GR Tech

This is a picture of me from 1986 with my first real bass, the Rickenbacker 4001 - I still have this beauty. 

Now, I play a lot of other instruments as you will see below, and I am looking a bit different from way back then...

This is a recent photo (Credits and Kudos to Joshua Merrill at M-Audio for the pic) of me holding my recent acquisition, the fretted 6-string Peavey "Grind" bass.

My Current Arsenal:

       

From left to right above:

• The Peavey "Grind" 6-string fretted bass, with natural wood finish
•  The Washburn 6-string fretted bass, with natural wood finish
• The Custom Carvin LB76 6-string fretless bass in black
•  the Ibanez Aria Pro II 5-string bass (modded to fretless)

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From left to right above:

• The rare and unusual Fender Performer 4-string bass with sunburst finish
• The gold-flecked Carlo Robelli 8-string bass
• The oxblood-colored Fender Standard Jazz 4-string bass.
• the Rickenbacker 4001 4-string bass (built in 1973) 

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From left ro Right above:

• the custom Des Lauriers  4-string "contra-piccolo" fretless bass*
• the CE Ministar "Mini-Jazz" 4-string "Travel" bass
• The Carlo Robelli 4-string acoustic bass guita
• The Chapman STICK© 10-string 'Alto' touchboard.

* this bass was modded to be fretless by Craig Fujii, a total guitar-tech madman and genius. It uses a non-standard tuning of C-F-Eb-Bb, and the strings are very light gauge, so this instrument is a bit lower in pitch than a baritone guitar, so I call it a 'contra-piccolo' bass

   In addition to these instruments I have a couple of electric 6-string guitars (Yamaha & Gibson) and an acoustic nylon 6-string I use for composing at home..

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& of course, I love to play my classic MOOG TAURUS bass pedals!  I'm fortunate to own this!

   

**WISH DEPT:  I used to own an upright acoustic bass
 (it's shown in a picture on my photo gallery page)
but I had to sell it, so I hope to get another of those, or at least some kind of electric upright,
so I can work on my bowing technique again...

the Line6 Bass Pod Pro preamp/fx unit:

 the ADA MB-1 preamp/fx unit:

the ART NIGHTBASS preamp/fx unit:

the X-15 MIDI foot controller for the ART NIGHTBASS:

the Rocktron RFX MP128P MIDI controller & the Line6 FB4 foot controller:

      

I also sometimes break out the old home-made analog pedal effects array that I designed and built back in the early 90's...this is the third and most elaborate of the ones I had built.  It uses Boss, DOD and Morley pedals. It has a compartment below the pedals for the power supplies and built-in cooling fan, and even had a LittleLite for onstage illumination! Secure the lid and it stood up on wheels--needed because it's very heavy.

(thanks to Jim MacQ for taking the photo of the pedal-beast!)

This beast above has been recently retired in favor of a more modern and easy to carry thing, the Behringer PB-1000 pedal board:

The individuaL pedals shown in this picture above are not the ones I use.  The ones I do use are in this collage image below here:

 

I've got a Korg ToneWorks AX1B multi-fx unit, and I've also got a vintage MU-TRON Bi-phase, but I use that only in the studio.

   

To get my basic "clean tone", I run all my instruments through a rack outfitted with the following Behringer processors:

They are an MDX1600 AutoCom Pro XL dual dynamics processor, an FBQ3102 Ultragraph Pro stereo EQ, and an EX3200 UltraFex Pro sound enhancer.   Finally. for amplification I use a vintage Fender BXR DUAL BASS 400 head coupled to a stereo noise-reduction Rocktron Hush IIcx unit (--those FX can cause a lot of noise!)

 

My speakers are one 4x10 Hartke cabinet loaded with Carvin drivers for the lows,
and another Carvin 2x10 w/bullet tweeter for the highs.

As a spare, I have an old Peavey bass head & 2x15 cabinet, and a separate 1x15 Fender cabinet

This section is "under construction" --I will have better pictures soon!  This is basically it, though.  I have three self-built computers networked together and KVM'd into 2x21" monitors, multiple external firewire drives, outboard gear, speakers, TV monitors.  One system is for email, one for audio work and one for video work.  I run Digidesign Pro Tools mostly, with a few other apps as needed.  I use lots of M-AUDIO gear.

 

So far, none of these companies endorse me, so maybe if I put their logos here, and advertise that I use their fine products, they'll reconsider...