The legendary Louisville rockers brought tons of vintage tone tools on the road this year.
My Morning Jacket’s Is, their 10th album, released on March 21, and as we reported in our feature on the band in our May print issue, it showcased a band exercising their classic strengths as well as newfound vision and curiosity. Helmed by superstar producer Brendan O’Brien, Is finds MMJ at their anthemic, psychedelic best.
We caught up with Carl Broemel for a Rig Rundown back in 2015, but on this year’s tour, PG’s John Bohlinger checked in with all three axemen—Jim James, Broemel, and bassist Tom Blankenship—to hear about their road rigs. In Broemel’s estimation, they’re lazy—they just like to bring everything.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Three's a Crowd
This gorgeous Gibson Jimi Hendrix 1967 SG Custom, aged by Murphy Labs, initially had three humbuckers, but James kept hitting his pick on the middle pickup, so it got the yank—as did the hefty bridge and Maestro Vibrola system, which were replaced with a simple stopbar tailpiece.
Mirror Image
James picked up this 1998 Gibson Flying V right around when My Morning Jacket got started. He traced and ordered the flashy mirror pickguard himself. It’s got Gibson pickups, though James isn’t sure of the models.
Jim James' Jimmy
James plucked this one-of-a-kind from Scott Baxendale’s collection of restored vintage guitars. He guesses it’s either an old Kay or Harmony guitar, but the decorations, including the custom plastic headstock plaque, make exact identification difficult. But it was clear this one was meant for James, since it has his name on it.
Elsewhere backstage is James’ Epiphone Jim James ES-335, a custom shop Fender Telecaster and Strat, a 1967 Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentleman, and a Gibson Barney Kessel.
Make Love, Not War
James loves repurposing old military equipment for creative, peaceful purposes, which is how this old radar system came to be a part of his live amplification kit. Along with the old tech, James runs two 3 Monkeys Orangutan heads through a 3 Monkeys cab.
Jim James' Pedalboard
James’ board is built around a pair of GigRig QuarterMaster switching systems, which lets him navigate the stomps you see here: a Devi Ever US Fuzz, Boss BD-2w, SoloDallas Schaffer Boost, Boss OC-2, EarthQuaker Devices Spatial Delivery, Strymon blueSky, EQD Ghost Echo, Malekko Spring Chicken, ISP Deci-Mate, Electro-Harmonix Mel9, UA Starlight Echo Station, and UA Astra Modulation Machine. A D’Addario Chromatic Pedal Tuner duo keep things on pitch, a Strymon Zuma and Ojai pair handle the power, and a Radial SGI-44 line driver maintains clarity.
Arts and Crafts Night
One night while a bit tipsy, Broemel took out his paint pens and set to work on this Gibson Les Paul Standard Faded, resulting in this masterpiece. He also removed the pickup selector switch; even though the neck pickup remains, it never gets used.
Relic By Broemel
This 1988 Les Paul Standard predates the band, and Broemel has given it its aged finish over the years—on one occasion, it fell out of a truck. It’s been treated to a Seymour Duncan pickup upgrade and occasional refrets when required.
Carl's Creston
This Creston Lea offset has two Novak lipstick pickups in the neck, with a switch to engage just one or both, plus a low-end roll-off control. It’s finished in the same blue-black color as Broemel’s house and sports a basil leaf on the headstock in tribute to Broemel’s son, Basil.
Also in the wardrobe are a shiny new Duesenberg tuned to open G, and a custom shop Fender Telecaster with a fattened neck and Bigsby to swing it closer to Broemel’s beloved LPs.
Milk Route
Broemel routes his GFI Ultra pedal steel, which is tuned to E9, through a board which includes a Milkman The Amp, which is projected through the speaker of a Fender Princeton Reissue combo. Operated with another GigRig QuarterMaster, the board also includes an Eventide H9, Moog MF Delay, Fender The Pelt, MXR Phase 90, EHX Nano POG, Xotic Effects EP Booster, Source Audio C4, and a Peterson StroboStomp HD.
Side-Carr
This time out, Broemel is running two Carr Slant 6V heads in stereo.
Carl Broemel's Pedalboard
Broemel commissioned XAct Tone Solutions to build this double-decker board, which depends on a GigRig G3S switching system. From top to bottom (literally), it includes a Boss TU-3, Durham Electronics Sex Drive, JAM Pedals Tubedreamer, Source Audio Spectrum, JAM Retrovibe, MXR Phase 100, Fender The Pelt, Origin Effects SlideRIG, 29 Pedals EUNA, two Eventide H9s, Kingsley Harlot V3, JAM Delay Llama, Merix LVX, Hologram Chroma Console, and EHX POGIII. A wah and Mission Engineering expression pedal sit on the left side, while a Lehle volume pedal and Gamechanger Audio Plus hold down the right edge.
