In response to a number of inquiries over the past several months, I thought this might be the best way to address the “what’s your rig consist of these days?” question. This will certainly be a more detailed and efficient description than a 140 character tweet or a Facebook email response.
So here goes….
The questions I get most often in relation to my setup with the Charlie Hall band are generally related to guitar effects pedals and amps; followed by questions about the keyboard rig. I’ll address the guitar setup here and save the keys for another post a day or two from now.
First, the guitars.
I’ve often heard the anecdote about Eric Clapton recording guitars in the studio sitting on top of his amp, using an instrument cable barely long enough to take it out of the patch-cable category, allowing him to “get the best tone” by not degrading it with long cables or a bunch of stomp boxes. This anecdote is usually administered by a frustrated youth pastor who’s doubling as sound guy for the weekend or an older gentleman who owns a pre-war Martin and a 60’s Gretsch and can play circles around me. I’m no Eric Clapton. The guitar I’m most often found playing in this band arrangement is a 1998 Fender American Standard Telecaster. I’ve Faraday shielded the guitar and replaced the stock pickups with Lindy Fralin Tele pickups. Because of the limitations of weight and number of cases allowed when we fly, this guitar gets the lion’s share of the work. It’s versatile enough to handle anything I throw at it and tough enough to survive destructive TSA and Delta baggage handlers. On drive dates I’ll also bring along my Gretsch Tennessee Rose for some variety of tone within the set. 
This guitar is mostly stock, I replaced the rocking-bar bridge with an adjustomatic and the stock hi-tron pickups with T.V. Jones’ Classics, they give the guitar a bit more teeth in the best kind of way. D’addario strings on both guitars.
My effects pedals are an ever-evolving exercise in experimentation to find that elusive tone in my head that I can hear but never quite seem to recreate perfectly. That’s my way of saying I don’t have this stuff all figured out, and there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and it’s about as complicated as a wiring diagram to some dynamo. . . and other Dan Rather sayings. This is just what’s working for me at the moment. I learned much of what I know about effects and sound layering with guitars by emulating players who do it really well (like the legendary Kendall Combes, to name one). I’m always trying to learn, improve and evolve along with the music.
The monstrosity of a pedalboard I’ve constructed starts with a Lehle buffer, this presents a super hi impedance load to the guitar pickups and helps get back some of that tone I’ve lost by not following the Eric Clapton Commandment (the ECC, if you will) described earlier. Next in line is the CMAT mods 4-knob deluxe comp; it’s one of their early iterations of the pedal and simply the best, most well-rounded compressor I’ve played. The next thing in the chain is a 4 channel true bypass strip I built from a DIY kit purchased online. First channel of the strip goes to my JHV3 Ghost Drive – if you’re looking for a great sounding versatile drive pedal, Jack will do you right! The second channel on my TB strip is a Fulltone Clyde Deluxe wah. Next is the Fulltone Supa-trem; followed by the EHX POG2. My POG stays on quite a bit and there are, generally, two go-to settings that I use: one combines 1 oct below and 2 oct below with a bit of 2 oct above for a very organ-like sound. I’ll use this preset quite often for swelly, ambient stuff (think pad) where appropriate. The second preset I go to most often is an octave up (not super wet) that I’ll use to make solos or lead hooks sound just a bit more shimmery and interesting. Coming out of the true bypass strip is my Ernie Ball VP Jr. [I like to hit my effects full-on before the volume swell, to get as much tone/effect as possible into the front end of the swell]. The volume pedal has the JHS mod allowing me to use the tuner out to my Korg blackout tuner without losing any impedance [tone] and buffering the signal; once again helping me adhere to the ECC. After the volume pedal is my EHX Deluxe Memory Man. This is a faithful recreation of the big, clunky, old silver one made famous in the 70’s & 80’s and probably my favorite pedal in the lineup right now. Since I’ve put this one on the board I’ve had a ton of questions about what reverb pedal I’m running. Truth is, I don’t have a reverb pedal on the board (and don’t use any on the amps either); it’s the Deluxe MM with the feedback cranked up and the delay almost all the way down. The sound I was attempting to emulate when I discovered this setting was the first track off Bon Iver’s self-titled record. (Not ashamed to admit I teared up the first time I listened to Perth. One of the most moving musical intro’s I’ve ever experienced). The last pedal in the chain is the Eventide TimeFactor. I love the flexibility of having two delays in a single pedal and the ability to create a preset for [just about] as many songs as I need to, saving me from having to tap the tempo on each song; just go to that song’s preset, activate it, and away we go. I’ve got an expression pedal connected to the TimeFactor that I made from a Fisherman’s Friend tin and a volume pot. 
