Gear
Here's the standard gear I gig with most often. I've never been the type of
guitarist who owned 5 different Strats, a few Les Pauls, 3 or 4 Jazz boxes,
and a half dozen acoustics. If you're a guitar player, you're probably
thinking..."What's wrong with you?!!" I know...I know. I just never could
justify spending the bucks unless I was really going to use a particular
guitar a lot. However, I am concerned about the quality of the
instruments and I like to have good guitars that are well-suited to each style
and musical situation I find myself in, whether it's strumming on the worship
team, playing a Jazz gig, rocking out in a cover band, whatever.
This is my 1978 Gibson ES-175D. It's a great Jazz
guitar. It was the first pro guitar I owned. Right before my Junior year in
high school, I sold a pro-model trumpet that I played, and bought this
guitar from my local guitar shop. Great tone and so versatile. It's suitable
for many styles of music. The 175 has served me through many, many
performances over the years and it's holding up very well. It's still my
main Jazz box.
This is my Fender Strat. It's a remake of the
1960's Strat, in Olympic White. I replaced the factory pickups with a set of
Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups. They work great. I also mounted a Roland
GK-2A divided pickup on it so that I can connect to my GR-33 guitar synth
and control other MIDI instruments (I love playing steel drums on
guitar!).
I hadn't bought a standard acoustic steel-string
guitar for many, many years. I figured I needed something new that would be
both a good fingerstyle guitar and a good strummer. I also needed something
that would project well when I play unplugged. After much (MUCH) playing and
listening to various guitars around the Seattle area, I decided this Taylor
414CE was the one for me. I really like the crisp sparkle and full low end I
get from the 414. I compared it to other Taylors (614's and 714's), as well
as other brands, but this particular guitar just stood out for me. Great
guitar.
Image Gallery
This is a custom-made, Noble baritone acoustic. I
love the haunting sound of baritone guitars and the inspiration that comes
from the lower tunings. Duane Noble (
http://www.dlnobleguitars.com/) built this guitar for
me, with Koa back and sides, Sitka Spruce top, Boxwood binding, Mahogany
neck, and Ebony fingerboard. Duane's guitars are just beautiful; pleasing to
both the ear and the eye...world-class, all the way! His inlay and
woodworking skills amaze me. I had Duane install a
B-Band A2.2 XOM pickup system. This
system is great at capturing the lower frequencies of the baritone while
keeping the highs crisp and clear. It picks up the natural sound of the
guitar very nicely and I'm extremely happy with it. For a closer look at
this guitar, be sure to check out the
Baritone Image Gallery.
I bought this Line 6 Variax Acoustic 700 not long
after they hit the market. I was a bit skeptical, at first, about buying an
"acoustic" guitar that depended so heavily on electronics for it's sound.
However, once I played it, and perhaps more importantly, recorded with it, I
was convinced this was the way to go. It models so many amazing acoustic
guitars and other stringed instruments, all perfectly EQ'ed and balanced,
without the need for any tone tweaking. It's perfect for heavy strumming,
light fingerstyle, and everything in between. If you haven't heard a Variax
Acoustic yet, you really should. The
Line 6 site
has some great audio and video demos you can check out.
This is a Yamaha Classical guitar. I bought this
right before I left for college to study classical guitar with James Reid.
Since then, I've used it in so many performances. The Variax kind of
overshadows it now but I still use it on occasion.
My wife and sons got me this Washburn Rover
travel guitar for Father's Day. A while back, I found myself in a hotel
room, completely inspired after a Phil Keaggy clinic, and I had no guitar
with me. Torture, I tell you! The next day, I went to check out various
travel guitars so that I could easily take one with me when I travel. I
played many different brands and models but this one stood out in terms of
tone quality, intonation, and playability. It has a full-scale neck, solid
mahogany back and sides, and a spruce top. Great little guitar. I don't gig
with it but thought I'd include it here anyway.
I loved the Line 6 Variax Acoustic so much...I
bought the company! Okay. Not really. I recently found myself playing such a
wide variety of styles in several different groups, with several different
guitars; I wanted to find one amp that could be used in all those
situations. This Line 6 Flextone III was the answer for me. It'll handle
everything from bright acoustic to ear-drum-rupturing thrash metal. I love
the tone I get out of it when I'm comping in a big-band setting, and the
blues and rock tones just...well...rock!
This is the Line 6 Shortboard foot controller for
the Flextone III. You really need one of these if you're going to be using
the Flextone in live performances. It allows you to access all of the
patches on the amp, as well as some nice, extra features that you can't
really get otherwise.
This is the guitar synthesizer I control using my
Fender Strat. It's a Roland GR-33. Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of
owning a guitar synth someday. It's so fun to play a guitar solo one minute
and then drop into a fretless bass solo or a vibes solo the next. There are
so many possibilities when I have all these tones at my feet.
This is my acoustic guitar pedalboard. I have a
Roland RC-20XL LoopStation on there, along with an Ibanez stereo chorus, a
Boss 7-band EQ, an Arion octave pedal (great, inexpensive pedal), a Line 6
direct box/power supply, and a Boss FS-6 dual footswitch controller for the
looper.
I recently upgraded to the Boss RC-50 Loop
Station. I needed a way to record short percussive loops on one track and
then record longer loops over the top of that, on a separate track. The RC-50
is really 3 loopers in one. Each can work independently or can serve as
multiple layers of a single loop.
For my solo setup, I always run though this rack.
It holds a Digitech Digital Delay unit and an Alesis MicroVerb III. I
usually use a light, hall reverb with just a slightly audible delay behind
every note.
My Flextone has most every effect I need for my
electric guitars, but here are some other effects I use when needed. From
left to right, there's an Ernie Ball volume pedal, an e-Bow Plus (so fun),
an original Ibanez Tube Screamer, and a Digitech RP-200 multi-effects pedal.
Ya gotta have the gadgets when you're a guitar player.
This is my Yamaha Stagepas 300 PA. It's the PA I
use for most every solo gig and some combo gigs. At 300 watts, it gives me
enough power for medium-sized venues and it is just amazingly crystal clear
— especially with my Variax Acoustic. The removeable amp locks
(optionally) in place on the back of one of the speakers, making it very
portable and easy to set up. I played "Evita" a while back and used just one
speaker, with the mixer, as my guitar amp. What a great sound. And it filled
the auditorium!
Okay...yeah...I know. It's a stool. Big deal. But
if you're a guitar player, you know how difficult it is to find that perfect
stool. The seat has to be at just the right height so you can reach your
pedals on the floor and you need a foot rest that puts your knee at just the
right height and angle to hold the guitar comfortably. I tried so many
stools and then stumbled upon this On Stage guitar/keyboard stool. I think I
may have heard angels singing when I saw it for the first time. Maybe not.
It really is the perfect stool for me though. And it's a firm stool.
