If you ever go into the sort of pub that advertises 'Live Music' via really tacky posters on the windows and is thronged with middle-aged people knocking back fizzy beer and screeching gossip at one another, you might have run into the phenomenon of the solo guitarist-singer.

Usually accompanied by a rhythm box of the very cheapest variety, this creature (also to be found in social clubs) does cover versions of the latest hits by Barry and Cliff plus the occasional nod to tacky Disco and weedy Rock. He is ignored by the vast majority of the punters and maligned by the press — when they deign to consider him at all.

But one thing stops this breed becoming extinct; the fact that for little outlay on gear, transport and so on the artist can make a reasonable living.

Which is why Steve Waye has forfeited the original material of his past to play medleys of well-known hits in the dingier pubs and clubs of the country.

"I've been in loads of bands doing their own material," he explained, "and always it was a case of one person doing all the work and the rest of them just turning up for rehearsals — sometimes — and gigs when they felt like it. And they want their ideas to come out on top all the time.

"In my last band I'd spend ages booking a gig and then ring one of the members and he'd say 'I'm playing cricket, I don't think I can make it'. And I was writing all the songs but because the guitarist wanted to play solos I had to stick a great long lead break in the middle of everything. All that hassle just to earn £25 between six of you playing the Rock Garden?

"So one morning I woke up and just thought 'stuff it'. I'd met an agent who had said that if I got a solo set together he'd guarantee me a well-paid gig six nights a week, no problem. So I left the band, worked out a set and now that's how I earn my living."

However, Steve hasn't capitulated to the forces of bad taste by playing rubbish; he'll only do songs that he personally likes and works out new arrangements of them rather than slavishly copying the record.

But where does the studio bit come in? Well, Steve's eight-track set-up is often used for the backing tracks he plays against live (no cheap 'n' nasty rhythm boxes) and to prove the creative spark hasn't gone out, he's often to be found demoing his own material, much of which will later creep into the live set.

And the fruits of his labour have recently come out in the form of a single, entitled Queen Of My Soul, which was again recorded on the home studio at surprisingly high quality, and of course equally low cost.

"I'd always done my own stuff," said Steve, "but for a long time the recordings I'd done had been at other people's studios and you know what it's like — your ideas always come up against what the engineer thinks it ought to sound like, what the equipment in the studio does to it... all sorts of things that can make your song come out so far from your original idea that you wish you hadn't bothered.

"So I decided to get an eight-track studio. I thought — and still think — that the Fostex A8 is brilliant. It's good value, it's compact and it's got excellent recording quality. The desk was a bit more difficult, though. I tried quite a few and very nearly bought the Fostex desk that most people get to go with the A8, but eventually I plumped for the Studiomaster 8:4 I've got now.

"It's a lovely desk; the Eq's good and it's extremely clean. The quality of results you can get with it beat most other mixers I've tried, definitely. There's only one major problem, which is that it's only got two auxiliary sends. And as I use quite a few effects — a Tascam graphic equaliser, a Fostex digital delay and stereo compressor, and an Accessit reverb — I have to use split leads if I want to use very many of them at one time."

The mastering machine is the standard semi-pro/small pro studio device, a Revox B77 run at 15 inches per second for better quality, and the mix is monitored via a hi fi amp and into a pair of Auratones, the tiny cube-shaped devices that you'll see on top of many large studios' desks as reference speakers. But what do they sound like used as main monitors?

"Really good, actually — I've been very pleased with them. They're amazingly true apart from the fact that they're a little bit light on the bass end. Not that I'm too bothered about that, because as soon as I've done a mix I do a cassette copy and rush downstairs to listen to it on the big hi-fi speakers I've got. Almost always I'll get down there, turn it on and think 'I must turn the bass down' — and then decide about everything else.

"On eight track it's very important to decide beforehand what instruments you're going to use"

"Overall, though, until I go for a 16-track set-up, which I'd love to, I think there's not much I desperately need. I really ought to get a patchbay, because the sockets at the back of the mixer are difficult to get at when I'm plugging things in and the back of the effects rack looks like spaghetti junction! The problem is that although a patchbay would make life easier for me, it doesn't actually show on the final tape, does it? And for the amount of money I'd have to spend to get a decent one, I could get some gadget which would actually improve my sound rather than make things quicker. If I was operating a pro studio I'd obviously need one, but for just me I can afford the extra time.

