I'm a one man show who takes advantage of desktop production software. I use 1 outboard guitar effects pre amp and even that is only used for converting the midi tracks to digital format. It's mostly there because it allows me to listen to that conversion in real time. The soul of my sound is generated by Smudge lead guitarist "Henry Rojas". Henry's fluid, yet aggressive licks are what truly articulate the mood of my music. I can't offer enough praise to this monster guitar virtuoso. Heres where you can find him as well http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/smudgeus I'm extremely thankful that technology has come so far that you can produce a record soup to nuts using a simple desktop PC or even better a Laptop computer.