Took the McRosie to the bandmates' home studio yesterday - laid down a few more tracks - one from scratch, two others from bare bones, and filled out a fourth with some flamenco style guitar (done on a nylon string "classical", not the McRosie). It was an eight-hour session and I still had energy at the end - everyone else was pretty well done, though, so I stopped. I'm also the mixing engineer, so I was just non-stop, maybe that helped keep my focus.
The McRosie sounded great for both rhythm and lead stuff. It felt good in my hands, and I didn't get tired (not that I usually do). I used the single coil mode for a barely dirty rhythm behind a song I wrote a while back that has evolved tremendously recently (was a fast-paced pop-flavored Celtic acoustic number, now it is a mournful light-rocking Celtic "ballad", I suppose). I also did a tasty (to me) lead break near the end of that song with bridge in full humbucker mode, with a fair bit of delay to get somewhat Gilmouresque in feel.
I played through a pedal board using an OCD clone with and without delay/reverb, into my 25W Archon combo, miked with a Beta 57.
An accident happened that had bizarrely good results: when I recorded the first electric track of the day, the rhythm for that Celtic "ballad", the mike I had carefully placed in front of the amp fell over before we started recording, and was laying on the carpet still pointed at the amp. I didn't notice until after we were done that take - dang, gonna have to re-do that! But no, it actually sounded better that way. I am suspicious the Archon, when miked from in front, is a little too "bright" (because it is a high gain djenting metal machine), but lying on the carpet made it sound more like the tones I like out of my HXDA for the work we do. (I'd done a couple tracks at home for a different song using the same mike on my HXDA, no pedal, just HXDA dirt.)
When I did the lead break, the first take was done with mike standing up "properly", pointing off-center of the speaker cone like I usually prefer, and I wasn't happy with the recorded tone (in person it sounded fine.) So I re-did the take with the mike on the carpet: Voila, exactly the tone I had in my head.
So now I need to figure out whether I just use the HXDA, miked "properly", or lay the mike on the carpet using the Archon. Weird.