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I never considered myself much of a gadget collector…until I got serious about this part of the site and went deep into the gear closet and counted the number of pedals, tone shapers, black boxes and sound tweakerizers I owned. The grand total: seventeen. Seventeen! I don't necessarily use all of them on a daily basis, or even an annual basis, but I've got 'em. Why? Why the hell not? At least I listed the stuff I use in my current rig closest to the top of the page. Click on an item below and find out more for yourself.
No molded plastic piece of post-modern switchery is this. The SWR Mo' Control--which, in full disclosure, I helped design in my role as SWR's Product Manager--is an old-school, all-metal master controller for my pride and joy, the SWR Mo' Bass. I probably couldn't use the Mo' Bass in a live setting without it. It's got eleven switches in all. Six of them simply turn on and off the individual effects at any time, which comes in mighty handy when Keneally (or anyone else I'm playing with) heads off into ImprovLand and I want to add a little spice to the mix, be it with Chorus, Overdrive, Subwave, or whatever I feel like. But I tend to use the four programmable group switches more often than the individuals, usually in conjunction with specific sounds for specific songs. The group switches--labeled Preset Group 1-4--simply call up programmed groups of effects. For example, my basic distortion sound is on Preset 1: Overdrive and Mo' EQ. The Bootsy-ish synth-moog sound I use on "Killer Fish" lives on Preset 2: Subwave, BassSynth, Mo' EQ and Chorus. The wild sounds used in the climax of "Kedgeree" and "Selfish Otter" are on Preset 4: Overdrive, Mo' EQ and Chorus. I leave Preset 3 as a wildcard. Best of all, just because I'm in a Preset Group doesn't mean I can't switch individual effects on and off while I'm in there. And if I get lost or hit something wrong in the heat of battle, the eleventh switch comes in handy: master bypass. The LED's correlate to the LED's on the Mo' Bass front panel, with matching colors to boot. The pedal is for opening and closing the filter of the BassSynth. Like I've mentioned before, the Mo' Bass BassSynth is a very touchy and dynamic effect, and though I can control it with the pressure applied by my fingers, it helps to have the pedal option when things get loud and out of control on stage. Once I got used to
the idea of a master controller as opposed to a pile of effects pedals
at my feet, I realized what I had in front of me: a mini-Bradshaw switching
system. And it doesn't even need AC power because it gets its power from
the Mo' Bass, a big plus in ratty venues with one quad box for the whole
stage. Bottom line: it makes things very simple. And like the Mo' Bass,
I'm very proud to have been a part of its design.
I never would have known about this great tuner if I wasn't SWR's Product Manager. As it happens in the M.I. (musical instrument) industry, some kinds folks at Akai approached me at a NAMM show and wanted SWR's official opinion on some of the new effects pedals they were coming out with. After a polite and very Japanese-style discussion, they agreed to send us a box of everything they had ready. I can't say I discouraged them from doing so. There was all kinds of stuff in that box we got: samplers, wah-wahs, synth simulators, compressors…and this tuner. I'd been using the same little white rectangular Boss tuner that it seems every musician must own at one point in their lives, and I can't say I was thrilled with it. It didn't do a good job of tracking anything below low 'D', and I was tuning between low 'B' and low 'A#' on a regular basis. Not so with the Akai TuneLock. It nailed the low 'B' instantly. I decided to test it with a low 'A'. No problem. OK, low 'G'! It still got it very quickly. Better yet, it could run on a battery and not die after two gigs, thanks to a clever "sleep" function that kicks in after five minutes of on time (you simply step on the switch to wake it back up). This, plus the AC-less Mo' Control, meant that I didn't need AC at my feet for any reason. I was impressed enough to make it my onstage tuner, and it proved itself during the Nonkertompf Live performance in October of '01, when I need to make a three second switch from low 'A' to low 'B' and it handled it in style. I highly recommend it. It's
my current volume pedal, with two inputs, two outputs, and a side-chain
output for a tuner. The action is smooth, it doesn't fail, and the internal
potentiometer doesn't act up like my old Ernie Ball volume pedal used
to on occasion. Plus it's fairly small. I like it.
