Complément d'information sur le matériel d'Andy Summers pour la tournée 2007-2008. J'avais déjà posté le lien vers l'article de Guitar Player, réalisé durant les répétitions :
Mais je savais qu'il avait changé deux ou trois chose pour la tournée.
Par exemple, le pédalier avait été réduit. En répétition, c'était ça :
Sur scène, il n'était plus qu'en une seule partie. Il a viré la wah-wah, le RC-20 et une pédale de volume, dont il n'avait pas l'utilité dans le cadre de Police.
Ensuite, je savais qu'il y avait un tremolo qui traînait quelque part (il suffit d'écouter Walking in your footsteps), mais rien d'indiqué. Et youpi, j'ai enfin trouvé les informations manquantes.
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large part of Summers' focus for the reunion tour was to update his equipment to get what he calls, "this incredible state of the art guitar sound."
"I'd been using a small pedalboard for years with only a few effects," Summers explains. "For the tour, I went back to the big rock stereo sound with lots of effects, split in a wet/dry setup, with mono/dry in the middle and the left and right for a big wet stereo sound. I had to sort out all the colours for each song, program everything and make it work with the Bob Bradshaw pedal switching board. I took a long look around at what was out there in terms of effects and pedals, and ended up using a combination of raw analogue pedals and digital devices. Everything is switched together and very quiet."
"When we first started rehearsing, I was hitting every pedal in sight. It worked, but it was cumbersome, so we decided to take that out of the loop. The effects are now operated by my tech guy, Dennis Smith, from an off-stage position. Dennis has worked with me for many years and he's also a very good musician. You couldn't do it if you weren't, because when you come to the end of a chorus and go into a guitar solo, the change in guitar sound has to come right on the beat. I can be miles away from the pedalboard and rely on Dennis to switch the sounds as needed. I can override what Dennis does at any time, so it's like we're both in charge. It gives me a lot of freedom."
To complete Summers' on-stage sense of freedom on tour, his guitar is connected to his amplifiers via three Sennheiser EW500G2 wireless systems, and he also uses the Ultimate Ears in-ear monitoring system. "I hate in-ear monitor systems," Summers remarks, "I absolutely loathe them. I've played for years on and off with earplugs in to protect my hearing. I have a little bit of tinnitus in my left ear, but other than that my hearing is absolutely fine. Some people say that in-ear monitor systems are not good because it goes straight to your ear, but you can completely reduce the volume and still get a clear picture. They were an absolute bitch to get used to because it's just not natural. At the end of the night, when we take a bow in front of the audience, I pull out the in-ear monitors and the audience alone is just deafening. It's overwhelming."
With this groundswell of adoration flooding over them, are The Police tempted to extend their reunion and perhaps even record some new material? "Not right now," replies Summers. "We're still in the middle of a reunion tour and people don't like us suddenly laying on a song they've never heard before. But after the tour, the whole situation is an open door. We'll see if we get as far as that. For now, the challenge is to go on stage and not get jaded. These songs are very simple to play for me and you don't want to knock them out like a factory every night. I'm much too sophisticated a musician for that. It's just one of life's ironies that I go out and play all of these pop songs. My worry is that playing them every night is dumbing down for me."
"This tour is pretty all-devouring. Initially, I left my whole musical universe behind. That really didn't work for me, so I'm trying to correct it now. I like playing the guitar and I have a classical guitar and a Fender here in my hotel room, which I play every day. I like to go on stage with my hands moving and warmed up. I also have a lot of music with me now. I'm trying to keep my own musical autonomy outside of playing The Police set every night. I almost feel like I'm done now with the tour, that I don't really need to do any more. I've had the experience and want to go home, but it ain't going to happen. We still need to do the second leg of the North American tour and then we go to South America, Japan, and Australia. It's an incredible situation and nothing to moan about really. When I go on stage, it's about being in the moment. Usually, that does come, because every night you walk out there's this huge mob and it's exciting..."
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Dennis Smith has worked full-time with Andy Summers since 1984, when he was Assistant Engineer during the recordings of Bewitched, the guitarist's second album with Robert Fripp. On the phone from Dublin, where the Police reunion tour had landed, Smith related with a good-natured chuckle that he set out, as so many, to become a musician, but that the sound of the demo recordings he made of his own music was so good that he soon found his engineering skills in more demand. Since then, Smith has engineered and co-produced quite a number of Summers' albums, including First You Build A Cloud. Today, he runs the guitarist's Pro Tools HD studio in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, and acts as tour manager for the jazz tours. On The Police reunion tour, Smith is Summers' Technical Assistant, flanked by guitar tech Dan Dearnley.
Smith explained that First You Build A Cloud was recorded to Pro Tools HD at Summers' home studio, which they "use more like a tape recorder. And, of course, we also use it to chop up arrangements and so on." The two guitarists were recorded live in the studio, with Verdery and Summers in the same room, but the latter's amp in a different room. The ambient mic for Verdery's classical guitar would also pick up some of Summers' acoustic strumming sound on the electric guitar.
