Chasny’s go-to acoustic for the last decade has been an Alvarez Yairi Bob Weir model. But after a rough life on the road, the guitarist is giving that instrument some much-deserved downtime and has moved onto a Martin 00C-16DBGTE.
Ben Chasny has spent his musical life firmly rooted in the undergound. If you’re an avant aficionado, you might be familiar with his project Six Organs of Admittance. Or his band 200 Years. Maybe Rangda, New Bums, Badgerlore, or even Comets on Fire?
You get the point. Chasny is prolific. Over the past couple decades, he’s proven to be an unwavering devotee of the musical fringe. He’s a noise-rock experimenter, and his acoustic work is revered by the heaviest of metal communities. He’s even created a vastly complex system for composition and improvisation that you can learn about in his 2015 PG interview.
But Chasny is changing his M.O. with The Intimate Landscape. The first album to be released under his own name, it’s a collection of beautiful, melodic, and accessible acoustic fingerstyle songs. And they were all recorded in hopes that marketing agencies would buy them. Seriously.
Ben Chasny "Second Moon" (Official Song Visualizer)
How does a psychedelic noise warrior who grew up on the Melvins and built a career in dissonance end up here? According to Chasny, it goes back to one of his early, understated guitar heroes. “I actually played bass in punk bands. I never wanted to play acoustic, but when I heard the first few chords on [Nick Drake’s] Five Leaves Left, it blew my mind. It wasn’t the lyrics. It was the sound of his playing. He’s doing syncopated stuff between his thumb and his fingers that I’ve never heard anybody do. He’s someone with his own thing. You know immediately when it’s him. That’s when I wanted to play acoustic guitar. That’s what changed everything.”
Drake’s influence helped shape Chasny’sdebut recording, 1998's Six Organs of Admittance, an album he initially tried to keep on the down-low. “At the time, I was getting very into ’70s cult stuff, like Comus and the Incredible String Band,” he explains. “I wanted to create that illusion of an anonymous acid-folk cult band, so I released it myself. And for the first couple of Six Organs releases, I didn’t put my name on them. Nothing’s really a mystery now, but back then you could do a mystery LP and there were distributors that would distribute it. Then it would be written about in ’zines and no one really knew who it was.”
After a few releases, Chasny settled on the Six Organs moniker. It became the banner under which he cultivated new styles of haunting experimental music using dark harmonies and drones as well as atmospheric synth and vocal sounds. As he fearlessly shaped his rock and punk background into a captivating form, his acoustic playing, specifically, found an audience among the biggest names in stoner, doom, and black metal. Improbably, he was soon sharing bills, tours, and festivals with artists such as Om (with whom he released a split 7"), Wino from the Obsessed, and Neurosis.
“It’s funny, because everyone wants me to play acoustic guitar,” he says. “The heavier dudes seem to prefer it. It’s like, ‘No, no. We’ll do the heavy stuff, kid. You play the acoustic guitar or something.’”
“My favorite guitar players are the ones who are, as they say, in the service of the song: guys like Richard Thompson or Lindsey Buckingham.”
Even within such an unpredictable career, Chasny’s latest veers like a left turn into outer space. The Intimate Landscape was initiated when KPM Music—a production music business with a large catalog that specializes in commercial placements—reached out with an invitation to create a set of library music. The only catch, he says, was that, like the metal guys, KPM wanted his acoustic side.
“I had visions of doing a soundtrack, some weird, horror, Blade Runner record. But they said, ‘No, no. We want acoustic guitar,’ which was a little disappointing. But I said, ‘Okay. I can do that.’”
Wary of simply knocking out a handful of jingles, Chasny decided to create an artistic album—which would also be released by the Drag City label—that suits commercial use. “When I hear music that could be used for a fishing show or something, I don’t think that it’s an artist putting everything into it,” he explains. “One of my ideas was to try to record nice music, not production music. Even though that’s what it would be used for.”
Deep into a career in underground music, not only did Ben Chasny accept an invitation to create a set of fingerstyle-guitar library tunes for commercial placement, but he’s made it his first album under his own name.
Conceptually, this runs counter to what Chasny has done across his Six Organs discography. “I’ll do acoustic that’s often smeared with dissonance, or noise, or something,” he explains. “This was my chance to not do that. But I had to fight against my instinct to subvert the melodies. It’s a challenge to make music that is a little more pretty. I want to start doing music under my name that will be a little more on this side of things. And I’m hoping to steer Six Organs into more of the experimental side. It’ll be easier for people to know, ‘This one’s going to be a little more mellow, and this one’s going to be a little tougher to listen to.’”
