Joe Satriani
Shredder Extraordinaire and major Hendrix enthusiast Joe
Satriani was fortunate that the stars aligned so he could
do the full Experience Hendrix Tour. He had played the
San Francisco date of the first tour, but scheduling conflicts
always seemed to prevent him from joining the nationwide
festivities. But after finishing the last Chickenfoot tour, Satriani
finally had the time to pay homage to the man that inspired
him to make guitar his life. And, going through the whole
experience facilitated some new gear and tone discoveries.
“At the start of the Chickenfoot tour, I noticed that my
Peavey JSX rig sounded more specialized for someone playing
lead guitar all night,” he said. “I had Marshall send me
some different stuff to try out in Vienna, and I ended up
using a JVM410 for the rest of the tour. It made such a profound
difference, because I’m playing rhythm guitar most of
the time in that band.” After his last stint on the road with
Chickenfoot, he decided to have an amp shootout at SIR
studios in San Francisco, and there he rediscovered his love
for a certain Marshall head. “I was shocked to find that using
a Vox Saturator into a Marshall 6100 Anniversary head’s clean
channel was really the best sound. Part of it was the fact that
it was a better 6100 than the older ones I had. Plus, I didn’t
have the Saturator back when I was using those amps.”
Satriani is well known for his dual-humbucker
Ibanez guitars.
But for the Experience Hendrix tour he decided to bring
some single-coils
into the picture. “I have some prototype
Ibanez JS guitars with three DiMarzio singlecoils,
and they
sound great combined with the Marshall and Saturator.
Those three work together really, really well.”
Satch’s guitar rack cradled the new Ibanez
JS2400WH (the first 24-fret Ibanez JS) and two
prototype JS series guitars with DiMarzio single-coilsized
dual-rail pickups. His set for the night included
“Third Stone from the Sun,” “Foxey Lady,” “All Along
the Watchtower,” and the show closer “Red House.”
Powered by a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus,
Satriani’s versatile pedalboard featured a Vox Big Bad
Wah, Boss OC-2 Octave, Voodoo Lab Proctavia, Vox
Saturator, Zvex Ringtone, Boss DM-2 Analog Delay,
and two of the guitarist’s signature Vox Time Machine
delay units.
Satriani’s Marshall 6100 Anniversary 100-watt
head and 4x12 cab. The head and 6101 combo were
released in 1992 to commemorate Marshall’s 30th
year in the amp business.