Jonny Buckland

Mentioned by FOH engineer Dan Green in this AudioTechnology magazine article about the Ghost Stories Tour.

AT: I’m fascinated by your 500 series lunchboxes at front of house. What’s going on there exactly?

DG: Anyone who’s worked on a Midas XL4 will remember how you really only needed to give it some gain and push up the fader and you were good to go. Now with digital consoles — and as happy as I am with the Digico SD7 — you don’t get that, especially on drums.

In my search to rediscover that instant ‘analogue’ sound I began to play around with effects pedal-style boxes, but they were a bit flakey. On the other hand, I’ve always found Radial gear to be super-reliable. When it came out with the 500 series Workhouse, I tried out a few different pres, and settled on eight modules of Neve 1073 (which work really well on Chris’s SM58), four of the Helios Type 69-500 EQs (I love what the Helios high/mids do to the guitars) and four Shadow Hills Mono GAMA mic pres.

If anything does go awry with those, there’s a macro on my SD7 that’ll instantly flick back to the preamps on the SD stage rack.

Mentioned by mixing engineer Michael Brauer as being used on "Violet Hill" in this Sound on Sound interview about the production of Viva la Vida & Death and All of His Friends.

Guitars: EMI Chandler TG1, Lexicon PCM42, API 525, API 5502, Roland Dimension D SDD320, Watkins Copicat

"Normally I send each side of a stereo guitar to my EMI Chandler TG1 panned left and right and coming back on the console, but I didn't in this case, so I must have felt that it sounded bad. It might have taken away from the tightness of the guitars. They had already recorded it very tightly. So instead I didn't add anything to their stereo chorus verse guitar. I also had a mono verse guitar, which I sent to a PCM42 delay set at 224ms and panned to the opposite side, and every time the guitar strums it goes over to the right. On the acoustic guitar I did what I normally do, which is to send it through my acoustic patch, an API 525 going into an API 5502. That's a great combo and I have been using that for years. It makes the acoustic guitar very natural and full and gives it great presence without it sounding processed. In this song it's not very evident, because the acoustic guitar isn't very important, but, for example, on Parachutes the acoustic is very important, and I used the patch back then. There was no insert on the solo guitar. I did have a Dimension D SDD320 chorus on it, which spreads the sound naturally, and which went to a Watkins Copicat Echo unit with a fairly short delay. Otherwise it's totally dry, no reverb, hardly any EQ. Again, it was so well recorded that it didn't need a lot of work."

"Lexicon are famous for making some of the finest echo and reverb effects available. No surprise then, that Jonny's guitar rig relies heavily on this rack unit for creating his huge soaring tones," reads Lot 25 in Coldplay's End of Decade Clearout Sale Catalogue.

Mentioned by mixing engineer Michael Brauer as being used on "Violet Hill" in this Sound on Sound interview about the production of Viva la Vida & Death and All of His Friends.

Guitars: EMI Chandler TG1, Lexicon PCM42, API 525, API 5502, Roland Dimension D SDD320, Watkins Copicat

"Normally I send each side of a stereo guitar to my EMI Chandler TG1 panned left and right and coming back on the console, but I didn't in this case, so I must have felt that it sounded bad. It might have taken away from the tightness of the guitars. They had already recorded it very tightly. So instead I didn't add anything to their stereo chorus verse guitar. I also had a mono verse guitar, which I sent to a PCM42 delay set at 224ms and panned to the opposite side, and every time the guitar strums it goes over to the right. On the acoustic guitar I did what I normally do, which is to send it through my acoustic patch, an API 525 going into an API 5502. That's a great combo and I have been using that for years. It makes the acoustic guitar very natural and full and gives it great presence without it sounding processed. In this song it's not very evident, because the acoustic guitar isn't very important, but, for example, on Parachutes the acoustic is very important, and I used the patch back then. There was no insert on the solo guitar. I did have a Dimension D SDD320 chorus on it, which spreads the sound naturally, and which went to a Watkins Copicat Echo unit with a fairly short delay. Otherwise it's totally dry, no reverb, hardly any EQ. Again, it was so well recorded that it didn't need a lot of work."

Mentioned by mixing engineer Michael Brauer as being used on "Violet Hill" in this Sound on Sound interview about the production of Viva la Vida & Death and All of His Friends.