If words like “pretty” make it sound like Chasny has sold out, don’t worry. He was free to pursue his own vision. “I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t know I was going to have so much freedom,” he says. “I gave them a little sample and said, ‘This is what it would sound like.’ They said, ‘That’s great. Make a record like that.’ And it was cool because I was working for somebody else, in a way. I knew exactly what I needed to do instead of sitting around wondering.”
“I had to fight against my instinct to subvert those melodies. It’s a challenge to make music that was a little more pretty.”
The result is focused and warmly listenable. Every piece on The Intimate Landscape puts Chasny’s guitar melodies front and center, while his touch and tone fill out his sonic vision. On “Cross-Winged Formation,” the intimate sound pulls you in. It’s as if you can hear the guitarist’s fingerprints on the strings. And just when you’re lulled into the moment, the song’s chorus expands with a low-string melody and open-string ornamentation.
Then there’s “Water Dragon,” a minor-key dirge that blends classical picking technique with an ominous vocal backing. It’s the one song that bridges the gap between his past and present work. “‘Water Dragon’ is a little nod to Six Organs,” he admits. “It has that more modal playing and the vocal drone. I did want to have a little window to something that ties it to previous records.”
Ben Chasny's Gear
Chasny still plugs in but says his acoustic playing has developed a reputation among metal audiences and commercial music houses alike. “Everyone wants me to play acoustic guitar,” he says!
Photo by Tim Bugbee
Guitars
- Alvarez Yairi Bob Weir model
- Martin 00C-16DBGTE (with LR Baggs Anthem pickup system)
Strings
- D’Addario .010 sets
While mainly a new direction, this album doesn’t sound like someone stretching for something new. It sounds more like an artist drawing on familiar influences to paint a new picture. But Chasny did mine one influence that, until now, he’s kept close to the chest.
“There’s this one record that I absolutely love that I never hear any acoustic players talk about, and that’s A Shout Toward Noon by Leo Kottke,” he reveals. “I love that nobody talks about that record, and I’ve never talked about it. I always try to keep it a secret because that’s the one that always inspires me for melody. The melodies on that record floor me.”
In addition to Kottke’s influence, we hear Chasny’s consistent fingerpicking technique and how he pushes and pulls time to suit the moment. And we know how much work it takes to get there. “I practiced a lot when I was younger,” Chasny says. “It was serious. I had very part-time jobs, and I practiced guitar for a long time. I’d try to learn as much as I could. I don’t really practice acoustic guitar. So, the actual technique stuff maybe comes from playing electric guitar. That gets ported to the acoustic a little bit, like some fretboard, left-hand stuff.”
“One of my ideas was to try to record nice music, not production music. Even though that’s what it would be used for."
His electric playing had an influence on Chasny’s choice of acoustic instrument, which for about a decade or so was his trusty, highly playable Alvarez Yairi Bob Weir model. “I love it because of the neck,” he says. “It’s easy to go from electric to acoustic because it’s really fast, like a shredder neck or something. I fell in love with that before the tone. I used to have some ‘real tone’ friends that would give me shit about it. But I really liked that guitar a lot.”
Unfortunately, the decade did a number on that guitar, and it started showing its age, so Chasny has moved onto a Martin 00C-16DBGTE that he says is “not that much different than the Alvarez.” That guitar had a rough start, developing cracks after one tour, but it’s now become his go-to acoustic. Paired with a set of dead, bronze guitar strings, it’s the sound of The Intimate Landscape. “It was only that Martin on this record. I think I changed the preamp plug-in for a song. The rest of it was one preamp emulation and that guitar.”
Much of The Intimate Landscape’s charm is in the immediacy of Chasny’s simple, DIY production and arrangements. From “The Many Faces of Stone” to “On the Way To the Coast,” it’s as if you’re sitting in front of the guitar’s soundhole. Though KPM offered to send him to a professional studio, he chose to keep things as straightforward as possible. “I did it by myself, at home, with my gear. And it’s all mono,” he points out. “The stereo is from the reverb, but I didn’t do any stereo recordings. I start getting freaked out about phase cancellation. Then I start wondering, ‘Can I even hear phase cancellation? What am I doing? Maybe I need to go to a studio?’”
