Mike Watt – In the Studio for Bullet Cable/Core X2LIVE

The Set-Up: 1:30 PM

This is a test. Today we are at Beach Cities Recording, hosted by owner/producer/engineer Darian Rundall awaiting the legendary bass player, Mike Watt. Let’s see if we can keep a live stream of this event. Please visit throughout the day and we will update videos, pictures and anything else that we can get up as fast as possible.

Classic reason why Mike is the King:

You can follow Mike Watt on his twitter: wattfrompedro

Okay so here are the players at this moment:
Darian Rundall (follow him on twitter: darianrundall), will be recording the session for our sound library. Darian, formally of Stall No. 2 has recorded Pennywise, Dokken, Remy Kobocka (Rolling Stones, Paul Simon), Jimmy Z and others in this studio. Vibe is cool. Torrance Airport is in walking distance (for all the producers who still have their own private planes), and we are looking forward to the most awesome podcast recordings with all the quality gear that is in this place.

Chris Aguilar – shooting our main film for our sound library, Soul Surf Media Productions (follow him on twitter: soulsurfmedia). We have known Chris for a few years. Ted and Chris belong to a posse of surfers here in the South bay called the “Las Pistolas”. I think his name is the Skipper, but I am not included in the gang so I don’t know why.

Kevin Keller, guitarist and bass player who just came home on tour with Todd & the Rankoutsiders and is mitigating his jet lag so that he can be here to introduce us to Mike (he is the one that set us up with Mr. Watt). You can catch him on his myspace: gatesofkevin or catch pattodd on their myspace.

Ted McCann – our Pres and designer of all the cool cables we are using today started setting us about an hour ago. He is really excited about this session. “When I was a kid I used to write The Minutemen all over my notebooks. I am meeting a legend and this is pretty awesome.”

You can follow Ted McCann on his twitter: ted_mccann

Mike Watt in the Studio: 2:30 PM

Mike is in the studio setting up:

The sound quality is not going to come through with these videos. I shot with a hand-held Flip Video Camera, so sorry about the flatness of tone. We will be releasing recordings soon and you can hear the actual differences.
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Sample Test with some Studio Standards: 2:45 PM

We tested a few cables, Monster, Guitar Center’s bargain cable and house brand, Live Wire before putting the Core X2 Bass cable on the chopping block.
“The Guitar Center cable sounds better than Monster….”

Mike was blown away that there was a difference in sound achieved by cable alone. After he tried the fat Bass Cable (a favorite) he said, “It is obvious that your engineer knows what he’s doing.”

Next he tried the Silver Bullet. This had a sound that Mike really liked. Finally Mike tested the Bullet Coil Cable.

Final Impressions: 4:00 PM

Okay, so this is where I messed up as the designated flip-video-instant-view camera girl, but Mike was really blown away. I am grateful that Chris was shooting, because Mike gave us a wonderful endorsement and we will have to wait until that is out of production to see it.

We asked Mike, did you make you a Bullet Cable fan?” and he answered that we did. He then took a moment to relax and think. “I know a few people.”:

Great day. Thanks everyone for sharing with us.
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Read the Feature Story for more about the day and about Mike Watt