"If only mixer manufacturers made the sockets at the top instead of right round the back, you would be able to get to them without moving everything. That would be a great improvement."

But enough about the hardware, what about the software — or as people used to call them in the pre-computer age, the songs?

"I like to think I've got my own style," affirms Steve, "but I do sometimes write songs which would be suited to one particular artist or type of artist. For instance, a while ago I did a song with a friend of mine which was very much in the style of B B King or George Benson; that's interesting to do and it's really good discipline. I hate those bands where every song sounds the same as every other one, those very one-dimensional bands that only have one song and repeat it all the time. Trying to write in a style you wouldn't normally do widens your experience and gives you more ideas to try on your own stuff.

"As for recording, I usually start with a basic keyboard or guitar line, the drum machine, and a guide vocal. Then I can put things around the main feature of the song which has to be, of course, the vocal melody. If you put the vocal on last you always play everything too busily. I started as a bassist, so my usual trick is to play too busy and complex a bass line. Then when I put the vocals on, you can't hear them for this great bass solo...

"I find on eight-track it's very important to decide beforehand what instruments you're going to use otherwise you can run out of tracks very fast. I run the drum machine (a Yamaha RX15) in stereo, so that's two for a start, and then there's bass, one keyboard part, one guitar part, and two for lead and backing vocals. It gets pretty tight if it's a complex arrangement, so you really have to know exactly what you're doing.

"I sometimes run the drum machines in mono, particularly if I'm making backing tracks for my live set where it's going to be played through a mono system anyway. But I find it's important to be able to Eq the bass drum separately to the rest of the kit.

"As for bass, I use my Fender Precision which has been fiddled with by Roger Giffin. He's put a Bartolini pre-amp in it to give it a clearer, more upfront sound. It's a good bass but before it had a tendency to disappear into the mix. Now it's possibly a little too far the other way; to toppy and Chris Squire-ish.

"The keyboards I use consist of a Crumar Roady electric piano which I bought to learn on, and is okay for natural or honky-tonk piano sounds, but awful for electric piano; and a Roland Juno-60. In retrospect, I should have started straight away with the synthesizer because not only does it do a much better electric piano, Fender Rhodes type sound than the Crumar, but it's pretty easy to set up sounds on.

"Guitars... well, here I've got a fair choice. I've got an Ovation steel-string acoustic/electric which I use a lot live; an early '60s Les Paul with the little PAF pickups on which is great, apart from the fact that it really makes you play in that standard Rock way — you know, Eric Clapton licks all the time: a nice Spanish nylon-string which I paid about nine quid for and sounds lovely; and my pride and joy, a handmade Jerry Bix which is shaped like a Telecaster but has a single-coil on the front and a humbucker on the back, complete with out-of-phase and coiltap switches. It's got a lot of really good sounds, and is particularly good for chorussy sounds and those thin Fenderish tones. In actual fact, I'm going to have to give this one back because I'm having an almost identical guitar built at the moment, and this one's only on loan in the meantime.

"Oh, and I play banjo as well, really badly."

One thing about Steve's studio that you might not realise is that it's in one bedroom of a semi-detached house in North London. So how do you reconcile that with the screaming sustained lead guitar sound that you need umpteen hundred watts of Marshall to achieve? Steve?

"I use a really small Peavey practise amp. It's great, and I find I can get a good sound from it by standing it on a wooden chair to get a live, less muffled sound and then miking it from very close to the speaker cone. It comes across very nicely then.

"Everything else I DI, so there's no problem with the neighbours at all, except for when I'm mixing, and that's only like somebody playing their hi fi fairly loud. Because I do so many gigs, I play in the studio during the day and there's nobody in next door then."

If you're a struggling band you may twitch at the sentence "because I play so many gigs" — particularly as they're paying gigs than Steve does. Despite his repertoire of standards he's also got a lot of time to do his own stuff; surely a reasonable compromise between the marketplace and the maestro.