TIDBIT: KPM Music offered to send Chasny into a professional studio, but he opted to record at home and kept his variables simple, using just one mic and one guitar.
Resisting the urge, Chasny pushed himself to get the most from a single, affordable microphone in an untreated room. “It was recorded with this really cheap mic called a CM3,” he says. “It’s a little pencil condenser made by Line Audio. It was one of those things where you go on the forums and look for ‘the best mic for acoustic guitar’ and everyone’s arguing. Five pages later, I found out about it.
“I angle it down a little bit, and it’s pretty close. I like close-miking at home because my rooms are not treated very well. Which is another reason why I don’t do any ambient mics.” Once it hits his DAW, he continues to keep it simple. “I do EQ, but I don’t do compression with fingerstyle. I leave that to the mastering person if they want. I just smack some reverb on it.”
Chasny prefers to stay rhythmically unencumbered when recording solo playing. “None of this record was done with a metronome. It’s all free time,” he says. “I think it might set it apart from other production music a bit.” This allows Chasny to manipulate the feel of each section on the fly. A case in point is “Second Moon.” Listen as he pushes and pulls the time, matching the emotional flow of each song.
“When I heard the first few chords on [Nick Drake’s] Five Leaves Left, it blew my mind."
This level of control only comes through practice and commitment to craft and genre. Yet Chasny avoids labelling himself a fingerstyle guitarist. He’s more inspired by players who put the music before the playing. “I’ve got a few tricks and I probably could learn some more,” he says. “But my favorite guitar players are the ones who are, as they say, in the service of the song: guys like Richard Thompson or Lindsey Buckingham.”
If it sounds like Chasny has abandoned his electric side, fear not. While he already has plans to record another acoustic set for KPM, he’s also conjuring a cranked-up vision for the next Six Organs album. “It’s definitely going to be electric, and I’ve got some ideas about it.”
Explaining Ben Chasny as an artist isn’t going to get easier any time soon. His music is all over the place, and he purposefully avoids classification. But there is a common thread that ties his entire career together. Look too hard and you might miss it, but it’s always there.
“This sounds cheesy as fuck, but I really love guitar,” Chasny says. “I remember when I was young, playing one note. It was so exciting. It was so fucking good. I still have that every once in a while. Maybe that’s why the varied stuff. I love absolute noise guitar, but I also like Paul Gilbert! I don’t know why I love guitar so much. I ask myself that all that time. I don’t know what it is, but I love guitar.”
Six Organs of Admittance - Shelter From the Ash
Get a feel for Chasny’s dark and droney fingerstyle sound in this intimate living room performance of the title track from the 2007 Six Organs of Admittance album, Shelter from the Ash.
- Ben Chasny: Six of Everything - Premier Guitar ›
- Zen Guitar for the 22nd Century ... and Beyond - Premier Guitar ›
After eight years, New Orleans artist Benjamin Booker returns with a new album and a redefined relationship to the guitar.
That evening, Booker played a release celebration show at Euclid Records in New Orleans, which has become the musician’s adopted hometown. He spent a few years in Los Angeles, and then in Australia, where his partner gave birth to their child, but when he moved back to the U.S. in December 2023, it was the only place he could imagine coming back to. “I just like that the city has kind of a magic quality to it,” he says. “It just feels kind of like you’re walking around a movie set all the time.”
Witness was a ruminative, lonesome record, an interpretation of the writer James Baldwin’s concept of bearing witness to atrocity and injustice in the United States. Mavis Staples sang on the title track, which addressed the centuries-old crisis of police killings and brutality carried out against black Americans. It was a significant change from the twitchy, bluesy garage-rock of Booker’s self-titled 2014 debut, the sort of tunes that put him on the map as a scrappy guitar-slinging hero. But Booker never planned on heroism; he had no interest in becoming some neatly packaged industry archetype. After Witness, and years of touring, including supporting the likes of Jack White and Neil Young, Booker withdrew.
He was searching for a sound. “I was just trying to find the things that I liked,” he explains. L.A. was a good place for his hunt. He went cratedigging at Stellaremnant for electronic records, and at Artform Studio in Highland Park for obscure jazz releases. It took a long time to put together the music he was chasing. “For a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do,” says Booker. “I just wasn’t interested in it anymore. I hadn’t heard really that much guitar stuff that had really spoke to me.”
