He's turned the world of pop music on it's head in the last 12 months and we've had the privilege of being on productions of his on two occasions, so, we thought we'd give you an insight into the gear that Ed Sheeran is using at the moment!!
Martin & Co LXM Little Martin (Mahogany)
Ed's guitar has been the subject of much speculation from fans, industry bods and initially us. It's the heart of his setup and has accompanied his to well over 300 gigs in the last 12 months. Now for the astounding bit; it's a £200 'Little Martin'!! We're a big believer that good gear doesn't make great musicians and this goes to prove it! Don't get us wrong, it's a great guitar but we often get to recording guitars worth over £5k. Ed uses it because it's size makes it very easy to transport and get on airplanes/trains etc....
The guitar is armed with a fishman pickup which we love for recordings. Believe it or not, our favourite sounding electro acoustics for recordings are APX Yamaha's!! They don't sound great unplugged but on live recordings they cut through a mix without heaps of EQ, don't need a huge amount of post-compression and just sound fantastic!! Although they've not got fishman pickups in them, they sound very similar!!
Ed's 'Little Martin' is a slightly shorter scale that a full blown acoustic. That's not a problem as far as we're concerned. In fact, it's probably what gives him his unique sound!! It certainly hasn't done him any harm has it? At the time of writing, the Little Martin is on sale at Dolphin Music (UK) for £203. Would we recommend it, yes! It's a bargain, in fact our CEO, Ben Marshall, ordered one last week!! He's gonna use it for some acoustic songs he's doing in his covers set with Phil Rostance.
Boss RC-30 LoopStation
Other than his smaller than usual guitar, the piece of gear that attracts most comment in Sheeran's camp is his Boss Looping Pedal, the RC-30 Loopstation.
Ed uses it at most of his shows on guitar and vocals. It's another piece of his live rig that gives him that unique sound.
The pedal features on a number of Sheeran's videos too, including 'You Need Me, I Don’t Need You', which currently has over 5.5m hits on YouTube.
The pedal features two independently controllable stereo channels which can be set to start recording the moment you hit a chord or sing a note. Each channel can then be clipped, looped and have it's volume controlled separately from the other. The pedal also features an array of effects including Phaser, Pitch Shift, Filter, Delays and more... At the time of writing, retail is approx £239 on these little bad boys!!
Focusrite ISA430 MkII
In the studio, Guy Massey has been at the helm of much of Ed's recording and is a massive fan of Focusrite's ISA430 MkII. When we've recorded or broadcast Ed's performances, we've also used a product from the ISA range as the pre-amp and EQ for Ed's vocal. These boxes are costly at £1500 mark but do sound epic! We've used them on artists including Take That, Bon Jovi and CeLo Green as well as Ed Sheeran. Below is what Focusrite tell us about them!
The ISA430 MkII brings together a set of classic Focusrite heritage elements:
• Classic Focusrite ISA transformer-based mic pre with variable input impedance
• Versatile equalisation including two dual-range parametrics, HPF and LPF
• Dual-mode compressor with both VCA and optical circuitry
• VCA-based expander/gate with "hysteresis" setting to avoid chattering
• Phase-cancellation de-esser for more natural processing
• Optional 192kHz/24-bit A-D conversion with soft limiter
Together, they form a comprehensive channel strip with impeccable specifications. But the ISA430 MkII is much more than that. The four main elements – mic pre, EQ, Dynamics and A-D converter – can be accessed individually and each used as a separate processor. Elements can be chained and patched together via multiple inserts and in different orders to form a variety of signal paths to meet every processing requirement. Used as either a comprehensive channel strip or as separate processors, the ISA430 MkII offers you the pinnacle of classic Focusrite analogue processor design and performance. There’s simply nothing quite like it.
Check out Focusrite's page by click here
Neumann U87 & AKG C451B
The U87 features in Ed Sheeran’s live YouTube recording of 'Wayfaring Stranger' and has been used on pretty much all of the star's recordings. It is a mainstay mic in pretty much every professional studio. We use them for everything from vocals to string sections and the generally sound great for anything!!
According to Dolphin Music's recent article "The current U87A yields a 6dB improvement in signal-to-noise over its predecessor. A 10 dB attenuation switch is located on the rear. It enables the microphone to handle sound pressure levels up to 127 dB without distortion and the low frequency response can be reduced to compensate for proximity effect."
For Ed's acoustic guitar recording, he uses the industry standard C451 from AKG. The small diaphragm is extremely responsive and really captures the percussive nature of acoustic guitar strings, particularly important for solo performers!!
These mics, we use a lot for woodwind recording and hi-hat work as they just seem to enhance high frequencies, many of which are found in the spectrum of an acoustic guitar!!
Hopefully you've found our guide useful!! Our aim was simply to give you an insight into the gear that Ed uses to create his organic and raw sound!! We'll be looking at gear that other clients of ours use in the future so check back!!
