Elmira, New York's À Rebours, play goth progressive music. The project has its roots out west but gradually migrated eastward and found a home with Final Joy Records for their 2006 release, Vanish.

Recently we spoke to singer / guitarist (and more), Ian Stone about his guitars, basses and the recording process. In the second part of our chat with Stone we move on to his live set up.

"For me, I usually use two guitars on stage -— an electric (usually the Ibanez) and an acoustic electric (one of the Ovations). They both go into a Loop-Master A/B/C switching box. From there, the chain goes: Boss SD1 Overdrive, an Effector 13 Punch Love Plus, an Effector 13 Disaster Fuzz Plus, an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone and finally an Electro-Harmonix Small Stone. The output of the pedalboard goes to the rack and into a Line6 Pod Pro," says Stone." A TC Electronic M300 (used for compression and reverb) and a BBE Sonic Maximizer are both in the effect loop of the Pod. A controller board for the Pod is also on the pedal board (though no audio actually travels through it; it’s just a remote essentially). The XLR mains on the rack go straight to the venue’s mixing board, and one ¼” out goes to a Line6 Spider 2x12 combo amp. Since the guitar signal is DI’d to the mixing board, the amp is just for sound reinforcement. I have played without it before and things seemed to sound just fine (although that little extra 'oomph' is pretty nice)."

He, like many singers, uses a Shure SM58 on stage.

"I bring a couple with me because a lot of venues like to get cheap-ass mics and just hang them on the booms for bands to use. If there’s not an SM58 on the stand, I’ll swap it out for mine." he says.

Bassist Ryan Holmes has a simple set up. He runs his Ibanez Bass through an AKG wireless system and into his Warwick CCL210 combo amp.

"There’s an XLR DI port on the back that we run straight into the mixing board so we don’t have to mess with miking the cabinet," says Stone. "It makes for a quick setup and a super clean sound through the PA but still plenty of punch from the stage."

For the backing tracks the band bounces percussion and synth to high-res wav files which are loaded onto an iPod.

"The output of the iPod goes through a 1/8” to dual-XLR patch cable into a BBE Sonic Maximizer. The main XLR outs of that unit go straight into the PA’s board," he says. "So basically once we have the gear in place, we just hand the sound guy six XLR cables to plug into the stage box and we’re ready to rock and roll."

When I asked if there was a piece of gear that Stone loves above all others he picked two (which raises questions for his significant other that we will not delve into here).

"There are two that I really dig. one is the BBE Sonic Maximizer. I have both of the rack versions: the 482i (for my guitar rig) and the 882i (for the backing tracks live or for vocals when recording)," says Stone. "I know people just rave about these thing, and usually it's a lot of hype whenever the majority of musicians have a hard-on for some piece of gear. But in this case, I have to say it’s well-founded and I’m one of those fans now."

The other piece is his Disaster Fuzz pedal.

"It’s a boutique pedal manufactured by Devi Ever (at the time calling his company Effector 13, which now goes by The Beautiful Disaster as sold by Ooh La La Manufacturing). The Disaster Fuzz is a disharmonic fuzz with an oscillator built into the circuit. Depending on the settings it’ll go from a really beautiful, saturated fuzz to complete radio-signal-from-alien-mothership destruction. It’s got nuance and color and it’s just freaking rad. I wish I had more places in songs for it but it seems to work better used sparingly. I didn’t get it in time to use on “Vanish,” but there will be some of it on the new record."

The band is playing as many shows as they can in the near future and plan to tour extensively in 2009. They are also recording a new album for release in 2009.