The 80s

A studio-only rack, started during the pandemic lockdown, with the effects already patched so any sound is a button press away. A Rocktron Patchmate routes a Soldano X88-IR preamp and a 1975 Marshall JMP 50 through a gate and a dbx compressor whose two channels are set up separately for clean and distorted sounds; a Red Seven line mixer then runs a Free the Tone Tri Avatar and a TC Mimiq doubler in series and blends the PCM 70, the SPX90 and an Eventide Eclipse in parallel. It records wet/dry/wet so the delays and reverbs can be rerun and rebalanced later: the same split the rack is built around, sent to the recorder instead of three cabinets.

The series opener: the Yamaha SPX90II, the multi-effect whose symphonic chorus and gated reverb are on more eighties records than anyone admits, and what it still does in a guitar rack today.

The preamp behind the classic LA rack: Bob Bradshaw asked Mike Soldano for one to cut the amps out of Steve Lukather’s touring rig, and the X88R spread through the LA session scene. This episode tries the modern revival, the X88-IR with built-in IRs and MIDI, at the head of the host’s planned chain, probably into a compressor and possibly an EQ before a tri-stereo chorus and mixer.

Compression and EQ at the front of the rack — a dbx 160X and an Audio Arts 4100 parametric — and why the clean eighties studio tone is shaped before the signal reaches an amp.

The Lexicon PCM 70 — the studio reverb behind the biggest guitar sounds of the decade — and how it sits on the wet side of a wet/dry rack.

The piece that makes a rack a rig: a stereo line mixer summing the effects returns while the dry amp stays untouched. The same job the RJM Micro Line Mixer does under the pedalboard.

Synergy’s modular preamps as the rack’s front end — one chassis, swappable amp modules — the current answer to the racked preamps the eighties rigs were built on.

The Lukather, Landau and Huff session sound built as a pedalboard instead of a rack — the same wet/dry thinking the rack page is organised around, in a form that fits in a case. Watched three times, which is how it ended up here.