80′s lead Strat solo – Here I’m using the Tube Drive on my Fender Strat to add sustain and drive for solo work. The Strat is fitted with ‘Kent Armstrong’ single coil pickups. The tone of these pickups is the perfect iconic ‘Strat sound’ but the output is not terribly strong. The Tube Drive helps give them that extra body and punch they need for soloing. The backing track is an old recording from the early 1980s (recorded on DAT) by the band ‘Kybalion’ in which my friend Phil Shiell played bass guitar. The strat solo was recorded direct to computer using Death Valley 15SSSN (15′ guitar cable) and 6IAAN (6″ patch cables) terminated in G&H nickel-plated jack plugs. The following VST plugins were used post recording: Valhalla ‘Room’ reverb; Torpedo CAB speaker emulation and Kuassa BasiQ Baxandall Simulation Equalizer. Ferric Tape Dynamics Simulator was used to help the newly recorded guitar solo blend in and sit better with the old DAT recording.