Gear Madness!
It has been a while since I talked (to the one or two of you that care) about what I’m playing and what’s going on in my little gear-geek world. Many changes and learning experiences have occurred over the past few months…
The first and foremost exciting thing to happen is that I am now officially playing electric bass in a real live situation! I have been a closet bassist for about 15 years and it was very exciting for me to come out and play bass in front of actual real live people earlier this month at Perk. Sure there were only a handful of people there but they were the good, most excellent kind of people (you all know who you are). So now that I’m making an attempt at coming across like a professional bass player, I had to get my bass rig all like, dialed-in and stuff:
I only have one bass which is the Line 6 Variax 700 four string bass (Thanks Matt!!). It’s super dope with all the bass modelling in it and stuff. I recently installed a HipShot Extender on it too which is simply brilliant. I use light gauge (yeah I like Mark King) strings: 30-50-70-90
For amplification I decided to go with the Line 6 LD150 which sounds really good. Quality stuff all the way. It’s a little on the heavy side (65lbs) but the benefits of the amp modelling, built in effects and direct out really make it worth it. The 12″ cone sounds very clean and punchy while still providing lots of the good low end. I personally find 15″ speakers a little too muddy on their own. So for a combo amp the 12″ is perfect I think. Along with everything else, the amp also has a tuner built in. So to make things easier on me, I bought the FBV Express pedal so that I can tune right from the floor. It also has a volume pedal and foot access to the 4 built in sound banks. It’s all so freakin’ awesome!
At the gig I mentioned ealier, I used the V-Drums for all the live drum parts. To make a very long story short, Meb and I decided that it was best that I continue to use the e-kit for recording and practicing purposes and go back to using my Pork Pies live. After close to four months of only playing the V-Drums, I really missed the porkies. So this was a change I welcomed whole-heartedly.
In an effort to keep setup time as low as possible, especially considering the fact that I am playing two instruments in the show now, the Pork Pie setup is a small one. I’m using just the 18×20 kick, the 6×10 snare, the Sabian Paragon 13″ hats and my trusty 21″ Paiste Dry Heavy ride. It’s all mic’d up with one Audix F15 overhead and the amazing Audix D6 on the kick. The only recent addition to my acoustic kit is a DW 5000ND3 which I absolutely adore. I had forgetten just how much I like strap drive pedals. I am actually enjoying this pedal more than the 9000 series I had for a while back in 2005. I will be converting my 7002 double pedal over to strap when I can.
I’ll be getting some pictures of all this stuff up soon. Meb and I will be playing again at Perk on the 10th of March.