Utility units include two SGI TX interfaces, two Strymon Ojais and a Strymon Zuma, and a Cioks Crux.
More From the Creston Crew
Blankenship, too, has brought along a few guitars from Lea, including these Precision-bass and Jazz-bass models. The dark-sparkle P-style rocks with GHS flatwound strings, while the natural-finish J-style has roundwounds.
Emperor's New Groove
Blankenship just got these brand-new Emperor cabinets, through which he cranks his Mesa Boogie WD-800 Subway heads.
Tom Blankenship’s Pedalboard
Like James, Blankenship uses a GigRig QuarterMaster to jump between his effects. After his Boss TU-3, that includes an Origin Effects Cali76, DigiTech Whammy Ricochet, Pepers’ Pedals Humongous Fuzz, MXR Bass Octave Deluxe, Tronographic Rusty Box, and EHX Bassballs Nano. A Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 Plus lights things up, and a Radial SGI TX keeps the signal squeaky clean.
Shop My Morning Jacket's Rig
EarthQuaker Devices host Echo Reverb Pedal
ISP Technologies DECI-MATE Micro Noise Reduction Pedal
Electro-Harmonix Mel9 Tape Replay Machine Pedal
EarthQuaker Devices Spatial Delivery Envelope Filter Pedal
Universal Audio UAFX Starlight Echo Station Delay Pedal
Universal Audio UAFX Astra Modulation Machine Pedal
Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster
Three brawny, chiming British amp voices, and a million colors in between, shine in an immaculately conceived and constructed 16-watt, EL84 combo that roars and sweetly sings.
Oodles of Brit tones that sound fantastic at low, or shockingly loud, volumes. Built like an old Benz. Touch-responsive and dynamic. Deep, addictive tremolo.
Expensive!
$3,240
Carr Bel-Ray
carramps.com
Playing the 16-watt, EL84-driven Carr Bel-Ray is, at times, flat-out, ecstatic fun. It’s alive, reactive, responsive, dynamic, and barks and chimes with a voice that spans a siren’s song and a firecracker. It lends snap and top-end energy to humbuckers, can turn a Telecaster bridge pickup lethal, or make a Rickenbacker 12-string brash and beautiful at once. It can also make you forget stompboxes exist. Most of my time with the Bel-Ray was spent without a pedal in sight.
Carr Bel-Ray Amp Demo | First Look
As the EL84 power section suggests, the Bel-Ray offers many paths to British amp tonalities. Three different voices—V66, H73, and M68, accessed via a 3-way switch—approximate Vox, Hiwatt, and Marshall sounds, respectively, and each genuinely, sometimes uncannily, evokes its inspiration. The three voices are only jumping-off points, though. The superb onboard attenuator enables huge sounds at civilized volumes, and the creative preamp section and volume-taper toggle can recast each voice profoundly. So can the flexible EQ, which shifts and morphs the Bel-Ray’s many tone colors in elegant and painterly ways. The tremolo, by the way, is rich, thick, and luxurious.
The Bel-Ray’s delectable tone-tasting menu is high-end stuff. Prices start at $3,240 for the combo and $3,150 for the head. But the Bel-Ray’s bold palette is unusually expansive, which can make a lot of amps very redundant. Compact, handsome, lovingly crafted, multifaceted, and way louder than its dimensions suggest—the longer you delve into the Bel-Ray’s potential the more the price tag makes sense.
Immaculately Executed
The Bel-Ray isn’t expensive for its hip sounds alone. We’ve raved about Carr quality before in Premier Guitar, and the Bel-Ray suggests Steve Carr’s standards are as high as ever. I’ve seen pricey custom furniture put together much less exactingly. And the substantial amp chassis and the circuit, handwired on terminal strip, almost suggest a kind of virtuous overbuilding—the variety that makes old Volvo and Mercedes-Benz engines go a half-million miles.
