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| Mike's Stuff... My main guitar is my Guild DCE-5. It's a full-sized cut-away, finished in Sunburst. It has a factory-installed Fishman  blender pick-up... which is basically a bridge pick up and a small microphone inside. I can blend the two to get the tone I want. It has all sorts of other features - EQ, notch, volume and a bunch of other knobs. Live, it sounds like an acoustic guitar, only amplified. The bottom line is this: Nothing else sounds like a Guild. Nothing else plays like a Guild. You can pay $2000 - $5000 for a Taylor because they're cool and pretty and trendy, but it still won't play or sound like a Guild. I bought this guitar and most my stuff here locally (Glendora, CA) at "Gard's Music". D'Addario are the only strings I use! On this guitar I use the Phosphor Bronze light gauge (EJ16). I use Fender Confetti picks, Medium Gauge.I recently added a Sabine tuner. It's a small "stick-on" tuner that attaches to the body of the guitar. Small, easy to use and always close by. On stage, I use a Roland AC-100 acoustic guitar amp. After searching for and playing just  about all of the amps out there that are specially designed for Acoustic Guitars, this one rose to the top of the list. Its deep stereo chorus and great tone can't be beat. When you come to see us, you'll see the case. When we toured Hawaii a few years ago, I had a flight case  made for this amp by the guys at Encore Case so it'd get to Oahu in one piece. When we were playing around Oahu, we stayed in Kailua. There were beautiful murals all over the town. We tracked this local mural artist down, Ron Artis, and asked him to paint island scenes all over the case. It turned out great, and brings back great memories. Now the case stays onstage whenever we play. Thank you Ron!My other guitar is a thrasher I bought in Hawaii back in '97 at a store in Kailua, Oahu called "Coconut Grove Music". It is a 1972 Yamaha FG-302 acoustic. It has a small body, and I bought it on consignment for $125.00. It was pretty thrashed. When I  brought it home, I took it over to a guy named David Cervantes (he builds Tracy G's guitars) so he could take a look at it. He totally restored it. A thrasher no more... Its' tone is low and swampy. I keep medium gauge strings on this beauty and pretty much only play it when I'm feeling pissed.. which I guess is a lot. You'll hear this guitar as the second guitar on the cut 'I get lost in you'.When we recorded the two CD's (Tree and Petrified) at the "G Factory" in La Puente California, we used a Roland VS-1680. It was important that the guitars sound like they do naturally. That may sound funny, but listen to most records and you can tell that the guitars have all sorts of effects, compression, EQ and other stuff all over them. I recorded the guitars with two Shure SM81 Mics (stereo - one at the hole, one at the neck) and an Audio Technica AT4031 large diaphragm condenser at the body. A little reverb on some songs, a little chorus on some others, some flanger on a song or two and that's it. The guitars sound like guitars. For more info on tunings and the recording process, link over to the Clear Cuts section in Tunes. |
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| Ken's Stuff... I'm currently playing your basic drum kit and a ton of ethnic percussion (I hate that term... if you're not from the USA, is my DW drum kit "ethnic percussion"...?) Anyway, all of the stuff I play is what we used on the records - we didn't rent out gear, I didn't bring in a zillion snare drums or build a special kit for the recording, etc. If you come see us, you'll see the stuff we used to make the records. I don't burn through drum sets like a lot of drummers do. In fact, I've only had 3 kits my whole life. My original Tama Imperial Star (my gigantic Neil Peart wanna-be), my Yamaha Recording Custom (the metal-god kit) and now this DW kit, "the Chevy" (named by a guitar player friend because of its green sparkle finish... "looks like a '57 Chevy, all pimpin' at a car show..." Current Drum Kit My current rig is a Drum Workshop 5 piece kit. After lugging around a huge Yamaha black Recording  Custom kit for years (two 26" kick drums, 14", 15", 16", and 18" toms... your basic big black '80's kit left over from my hair-farmer spandex days) I decided to go in the completely opposite direction, and scale my drums way back. The Yamahas were birch - huge toms... and those Kick Drums...26-inchers? Scary. Birch is cool, but it makes for drums that are very deep in tone and the heavy ply shells don't sustain or project as much - great for a very controlled sound. But as I've gotten older, I've begun to really love the way the tone leaps off of thin-ply pitch-tuned melodic toms.When I set off to replace my metal-god kit, I played about 30 different kits from all the majors - Pearl, Yamaha, Sonar, Ludwig, etc. I played some kits from the smaller boutique shops as well - PorkPie and OCDP and some others. I loved the PorkPie rig, but it would have taken too long to produce it in the sizes I wanted. I plowed through about 10 different DW kits in about 4 or 5 configurations (2, 3 or 4 toms in 4 or 5 different sizes and depths) and over a dozen snares before I picked this rig in this configuration. I love the DW "fast toms". They're cut down an inch shorter in depth than standard toms. They're bright and project like crazy. They tune to perfect pitches and hold their tuning really well. I'll likely add an 8" or a 13" tom before long... I miss having 4 toms. The solid brass snare is simply the most versatile snare going. If you're only going to own one snare, this is it. Because the shell doesn't flex, I can tune it up way high or way low, and really beat the heck out of it without it breaking up. Its always true, so the heads have great contact with the bearing edges. This drum has mad-sustain... and I like that in a snare. The Pillow-dead snare sound went out with the last 80's Pop band. You can't add sustain to a dead drum, but I can control sustain in a hundred different ways on this drum. I just love it. I rebelled against the whole drum rack thing for the last 15 years or so. But I've gotten to the point where I want stuff where floor stands just can't reach. I try to keep the front and high-hat side of the rig open, so I can see out and people can see in when I sing and make faces... Plus, I have so many cymbals and percussion with the drums, I was schlepping around about 12 floor stands. I'm too old for that  now. The rack is lighter, more versatile and more flexible. I keep some floor stands around for the smaller venues. Visually, this rig is sort of Mike Portnoy meets Tommy Aldridge meets the Grinch.
Current Percussion Rig
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Snare - DW 5.5x13" solid brass. At 21 pounds, it weighs more than the kick drum. Its just a hog. Replaced the 16 wire steel strainer with a PureSound Equalizer strainer. PureSound makes the best strainers on the market. The Equalizer has two 12-wire strainers, separated by about ½ inch in the middle. For a solid brass snare, it really tightened up the slap and reduced the unwanted buzz. I recorded with a 24 wire steel strainer. I use the Equalizer for live shows. I've added a Yamaha jingle wedge to the right side. This is a 1/4 round block with tambourine jingles... makes for a killer side-stick. 
plugging the guitar and playing real softly on the drums. I leave the drum kit completely and move to a percussion rig. The key here is not losing the basic components of a rock drum line (Kick, Snare, High hat) in an unplugged show. The best way to do that is with a Cajon (KAH-hone). It's a Peruvian instrument - it's sort of a box you sit on and beat the snot out of. I play with my hands, my feet, my heels, my fists and with brushes. I play the front, the top, the sides and the back... it's the visual equivalent of the Tasmanian Devil vs. a wooden crate. My hands are usually the only losers. |