Musical Gear

Lance's Musical Gear

Guitars

I've went through quite a few different guitars over the years. I've owned many different Japanese models and makes in the late 80's - early 90's heavy metal era including an ESP, a Charvel, a BC Rich and several different Kramers. Since then I have decided that I can't stand to setup the floatation tremolos that most of those guitars had. Not to mention that my style of playing never really benefited from the use of a tremolo anyway.

Right now, all I have are American electrics except for one old, great sounding Alvarez Yairi acoustic. The Yairi is a somewhat rare version known as a model # 5060. It was made in 1971 and appears to by a copy of a Martin, and has a considerable amount of Abalone inlay and binding. It came stock with gold hardware including the Grover tuning keys.

The back if this guitar is absolutely perfectly book matched! Click the center pic below to check it out!

I have two Fender Stratocasters. The first one is a Fender Stevie Ray Vaughan Signature Strat . The SRV Strat is supposed to be a replica of one of Stevie Ray Vaughan's most used guitars called "Number One".

The Stevie Ray strat that I have is one of the earlier 90-91 models which supposedly had a Brazilian wood fret board rather that the Pao Ferro fret board that the newer models have. Many people believe that these models are the more desirable ones because they think that they have a little bit darker tone and get a growl more similar to SRV's tone than the newer models.

The SRV's pickups are all Texas Special single coils which mimic the over wound pickups that were in Stevie's "Number One" guitar and it has a beautiful tri-color sunburst finish. I keep .011-.054 gauge strings on this guitar as well as setting the string action pretty high. For that reason I pretty much only use this guitar for playing blues and SRV type material. This guitar also comes with a vintage style tweed case which I think is a nice addition. :-)

Fender SRV Signature Strat in Tweed Case

My other Fender Stratocaster is a slightly hot rodded version of a strat known as the Fender Lone Star Strat. Rather than having three single coils as the traditional models, it features a stock humbucker / single-coil / single-coil pickup configuration. The color of mine is Shoreline Gold and it came stock with a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates Plus Humbucker in the bridge and a Texas Special Single Coil in the middle and neck positions.

I recently changed the neck single coil to a Seymour Duncan Lil' 59 pickup which is a little single coil sized humbucker. This gave me a little thicker tone in that pickup position. I also removed the stock tuning keys and added Sperzel Locking Tuners. This guitar stays in tune much better with this type of tuner which I need since I use this guitar to do most of the solos in my recordings. Even with full step and a half bends the Sperzels seem to keep the guitar in tune.

I also have a Gibson Studio Les Paul. Its Alpine White with gold hardware and its is slightly different that most of the Studio LPs out there because it has an ebony fret board. Most other Studios out there have rosewood fret boards. Also mine is one of the older versions which had the trapezoid inlays rather than Gibson's newest models which said good-bye to the trapezoids for the cheaper dot inlays. The only thing I have changed on this guitar are the stock black knobs that Gibson puts on them for a prettier version of gold Gibson LP knobs. I kept the originals as usual.

Below: Well here it is .....! My newest Les Paul! A Gibson Les Paul Classic Plus. This guitar is reissued to be like a 1960 Standard Les Paul. It has aged trapezoid inlay and aged style binding on the body and neck. The color is the main reason I bought it :-) Dark, cherry wine translucent with a beautiful flame grain, figured maple top! It has higher output ceramic style pickups rather than the usual alnico pickups found of most Standards, Customs and Studios. The Classics come stock with no pickup covers but I think Les Pauls look better with them on so I ordered mine "with" nickel pickup covers installed (which makes the guitar look almost exactly like a regular Gibson Les Paul Standard). I even love the case that comes stock with this guitar! A form fit style Gibson case in brown tolex with purple plush interior and a plush guitar cover attached under the case's lid!

Amplifiers

As with the guitars, I went through many low line amps in the beginning and over the years. I've had Peaveys, Crates and many others that just didn't really have even a hint of a tone. I also got way into rack gear for a few years as well. When racks were big, I had an ADA MP-1, an ADA MP-2, an Eventide Ultra-Harmonizer, an SGX 2000 Express, and countless other stand alone rack mounted effects processors. Now all I have left from my rackmount glory days are a Furman PL-Plus power conditioner and a Korg DTR-1 rack mounted tuner.