The effects that Summers used consisted of his trusty Lexicon PCM70, the TC1210 Spatial Expander, and the Eventide Eclipse, one of the guitarist's all-time favourite units. In addition, there was a Klon Centaur overdrive pedal, which, says Smith, "has no tubes, but has a very smooth, tube-like effect. It's almost always switched on." In addition, there was the Fulltone Ultimate Octave fuzz pedal, which picked up the radio voice in 'Bring On The Night', and a Menatone Red Snapper fuzz pedal and Voodoo Lab analog chorus pedals. An Ernie Ball volume pedal completed the collection. Amplification was as via a Mesa Boogie Triaxis preamp, going through a Mesa Boogie 2:90 Power Amp into two 2 x 12 Mesa Boogie Recto Cabs. "Andy uses Mesa Boogie stuff a lot, we have a continuing long-term relationship with them."
The above was also more or less Summers' setup for his solo work previous to the Police tour. As the guitarist explained in the main article, he spent a considerable amount of time updating his effects and his sounds for the Police tour, something he did in conjunction with Smith. The amplification setup for the tour, with four 2 x 12-inch Mesa Boogie Recto cabinets (plus two for backup) providing an impressive and old-fashioned looking speaker wall, strongly influenced the way in which the effects were used. Summers spoke of a wet-dry situation, and Smith explained, "The centre 'dry' section is driven by a Custom Audio Amplifier, that feeds two 2 x 12 Mesa Recto cabs. The 'wet' effects section is amped by a separate stereo amplifier — in the US, we had used a Carver amplifier for this, but we had trouble running it on European power, so we switched to a Crown XTI1000 instead. The Crown amp feeds the left and right Mesa Boogie 2 x 12 cabs."
"The four fundamental stereo effects that went into the Crown are the Eclipse, the PCM70, the TC Electronics D2, and the TC1210. The latter is a kind of one-trick pony, but it does what it does so well, there's nothing like it on earth. I felt we were short on a dedicated DDL, and TC Electronics recommended the D2. It's so simply to use, it's great. You can have left and right panned and doing really esoteric things. The Eclipse adds clouds of sparkly sounds, kind of like pads, almost like a fourth member has just joined the band. It's a fantastic piece of equipment to use. The Eclipse and PVM70 provide the reverbs. The front-of-house guy, Mike Keating, does not add anymore reverb. He gets three sends, left, right, and centre mono, which he can adjust with his faders, and that's it. Andy and I will tailor the reverb to the size of the hall, and basically, he's in full control of his sound. He has three volume pedals in front of him, one for the Eclipse, one for the PCM70, and one for the guitar."
"As far as the mono centre section is concerned, Andy became famous for using the Echoplex, and we tried it, but it was so inherently problematic, it didn't seem reliable enough anymore. It was also very noisy. So, for the old Police songs like 'Can't Stand Losing You', we replaced it with the Moogerfooger MF-IO4Z analog delay, and this provides the only delay coming through the centre cabs. The Moogerfooger sounds like a tape delay, but there's no tape. The biggest problem is that there are no presets, so getting the tempo right is rather hit and miss. Just before the performance, you set the tempo and you hope it's close enough."
"The other foot pedals include a bunch of overdrives, such as the Klon Centaur, the Fulltone Ultimate Octave, the Fuzz Factory, which is new and a useful little pedal. There's also the Love Eternity Overdrive pedal, which is a very hot device, hand-made by Sean Michael in the mid-west of the USA, and we use a Cream Tone distortion pedal. A Maxon OD9 overdrive replaced the Tube Screamer. In addition, there's a Red Witch Moon chorus and Red Witch Moon phaser, made by a company in New Zealand. We also have an Empress tremolo, which is great. Andy uses it for one tune only, 'Walking In Your Footsteps', for a very large, deep tremolo effect. And there's a Keeley compressor pedal. All these pedals are powered by a [Voodoo Labs] PedalPower unit, so there are no batteries, and they all contribute to the old-fashioned, big, mono rock sound. Finally, Andy uses a Peterson 490 eight-octave strobe tuner."
This avalanche of effects is controlled by Summers and Smith with a Bob Bradshaw pedal system, which makes it possible to have multiple effects settings under one button, making life much, much easier for Smith. The tech man also commented that the wireless Sennheiser System (3 x EW500 G2) used by Summers "has been flawless and problem-free." With both Smith and Summers being able to override each other, communication between the two is very important. Smith explained that he uses Etymotic in-ear monitoring, and a microphone and a computer to communicate with his boss.
"The Ultimate Ears are pretty much glued in your ear, and unless someone is standing in front of a microphone, I can't hear what they're saying. Repeatedly trying to take the Ultimate Ears out drove me insane, so I opted for Etymotic in-ear monitors, which you can remove immediately. But both systems are fantastic. I have a microphone in front of me, with which I can talk to Andy directly for urgent messages, and I also have a little Mac at the side of the stage with me, from which I can feed information to a little screen at Andy's feet. It's a bit like a prompter. I'm also in his line of sight all the time, so if he wants to communicate with me, he can signal with his hands or body."