For those of you who don't know, the original founder/designer of SWR, Steve Rabe, has gone on to smaller things. His new company, Raven Labs, cranks out little boxes with incredible tone and utility. This piece, a five-band semi-parametric EQ, will sound happily familiar to anyone who loves the old SWR EQ circuitry…like me. In my current setup,
I use the True Blue in the effects loop of the SWR
Mo' Bass both live and in the studio with the following settings:
Band #1, boost 80 hz +7 db; Band #2, boost 160 hz +5 db; Band #3, cut
700 hz -4 db; Band #4, boost 1.5 khz +4 db; Band #5, boost 6.5 khz + 10db.
Since I blend in the True Blue's signal with the original bass signal
of the Mo' Bass, those db-rated settings actually end up sounding milder
than technically described, but they accurately relate to where the knobs
are set on the individual controls of the True Blue. To me, it acts like
a sweeter version of the EQ section of the SWR SM-900. Wanna know more?
Check out www.raven-labs.com.
This is an essential piece of gear for anyone using two different power amplifiers in their rig, which I happen to do. Ground loops are like voodoo. There are so many factors that can contribute to a loop--venue, power quality, cables, internal circuitry--that what works perfectly in one place may be horrendously noisy in another. I encountered just such a situation in a club in Hollywood when I connected my SWR Interstellar Overdrive (which has a small power amp inside) to my Peavey DPC1000 Power Amp as shown in the schematic for what I call The Old Rig. I tried everything in terms of lifting grounds on the AC lines and the XLR outputs, but nothing worked. The buzz was so loud, it practically rendered the rig useless. Then a technically-minded guy I know by the name of Ed Lucas asked me if I knew about this product by Eb-Tech. When I said no, he offered to run to the closest Guitar Center and get me one if I gave him the sixty bucks to buy it, guaranteeing that it would fix the problem. I gave him the dough, he came back in an hour, we plugged it in, and the noise disappeared. I don't know exactly what it does--buffer amps, isolation transformers, who knows?--but I swear by it and still use it to this day.
SWR toyed with the notion of marketing this high-quality and incredibly useful four-space soft rack case back in 1999, but the cost for the kind of quality material they wanted proved too high for customers in market research, so the idea was scrapped. But the single prototype we made was already bought and paid for…so I asked if I could have it, and sure enough they said yes. Man, sometimes I really love this job I have. I can't fly with it unless I carry it onto a plane, a dicey prospect before September 11 and an impossible one since. But I can tour with it if it's a pure ground transportation deal, which I did in May of '01 on Keneally's "Dancing" tour. I also cut holes in the sides to match the vent holes in the SWR Mo' Bass. And check out the elephant-sized pocket on the top, big enough for ten decent sized cables and plenty of spare strings, straps, and other gadgetry. No complaints here.
When Steve Rabe, original designer and founder of SWR, set out to make small utility-oriented products under the guise of his new company, Raven Labs, I really didn't know what to expect. From the creator of the SM-400, I should have known better. This little preamp/headphone amp has become an essential part of my practice regimen. I plug my bass into it and out comes the great old SWR sound. Then I mix in a stereo source (independently adjustable with left and right level controls)…and instantly it sounds like I'm playing inside the track. The first time I tried this was at Steve's workbench while the product was still in development. I put on Disc 3 of the Steely Dan box set and began playing along with "Kid Charlemagne." By the time I got up, forty-five minutes had passed. Silent practicing now sounds and feels better than playing along with a track out loud. It's remarkable. I've said as much in a quote Steve eventually used in an ad that ran in Bass Player. I also use it in the studio. Generally I like to play in the control room, because bass never sounds right through the cue mix from the board, and being in the same room as the drummer just makes it worse. But sometimes even the control room mix doesn't pop the bass like I need it (often the bass is too "thick" because the monitoring system reproduces it unusually well). So I'll take a line out of either the Mo' Bass head or the bass channels from the board itself, run that signal through the PHA-1's preamp, and dial in just enough level in the headphone output to cut above the mix from the control room's main monitors. This is an incredibly
useful and versatile piece of gear. I've never said this about anything
because subjectivity usually prevents it from applying, but in this case
it doesn't: every bass player should own one of these.
I love chorus. I use it all over the place. I probably overuse it, but I don't care. I love it. And this is the best chorus pedal I've ever heard, period. It was on The Old Pedalboard as part of The Old Rig. I first used it in the studio as a flanger, on the solo in Keneally's "I, Drum Running, Am Clapboard Bound", but 99.9% of the time I use it as a chorus with the following settings: Speed at '.5', Width at '3.5', Intensity at '5.5'. It's all over Dancing, and plenty of other recordings as well. When I started using
the Mo' Bass as my main head,
I set it aside because the Mo' had an onboard chorus which sounded very
good as well. But after listening tests both live and in the studio…I
have to say that the T.C. wins. The secret: incredible dynamic range.
