Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree
Steven Wilson is the vocalist, guitarist and producer for the prog-alt-metal band Porcupine Tree as well as projects such as Blackfield, No-Man and Bass Communion. He’s also famous for working with the who’s who of prog-metal acts, such as Opeth.
In terms of guitars, Wilson predominantly plays Paul Reed Smith guitars, including PRS Custom 22‘s, Singlecut and the Modern Eagle. In the studio he has also been known to use Gibson Les Pauls in the studio. Before the release of the In Absentia album, he was often spotted playing an ESP Stratocaster.
In the studio Wilson relies a lot on the Line 6 POD as well as plugins for a lot of his guitar tones but for the Fear of a Blank Planet album he also used a bunch of analog gear.
[On Fear of a Blank Planet] I used [Gibson] Les Paul and Paul Reed Smith guitars. We were going through… we had the Bad Cat Hot Cat in the studio, we also had a Diesel head, and were just going through a pretty generic 4×12 Celestion Greenback Marshall cab. We had a couple of mics on there: we had a 58 and a 414.
“Steven Wilson: Fear of a Blank Interview“, MusicPlayers.com, July 2007.
In the same interview he also spoke a lot about the plugins he used in the studio.
There’s a suite of plug-ins [Digidesign’s D-Fi collection] of which one is called Lo Fi, which is fantastic. I love Lo Fi – it’s the kind of thing that Trent Reznor uses a lot where he gets those really fizzy digital f**ked-up sounds. It basically enables you to take a sound, not just a guitar sound but any sound, and reduce the bit rate and the sample rate until you get that kind of wonderful quantization noise. Well, it’s not always wonderful, but it can be wonderful used in the right way, so I used that a lot to get really fizzy kinds of sounds, almost digital distortion sounds, so that’s one of my favorites.
I love the Line 6 Echo Farm, which is the old kind of tape delay simulator – that’s wonderful. I’m using that all the time. I like being able to add things like warble and tape hiss and stuff to the signal – it just makes it sound more organic somehow. And, I’m a big, big fan of the Focusrite EQ and the Focusrite compression, the D2 and the D3. They’re, I think, probably my favorites.
“Steven Wilson: Fear of a Blank Interview“, MusicPlayers.com, July 2007.
In terms of playing live, his onstage rig has changed a bit over the years. Where once he used to play through a substantial effects rack, he has now gone to a more stream lined floor based system, as a result of the cost implications associated with lugging around the rack units.
As you can see from the picture of one of his pedal boards below, his rack gear has essentially been replaced with the TC Electronic G-System effects unit. There are also a couple of Boss volume/expression pedals as well as what looks like a Dunlop Crybaby. Although it is hard to make out a couple of the pedals, this board also seems to feature a Carl Martin compressor, Boss pedal (potentially an Acoustic Simulator), Bad Cat two tone distortion and what could be a GigRig midi switching system.
The second board pictured below again includes the GigRig switching system as well as an Ernie Ball Volume pedal, Boss DD-20 Delay, Boss RT-20 Rotary Twin, Boss Chromatic Tuner, Peterson Strobostomp tuner, Klon Centaur, Dunlop Crybaby Wylde Wah and AnalogMan Mini Bi-Comp Compressor.
