It's Ray Russell, just off to a session with Art Garfunkel. But why use a copy-Strat when you've a lovely old Fender? And what has the Synthaxe to do with Martians? And, asks Tony Bacon, who is Ray Russell?

You may well ask. Even if you don't know the name, you've heard Ray Russell. Most likely on both the Heaven 17 albums, although most prominently his clean, cutting guitar lines on the last LP. He seems to have played session guitar for everyone from Gil Evans, the masterful jazz arranger and band-leader, to Lulu, the popular female vocalist.

He arranged the "Rock Follies" TV music some years back, co-wrote and arranged the wondrous "Bergerac" theme for the TV series, arranged the strings on the new Bluebells LP, and has recorded three solo albums. He also plays in a group called REM (the ones who don't sound like the Byrds) with Simon Philips and Mo Foster in those odd moments between arranging film scores, writing suites for percussion and orchestra, and playing guitar for the Pointer Sisters, Phil Collins, Chaka Khan, Tina Turner, and countless others.

What you might quite accurately term a busy little bee. But just to get things rolling, does he have any favourites from amongst his work? He looks worried at this question. Understandable with so much to consider. The waiter at the Russell hotel (a coincidence, honest) brings more coffee and a decision is made. Ray nominates his stint with Gil Evans at Ronnie Scott's as his finest live moment: "I played my heart out for two weeks, a wonderful feeling." For his string arrangements he points to Merron Laginestra's new LP for Siren records, and his guitar playing fave is Heaven 17's "It's No Lie".

This last is a perfect choice. It exhibits a simple, damped guitar line that creeps into the mix and drives the track along. There's a lovely flurry at the end of each line where the right-hand palm obviously slips off the strings for a second, just so you're sure that it's a guitar.

"If you imagine that track without the guitar line... it just needed a motif to help it along. It's a simple guitar line recorded very well, DI'd." And often that's exactly what will happen in the studio. He'll be presented with a track and asked, simply, what he can do to make it better. His job is to provide the fairy dust.

"People book me for the name and what I'll do," he reckons, "not just A Guitar Player, and that's how I want it. I get a lot of work from producers, and from what's known in the business as 'fixers', music contractors."

As you ask, yes he does have a lot of guitars. But his main guitar is a Strat-type instrument made for him by a chap called Alan St Clair, who used to work at Roka's repair shop in central London. Apparently Alan now plays in a band and doesn't make guitars any more. Which, given Ray's enthusiasm, seems a bit of a waste.

"I've got a very old blonde Strat, serial number 870, very early. It's got that Strat sound. But I don't actually get on with the Fender scale length too well, I prefer the Gibson length. So I asked Alan to make a guitar with an SG scale and a Strat body."

He's put EMG pickups on, active single-coil types, and praises their power and ability to cut through. This, it seems, is another of the session player's big requirements.

"Old guitars are different," he stresses. "My old Strat sounds great, my Flying V sounds OK, but different to my newer guitars. A lot of today's session jobs, you've really got to cut through. When Jeff Beck uses an old instrument it sounds marvellous, but I just happen to find my St Clair Strat more suited to my needs. The neck's made for me, and it sounds like a Strat but with a vast amount of presence and cut."

A Flying V, did you say? Now that's hardly a guitar for the demure world of studio sessions, surely? "Mmm, it is a posing job. I used it on the Heaven 17 'Tube' appearance, looks so good. A director's dream: shapes, light it!"

But of course it doesn't have the poke of his beloved EMG-equipped St Clair. So what about new production guitars? . "I think it's pointless buying a guitar off the shelf — for the money it costs to have one made, say a couple of hundred quid more, it's much better."

Two immediate problems there. First, there's communicating your wishes successfully to the guitar maker. Ray suggests that it's the makers who may be at fault here, not asking enough questions of sufficient detail to get the right information from the buyer. And then there's resale value. It's so much easier to flog a Squier Strat when you want to move on than, say, a St Clair Strat.

Ray considers the argument. "It's like the old Woody Allen sardines joke: they're not to eat, they're to sell. I never sell instruments, but then I'm in that position..." He admits defeat. "All right, look, I tried a new Fender Strat today and it was awful. The neck was set up wrong, it didn't sound anything like a Strat, it was cardboardy, and they're asking 300 quid or so."

So what would he do to make it better if he was made to take it? "The first thing I'd do is put EMG pickups on." What is this, an endorsement deal? "Or some pickups with a bit of poke in them. Then I'd take it to Steve who does all my repairs, put on my gauge of strings, and stone the frets. Then, if you wanted to go another 50 quid, I'd put an ebony fingerboard on. OK, so that's quite a personal thing, but I find ebony's much faster and has a smoother feel. The sustain's better, too. And frets with a point to them rather than big wide ones will give you a more presencey sound. A brass nut and bridge will help, too — not on their own, but in combination with all these other things. I only play them... music shops are the most boring places in the world."

