sound that is similar but distinct from a harmonica, yet just as bodacious.

Regards,

Lowboy