For a Complete List of Guitars click Here...
Live Rig
| STAT
| EQUIPMENT
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| GUITARS
| 1995 Fender Jag-Stang w/ EMG SA/81, 1998 Fender Jaguar w/ Cool Rails, 1983 Hondo Paul Dean II w/DiMarzio Super II, 2013 Squier VM Bass VI are the main ones I use the most.
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| PEDALBOARD
| SKB PS-45 Powered Pedalboard/Case, held together by Velcro and hardware store hardware and beat to hell
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| EFFECTS
| GTR->AMP: BOSS TU-2 Tuner, CreepingNet RFZ02 SkullFuzz, CreepingNet RFZ01 FazzFuzz, EHX Pitch Fork, EHX Small Clone, Behringer PH-9 Phaser, Digitech X-Series Flanger, BOSS DD-7 Digital Delay/Sampler, Behringer Noise Gate, Crybaby GCB-95 Wah, Behringer EQ.
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| AMPLIFIER
| 2008 Bugera 333XL 3 Channel 120 Watt Head, Tungsol (Bugera) EL34 Power Tubes x4 Grade "G", 4x 12AX7 TungSol (Bugera) tubes, Modified footswitch that uses old DB-9 Serial extention cables from old computers to talk to the original Bugera Footswitch (redaundant wiring for quality assurance). Usually Biased dead on night after night right before the show for the best tone possible and longest valve life.
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| CABINET(S)
| 1987 Peavey 412M VTM Series Cabinet, Beat to shit casters, peeling tolex, no label, scraped up rusty hardware, a workin' man's cab!, 16 Ohm mono only.
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| SPEAKER(S)
| 4x Celestion GK-85S Speakers, 16 Ohms total, series only, mono
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| MICROPHONE
| Usually whatever the club has but more often than not a Sure SM57 or SM58, typically I tend to favor the bottom right or top left speaker, slightly off center to the right. The best sounding speaker is the bottom right.
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| STRINGS
| Custom Set on Squier VM Bass VI (.048-.105), Ernie Ball Paradigm .009-.042 on everything else
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| PICKS
| Dunlop Jazz III red with sharp tip, sometimes black Jazz III when I can't find the red ones.
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| STRAPS
| Get'm Get'm Leopard Print (Jaguar), Get'm Get'm Zebra Stripe (Jag-Stang), Leather Studded Strap (Hondo Paul Dean II or Jazzmaster), Levis Leather Strap (Jazzmaster or MadRite).
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| OTHER DETAILS
| Typically the Jag-Stang is in standard while the others do drop tunings but get put in standard if doing backup duty. Some shows I use one guitar, some shows I use as many as 5. It just depends on the show, the band, or my mood at the moment.
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Home Studio Rig
| STAT
| EQUIPMENT
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| GUITARS
| Pretty much my entire Collection, whatever I have at the moment. Most often it's the Jag-Stang, Jaguar, Jazzmaster, Paul Dean, Mad-Rite, and Bass VI I use the most.
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| BASSES
| Just a 2013 Squier VM Bass VI, it emulates everything bass-wise
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| AMP MODELING
| Line6 HD500, or the built in BandLab Amp Modeler. Doing guitars in Bandlab is a bit of a PITA because the older my phone is, the more sync Issues I have with the guitars, and then I have to shift it to line up with the beats because the recorder was picking up a DSP'd and Buffered signal - with that processing time causing a delay in audio. This is why I'm a huge fan of Hardware Loopback on sound cards and using discreet digital effects boards in my home studio. I also use the software modeling in Garage Band, which there, I find it a bit more important to use that instead of outboard as GarageBand already puts some E.Q.ing and environment variables on the Line6 that makes it sound different.
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| DAW
| I use 4 different ones, first is BandLab which is tied to my portable studio via the Cloud. Then there's Cakewalk ProAudio 4.5 on my 486s which are all DAW capable machines weirdly enough (though not the most comfortable to use). I also have Cockos REAPER which I have been using since 2008, Quartz AudioMaster Freeware on my Pentium laptop, and lastly, GarageBand of course - because I have a Mac as well. Somehow the DAW I'm using inspires me to do certain things as well. Kind of cool. More recently, under Linux, I've started using Ardour with Drum Gizmo to get a more organic sound and get back to my pre-electronic rock roots a bit.
