Rock guitar icon Jake E. Lee takes Premier Guitar through his powerful rig before the Red Dragon Cartel’s soundcheck at Nashville’s Basement East.
Jake E. Lee is best known for rocking white Charvels and his current signature model carries on that tradition. It has a bolt-on neck and a unique pickup configuration with both the middle and neck DiMarzio SDS-1s are slanted towards the bridge. A Seymour Duncan JB Alnico II humbucker rounds out the trio. All of his guitars are strung with DR Strings .010–.046 sets.
Sharing equal time on Jake E. Lee’s tour is this Charvel Jake E. Lee USA signature model in blue burst. Unlike Lee’s white sig, the pickups are mounted on the body since the guitar does not have a pickguard.
On the Red Dragon Cartel’s current album Patina, Jake E. Lee played a1965 Gibson ES-335, so he brought out this vintage beauty to cop the tone. This stock semi-hollow is feedback prone, but Lee likes it for its lively unpredictability.
Jake E. Lee tours with a trio of high-powered heads. Here’s his signature Friedman. Depending on the venue he might run only one or two of them. If you look closely, you’ll see Lee isn’t afraid to dime the volume. He typically pulls this out on bigger stages, but this 100-watt beast does have a half-power switch to tame it down to 50 watts.
On this particular show Jake E. Lee was running through this Friedman Small Box. It’s a 50-watt head that goes after those classic plexi tones.
Rounding out the trio is this custom 100-watt head by RJS Amplification out of Denver. All three of these heads feed up to four EVH 5150 III 4x12 cabs which are loaded with a mix of 25-watt Celestion Greenbacks and 20-watt Celestion Greenbacks.
Jake E. Lee’s modest pedalboard runs entirely on various flavors of 9V batteries. He starts with Mogami cables running from his guitar to a Prescription Electronics Experience pedal before hitting a mysterious silver fuzz pedal. (Lee claims it was once owned by Paul Gilbert.) After those, Lee’s signal hits a Boss TU-3 tuner, a Magik Box Jake E. Lee Body Blow, an MXR Stereo Chorus, an Analog Man Bi-Chorus, and MXR Carbon Copy, and finally a Vox wah (not pictured).
John Bohlinger is a Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist best known for leading the band on NBC's Nashville Star, serving as music director for the CMT Awards and specials on PBS and GAC, and of course for his appearances in PG Rig Rundown, Review Demo, Axes & Artifacts, and What Bohlinger Plays videos.
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