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Premier Guitar’s Ted Drozdowski dropped into Nashville’s POGO studio to eavesdrop on the sessions for the new improv/art-rock group Five Times Surprise—and, of course, to do a Rig Rundown with the three string-playing virtuosos at its epicenter: famed free-ranging guitarist Henry Kaiser, guitarist Anthony Pirog (above left) of the Messthetics, and the Dixie Dregs’ legendary bassist Andy West. Actually, there are four, since the group also includes eclectic electric violinist Tracy Silverman. But hey, this ain’t Premier Fiddle, so…
For the Five Times Surprise sessions, Henry Kaiser’s big dog was a prototype built by Michael Spalt of Austria’s Spalt Instruments. It has a 27" scale rosewood neck, but its superpower is a Don Ramsay Linear Tremolo, which rolls on a linear bearing and stays in tune like Pavarotti. The 6-string has Seymour Duncan pickups.
Here’s a close-up look at the Don Ramsay Linear Tremolo on Henry’s Spalt prototype, which was built for another guitarist, but fell into his hands—a stroke of luck.
Henry’s had his custom-built Klein since the early ’90s—he’s an early adopter of, essentially, everything—but replaced the original neck with one by Sweden’s True Temperament. Check out those frets, shown close up in the following photo. The guitar fits easily in an airplane’s overhead compartment, and Henry’s brought it to Antarctica, where he’s a scientific diver for the U.S. Antarctic Program, five or six times. Once it was so cold the bridge cracked. The pickups are by Alembic.
Henry is a fan of True Temperament necks, like that on his Klein. “This is a system where they’ve actually made the guitar play in tune,” he explains. Conventionally fretted guitars, he says, are “not really in tune.”
When you see Anthony Pirog with Five Times Surprise—who have yet to play a live gig—or the Messthetics, which is anchored by Fugazi’s rhythm section, he’ll likely have this 1962 Fender Jazzmaster in his hands. He scored the guitar, his favorite, on eBay in 2007 and put in Joe Barden pickups with coil-splitting, as well as a Mastery bridge, although the vibrato system is original.
Anthony’s runner-up is this custom Shelton GalaxyFlite. It’s also got coil-splitting Joe Barden pickups and a Graph Tech bridge with an Acousti-Phonic pickup, for acoustic-guitar-like sounds. The guitar has three outs—for the bridge piezo, the regular guitar signal, and a 13-pin connecter for synth or laptop interface. And by the way, he’s nuts about BlueChip picks. “I saw Julian Lage play with one, and then I saw the bluegrass guys on their website and I was hooked. He uses a TPR-50 and also digs in with a Clayton Teardrop, “because I saw that Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan use those small white picks.”
Andy West’s main bass is a 6-string custom made by Modulus Graphite founder Geoff Gould in San Francisco. It has a 5-string neck, for tighter spacing, which make it easier to cross between strings with a pick while playing fast lines. The neck is graphite, naturally, and it’s got EMG active humbucking pickups, which he’s been using since he was an early adopter of Steinberger basses, in 1979. The bridge humbucker has coil-splitting. He notes that while his bass has “infinite sounds, you end up using two or three sounds that you want.” His strings are medium gauge La Bella super-polished, so they have some flatwound characteristics. Green leather chair not included.
Anthony’s main amp is a 1965 blackface Fender Deluxe Reverb, which is stock except for its Weber California 12" speaker. His second choice, which also made the trip from Virginia to Nashville in his car, is a 20-watt handwired Marshall 2061.
A borrowed blue Tolex Fender Deluxe Reverb reissue did the trick for Henry during these POGO sessions. It has a Fender D120F speaker. Henry likes speakers that have no coloration, as you might imagine by the amount of effects on the floor, and this amp was borrowed from Nashville pedal steel player Steve Fishell.
Henry has a simple strategy for his pedalboards, which change on a gig-by-gig basis: take everything that fits, and then throw a few extras in a bag. His chain for the Five Times Surprise recordings started with a Chase Tone Secret Preamp, which is inspired by the classic Echoplex preamp. From there, it hits a Sonic Research Turbo Tuner and, next, his favorite compressor: the Old World Audio 1960. After a Lovepedal Rubber Chicken filter, Henry’s signal chain gallops through six—count ’em—six distortion pedals: a Stomp Under Foot Ram’s Head (Catch Henry drop a King Crimson riff with it in the video.), an EC Custom Shop The Mystical Sustainer, a Montreal Assembly Your and You’re, a Tech 21 CompTORTION gated fuzz, a Tanabe Super Dumkudo, and a Gamechanger Audio Plasma. Oops! Accidentally skipped the Vemuram Jam Ray, which sounds like a dirty blackface Super Reverb.
