The Rig from Hell (Part I)

I’ve made several mentions of my “insane bass rig” and I guess it’s probably time to clarify that description. Lots of bassists have put together bass rigs that are excessively complex and chock full of features and tones (most of which they’ll never use.) There are also plenty of bass toys out there that do some amazing things; the Line6 gear offers tons of tonal flexibility by modeling a huge collection of amps and effects, the Roland V-Bass does it as well (but uses a special pickup to accomplish it). There are certainly plenty of analog effects pedals and units out there too.

Before I go into the technical details, I’ll first examine the “why”… as in, “Why did Mark bother to brainstorm, purchase, assemble and carry around this giant tangle of cables and rack-mounted insanity?”

Heh.

Good question. Actually, quite a while back, when my good friend Scott and I were starting to put together the band that would eventually become Second Story, we both decided that we needed the ultimate in flexibility for our sounds. While we always intended to have a keyboard player in the band, we also wanted Scott (on guitar) and me (on bass) to be able to create new sonic flavors to add to our musical stew. That is, besides the “normal” guitar and bass tones that are common in popular music. And we needed them to be switchable “on the fly” so that we could change them between songs – even mid-song – so that we could really be free to create new textures. So we set out to figure out how to do that.

So now that you understand the why (maybe) here’s the gear list.

The image to the right shows the rig behind me; it is an earlier shot, prior to the addition of the MB76 Patch Mixer.

Rack 1
• Furman Power Conditioner
• dbx Subharmonic Synthesizer
• ADA MB-1 Preamp
• Peavey Spectrum Analog Filter
• Akai MB76 Patch Mixer
• Yamaha G50 Pitch-to-Midi Translator
• Alesis NanoBass Synth Module
• Furman Pluglock

Rack 2

• ADA B500B Power Amplifier

Speaker Cabinets

• SWR Goliath Jr. 2×10″
• SWR Big Ben 1×18″ Subwoofer

Miscellaneous

• Digital Music Corp. Ground Control MIDI Pedal
• Ernie Ball Volume Pedal (used as CV pedal for MIDI)
• Axon AIX-103 Hexaphonic MIDI Bass Pickup

So you can see that there are a lot of components; all of the ones in the “Rack 1” list are crammed into a 6-space SKB rack. That rack also has one of my favorite gigging inventions, the “RakTrap.” It is an addition to the SKB which adds two separate door-access compartments into the back lid – normally wasted space – where I can carry spare cables, a flashlight, a soldering iron, picks (for when Scott would invariably forget his), my eBow, spare strings, NuSkin liquid bandage in case of emergency, and much more. It’s a shame that they aren’t available anymore…

Next Issue: The ADA Preamplifier, and why it’s so freaking awesome…

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