Equipment List

I am the only guitar technician I trust, and do all of my own setup, repair work, and wiring. It is the only way that I have been able to get my basses to play, feel and sound the way I want them to. I also design and build my own speaker cabinets for certain applications, and have also built ATA rack cases. Hey, anything to save a buck!

While I am a "gear groupie", and am always trying new pieces of gear, one thing I never change is my brand of Strings. I swear by Ken Smith Rock Masters Stainless Steel Roundwounds. I use them on all of my basses, and have for over 10 years. They keep their tone and feel and stay bright for eternity, and they are the only string I have never broken. I can tend to play hard with my right hand (especially when playing live shows) and Ken Smith Strings are the only strings I've never broken. (FWIW, I am not paid for or sponsored by Ken Smith, and the above statement is my own, pure opinion and preference)

Borrowing from Chris Squire and my main influence Billy Sheehan, all of my basses are wired for stereo, that is to say, each has two pickups and each pickup has its own output. The two signals are not shared and are run through completely separate sets of equipment and speaker cabinets. This allows me to run quite a bit of signal processing on the "high end" without muddying up the bottom end at all. Once you run a bass this way, regular old bass amps will never again satisfy you!

Basses The Duke of New York, A #1! A 1971 Fender P/J bass. This bass damn near plays itself. I do my best work on this bass and other bassists who play it are always amazed at way the bass feels, the tone, etc. This bass has a very unique personality all it's own! The neck was badly broken in the early '90's on the way home from a gig. Miraculously, the rest of the bass was okay. It was in the trunk of one of our roadies cars, and the rear of the car was plowed into by a drunk going 65 mph. I grieved for about 2 weeks, tried putting a maple neck from an old telecaster bass I had on it, but it did not come close to sounding the same. The rest of the band even noticed the sound difference with the maple neck! So, I spent about a week repairing the neck and putting my baby back together. It has been over ten years since the accident, so it appears that the repair was a success! First thing I did after I bought it was to install a DiMarzio Model 1 pickup right under the end of the fingerboard, and the bridge pickup is an EMG active, and I wired it for stereo. I have confirmed the serial number as an early 1971 production. I will never part with this bass.
GW Basses SC-1 6 String I decided to build myself a tricked out 6 string. I love dark woods, and I wanted a deep, smooth almost keyboard-like low end. So I spec'ed out this baby for myself. You can see the build process on my GW Custom Basses site. I can build one for you, too!
Carvin LB76 6 string I spent the longest time about 11 years ago looking for a 6 string bass. I played every brand and model I could get my hands on. This one was too expensive, that one's neck was too wide or too flat, others didn't sound right, etc., etc. I mentioned to a guy I was taking jazz theory classes from that I had read great things about Carvin basses, particularly their 6 strings in Bass Player magazine, but was leary of ordering one without being able to play one and check out the fit and finish first. He put me in contact with one of his other students who had purchased two Carvin 6's, one fretted and one fretless. Needless to say upon checking his out I ordered mine the next day. I don't believe that anyone can touch Carvin for 6 string basses, and I'll be damned if I can figure out how they make `em out of such quality woods and electronics and the top notch craftsmanship that they do at the price that they sell them for. I have had mine since '93 and still love it. Of course, as soon as I got it I replaced the original bridge pickup with an EMG active, removed the original wiring and pre-amp circuitry and replaced it with stereo wiring (I wish that they still offered stereo wiring from their factory!... oh well....), and just recently, in order to improve on the strength and sound of the low-B string, I took a router to it and installed new "soapbar" six string pickups (a Bartolini deep tone split coil in the neck position and an EMG HZ-45 DC in the bridge position). The resulting sound is nothing short of amazing, and the low-B string is DEADLY now! My LB76 is featured on the Carvin Bass Museum site!
