Next Show:
Shank Hall
Saturday, 01-31-20099pm
1434 N Farwell Ave - Milwaukee, WI 53202 - (414) 276-7288
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Former members:
Dan
Chester
                                  
 
It has been mentioned to me a couple times that I should describe my rig on the web site. Here we go...

Amps and rack, top to bottom, let to right:
  1. Old Roland JC-120 head.
  2. Furman power strip thing.
  3. Roland Fantom XR synth / sampler with 1/2 gig ram / 1gb storage, vintage synth card. It takes about 10 minutes to boot and load all the samples.
  4. TC Electronic G-Major for time domain effects from the Splawn amp (Marshall logo).
  5. Motu 828 mk-2 digital interface used as a mic pre and onstage mixer.
  6. Behringer DI4000 direct box (4 di's in a rack).
  7. Trace Elliot 4x12 stereo slant cab with Celestion Vintage 30's. This is used in stereo with the JC-120 head.
  8. Splawn Quickrod head (purple Marshall thing).
  9. Custom 4x12 straight cab with 2 old Celestion 70's and 2 newer Celestion Greenbacks (X pattern). Someone in Canada hand builds these off of various older Marshall specs. Fed by the Splawn head.
  10. The all-imporatant plexiglass shield to help keep Scott the soundman happy.
  11. Sennheiser 609 mic on the Splawn feeding a mic pre on the Motu unit.
  12. Guitars pictured - Peavey Wolfgang special and Gibson Les Paul Standard (fat 50's neck, non-potted burstbucker pickups). Peavey has stock bridge pickup and a Seymour Duncan pickup in the neck position (the one that Slash uses, can't remember the name but I like it).





Another amp shot, this time just the Splawn, but the Mackie SRM-450 powered monitors are pictured. In the picture above, these were placed on the floor by the pedal board. Guitar shown is a Parker Fly Mojo with stock pickups (SD JB/jazz models). Also, to the left in this picture is the rack minus the Motu, but I was using a Mackie 1202 in place of it (top).




Pedals:
  1. Rocktron Midimate for switching patches on the Fantom. I use around 40 patches on the Fantom for any given show.
  2. Boss BC5 midi pedal controller for the Fantom.
  3. Midi pocket thru thing used as an extention from the synth pedal stuff to get the midi cable closer to the snake.
  4. Fulltone Choral Flange.
  5. T-Rex delay.
  6. MXR Phase 90.
  7. Peterson Strobostomp tuner.
  8. Teece wah (sometimes it's a Crybaby or a Vox).
  9. Boss FC-50 midi switcher for the TC Electronic unit.
  10. Channel switcher for the Splawn
  11. Sansamp distortion pedal (it's hanging around in case the Splawn blows up and I'm stuck with the JC-120).
  12. Radial Engineering A/B box.
  13. Earnie Ball volume pedal.
  14. Furman pedal board.
  15. Power supply for the effect pedals (can't remember the name and it's hidden under the midi pedals).
  16. Mackie SRM-450 (1 of 2 on the floor).



Signal Path:
  • Guitar - volume pedal - wah - tuner - phase 90 - trex - fulltone - A/B side A to Splawn - custom 4X12.
  • B side of A/B pedal - Sansamp - JC120 - Trace Elliot cab in stereo.
  • Mic in front of Splawn - Motu mic pre - send of Motu to TC - TC to DI(2 channels) - DI back to Motu - Motu to SRM-450's. Obviously FOH takes DI taps for the TC.
  • Synth stuff - Rocktron midimate to Boss midi pedals, out of the midi pedals to Fantom. Fantom to DI(2 channels) to Motu to Srm 450's.
  • Other - Midi from Boss FC-50 to TC G-Major. Splawn channel switch to Splawn amp.

Thoughts:

  • With vocal this rig consumes 8 channels on the board. 1 for Splawn, 2 for JC120, 2 for synth, 2 for TC, 1 for vox. The band as a whole uses around 29 inputs and I am the only one leveraging stereo.
  • I use 5 presets on the TC and they are completely wet. Chours, Chorus/delay combo, delay only, reverb for volume swell effects like in the Xanadu intro, and one delay with a long tail used maybe for one note per show.
  • I hate reverb as a general rule.
  • The T-Rex delay is only used to simulate echoplex type effects.
  • The Mackie powered monitors are for personal monitoring of the synth pedals and TC unit. Since those signals are sent to FOH via DI and I can use the house monitors for them, but I always regret it because they are eq'd for feedback elimination and sound like crap where I am wanting a flat signal.
  • I need a tech! It's a lot of stuff to setup and troubleshoot. With that being said, I really hope you appreciate the effot we go through to make the shows as good as we can. It's not just me, but the whole band has a slew of technical stuff to deal with before we even begin to worry about the perfomance side of the equation.

There is some more info here.