Guitars: EMI Chandler TG1, Lexicon PCM42, API 525, API 5502, Roland Dimension D SDD320, Watkins Copicat

"Normally I send each side of a stereo guitar to my EMI Chandler TG1 panned left and right and coming back on the console, but I didn't in this case, so I must have felt that it sounded bad. It might have taken away from the tightness of the guitars. They had already recorded it very tightly. So instead I didn't add anything to their stereo chorus verse guitar. I also had a mono verse guitar, which I sent to a PCM42 delay set at 224ms and panned to the opposite side, and every time the guitar strums it goes over to the right. On the acoustic guitar I did what I normally do, which is to send it through my acoustic patch, an API 525 going into an API 5502. That's a great combo and I have been using that for years. It makes the acoustic guitar very natural and full and gives it great presence without it sounding processed. In this song it's not very evident, because the acoustic guitar isn't very important, but, for example, on Parachutes the acoustic is very important, and I used the patch back then. There was no insert on the solo guitar. I did have a Dimension D SDD320 chorus on it, which spreads the sound naturally, and which went to a Watkins Copicat Echo unit with a fairly short delay. Otherwise it's totally dry, no reverb, hardly any EQ. Again, it was so well recorded that it didn't need a lot of work."

The item can be seen in this photo from the same interview.

Five towering racks of outboard gear dominate Michael Brauer's mix room, and contain far too much equipment to list. Notable items used on the mix of Violet Hill include (first rack) Pye compressor, Empirical Labs Distressors, ADR Compex limiter, Chandler EMI TG12413 limiter, EAR 660 compressors and Fairchild 666 compressor; (second rack) Lexicon PCM81, Sony DRE S777, Akai S612, Bricasti M7, Zoom 1202, Rupert Neve Portico 5014; (third rack) Neve 33609, API modules, Moog EQ and Pendulum ES8 compressor; (fifth rack) Chandler EMI TG12345 Curver Bender, Shadow Hills compressor and ADL 670.

Mentioned by mixing engineer Michael Brauer as being used on "Violet Hill" in this Sound on Sound interview about the production of Viva la Vida & Death and All of His Friends.

"In addition to all the above effects, all tracks went through my ABCD multi–bus compression system [see 'Brauerize TheMix' box]. 'A' consists of a Neve 33609 going into a Pultec P1A3S EQ; 'B' is is almost always a Distressor going into my Avalon E55 EQ; 'C' is the Pendulum ES8 tube limiter; 'D' at the time was my Inward Connection stereo tube limiter (but currently it's the [TF Pro] Edward The Compressor P8). So the bass and drums went through B, the guitars went through C — sometimes I'll send guitars through A and C, or I'll send them to C and then send them to a mono compressor return, whichever excites them the best — the keyboards went through A, and the backing vocals through A and D. I did not put the lead vocals through my multi–bus system. I stopped doing that three years ago. Instead they went through these five compressors, the Federal, Gates, Fairchild, 1176 and Distressor.

In a 2003 ezine, Jonny Buckland is shown using a Line 6 Echo Pro, highlighting its role in his setup during that period.

In this photo Jonny can be seen playing Korg KONTROL49.

"Jonny Buckland has been using the TC Electronic 2290 Dynamic Digital Delay since 2003, as shown in a user-uploaded photo on Imgur."

In the photo from Coldplay's performance at the Royal Albert Hall, Jonny Buckland is seen with the JazzMutant Lemur Multitouch Modular Controller.

Mentioned by mixing engineer Michael Brauer as being used on "Violet Hill" in this Sound on Sound interview about the production of Viva la Vida & Death and All of His Friends.

Guitars: EMI Chandler TG1, Lexicon PCM42, API 525, API 5502, Roland Dimension D SDD320, Watkins Copicat

"Normally I send each side of a stereo guitar to my EMI Chandler TG1 panned left and right and coming back on the console, but I didn't in this case, so I must have felt that it sounded bad. It might have taken away from the tightness of the guitars. They had already recorded it very tightly. So instead I didn't add anything to their stereo chorus verse guitar. I also had a mono verse guitar, which I sent to a PCM42 delay set at 224ms and panned to the opposite side, and every time the guitar strums it goes over to the right. On the acoustic guitar I did what I normally do, which is to send it through my acoustic patch, an API 525 going into an API 5502. That's a great combo and I have been using that for years. It makes the acoustic guitar very natural and full and gives it great presence without it sounding processed. In this song it's not very evident, because the acoustic guitar isn't very important, but, for example, on Parachutes the acoustic is very important, and I used the patch back then. There was no insert on the solo guitar. I did have a Dimension D SDD320 chorus on it, which spreads the sound naturally, and which went to a Watkins Copicat Echo unit with a fairly short delay. Otherwise it's totally dry, no reverb, hardly any EQ. Again, it was so well recorded that it didn't need a lot of work."