“For a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do. I just wasn’t interested in it anymore.”
LOWER is Booker’s most sensitive and challenging record yet.
Among the few exceptions were Tortoise’s Jeff Parker and Dave Harrington from Darkside, players who moved Booker to focus more on creating ambient and abstract textures instead of riffs. Other sources of inspiration came from Nicolas Jaar, Loveliescrushing, Kevin Shields, Sophie, and JPEGMAFIA. When it came to make LOWER (which released on Booker’s own Fire Next Time Records, another nod to Baldwin), he took the influences that he picked up and put them onto guitar—more atmosphere, less “noodly stuff”: “This album, I was working a lot more with images, trying to get images that could get to the emotion that I was trying to get to.”
The result is a scraping, aching, exploratory album that demonstrates that Booker’s creative analysis of the world is sharper and more potent than ever. Opener “Black Opps” is a throbbing, metallic, garage-electronic thrill, running back decades of state surveillance, murder, and sabotage against Black community organizing. “LWA in the Trailer Park” is brighter by a slim margin, but just as simultaneously discordant and groovy. The looped fingerpicking of “Pompeii Statues” sets a grounding for Booker to narrate scenes of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Even the acoustic strums of “Heavy on the Mind” are warped and stretched into something deeply affecting; ditto the sunny, garbage-smeared ’60s pop of “Show and Tell.” But LOWER is also breathtakingly beautiful and moving. “Slow Dance in a Gay Bar” and “Hope for the Night Time” intermingle moments of joy and lightness amid desperation and loneliness.
Booker worked with L.A.-based hip-hop and electronic producer Kenny Segal, trading stems endlessly over email to build the record. While he was surrounded by vintage guitars and amps to create Witness, Booker didn’t use a single amplifier in the process of making LOWER: He recorded all his guitars direct through an interface to his DAW. “It’s just me plugging my old Epiphone Olympic into the computer and then using software plugins to manipulate the sounds,” says Booker. For him, working digitally and “in the box” is the new frontier of guitar music, no different than how Hendrix and Clapton used never-heard-before fuzz pedals to blow people’s minds. “When I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time,” he adds.
“When I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time.”
Benjamin Booker's Gear
Booker didn’t use any amps on LOWER. He recorded his old Epiphone Olympic direct into his DAW.
Photo by Trenity Thomas
Guitars
- 1960s Epiphone Olympic
Effects
- Soundtoys Little AlterBoy
- Soundtoys Decapitator
- Soundtoys Devil-Loc Deluxe
- Soundtoys Little Plate
“I guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary. I wanted a little bit of ugliness.”
Inspired by a black metal documentary in which an artist asks for the cheapest mic possible, Booker used only basic plugins by Soundtoys, like the Decapitator, Little AlterBoy, and Little Plate, but the Devil-Loc Deluxe was the key for he and Segal to unlock the distorted, “three-dimensional world” they were seeking. “Because I was listening to more electronic music where there’s more of a focus on mixing than I would say in rock music, I think that I felt more inspired to go in and be surgical about it,” says Booker.
Part of that precision meant capturing the chaos of our world in all its terror and splendor. When he was younger, Booker spent a lot of time going to the Library of Congress and listening to archival interviews. On LOWER, he carries out his own archival sound research. “I like the idea of being able to put things like that in the music, for people to just hear it,” says Booker. “Even if they don’t know what it is, they’re catching a glimpse of life that happened at that time.”
On “Slow Dance in a Gay Bar,” there are birds chirping that he captured while living in Australia. Closer “Hope for the Night Time” features sounds from Los Angeles’ Grand Central Market. “Same Kind of Lonely” features audio of Booker’s baby laughing just after a clip from a school shooting. “I guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary,” says Booker. “I wanted a little bit of ugliness. We all have our regular lives that are just kind of interrupted constantly by insane acts of violence.”
That dichotomy is often difficult to compute, but Booker has made peace with it. “You hear people talking about, ‘I don’t want to have kids because the world is falling apart,’” he says. “But I mean, I feel like it’s always falling apart and building itself back up. Nothing lasts forever, even bad times.”
YouTube It
To go along with the record, Booker produced a string of music videos influenced by the work of director Paul Schrader and his fascination with “a troubled character on the edge, reaching for transcendence.” That vision is present in the video for lead single “LWA in the Trailer Park.”
