The Electronic Systems

 

Alex primarily uses DAW systems as sequencers and digital recorders such as Steinberg Cubase and Ableton Live.
In addition to a limited number of VSTi, such as Arturia, Native Instruments and Waldorf, it prefers to use physical synthesizers such as Korg Ms20, Korg Monologue, Moog DFAM, Moog Mother 32, Waldorf Blofeld, Doepfer Dark Energy, Arturia Microbrute, MSB Tanzbar and various Elektron machines. He also uses synths and effects from various builders in Eurorack format.

 

 

The Guitar as a Synthesizer

 

Alex Marenga approached to systems that allow guitarists to play synthesizers from the appearance of the first systems by Roland.
Alex has always liked guitarists as John McLaughlin, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Paolo Tofani (Area), Allan Holdsworth and Pat Metheny and he has ever followed their experiments with these kind of intruments.
One of the ways that still he uses to connect guitar to monophonic synthesizers is the circuit pitch-to-cv on Korg MS20.

 

In the 80s he used Roland GK2/GR and Casio PG systems with hexaphonic pickup.
He also used the monophonic synthesizer for guitar by Electro-Harmonix Microsynthesizer and synth emulations and filters on Line6 FM4 .

As a small portable system has also used the Sonuus G2M
Today as hexaphonic system he uses the Fishman Triple Play on his Godin Custom Session , which has an excellent response, the Roland Gk3 with BOSS GP10, Roland Gk-1 with GM70 and the historical Roland G808 with GR300.

In recent years it has experienced some MIDI controllers, after the innovations in this field and cost containment.

Alex used the system Misa Digital Kitara, now discontinued , appreciating the idea of the touchscreen display .

But the real turning point was the innovative system YouRockGuitar , which uses sensors that allow a guitarist revolutionary performances previously unthinkable .
Today Alex is among the endorsers of this system that uses so prevalent.

Alex usually connects YRG gen.2 controller to the computer (Ableton or Cubase) or to hardware synthesizers.
In live performances he uses various analog and virtual synthesizers as Waldorf Blofeld , Novation X25 , Arturia Microbrute , Moog Slim Phatty , Waldorf Rocket, Korg Volca Keys.
Alex uses in his equipment the legendary Roland Gr300 with the G808 controller and the Baby-Z controller from Starr Labs.

Alex also follows a different approach to the electronic applications of the guitar.
He’s filtering the sound from the traditional guitar pick-ups through effects (shimmer, loopers), modules for modular synthesizers (grainshift, makenoise phonogene, echophon) , software plugins and Ableton Live.

 

 

for more infos about YouRockGuitar:

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GUITAR EQUIPMENT

Electric and midi Guitars

Fender Stratocaster
Godin Session Custom with Fishman Triple Play
YRG gen 2
Dobro
Ovation acoustic

Roland G808

Ibanez AS 200
G&L basses

Epiphone Joe Pass
The Heritage guitars
Spirit Steinberger Amptek Custom Set HSH
Misa Digital Kitara

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 Pedalboards

AMPTEK uses three pedalboard chains for analogic guitar sounds:

• Virtual Effects through Ableton Plug-ins with GuitaWing controller
• Analog Effects: Effettidiclara, Catalinbread Csidman, Red Panda Particle, ZVex Fuzzfactory, Meris Ottobit, Pro-co RATT, Moer LoFi, Digitech Synth, Soviet by Giudis Pedals, Alesis Philtre, Zoom CDR70, Jamman and Viscous Vibe.
• Modular Eurorack effects Audio Damage, Mutable Instruments, Doepfer

On top every configuration he uses Whammy Wha & Digitech Impossibile Pedal or Zoom G3 Multieffect.

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