It'll probably become a part of my live rig again starting with the Keneally/BFD
November '01 "Quartet" Tour.
For years, SWR made this 9-band, semi-parametric EQ only as a special-order, word-of-mouth boutique item. It was never advertised and never stocked in stores. And now they don't make it at all. Which is a shame, because although it's probably too esoteric for most bassists, this is, as far as I'm concerned, the ultimate EQ unit for bass guitar. The standard SWR amp's EQ section is one of the reasons the "SWR sound" became so popular in the first place. This is that EQ section with the lid off. Nine separate frequency bands all across the spectrum, plus and minus 15 db adjustability, quiet as hell, tonally superior to anything else I've heard. I use it in the effects loop of my Super Redhead when I'm using that piece in the studio. I've tried it in the
effects loop of the Mo' Bass too,
and it does wonders. However, I decided to use the Raven
Labs True Blue EQ --a direct descendant of this product--in my current
rig instead because I didn't want to have to expand my rack case to
five spaces.
This was one of the products that came along with the Akai TuneLock tuner I currently use (see above for the story on how I got all this Akai stuff). It actually led to me writing the only "song" I've ever composed, the acoustic solo piece "No". What is it? It's three things: a digital delay, a tape loop, and a sampler. The latter is the most interesting from a creative standpoint; it allows unlimited overdubs on top of an initial 11-second (maximum) recording. The regenerative sound quality of the sampler is decent, though it degrades slightly when you start layering past the fourth overdub…but I could see crafting a neat live piece out of it. Unfortunately the gain structure is much better suited for guitar than bass, because it clips early even with a passive electric bass. The tape loop is fun
if nothing else, but it was the delay that led to the writing of "No".
I set it at a very fast, rockabilly-style slapback delay, and started
screwing around with a campy, "bad cat" kind of walking groove
in E minor. A structure quickly took hold, and once I noticed that the
delay also helped cover up technical deficiencies in my playing, I was
fully sold. Not the original, but a damned fine re-issue of Electro-Harmonix's signature envelope filter. It's so much fun, it's a wonder I don't use it more. I used to use a crappy little DOD Envelope Filter back in the early 90's, and I remember hating the way it destroyed the fundamental of the note even though the effect was at least decent enough to be noticed. After the 1998 Keneally tours, I started wanting a Mu-Tron for certain things…but then I thought, everyone uses a fucking Mu-Tron. I wanted something unique. Then someone brought this into the SWR soundroom, and I bought it off him two hours later. I ended up using it for several shows in 1999, and it helped my soloing immeasurably. I also used it in the "Death Riff" section of "Selfish Otter" to good effect. But it only makes one sound, and if I was looking for something unique, it quickly dawned on me that a mass-marketed pedal that makes one really cool sound might not be the way to go. Eventually the Mo'
Bass solved this issue for me, both in sound quality and uniqueness.
Still, every time I see this pedal in my box of toys, I have to keep myself
from whipping it out and screwing around with it again. Call this unit
one of my guilty pleasures.
What you see here are the remains of the pedalboard I used, in one form or another, from 1996 until early 2001. The board itself is just a piece of plywood covered in Velcro and trimmed in metal by the ever-vigilant Thomas Nordegg. He also did the custom cabling, the AC system (several taps off of one AC "wall wart" adaptor), and the labeling. The chain began at the Ernie Ball Volume pedal, which I had modified to include a side-chain tuner out that went to the ubiquitous "little white rectangle" Boss Tuner that used to be mounted to the top center section of the board. The signal path continued from the volume pedal into the DOD Octave I used to use (now replaced by the Boss OC-2), which was located in the lower left underneath the SansAmp footswitch. From there it was onto the T.C. Electronics Chorus/Flange (formerly located on the bottom to the right of the octave) before entering a Morley A-B-Y splitter box (labeled "4" with the "A" and "B" notations). Then the signal split into clean/always on (A) and distortion boost when desired (B) as detailed in the schematic for what I call The Old Rig. The SansAmp footswitch connected directly to the back of the SansAmp PSA-1 via a separate cable and wasn't part of the in-front signal path, its use limited to back-and-forth switching between a single custom "Ampeg-type" preset and bypass. It worked great, and I still take it on the road with me as a backup system in case the Mo' Bass gets dropped or something. As a matter of fact, I can construct the old rig in its original state very easily just so long as I bring my backup amp rack (SWR SM-400 and Interstellar Overdrive), this pedalboard, and substitute the Bass Monitor 12" for the Goliath Junior III for the distorted cabinet. Having options is a good thing.