Note the cavity cover on the back, which houses the components of Andy Summers’ mid-boost system.
In general, you can use any Telecaster and convert it to Andy Summers’ specs. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original guitar, the way to go is an alder body—just like Andy’s, which is 2-piece—with a 3-tone sunburst finish and white double binding.
The neck should be quarter-sawn, 1-piece maple with a C profile, 21 vintage-style frets, and a 7.25" fretboard radius. Of course, you can choose your own specs here, too. The original guitar has a brass nut rather than bone or plastic, and it should be no problem to find a brass nut blank for a Telecaster. You will need different tools to work on it compared to bone, plastic, or graphite, so keep this in mind. If you do not have the right tools or don’t feel comfortable making nuts, you should leave this task to your local guitar tech. Summers’ guitar has Schaller M6 tuning machines, which are still available from the German Schaller company, and two chrome butterfly string trees. You may not really need two of them—usually one for the B and the high E string will do the trick, especially with a well-made nut.
The original has a heavy brass bridge plate with six individual brass saddles, which will increase overall weight significantly. You can still buy this type of brass bridge from several companies, but there are much lighter bridges on the market.
The stereo output jack is installed in a rectangular chrome plate, like on a Les Paul, which I think is superior to the typical Telecaster jack cup. Interestingly, the plate on Summers’ guitar is only held by two of four screws, but do yourself a favor and use all four to make this spot as strong as possible. You should attach the plate really tight, especially when you use an output jack with a tight grip for the plug.
“Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls.”
The rest of the hardware is chrome and standard: two regular strap buttons, a standard Telecaster control plate, ’60s Telecaster flat-top knobs, a black ’60s-style top-hat switch knob on the 3-way pickup selector switch, and two flat-lever mini-toggle switches. You should have no problem getting all of these parts from any guitar shop. The pickguard is a 3-ply mint green pickguard with a standard humbucker routing for the neck pickup.
Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls: a standard 3-way pickup selector switch, two 250k audio pots for master volume and master tone, a gain control pot for the booster, and two additional mini DPDT on-on toggle switches for switching the booster on and off and for the phase control of the bridge pickup. The resistance of the gain control pot depends on the booster you want to use: e.g. for the Fender Clapton mid-boost kit, a 500k type will work great.
For the bridge pickup, there is a standard early-’60s-style Telecaster single-coil pickup, and every pickup company will have something like this in their catalog. Because the bridge pickup is installed to an out-of-phase mini-toggle switch, your pickup will need three conductors, with the metal base plate separated from the pickup’s common ground, and a third wire that connects the bridge plate individually to ground. If you have a regular two-conductor model, you need to break this connection, soldering a third wire directly to the base plate.
Interestingly, the bridge pickup on Summers’ Tele is installed directly into the wood of the pickup’s cavity. I see no reason why you shouldn’t install it the regular way on your guitar.
Here’s a close-up of the bridge on Summers’ historic Tele.
Photo courtesy of Ten-Guitars (https://ten-guitars.de)
In the neck position, there is a ’59 PAF humbucker with a conventional two-conductor wiring installed directly into the pickguard in the standard way, with the open pole pieces facing towards the neck. The choice of late-’50s PAF copies has never been better than it is today. You can buy excellent versions from a lot of companies, just make sure to choose the correct string spacing, which is usually called “F-spacing” or something similar, and is usually 2.070" (52.6 mm). (Gibson spacing, or G-spacing, is 1.930" or 49 mm.)
You’ll need humbucker routing on your body to make it fit. If you don’t have a body with humbucker routing and don’t want to get your Tele body re-routed, you can consider one of the numerous stacked humbuckers that will fit into a standard Telecaster neck pickup cavity. My experience is that there is a noticeable difference in tone compared to a full-sized humbucker, and it will be a compromise.
Next is the active booster. Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body. There are a wide range of available booster options. There are complete DIY sets available that include the PCB and all of the necessary parts to build your own, and there are also drop-in PCBs that are already populated, like the well-known Fender mid-boost circuit kit. You can also find mini-sized booster modules using high-quality SMD parts, which only require a fraction of space compared to the regular PCBs.
“Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body.”