Mentioned by mixing engineer Michael Brauer as being used on "Violet Hill" in this Sound on Sound interview about the production of Viva la Vida & Death and All of His Friends.

Guitars: EMI Chandler TG1, Lexicon PCM42, API 525, API 5502, Roland Dimension D SDD320, Watkins Copicat

"Normally I send each side of a stereo guitar to my EMI Chandler TG1 panned left and right and coming back on the console, but I didn't in this case, so I must have felt that it sounded bad. It might have taken away from the tightness of the guitars. They had already recorded it very tightly. So instead I didn't add anything to their stereo chorus verse guitar. I also had a mono verse guitar, which I sent to a PCM42 delay set at 224ms and panned to the opposite side, and every time the guitar strums it goes over to the right. On the acoustic guitar I did what I normally do, which is to send it through my acoustic patch, an API 525 going into an API 5502. That's a great combo and I have been using that for years. It makes the acoustic guitar very natural and full and gives it great presence without it sounding processed. In this song it's not very evident, because the acoustic guitar isn't very important, but, for example, on Parachutes the acoustic is very important, and I used the patch back then. There was no insert on the solo guitar. I did have a Dimension D SDD320 chorus on it, which spreads the sound naturally, and which went to a Watkins Copicat Echo unit with a fairly short delay. Otherwise it's totally dry, no reverb, hardly any EQ. Again, it was so well recorded that it didn't need a lot of work."

Mentioned by mixing engineer Michael Brauer as being used on "Violet Hill" in this Sound on Sound interview about the production of Viva la Vida & Death and All of His Friends.

Guitars: EMI Chandler TG1, Lexicon PCM42, API 525, API 5502, Roland Dimension D SDD320, Watkins Copicat

"Normally I send each side of a stereo guitar to my EMI Chandler TG1 panned left and right and coming back on the console, but I didn't in this case, so I must have felt that it sounded bad. It might have taken away from the tightness of the guitars. They had already recorded it very tightly. So instead I didn't add anything to their stereo chorus verse guitar. I also had a mono verse guitar, which I sent to a PCM42 delay set at 224ms and panned to the opposite side, and every time the guitar strums it goes over to the right. On the acoustic guitar I did what I normally do, which is to send it through my acoustic patch, an API 525 going into an API 5502. That's a great combo and I have been using that for years. It makes the acoustic guitar very natural and full and gives it great presence without it sounding processed. In this song it's not very evident, because the acoustic guitar isn't very important, but, for example, on Parachutes the acoustic is very important, and I used the patch back then. There was no insert on the solo guitar. I did have a Dimension D SDD320 chorus on it, which spreads the sound naturally, and which went to a Watkins Copicat Echo unit with a fairly short delay. Otherwise it's totally dry, no reverb, hardly any EQ. Again, it was so well recorded that it didn't need a lot of work."

In this photo taken from Coldplay’s 2020 livestream supporting Every Vote Counts, we see Jonny performing with an early 60s style Fender reverb tank placed above a matching Blues Deluxe amp in tweed

In this photo, taken from a 2021 MusicTech interview with Coldplay’s longtime producer, Rik Simpson, we get a good look at Jonny’s live synth set up for the band’s 2019 “Live in Jordan” performance, which seems to be all running through a Radial J48 DI Box, visible in the bottom center of the photo.

In this photo of Jonny's rig backstage at a Coldplay gig, a iConnectivity mioXM 4x4 Midi Interface can be seen.

This article titled "Playtime: Coldplay Live" from October 2013 details Coldplay's live show setup, and contains this photo of Jonny Buckland's rack, which contains two of everything for redundancy. Below his Shure wireless receivers, Boss tuner pedals, TC2290 delays, and Line6 processing, an Eventide H7600 Harmonizer can be seen at the bottom.