Recording Gear:

Basses:

  • Fender Jazz Bass Special: my main bass for 20+ years. This one was made in Japan in the early 80s. It’s a great bass and I wouldn’t part with it for anything. It’s on the right in this shot. Here’s me rocking it, back in the day.
  • Fender Jazz Bass Special (fretless): a fretless version of my main bass. I bought this in 1997 (it was built in 1988). It’s in the middle of this shot.
  • Carvin LB76: a six-string bass (fretted). Playing this quite a lot of late. There are several shots of it here.

Guitars:

  • Squier Telecaster Custom: a cheap-but-good solid-body clone of the more expensive Fender ‘72 Telecaster Deluxe. It plays beautifully and has many very nice sounds.
  • Kay K573 “Speed Demon” semi-hollowbody: an odd beast that a former neighbor of mine found in a dumpster (I’m not kidding). Here’s a picture of it (it’s in the middle).
  • Guild D40C NT acoustic: a joy to play and and one of my main songwriting tools. It’s on the right in this shot.
  • 1935 Sears/Harmony “Old Santa Fe” Gene Autry archtop acoustic. This was my father’s guitar. Here’s a picture of one and some details about the model. Mine is here, on the left.
Other Instruments:
  • 1940s-50s Harmony soprano ukelele (D-tuned, reentrant).  Here is a photoset of it, on Flickr.  

Effects:

These days I’m using effects in Ableton Live and GearBox or Pod Farm for most things, but I still have a few stomp boxes that I sometimes use (especially live):

  • Boomerang Phrase Sampler. I use this mostly as a composition tool, but I also sometimes loop lots of things together and then sample the entire thing. It’s a very intuitive looper and a lot of fun to use.
  • Boss ODB-3 Bass Overdrive: for those days when I’m having guitar envy or want a grittier sound. Sounds great on the Tele, too.

Amps:

Now that I’m using GearBox’s/Pod Farm’s amp and cab simulators, I don’t have much use for amps, outside of playing live. But I have a few around that I can mic when I want:

  • Peavey Microbass. Believe it or not, a close mic on this thing gets a great sound for recording without having to get loud.
  • Yorkville 400B. Mostly for live gigs and other applications when I need volume. Sounds great. Built to survive a nuclear war. They don’t make this one anymore. In fact, Yorkville has revived the Traynor brand for their bass stuff these days.
  • Kustom Arrow 16R. For the electric guitars. Very cheap, very good sound, very easy to record. It has a nice clean and overdrive channel and a good reverb. It’s surprisingly loud.