The Les Paul "Mutt"Bass Okay, I wanted a Les Paul bass, that is to say, a Les Paul guitar with a bass neck. Not to knock Gibson basses in any way, but the then newly released Les Paul basses weren't quite what I was looking for. They had the Les Paul body style, but no binding, no arched top, and the pickups and electronics were not laid out the same. So..... I decided to build my own. I search around and finally found an old Washburn bolt on neck Les Paul copy guitar in a pawn shop that had a fantastic flamed top, and paid less than $100 for it. The body is made up of several pieces of Mahogany pieced together, and the flame maple top is a thin veneer over about a 1/4" arched hardwood plywood top, with a hollow cavity between the arched top and the main mahogany body. Then I found an Epiphone bass in a pawn shop as well that had a really nice neck on it. It was a basic P-bass body style and the neck had an explorer type peghead. Well, I put the two together in a real hack job, as I really did not think it would sound very good. Instead of enlarging the neck pocket in the body I routed the sides of the neck heel under the fingerboard to fit into the narrow guitar neck pocket. I had to put a shim in to get the neck to sit at the right angle. I put a big, heavy brass bridge on it that I picked up for $5 at a guitar swap meet. Lastly, as with all my basses, I put an EMG active pickup in the bridge position and wired it for stereo. When I plugged it in I was blown away by how fantastic it sounded! It is an extremely fun bass to play, and I get people checking it out all the time thinking it is a real Gibson/Epiphone bass!
Live Bass Rig (click on picture to the right to view larger image) My current live bass rig. This is about the 113th version of my live gear. I keep trying to whittle it down, but to get the sound and flexibility I require there are certain pieces of equipment that simply have to be there, and I'm always switching things out and trying new pieces. I run two seperate signals, one for each pickup from my basses which are wired for stereo. 26 March 2005 - Well, the pic of my live rig is outdated again, I've replaced the Bass POD Pro with a DigiTech GSP-2101 Studio Tube Artist and foot controller. I've also found an old Analog Synthesizer Bass Pedal set that is way cool! I've also added a Nady XR-62 Dual Wireless, and replaced the SoundTech power amp with a Fender 2150 Tube Emulation Power Amp. Not pictured is my old Korg G5 analog bass synth pedal. High end signal processing (bridge pickup) Nady XR-62 dual wireless system ACM Audio RT-1PC digital chromatic tuner & power distribution Roland SPH-323 Phase Shifter DigiTech GSP 2101 Studio Tube Artist Guitar Signal Processor Digitech Floorboard Korg G5 Analog Bass Synth pedal (not pictured) Ashley 3630 stereo compressor / gate BBE 462 Sonic Maximizer Custom built (by me) input switching unit. Allows me to have 3 basses plugged in at once and switch between them without having to unplug Fender 2150 stereo tube emulation power amp 2 Custom built (by me) speaker cabinets, one 4x10 and one 1x15 Low end signal processing (neck pickup) Art SP4x4 metered power distribution BBE BMax bass pre-amp Rane PE15 Five band parametric EQ DOD R-825 compressor / limiter AB Precedent Series 900A power amp (540W per side) 1 - SWR Big Ben 18" cabinet, & 1 duplicate cabinet I built and loaded with a JBL 2240 18" speaker
My Bass Synth pedals and DigiTech controller
Guitars & Others 1961 Gretsch Corvette I picked up this beauty from a friend when I was still living in Buffalo, N.Y. around 1979 or so. He was no longer using it, and the original finish had been stripped, the original pickup and tuning machines missing, and he had routed a groove down the center of the back of the neck which he had put lamp cord in and covered with duct tape ("the handy man's secret weapon" - Red Green) over it so he could run flash pots off of the peghead. There was also a big crack in the peghead right behind the nut that opened up when you tried to put strings on it. I filled in the groove in the neck, doweled the crack in the peghead, and finished the neck with 8 coats of polyurethane to protect it, and tung oiled the body. I then installed a DiMarzio Super II pickup, which I later replaced with a regular DiMarzio humbucker. This guitar is just too cool.
1975 or `76 Ibanez Concord Acoustic I inherited this guitar from my sister. She purchased it new in 1975 or `76 (don't remember exactly....) from Roxy's Music in East Aurora, NY. It has a beautiful ebony fingerboard with mother of pearl block inlays, one piece mahogany neck, spruce top, mahogany sides, and the back is book matched flamed mahogany! Sounds and plays fantastic, an absolutely beautiful instrument.
Demo Recording I am currently building up my own studio to allow me to record and produce demos, limited CD production, work out bass lines for any studio session work I do for recording projects that do not allow me to be there for the original rough out sessions, etc. I still prefer to do final recording and production in a "real studio", as I like the whole idea of "being in the studio", and always travel to the studio being used for the final recording and mixdown of the project. Kinda like having home exercise equipment vs. going to a gym. For me it forces me to focus more and be in the moment of recording, and to have the artists, engineer, and producers all present for the final product takes of the bass tracks. I will be adding more equipment and software to my studio as the need (or good deals!) arise. Current Studio Gear Compaq Presario 5BW131 Computer Compaq Presario MV940 Monitor JBL Speakers Ibanez Ue405 Multi Effects Unit Yamaha E1010 Analog Delay BBE 362 Sonic Maximizer dbx 266XL Compressor / Gate Zoom MRT-3 Drum Machine Cake Walk Home Studio 8.0 Sonic Foundry Sound Forge XP 5.0