I see. Moving quickly away from the music shop door, I wonder what Ray heaves through the studio door on an average visit? There is, it seems, A Package. What does it consist of?

"I take along my St Clair Strat and a Guild acoustic. Then there's a couple of the new Boss delay pedals, a modified Electro-Harmonix Micro Synth, a Roland Dimension-D, an MXR Pitch Transposer, a dbX 160X compressor, a Music Man RD100 amp with 1 x 12 and 2 x 10, and a Rockman. Sometimes a Yamaha R1000 reverb, too."

A neat little music box or two, to be sure. The effects set-up, particularly, has been honed down after using most of the gadgets that have come on (and mostly gone off) the market. The Pitch Transposer he uses as a harmoniser or for thirds, fourths and fifths — it wobbles a bit up the top, he complains, but the compressor helps that. Everyone seems to be after a Dimension-D: "A great way of making things stereo, you can't hear the delay and it just makes it wide."

His amp needs to be strong, primarily, for all the humping it gets. "The Music Man's built like a brick shithouse. It's been dropped off planes and still sounds wonderful." He reckons the ideal in the studio is to be able to give the engineer a jack plug or Cannon plug on the end of a lead attached to all his gadgets and say, "Here it is, this is the sound you want." Ray takes pride in his sonic versatility. "Everybody wants sounds. I get them." The Rockman is a good box to lug around, and in Ray's experience can come in handy at the most unexpected moments. He recalls a Hooked-On Classics session — those are the records that end up sounding like ELO on valium. Anyway, this is a job. Ray recalls the score, the guitar part, in front of him as he sat amidst the wood and brass.

"It said 'roaring guitar solo'. You've got these parts with a list of instructions. Not only do you have to play, you have to sort these instructions out too. So, roaring guitar solo. Now when there's 50 guys out there playing strings you can't turn it up and go mad cos it'll go over all the mikes. So... out comes the Rockman, there's no spillage, two DI boxes, engineer's dream."

He checks out as much new gear as he can, always keen to have the best in sound manipulation available. So he must have tried out some guitar synths? Yes, and he's not liked them. The Roland 707 he was put off by the design before he'd even played it — he chuckles at my "coat-hanger" description — and wasn't much more impressed when he actually had a go. Biggest criticism was that the tracking still wasn't fast enough: "Sometimes it didn't speak. If I was doing a lot of live work with a band I'd probably buy one, persevere, and use the settings it really worked on — it's essentially a JX3P, so it has some good sounds. But if I'm at home recording I'll use keyboards, no-one really knows what it is."

Ray has also grappled with a prototype or two of the Synthaxe. He was alarmed at the price — seven or eight grand before you've even got any sound. And he found the thing, well... un-guitarlike. But this is a more general criticism.

"The problem when you play any guitar synth, no matter what it is, is that you have to adopt a different technique of playing. But it would be so nice to be able to pick up your favourite guitar and play it and get those sounds. Some of the Synthaxe is more like a keyboard. These things are for people from another race. Martians, really."

His recording gear at home is closer to earth: a Fostex B16 16-track tape recorder and a Soundtracs 16/8/16 desk. With the tape machine he found there was little competition at the price: originally he fancied a Studer 2 in machine — "I could live in a tent and buy it" — then switched to Otari brochures, but eventually decided on the Fostex.

"It was a matter of how much better would you get for the extra money? There's more important things to spend your money on: a drum machine, perhaps, but definitely outboard gear to make it sound better."

The desk, too, came down to available cash. "Finance is the limiting factor with a desk. What you pay for is the input module. Most of the time a desk isn't being used for recording at home, you just use one or two channels at the most at a time. You only use more on mixing.

"My criticism of the Soundtracs would be the lack of eq switching, which I'm having modified. At the moment the eq's always on, you have to put it to zero to turn it off which is very iffy. And the metering's in 4dB steps, that's a bit out of order, not very accurate. What I like is that the amps are quiet, there's a phase reverse button, good muting and soloing facilities, and the faders are fine. All that for two grand I think's very good."

He uses an old Prophet-5 and a "very cold, very modern" DX7 which he favours for bass, bells and percussion. But the idea germinating in the section of Russell's ever-active cranium labelled "high tech" is of purchasing a Synclavier. "I may get one of those and have done with it. You're spending just as much on all the bits and pieces."

But any addition to his army of instruments would have to be made for purely practical reasons. Ray is well aware of the way that machines seem to be taking over many jobs, not least that of the session musician.

"A month ago I went in to see someone at Abbey Road studios, and I had a look around the place. They had three Fairlights, one in each studio. No musicians at all. There they all were in the three studios, programming away. And I thought to myself, there's no-one playing live music in here at all. Creepy."