There's nothing like getting your money's worth from an interview, as we say here. After all, if you're going to go all the way to Camden to interview Madness you've got to justify the bus fare.

So with all expense spared we've decided to take the opportunity to grill the band's drummer and expert home recordist Woody on his taping exploits.

Not that he's anything but an ideal prospect for the prestigious Home Taping interview, of course; he's a fanatic about gear and the selection he's accumulated for the purposes of songwriting would make many a fully-fledged studio blush the colour of fresh lawn cuttings.

If you want a complete list of his stuff, look to your right — as the Woody one said, "all my favourite pieces of technical journalism have the interviewee's equipment listed separately. It makes it easier to see what he's got."

But how does this impressive technoheap work? Over to the expert.

"My normal procedure is to put a code from my MSQ700 onto my A8 through my Seck desk (they're really brilliant — only about an inch thick, and light). I have thought about getting a Fostex B16, but that would only have meant getting a mega-desk. A nice clean simple desk, simple routing, and I've got my rack system in order. I used to have two Roland SDE3000s, but I never used them to their full capacity, and they had no sampling, which is why I swapped to Korg SDD1000s, with 2 seconds of delay, and proper triggerable sampling. I always get pairs of things because I'm a stereo fanatic.

"And I've got two R1000 Yamaha reverbs. They're lovely — without them, forget it. DX7s should have them built in. For monitoring, I use headphones, or Bose Studiocraft speakers; and I've got those self-powered Fostex personal speakers, the ones with the preamp in. They're powerful.

"I normally master onto an old Revox A77, though if I was mastering onto cassette, I'd use a Hitachi DE7, as they've got a really close three-head system, which is much better for monitoring input/output. One of my prizes is a Sony Walkman Professional which I use for playback. And I've got an Aphex Aural Exciter. That's good for giving bass drums a big clout.

"And I've just got a Yamaha 31 band stereo graphic, which is glorious. I have used compressors and noise gates, but they're such a hassle to deal with. All the stuff I use is so clean, and anyway, it's only home recording...!"

How often do you use all this gear, Woody?

"Every single day of my life. But I used to spend months trying to perfect things in my own Mike Oldfield manner. Hopefully I've got to the stage now where I can come up with the basics, and say 'how about this, boys?'

"Usually we make tapes, and then give them to Suggs, Carl, or Lee to see if they want to write some lyrics."

The rest of the band aren't entirely idle, either, though — Chris and Mark chipped in with a few tips for home studio sprogs.

Chris: "Don't go potty and bounce things down too much. Just get your best two or three songs."

Mark: "When you make demos, you've got to be very direct."

Woody: "There's a danger in making your recording excruciatingly perfect, and losing sight of the original material."

Chris: "It's very easy to lose the spontaneity."

Do you ever find yourselves trying to recreate demos in the studio?

Mark: "We're always honing the songs down, right up until the last moments before we record them, so it doesn't happen quite like that."

Chris: "Songs like Perfect Grace, Yesterday's Men — we've spent so much time arranging them that they're already nearly done; others we change around quite a lot."