Let’s really eyeball the Plasma Pedal, which makes distortion happen by creating a series of high-voltage discharges within a xenon-gas-filled tube. “It seems like there’s a hundred gates at different frequency bandwidths,” Henry relates. “It has a really strange way of shutting down the signal.” Coupled with other overdrives, it’s kinda insane—if you’ll pardon the technical terminology. Henry describes it as his new “favorite child.”
And there’s also the Sonus Wahoo, which Henry gives a cool workout in the video. It’s not just a wah—it’s also an auto-wah and filter that responds to distortion in quirky ways. And with more than a half-dozen distortion and overdrive effects in line, there’s plenty to respond to.
Moving away from distortion, there’s an EBS OctaBass. Next, comes the one pedal Henry says is his constant and essential: the Red Panda Tensor. “It does my crazy Henry Kaiser momentary pitch-transposition thing,” he notes. Henry had a lot of input on the pedal’s design. A Hexe revolver DX16 looper/glitch/distortion box adds more divine weirdness. (Honestly, if you love pedals and unpredictable sonic bliss, you need to see this video!) There’s an Eventide H9, mostly used for momentary octaves, which leads to an EHX Killswitch, followed by a TC Electronic Flashback (used mostly for backwards mode), and an Ernie Ball volume pedal, to bring the quiet. His Montreal Assembly Count to Five will speed up his notes, like a tape machine set to a higher-than-actual speed on playback. (Instant Yngwie?) Following another Ernie Ball Volume Pedal, there’s a Flux Liquid Tremolo and a GFI Specular Tempus reverb. In Henry’s thrall, it all sounds like peanut butter and chocolate!
The first stop for Anthony Pirog’s signal—before his first pedalboard—is a ZVEX Fuzz Factory, followed by an Electro-Harmonix Mel 9 (often kept on a flute setting, to produce lovely tones with long decays), a red DigiTech Whammy for octave and pitch-change work, and a Diamond Compressor (equally good for clean tones and skronky improv).
For Anthony, there’s also an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb, a Crowther Hot Cake overdrive, a Pro Co RAT (his first pedal, bought at age 12), a Klon Centaur (scored where he teaches, at Action Music in Falls Church, Virginia), a Greer Super Hornet (fuzz with a momentary octave switch), an EarthQuaker Devices Afterneath ambient reverb, a Boss DD-7 Digital Delay (dedicated to backwards delay), a Moog MF Delay, a ZVEX Ringtone ring modulator, an MXR 16 Second Digital Delay reissue (with a foot controller), and a ZVEX Lo-Fi Loop Junky (not pictured).
But wait! Of course there’s more. Anthony also employs an oscillator-based Noise Swash built by 4 ms, which sounds like the horn of an express train to Saturn, with Sun Ra at the controls.
During the original run of the Dixie Dregs, Andy West used stompboxes, including a Mu-Tron Bi-Phase, an envelope follower, and various dirt pedals. Today he’s pared his live rig down to a Line 6 Helix and a full-range Electro-Voice PA cabinet for his clear, articulate sound. He brought the Helix to the studio, and it gets a little help from the now-nearly-ubiquitous Eventide H9 and an expression pedal. Andy loves the Helix for its ability to pre-program various signal chain routes, plus add a little dirt, and in the studio he uses his android phone to change programs on the H9. Watch the video for his effects routing preferences via both devices.
Andy’s laptop is used primarily to host his plug-ins, employing Cockos’ Reaper as his DAW. Any latency? Since he’s using time- and modulation-based effects via his computer, it’s no problem. It all evens out in the wash, so to speak. And the Helix, of course, has zero latency.
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Ted is an award-winning journalist, musician, songwriter, producer, and film consultant. He has presented workshops on roots music history and on slide guitar in the U.S. and Europe. He is also the leader of Ted Drozdowski’s Scissormen, a psychedelic blues-based group that has toured internationally, including such festivals as Bonnaroo, Memphis in May, and Cognac Blues Passions. He is a senior editor at Premier Guitar.
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