My personal hitlist 2007

Usually at this time of the year you can see polls everywhere, so I decided to also list my faves of 2007. Of course this only reflects my personal taste, so feel free to disagree :-)

CD's:

1: Dimmu Borgir - In Sorte Diaboli
2: Alter Bridge - Blackbird
3: Amorphis - Silent Waters
4: Heaven & Hell - Live at the Radio City Music Hall
5: Dethklok - The Dethalbum

Movies

1: Pirates of the Caribbean III
2: 300
3: Transformers
4: Metalocalypse Season One
5: The Fountain

Books:

1: Steve Niles - 30 Days of Night
2: Neil Gaiman - Anansi Boys
3: Henning Mankell - The Dogs of Riga
4: Frank Miller - Dark Knight Returns
5: PC Games - World of Warcraft Specials

Concerts:

1: Heaven & Hell (Loud Park)
2: Orphaned Land (ProgPower)
3: Dimmu Borgir (Cologne)
4: Iced Earth (Cologne)
5: Amorphis (Wacken)

Most heard Album in 2007: System of a Down - Mesmerize

Fave Songtitle: Panic at the Disco - There's A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought Of It Yet ( I DEFINITELY have to see this band live one day, first of all I like them and I want to find out how their fans are screaming for that song live...)

My amps and my rack

After all the updates about my guitars we now come to the other side of my equipment, my amps and my rack. As you can see I am using a rather simple setup, I don't like those huge racks with tons of effects, first of all I don't need them and if one thing gets damaged in such a big system you will have a lot of fun finding the problem, specially if this happens during a show.
The core of my system is a Mesa Boogie Tripple Rectifier, the original two channel version, in my opinion those originals sound better than the new 3 channel versions. I am using a Sennheiser G2 Wireless System for my guitar that leads the signal straight into my main amp, there are no additional effects between my guitars and the amp. For my main rhythm sound I don't use any effects, only when it comes to my clean and some lead sounds I am using a Rocktron Intellifex to get some chorus, reverb and delay. I am also using the Rocktrons Hush system to prevent humming or any other noise. To control the whole setup I use a Rocktron Midimate footcontroller and everything is connected to a Furman Powerconditioner to make sure that everything always gets the right amount of power, concerning cabinets I am using two Mesa Boogie Rectocabs. As a backup system I am either using a second Rectifier head, or as you can see on the picture, my Mesa Boogie Rectifier Recording Preamp. The big advantage of this preamp is the fact that it has recording outpts that sound extremely good, so I can plug it straight into the mixing console and still get my sound, which is very handy when we are are flying and therefor can't take all of our equipment with us. For this backup system I also have a Rocktron Xpression to get my clean and lead sounds, so like this I have two completely independent systems, in case the main one freaks during a show I can switch to the second system within a few seconds. This is all I need to get my sounds and I was using this setup during the whole tour. The only changes were made towards the end of the tour when I replaced the Recording Preamp with a Mesa Boogie Triaxis Preamp and I added a Mesa Boogie 2:90 Poweramp, the Triaxis is extremely versatile and in the moment I am thinking about making this one my main amp, but well, since we won't be touring anytime soon I have enough time to think about this.