The Bel-Ray’s tube complement is nearly identical to those found in 18-watt Marshalls, AC15s, and Watkins Dominators, which are the Bel-Ray’s most obvious design touchstones. But rather than use three 12AX7 preamp tubes like those circuits, the Bel-Ray trades one 12AX7 for a pentode EF86. It adds a lot of pop and kinetic energy to the basic voice. It also works with a partial master volume, situated just after it, to lighten the load on the power tubes when you use the amp in the volume-taper toggle’s less-aggressive low position. An EZ81-based tube rectifier adds a welcome touch of contour to the Bel-Ray’s often hot and toppy response and widens the amp’s touch responsiveness spectrum. The Fane F25 12" ceramic speaker also helps broadcast the Bel-Ray’s fiery side while smoothing the toppiest peaks. Carr’s excellent attenuator enables operation between zero and 2 watts, or you can use the wide-open 16-watt mode. In both modes, and at virtually any setting, the Bel-Ray dazzles with its power, many personalities, and electric presence.
Warning! Explosives on Board
If you’re accustomed to vintage Fender, Gibson, Ampeg, and other American amps in this low-mid-wattage power category, you might be startled at how loud and feral the Bel-Ray can be. At 16 watts, it sounds and feels as loud and feisty as some 30- and 50-watt combos. At 2 watts it sounds just as full bodied and full of fangs, just quieter. Only when you spin the attenuator to the noon position (presumably about 1 watt) does the amp start to sound considerably thinner.
“There aren’t many guitars the Bel-Ray won’t love or illuminate in the most flattering light.”
Each setting on the voice switch, which affects the EQ section only, effectively reroutes the tone stack through three completely different sets of circuit values, shifting frequency emphasis and pass-through gain. The individual voices vary in gain (the Vox-y V68 is lowest, the Marshall-y M66 is highest) and can sound completely distinctive with many, many tone shades between them. As a result, there aren’t many guitars the Bel-Ray won’t love or illuminate in the most flattering light. PAF humbuckers, and their thick overtone profile, predictably blur some differences between the voices, but also generate dynamite, white-hot, and throaty tones and push the Carr to bellowing volumes that sound nothing like 16 watts. Good humbuckers are also a great vehicle for exploring the Bel-Ray’s superb dynamism and touch sensitivity. I rarely used a pick with my SG and the Bel-Ray, because I could coax such clear-and-sweet-to-searing extremes via touch dynamics and my guitar’s volume knob alone.
Telecasters, which are a particularly tasty match for the Bel-Ray, come alive with the same dynamism, sensitivity, responsiveness to volume and tone attenuation techniques, and varied touch intensity—enabling travel between dew-drop-delicate bell tones and screaming, edgy Jimmy Page daggers. A Rickenbacker 12-string with toaster tops was among the most revelatory pairings. With a little extra midrange kick, overtones danced in kaleidoscopic light. Turn up the gain, though, and the Rick will roar.
While the Bel-Ray could happily live its long life without ever meeting a pedal, it sounds fantastic with them. There is plenty of air in the Bel-Ray’s many voices to accommodate and communicate overtone intricacies in reverbs and complex modulation effects. And fuzz paired with the Bel Ray is a psychotically hot combination that cannot be missed.
The Verdict
The Bel-Ray is an impressive and handsome piece of kit. It’s also a reminder that an amplifier is arguably the most important piece of your signal chain. Everything sounds awesome through this amp. Technical pickers will love its sharp precision, but it overflows with slashing punk energy and dynamism, has enough headroom to communicate the details of alternate tunings and odd effects, and sounds spectral, full, and fantastic at both ends of its impressive volume range. About the only thing you won’t get from the Bel-Ray is a wide range of blonde and black-panel Fender sounds, though you can get really close, if extra-zingy, approximations in a pinch.
The price is hefty. But depending on your music and the settings and spaces you create it in, the Bel-Ray opens up many more possibilities than any AC15 or 18-watt Marshall would offer on its own. Also, the sense of craft in this amp offers its own kind of enjoyment. It’s a thoughtful, clever, beautifully built thing to behold. It’s also fun. Fun enough to make you fall asleep at night smiling and giddy, grateful that electrified, amplified music exists.
Ultimate Gear Talk with Tool & Pantera, Ed Sheeran's Looping Magic, PRS & Peavey Spotlight | Gig Rundown Ep. 2
The PG Video crew of John Bohlinger, Perry Bean and Chris Kies comment on recent monster Rig Rundowns with Justin Chancellor, Rex Brown, and Zakk Wylde. Then the trio focus on new gear pieces from Ed Sheeran, HeadRush, and PRS, before dishing out some new music they're excited about from Pelican, Knocked Loose, and St. Vincent. They conclude their chat with a horrific bandmate story from Llorona and chime in with their own terrible tales from the tour bus.