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| DEVICES
| These days I do most of my DAW work on my Dell Latitue E6440, or my cell phone (Samsung Galaxy A14) when I'm using BandLab. I use Ardour on the Dell, GarageBand on the iMAC, and I still dabble with Quartz and CakeWalk on the old computers. So I've got options - lots of options. I also have a Donner Electric Drum Kit right now that I'm still learning to play well enough to do at least a basic drum track with before I record with it. I seem to be getting the basic "David Robinson" thing down....though I don't even hold a candle to that guy....and a little Matt Frenette "Four on the FLoor" as well. Not ready for the crazy fun stuff yet, not even close.
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Portable Rig
| STAT
| EQUIPMENT
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| GUITARS
| If I'm on the go I usually just pick one good guitar and go with it. My wife usually wants me to "revolve the door" a bit because she likes photographing me with guitars. Honestly, my top travel companion is usually the Fender Jaguar because that's my favorite model off-the-rack that I can easily replace if something happeens to it (Squier VM Jaguars), even though I'm dead set on my Jaguar. However, some changes with my rampant building as of 2024 might lead me to not have to risk losing my guitars while out and about at all.....let's just say some "sattelites" in other cities for other people that I'll probably be allowed to use while I'm there.
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| RECORDING INTERFACE
| IK Media iRig2 into my current cellular phone
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| AMP MODELING
| I use BandLab's built in Amp Modeling, I have several presets. I tend to use 70's Disco/Pop for the bass the most, with a little overdrive when needed in the rare cases I'm recording bass guitar on my phone. I also use effects a ton with synth sounds, but I prefer classic chamber for drums. I have a few key presets including my classic guitar sound, and on synths I use an effect I created by accident htat I nicknamed the "Doug Johnson-izer 3000" - yes, it's named after Loverboy's keyboard player - it gives a really fat chorus effect to keyboards, especially the saws and squares, that gives it this really cool "analog synth" quality I really like. It really really sounds like the synth effects from the first three Loverboy records hence the name - one of my favorite synth sounds.
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| DAW
| Cakewalk BandLab App on my phone, which is what I use most of the time to get a good backing started for most of my compositions. I use the online DAW sometimes as well, mostly for guitar/bass, but not too terribly often because I prefer the mobile piano roll.
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| CELL PHONE
| As of 2/2024 I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy A14 5G from the LG Stylo 6 (Which I still have both of em'). I may be bumping the capacity of storage up because BandLab these days REALLY Sucks down your storage capacity with the track stems for recording. Luckily the Galaxy has something the LG did not have - micro SDCARD addition.
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| MIDI
| Almost everything that's not a guitar, is me composing in MIDI via piano roll notation, it uses the same sort of interface as my 486 (surprise, the 486 has CakeWalk 5 pro Audio on it which is BandLab's great grandpappy). The Majority of my MIDI work revolves around synthesizers, drums, and occasionally bass, though I sometimes write classical and orchestral pieces too when those get stuck in my
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| SAMPLING
| I use both premade samples on bandlab, and those I have made myself. That's one nice thing about using my cell phone is I can record wacky noises almost anywhere, and use those periodically, whether it's sampling a meowing stray cat I run across or sampling a fire alarm test at work (built a whole piece around that one, lol).
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| LOOPERS
| I tend to keep a watch out for new Loopers on BandLab and then try them out. Sometimes I only use one or two pads, sometimes I use the whole bloody looper, just depends on what I'm "feeling" at the moment that I'm recording with it. This is part of how I've "diversified my portfolio" if you will, because I'll throw on Hip-Hop Looper, and see what happens, then I might play witth an EDM Looper and crate some EDM music I might actually want to listen to.
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| THE CRAZY PLACES I RECORD
| The first place I ever recorded in BandLab was on a Patio at a Portand Oregon hotel. I've also wound up in the park, off-road, hotel room late at night, the in-law's house, bike trails between stretches of a trip on the bicycle, in the office, in the bathroom.....this is the beauty of having a cell phone that can record multitrack music, basically I have a repository for my ideas whenever inspiration strikes. This is the stuff not just me, but even famous people like Eddie Van-Halen could only dream of as near as 15 years ago, when we were all still murmuring into pocket tape decks and jotting down shitty tablature on post-it-notes because the tech just was not quite there yet.
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