Known as "the brown box" to bassists for the past fifteen years--with varying amounts of affection--this unit is probably one of the most widely used bass effects in history. I only picked it up in 2000 as a replacement for my beat-up DOD Octave when it finally gave up the ghost, and it's only for use on my backup pedalboard at that. Frankly I like both the octave on the Mo' Bass and my old DOD better than this one, but you can't find the DOD's anymore. Quick story: when
the DOD died on me, I went and picked up the renowned EBS Octabass as
a replacement. Consistent with the word on the street, it did indeed sound
better than anything on the market, but upon closer inspection I noticed
a small amount of digital-sounding distortion whenever I touched my finger
to the string, regardless of whether or not the unit was engaged. EBS
said that it was due to a faulty AC cord, which they replaced…but
that didn't solve the problem. Then they replaced the unit. The new one
had the same problem. Unable to get any additional insight from EBS, I
sold it on E-Bay and went instead with the old reliable brown box, which
sounds pretty good in its own right and is noise-free.
Yes, OK, I did actually use this for a little while. From 1995 through the end of 1996, this was how I got an "overdrive" sound. It sounds really solid-state, and not in a good way--very laser-y and brittle. I screwed with the settings for hours on end, trying in vain to make it have more mid-range and cut through the mix without sounding like, well, like shit. It didn't work. The only thing I really needed it for was "Vent", which Keneally played quite a bit on the "Half Alive In America" tour opening up for Vai in late 1996. The only document of it sounding halfway decent is the January '96 Bourbon Square show, a.k.a. The L.A. Riot (see Act 5 of The Life Of Bryan for, pardon the pun, the "blow-by-blow"). Somehow, on that night, when I used the '51 Fender P-Bass Re-Issue and tuned it down to Eb, and kicked this pedal on, it worked well through the house sound system and subsequent audience recordings. I also got in a fight
later that evening, proving that lightning can indeed strike twice in
one night.
When the Mo' Bass first came out, the Mo' Control Master Footswitch was not yet ready for production. Me being the SWR insider that I am, however, I did have access to a working Mo' Control prototype that performed basic switching functions but didn't have a filter sweep pedal (for the opening and closing of the onboard BassSynth's filter). Since the Mo' Bass has a dedicated Filter Sweep Pedal input jack, any CV-type (that's "control voltage" to you) pedal with a stereo plug will work. Like the Roland EV-5. I used this from September 2000 until March 2001, when the Mo' Control was finally ready. Honestly, I like the action of this pedal a tiny bit better than the Mo' Control's pedal, but the difference is negligible in the heat of battle and I like having everything in one unit.
This is a great-sounding 3-channel sub-mixer and buffer amp that I used sometimes on the 1998 Keneally tours. It's extremely useful if you use more than one instrument during the course of a show, as you can level out gain differences in instruments before your rig and/or the front-of-house mixer, reducing the possibility of wild jumps in levels and frightened soundmen turning the bass down low enough for no one to hear it for the rest of the night. Then, as now, I played
one instrument most of the time. I sometimes switched to the '51
Fender Precision Re-Issue for "Potato" and "TRANQUILLADO"
on that tour, and so this unit came in handy. But after a while I got
lazy and just played them on my main axe at the time, the Fender
Jazz Deluxe V, and suddenly I had no real use for a mini-mixer. I
still have it, just in case I end up on a tour where I need a different
bass for every song and there's a guy whose sole job it is to hand each
instrument to me between tunes.
Again, part of the Akai care package I got (through SWR) along with their TuneLock tuner. It doesn't have the dynamic range of the flanger on the T.C. Electronics model, but there's an old-school, analog-sounding richness to it that hooked me enough to take it home. I've never used it on a gig or in a session, but I plan to one day.
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Boss
ODB-3 Bass Overdrive
Akai
Intelliphase