US Tour Recap: Gear!

With the US leg of the Other Side of the Kaleidyscope Tour finished, and the European tour a week off, I thought I’d make a rare post covering the gear used so far. Several months of updating SPFC’s equipment section have had some side effects- namely, my already meticulous concert setlist notes now include details on guitar changes! Lucky you, that means a whole article devoted to guitars & stuff (don’t worry, there’s pictures, too)! :D

Note that I’m still quite a novice when it comes to identifying guitars- while some people can tell you down to the year & specific model variations (custom, standard, junior, etc.), I can pretty much only identify the basic models (Strat, SG, LP, etc.), unless there’s something obvious (i.e. in the case of the SG Custom, which has 3 pickups rather than the usual 2). That said, this should provide a “good-enough” overview for non- to casual players, as well as a starting point for more experienced gearheards. And there’s pix of everything, so those with the knowledge, please feel free to chime in with more detailed information wherever. :)

Nicole was the most consistent member, going with a Fender Jazz bass for all songs. Although the colors were a bit hard to discern with the constantly changing colored lights, it appears she used 3 basses throughout the shows- a white one for Geek USA, Muzzle, Ruby, Cherub Rock, and Bullet, and 2 blueish-grey ones for everything else (one may have been more blue than grey, and vice versa- it’s hard to tell with colored lights). Given the white bass is a 1-1 match for guitar changes by Billy & Jeff, I’m designating that the E-flat bass, meaning one of the other basses was in drop-D to accomodate Siva, Silverfuck, etc., and the other in standard tuning. Although it’s also entirely possible that there were only 2 basses- one in Eb, and one in drop-D- which she used for songs in standard tuning as well.

Mike was next up, using his un-changing drum kit for each song, but heading over to a Roland Fantom X8 (one of the models used by Lisa Harriton during her time with the band) for the intro and outro to For Martha, opting for an electric piano/vibes preset, rather than the traditional piano sound heard on the album version. The keyboard parts in the middle of the song are filled in by guitar, with Billy strumming chords and Jeff playing the melody.

Billy was heavy on the strats this time, namely his own signature model, of which he had at least 3, all white, identifiable by their various stickers. The first has a Disney Tomorrowland “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (artwork visible here), and a black octopus sticker (with what looks like a stylized “3E” on its head), and was used on Quasar, Panopticon, Starla, Window Paine, Lightning Strikes, Oceania, My Love is Winter, For Martha, and Pissant.

The second (pictured at the top of the article) had a 76 gas station logo sticker with another “BURBANK” sticker on top of it- this was used on the E-flat songs (Geek, Muzzle, Ruby, Cherub Rock, Bullet). The third has a silver glittery “X” sticker, as well as a couple different-sized stickers of what look like the Devo “Energy Dome” hats, and a strawberry- this was used on Soma, Siva, Frail & Bedazzled, and Silverfuck, indicating it’s in drop-D tuning.

Finally, for his only non-strat, Billy uses a Gretsch Country Club for Obscured, Suffer (LA only), Pinwheels, and Owata (with a capo on the 5th fret). In addition to the guitars, Billy also plays the new (as of 2010) M4000D digital Mellotron (also pictured in the “20,000 Leagues” shot above) on Oceania. The back panel also includes the Chamberlin logo, which was the first sample-based music keyboard, on which the Mellotron was based.

Jeff has the widest variety of axes for this tour. First off, he uses a white Gibson SG Custom for Quasar, Panopticon, Starla, Frail & Bedazzled, and Silverfuck. He’s got 2 Les Pauls, both black- one with a white pickguard, and one with black; the black/white LP is used on E-flat songs, while the black/black one is used on Window Paine, Lightning Strikes, Some, Siva, and Pissant.

In addition to these, he’s got 3 Fender Jazzmasters: a black one used on Oceania, My Love is Winter, and Pinwheels; a red one used on Owata and For Martha; and a white one used on Obscured, Suffer (LA only), and Pale Horse. Finally, a tobacco sunburst Fender strat was used on Owata in the LA show, but this was swapped out for a Jazzmaster in Oakland, and possibly all subsequent shows (let me know if anyone’s spotted it elsewhere!).

Last but not least, Nicole, Billy, and Jeff all used a huge array of effect pedals, but even from the best shots I could manage from the balcony in LA, it’s pretty hard to make anything out other than the Voodo Pedal Power power supplies, some wah pedals, and Jeff’s Rocktron. I’ll leave that for the more hardcore gearheads. Also, if anyone has seen any other guitars used on this last tour that weren’t mentioned here, leave a comment here or drop a line to equipment at spfc dot org!

More pix can be seen for LA and Oakland, with all instruments tagged.

UPDATE (2011/10/27): Got some new info, straight from Jeff & Nicole!

First, Nicole is only using 2 basses- the white one for E-flat, and the blue-grey one for everything else. She’s using a Hipshot detuner to quickly switch between standard E tuning and drop-D, which works similar to a guitar D-Tuna, only on the headstock end (the regular tuning peg is replaced with an assembly that includes a lever that switches between the 2 tunings), rather than on the bridge. You can see the “Xtender” assembly on Nicole’s bass in this picture (zoom in on the headstock for more detail).