My main amp right now is a Line6 AX2. This is a new digital modeling amp that mimics the tones of many classic amplifiers. I use it to record mainly because it records better and easier that any other amp I've ever used. With this amp the way it sounds going down is the way its going to sound playing back. With any other amp and a microphone, the way it sounded when you recorded it and the way it will sound playing back will be two totally different things.

I have a 100 watt Marshall 6100LM 30th Anniversary and a Marshall 1960 B 4x12 cab with Celestion 70 watt speakers. I have this amp fitted with 5881 power tubes. Some Marshall 6100LMs have EL34s. The Marshall 6100LM head is rather unique because it has 3 channels and also its midi capable. This is one of the only heads made by Marshall that I know of that has midi except for the preamps.

Channel one is clean, channel two is basically for rhythm and gets tones similar to most of the classic Marshalls via mode buttons and channel three is an ultra high-gain lead channel. This amp will run in power modes from the full 100 watts all the way down to 25 watts. With two different 50 watt modes (50w Pentode & 50w Triode) All of which have totally different tones.

This amp does not have reverb so I use a Reissue '63 Fender Reverb unit. This Fender Reverb unit is a stand alone reverb tank which is nearly as big as an amp head. It gets that great Fender reverb but, on whatever amp you select. Below the photo to the left shows the front of the Fender Reverb unit and the one on the right shows the rear side of the unit where all of its controls and access to the internal tank, tubes etc., are located.

I also have a Rivera M100 head. This is a 100 watt amplifier made by Paul Rivera and his crew and it is my favorite amp. The tones that this EL34 tube wielding amp has are flat out deadly. It gets convincing Marshall and Fender tones as well as countless other tones. It will do pre-amp distortion as well as power amp distortion. So your not stuck with either choice.

The Rivera is so feature loaded that I can't even begin to name everything. It does have reverb, Ninja Boost (a patented clean boost feature), Slave-Master (another cool Rivera feature which is kinda like a third channel and allows you to greatly boost the gain of which ever channel you happen to be using as well as change the volume and add effects - all by just hitting the slave-master button). It has countless push/pull knobs along the front panel which control all sorts of features like the presence, gain, etc.

I have a Mesa Boogie 2X12 Split-back cab that I use with the Rivera. It is loaded with 300 watt EV speakers. It has the benefits of both the tones of an open back amp/speaker cab as well as the rumble of an enclosed cab because it has one sealed and ported speaker and one speaker that is mounted open backed. Hence the name "split-back".

Other Recording Gear

Below is my Mackie 1402-VLZ Micro Series 14 channel mixer. Pretty much everything is routed through this mixer. Its the brain of my system. I'm hoping to add some Mackie Powered monitors to this system soon but for now I use a Peavey power amp and some monitors.

For the microphone recordings I have two different mics that I use. One is a Shure SM57 which is basically the best mic out there for micing a cab. The other is a higher priced Sennheiser MD421 mic. Again this mic is one of the most used in the world for recording.

The Sennheiser has a little equalization knob built right into it for boosting or cutting. I have a Boss LS-1 line switcher for switching between two amps or even three but, there are countless other applications for a pedal like this one. I also have a Boss Chorus Pedal that I still adore.

For the digital PC recordings I use a program called Cakewalk Pro Audio. Which is basically just high powered digital multi-tracking software. It will record and playback at ultra high sampling rates. You can record as many as 256 tracks of digital audio with this program so the amount or hard drive space becomes a bigger issue than free tracks.

For my drum parts that don't use real drums I use my Roland R5 Human Rhythm Composer. This drum machine does realistic drum sounds which can be recorded digitally into the computers software. Acid Music's program also does well for drums.

My newest addition to my virtual studio!! A POD from Line6. This little box is the ultimate direct recording tool for guitarists. The AX2 amp mentioned above will record direct just as well as the POD and actually has more sounds but the portability of this unit just cannot be matched!

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