Re: Small Equipment Possibilities

["K. Douglas Baldwin" <dbaldwin@suffolk.lib.ny.us>]

>K. Douglas Baldwin wrote a message about doing a gig with a Roland D-50,
>several amps, a PA, a marshall stack, a kitchen sink, and several large
>pack animals to carry it all.


Yes, and the worst part was getting the grand piano over the Alps.

>I thought about the smallest possible amount of stuff to bring on a gig
>and came up with this configuration:
>
>Guitar: Steinberger (the little square one with no headstock),
>FX Unit: Line 6 Pod (it's really small and sounds good)
>Looper: Akai Headrush or Boomerang (the Akai is small, Boomerang less so)
>Drum Machine: New ZOOM unit (could replace FX unit above)
>Keyboard:  Tiny $100 casio with MIDI into more expensive sound module*
>
>*Dave Torn has done this live!
>
>The only problem would be the amplifier; even a Roland JC-77 is rather
>heavy (not as heavy as the JC-120), but these amps are clean and loud
>and would amplify the above nicely.
>
>You could actually do okay with a rig like this and it wouldn't weigh
>a lot and would work fairly well I would think.  Experiment!
>
>Todd Madson
>Musician, Mountain Biker, Stunt Kite Flyer, BeOS/MacOS/Linux/WinNt user.
>http://www.waste.org/~crash/index.html


Tahnx, Todd. And good advice. I may take a Crate Acoustic Guitar amp out
(the 120 watt model) for it's combination of very clean tone and relative
light weight, but I am also addicted to big ol' tube amps. I like sounds
that are real trad guitar as well as indefinable deep space (Mr. Torn is a
good reference, actually) so I will probably haul something around for that
sound as well. As for the drum machine and keyboard, it all got too
constricting for me. I like to fly off into any key (or no key) at any
moment, and I like to play the guitar, not push buttons. Button pushing for
music making is fine, it's just not me.
    The setup at the moment seems to include: guitar (Hohner/Steinberger or
Yamaha
Pacifica) into Rat distortion, Digitech Whammy, Alesis Microverb and Mooger
fooger Ring Modulator, then into Akai Headrush and out to Crate amp. I need
to experiment with adding a tube preamp, probably between the Rat and
Whammy, then an A/B switch to route the signal to either the Headrush/Crate
or tube power amp for soloing over loops. This is a work in progress, and
will always be so.
    For absolute minimalism, I could use the Hohnberger, Rat, Headrush and
Crate (and maybe the Whammy) and be very happy.

Douglas Baldwin, Alpha male Coyote, the Trickster
dbaldwin@suffolk.lib.ny.us