Second, some additional info on Billy’s Gretsch: all songs are in standard tuning (including Obscured), except Pinwheels, which is changed to “Rolling Stones” open G tuning (DGDGBD) on the same guitar between songs (Jeff plays in standard E). Also, as a few have noted, Muzzle is being playing in “standard” E-flat tuning, no dropping of the 2nd string to A-flat.

Finally, we have some updates from Jeff about his Jazzmasters, effects chains, and amps. There’s so much great stuff in here, I’m just gonna dump it here as is (w/ the addition of some links & a couple comments, noted by ed:). :)

–Jazzmasters: All three Jazzmasters are in standard tuning. The Red one is a mid-nineties ’62 reissue that I’ve had forever. The bridge has been changed to a Mustang-style bridge and the pickups are Lollars. It’s one of the best sounding Jazzmasters I’ve heard. It has that extra “thing” to it that you can’t explain. The other two are J. Mascis (ed: Dinosaur Jr.) signature models that Fender custom painted for me. The cream colored one has Curtis Novak pickups. These are his standard vintage-spec pickups. They sound very clear and chimey–the classic Jazzmaster sound. The black one has Novak wide-range humbuckers. These are the same pickups Lee Ranaldo (ed: Sonic Youth) puts in his guitars. In fact, I’ve heard the pickups Fender has been putting in the Lee Ranaldo signature models don’t sound anything like they are supposed to and Lee has had to have Curtis make him replacements.

On a normal night, this is the breakdown of Jazzmaster songs:

Oceania – Red
Suffer (first night only) – Cream
Obscured – Cream
Pale Horse – Cream
Owata – Red
For Martha – Red
Pinwheels – Black

However, because of noise issues usually having to do with bad power in the old theaters we’ve been playing, I’ve ended using the Black Jazzmaster because it has humbucking pickups. The single-coil pickups in the other are just too noisy to use some nights. Total bummer. It’s probably for this exact reason that people like David Gilmour, Clapton, and Jeff Beck–as well as a zillion other players (ed: like Billy! :D)–switched to using EMG‘s and/or Lace Sensor type pickups in the eighties and nineties. So on nights where I use the Black one a lot, it’s just because of noise and not sound preference or tuning.

–Effects: I had a new pedalboard made for this tour. It’s somewhat a work in progress, but I won’t change anything out again until next year. The reason for putting everything out on the floor versus having everything in the rack is sound. Before, I would have a long cable run before I hit any of my pedals; and the longer cable run you have, the more tone you lose. This is always a trade-off. Before, Billy and I had everything in our racks and used a MIDI loop/switching system. When you use one of these systems (and now there are many on the market), you have to use what is called a buffer. A buffer changes the signal coming out of your guitar from a high-impedance signal to a low-impedance one. What this allows you to do is make long cable runs without losing signal. Unfortunately, it changes the sound quite a bit. There’s a ton of stuff on the web talking about the pros and cons of all this. Many pedals–like all Boss pedals, but others as well–have buffers built into them. Some players hate what buffers do to their sound. That’s why over the last ten years or so, there has been such a craze towards “true bypass” pedals. Anyway… both Billy and I liked the sound of our amps when we plugged straight into them. Yet, playing a Pumpkins gig with no effects wasn’t a realistic option. Eventually, I figured out I could use three Keeley true bypass loopers and reach what I feel is a fair compromise. If I have all three loops turned off, I have pure, un-buffered signal. Here’s my signal chain:

Guitar –> Fulltone Clyde Wah –> Loop 1: Mad Professor Forest Green Compressor (my favorite compressor), Tone Freak Naked OD, Tone Freak Abunai II OD, Instruments for a New Electric Music Compact Faye Sing Phaser, Analog Man Chorus, Boss PS-5 Super Shifter –>

Loop 2: Boss RE-20 Space Echo, Eventide Time Factor Delay, Eventide Space –>

Loop 3: Line 6 M13 –> Amp

The Rocktron All Access is used to do the channel switching on the Randall Preamp. Everything else is done old-school. No presets or anything like that.

–Amp: I’m still using the Randall MTS moduler system but now I’m using a set of custom modules made by Antonin Salva from the Czech Republic. The man is a total amp wizard. His company is called Salvation Mods (www.salvationmods.com). My Randall preamp has four channels: Channel 1: Randall Tweed (this is the only standard module I’m using); Channel 2: Salvation Mash-All (emulates four different Marshall amps–59 Plexi, JCM 800, Jose Modded Marshall, and the JVM series); Channel 3: Prototype of a custom module Antonin is making for me based on an Orange Rockerverb head. This is my main distortion sound. It sounds amazing; Channel 4: Salvation Salvado. Module based on a Soldano head that I only use for leads.

Randall RT2/50 power amp into two Marshall 4×12 cabinets with Celestion Vintage 30s run in mono. I went back to using Marshall cabs for two reasons. One, the angle of the slant makes them much easier to hear on stage and also for the sound. Classic.

Well, there you have it! This should keep me busy for a while on the equipment section as I add all this in.  HUGE thanks to Jeff & Nicole for the extra info!