The available options include treble boosters, mid-boost circuits, full-range boosters, etc. Choose what you like best. The problem will be that you need to stuff it into a Telecaster body. As you know, there is not much space inside a Telecaster, and you need to add the booster itself, the 9V battery, an additional pot for controlling the booster, and two additional mini-toggle switches—one for turning the booster on and off, and the other to get the bridge pickup out of phase. This is a lot of stuff! On Summers’ guitar, this problem was solved by adding a large cavity on the back and closing it with a plastic back plate, as on a Gibson Les Paul.
A look inside the cavity for the mid-boost unit.
Photo courtesy of TeleManDon from Vancouver Island, BC (https://tdpri.com)
You can clearly see the two big routings for the booster’s PCB and the 9V battery, plus the additional pot to control the amount of boost as well as the mini-toggle switch to turn the booster on and off. If you are not afraid of routing two big chambers into your Telecaster’s body, this is a suitable way to go.
On a Telecaster, there are not many alternatives I can think of to fit all these parts. One possible way of saving space would be to use a stacked pot with two 250k pots for volume and tone, so you have the second hole in the control plate available for the gain control pot of the booster. Between the two pots, it should be no problem to place the two mini-toggle switches. Or you use a push-pull pot for the gain control to save one of the mini-toggle switches. The guitar will look much cleaner, at least from the front side. But you still have to put the booster PCB and the battery somewhere. A customer of mine did this by completely routing the area under the pickguard. But even with only a regular single-coil neck pickup, it was a really tight fit, so with a regular-sized humbucker, it will be close to impossible. So, you or your luthier will have to be creative, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a company offers Andy Summers Telecaster bodies with all chambers already routed.
Here we go for the wiring. Wherever possible, I tried to keep the diagram as clean as possible. The wiring of the booster is only an example and depends on the booster you want to use, but the basic wiring is always the same.
Here’s a helpful schmatic of the Andy Summers‘ Telecaster wiring.
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL (www.singlecoil.com)
That’s it. Next month, we will take a deep look into guitar cables and wires, what really makes a difference, and how you can use this to reshape your guitar tone. So stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Grammy-nominated session guitarist, producer, mixer, and engineer Paul Moak stays busy on multiple fronts. Over the years he’s written, played, produced and more for TV sessions (Pretty Little Liars, One Tree Hill) and artists including Third Day, Leeland, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. But most recently he’s worked with Heart and Ann Wilson and Tripsitter.
Time Traveler
Moak is most loyal to a 1963 Stratocaster body that’s mated to a 1980s-vintage, 3-bolt, maple, bullet-truss-rod, 1969-style Fender Japan neck. The bridge has been swapped as many as four times and the bridge and neck pickups are Lindy Fralins.
Cool Cat
If there’s one guitar Moak would grab in a fire, it’s the Jaguar he’s had since age 20 and used in his band DC Talk. When Moak bought the guitar at Music Go Round in Minneapolis, the olympic white finish was almost perfect. He remains impressed with the breadth of tones. He likes the low-output single-coils for use with more expansive reverb effects.
Mystery Message Les Paul
Moak’s 1970 L.P. Custom has a number of 1969 parts. It was traded to Moak by the band Feel. Interestingly, the back is carved with the words “cheat” and “liar,” telling a tale we can only speculate about.
Dad Rocker
Almost equally near and dear to Moak’s heart is this 1968 Vox Folk Twelve that belonged to his father. It has the original magnetic pickup at the neck as well as a piezo installed by Moak.
Flexi Plexis
This rare and precious trio of plexis can be routed in mix-and-match fashion to any of Moak’s extensive selection of cabs—all of which are miked and ready to roll.
Vintage Voices
Moak’s amps skew British, but ’60s Fender tone is here in plentitude courtesy of a blonde-and-oxblood Bassman and 1965 Bandmaster as well as a 2x6L6 Slivertone 1484 Twin Twelve.
Guess What?
The H-Zog, which is the second version of Canadian amp builder Garnet’s Herzog tube-driven overdrive, can work as an overdrive or an amp head, but it’s probably most famous for Randy Bachman’s fuzzy-as-heck “American Woman” tone.
Stomp Staff
While the Eventide H90 that helps anchor Moak’s pedalboard can handle the job of many pedals, he may have more amp heads on hand than stompboxes. But essentials include a JHS Pulp ‘N’ Peel compressor/preamp, a DigiTech Whammy II, DigiTech FreqOut natural feedback generator, a Pete Cornish SS-3 drive, Klon Centaur, and Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man.
Reverend Descent W Baritone Electric Guitar - Transparent White
