Gear

After popular demand, I have decided to put a gear page back on the website.....I had no idea people cared so much about what gear I am using! It's all pretty straightforward, no magic black boxes or anything. I just use what sounds good to me.

The Guitars

I Have three strats I use regularly, and an Ovation Balladeer Special I use on the odd acoustic gig.

The Sherwood Green Strat is actually a parts guitar made from Warmoth Guitars, and fashioned after a Fender '62 Reissue I loved in a store, but thought was a bit overpriced. So I built the guitar to the same specs for about $800 less! This guitar is just starting to get sweet, as it's only about four or five years old.

The two Black Strats are both real Fenders....the Maple neck is a 1988 American Standard and the Rosewood neck one is a 97' California series strat. All guitars are loaded with Kinman Blues pickups.

Amps

This is the section everyone seems to get all wrapped up in. Some people really get sucked into thinking you have a spend a fortune on equipment, but not really coming from money I have always had to get good sounds out of less expensive gear. Over the years, I have realized that I sound like me on almost every amp out there, and have stopped driving myself nuts over amps and prefer to get to the business of playing and learning the instrument rather than spend all my time worrying about which amp is better, etc. I had a great run with a Tech 21 Trademark 60 for ten years, but have finally updated my rig.

Anyway, on the left is a V30 Class A 30 watt tube amp made by Crate, though nowhere on it does it say Crate, not even on the inside. It is made by St. Louis Music who makes Crate, Ampeg, Mackie, and others. Based on a Vox circuit, it is a single channel amp with an overdrive station I never use, as I prefer to control my sounds from my pedal board. I changed the stock Celestion speaker to an Eminence Red White and Blues which really added a lot to the sound. I am very satisfied with this amp and it's a shame they don't make them anymore. I'm on the hunt for another USA model in the future.

My other amp (on the right) is possibly the coolest thing I've bought in ten years...my ZT Lunchbox. It has a 6.5 inch speaker, 200 watts of power, and four knobs. Though it is solid state, this thing has a killer tone and can hang with a band on it's own, and is ideal for rehearsals, and small club dates where there is limited space on stage or to open up a tube amp to get a good sound. I am running it into a custom 1x12 cabinet made by Lopo Line Cabinets, and installed a Jensen C12K in it to give the amp a little more low end. The reactions of people alone made this a worthy purchase, and the fact that it sounds great is just gravy!

Effects

My pedalboard is constantly in flux, as I add or remove pedals to compliment the music of whatever band I am playing with. The board itself is a Pedaltrain Pedalboard. Pedals are as follows: A Fulltone Clyde Wah, A Boss Tuner Pedal, A Catalinbread Ottava Magus, a Maxon Phaser, Boss Blues Driver modified by Monte Allums, a Visual Sound Double Trouble, a Modtone Tremor Tremolo pedal, Boss Delay pedal, and a Malekko Chicklet Reverb pedal.Powered by a Visual Sound One Spot and wired with Monster Cable.

HOME