I am slightly "old school" in a way that I have never even been on Patreon site. I get the idea, and basically also like the idea, that you can directly support maker who you "consumer". Like myself, who have listened every episode of Noisextra for free of charge, thanks for the noisextra crew, hah. It would be certainly worth of payment like I pay for the albums I buy... Nevertheless, fact that never bought digital music either, nor almost never download stuff.. It also means I have not heard any of the trashwire episodes of Noisextra. Except the one(?) what was on public side earlier.
It was nice to listen entire 1h 40 min episode with Greh interviewing Conelly. I have sent them couple of times mail that it would be good to hear more of what they have done. Especially things like USA touring culture of first decade of 2000's. In new episode, we get some amusing anecdotes of that too. Topic itself is gear mike uses - which is basically almost zero gear.
https://www.noisextra.com/2021/12/29/trashware-mike-connelly/Gear talk with people with no gear is probably even more interesting for me. I am sort of interested in gear, but in other hand, don't buy almost any, and don't use more than pretty much absolute minimum. I still got my first guitar, first guitar amp. I got the first multi efx unit. I no longer have my 2 first 4-trackers or stereo system I used for feedback loops back in 94-96. Otherwise I still have pretty much everything, many things in active use too.
I have had so little amount of pedals or synths, so I think I got all pedals I ever had in my life still at reh place/studio.
I could basically go back to do sessions with Grunt 90's equipment, where everything else is the same, but 4-tracker is not 100% same and microphone is different.
Even latest Grunt, it was so minimal gear, MS-20 and loop pedal, in some tracks hall-of-fame reverb, digi-delay and blues driver distortion. Nothing is "boutique pedals". Just the most popular, easiest to get (say: things that were available!) stuff. Besides that walkman, turntable, tape decks.
Mikes early style to first have mixer where everything is plugged in, then from output goes to Death Metal distortion and to amp. Its good one. On later era of Grunt live gigs, we'd sometimes have straight to PA gigs where line-sound is shitty, unless you have something
after mixer to create saturation. I have this stereo tube pre-amp that creates neat analogue saturation when playing without amps or recording to tape. For more noisier stuff, I used sometimes just two blues driver pedals to get stereo out. Just good ripping sound and everything melting together and you can also tell sound guy that level is THIS. There won't be peaks, as everything melts into nice fat distortion.
Big part of gear always came from friends who wanted to get rid of something. Only gear I have REALLY ever hunted for, and tried to compare options and possibilities, is sampler for live gigs.
That said, it is funny to hear how clueless Conelly is after all these years. Just total gut feeling, with almost zero technical know-how. I have played with tons of gear, have many friends who have all sorts of things. Some of it occasionally bleed into my own work. Even like doing things with modulars or other complex gear. Useful to some purposes, but I really prefer the noise where gear is "hidden", not something where gear IS the noise.
Recommended episode!