It’s much smaller and lightweight than a full-size, traditional expression pedal. Finally, a T1M three-button switch allows me to bank down, tap tempo, or “hold” a sound on the TimeFactor. The pedals are powered by two Voodoo Labs power supplies. Everything fits nicely onto two smaller pedal boards I constructed from 1/4” birch wood that stack inside a Pelican camera case with a nice, thick piece of foam between them, weighing in at 49.5 lbs. Everything up to the volume pedal is on the right side board, then a single patch cable connects the volume pedal to the other (left) side with the delays, expression, tap tempo and power strip.
Now for the amps. Just about everywhere we play I get asked (at the very least by the sound engineer) about having two amps: “Why?” “What’s the difference between signals?” “Should one be louder than the other?” etc. Since most of our dates involve flying and backlining much of the gear, the amps change slightly from one place to the next. The rider provides a few options on amps and it’s usually a variation of Vox AC30s, Matchless, or BadCat amps; sometimes a mixture of those. The reason I run two amps is to broaden the “stereo image” of sound we’re creating. As long as bands have been making music, they’ve been trying little tricks to make themselves sound bigger or more full-sounding; four guys trying to sound like six, six guys trying to sound like twenty-eight, etc. By using two different amps – either different brands/models or the same model set slightly different on each in the gain section – and panning those out left and right, the illusion is created that there are two guitars ‘stacking‘ the same part creating a wider, broader sound. This illusion is enhanced by having the left and right sides of my delay set to different beat resolutions. For instance, one delay setting I use quite often is left side set to dotted eighth note resolution and right side set to quarter note (think opening riff in “Where The Streets Have No Name”). When those two signals are separated by panning left and right it creates a nice ping-pong effect making the guitar sound much bigger than it really is without increasing the volume while also adding a ton of “presence” to the signal. On drive dates where I’m bringing my own amps I’ll bring a Vox AC15 and an Orange Tiny Terror head paired with a Fender Blues Jr. using it simply as a cab (bypassing the amp). *A quick word about low-wattage amps, since I get many questions about those too.* I prefer to get my overdrive sounds from the amps themselves whenever possible, using my drive pedal to accentuate this sound or even just boost the signal giving me more break up from the amp itself. With that said, it’s difficult to get a 40-watt Fender DeVille to break up without being so incredibly loud that the sound guy can’t use it in the mix unless the amp is down the hall, locked away in a bathroom and surrounded by egg-crate foam. What I love about the AC15 and the Tiny Terror (which has a great 7-watt setting!) is that I can turn them up until they overdrive nicely without blowing away everyone in the room or [perhaps more importantly] my compadres on the stage.
Whew!! If you stuck with me through all that you deserve a gold star! That covers half my setup (the guitar side). I’ll address the keys setup in another blog a day or two from now, as well as the craziness of some my thought processes in pushing all those buttons while playing an instrument and singing background vocals (I’ve been known to make up my own lyrics ‘cause my head is so full of other things I’m trying to keep track of; it’s like playing Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and singing karaoke all at the same time!) all while trying to keep the spiritual aspect of what we’re doing a priority in my thoughts and having the flexibility to interpret the moment and flow into new or different sections on the fly. It should be an interesting post, so check back soon.
Thanks for stopping by!
- Ben
