Steven Wilson

Porcupine Tree's writer, singer, guitarist and producer, and one of the most prolific mix engineers in progressive music. Wilson's guitar playing is deliberately unshowy and almost always layered -- 'I tend to track things many times so you get a very rich, more musical tone' -- and his studio approach pairs real amps with plug-ins rather than choosing between them. On Fear of a Blank Planet the heavy guitars were a Bad Cat Hot Cat and a Diezel head through a single Celestion-loaded Marshall 4x12 captured with an SM58 and an AKG 414.