Andy,
My basement studio in New York has the drums in a corner, the left side has the guitar amps by the wall and the vocal mikes are a few feet forward. on the left side wall near the drums is the bass amp. opposite corner from the drums are the PA speakers side by side pointed diagonally to the center of the room. no feedback, everyone can see each other.
my ceiling is also not high.
I see that you are also into Ventures music. My favorite is Bob Bogle with his Jazzmaster sound (pickups in parallel) thru a Fender showman piggy back amp and a reverb unit. I have a 65 Jazzmaster with the flatwond strings (wound g string) but i hardly use it as I am more used to the regular strings with 10 gauge. I recently put reissue Jazzmaster pickups in a cheap Jagmaster guitar with the shorter neckscale, its got the Bogle sound and easier to play. My friend Milton Soong from San Francisco is a Ventures/surf music fanatic and he has books and info on most venrtures songs and who played lead and other info. He also has Japanese freinds (Ventures fanatics). I can hook you up with him.
For Shadows, the Strat would be my guitar of choice (modified so I have a blend control knob engaging the neck and bridge pickups together, kinda gets close to the Jazzmaster tone when I want it). I also see that Malcolm has a few copies of Roberto's book. Its got a lot of info on the Shadows specially their recording sessions at Abbey road studio2. I miss Roberto. His last gadget before he died was the Arieb box that killed the bass frequencies to emmulate Abbey road studio e.q. I asked him to make me one that I can install inside my strat but it was too late. It was so funny when he interviewed Malcolm Addey (Abbey Road recording engineer in the 60s) here in New York to confirm if Hank really used the Gretch Country gentleman during the recording session of Apache and Sleepwalk. Malcolm's reply floored him. Malcolm said "why ask me that question? It was 40 years ago and I am now 70 years old..I dont remember!
I just turned 64 and I dont remember what I did yesterday. Email me at
bristolex@verizon.net Joey Martinez