On the road with the history-making engineer, producer, and artist, this guitarist keeps it simple.
Jeff Kollman is a lifelong gigging guitarist whose resume stretches from Deep Purple’s Glenn Hughes to Chad Smith’s Bombastic Meatbats. Since 2017, he’s been performing with famed engineer, producer, and songwriter Alan Parsons, who worked on Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon, and a host of other records that you’ve probably owned for decades. It should come as no surprise, then, that as a member of the Alan Parsons Project, Kollman’s gig is to sound great. And he does so with a quick-and-easy rig.
After getting into Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium from a sweaty gig from the night before in Georgia, the band got set up and PG’s John Bohlinger rolled in to catch up with Kollman about his simple road setup.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Inspiring and Practical
Kollman has a pair of No. 1’s he takes on the road. The first is this all-stock SG Faded Special he picked up used for $560, which he points out is “really resonant” and “really woody,” with great sustain. “It inspires me,” he says, “and it’s inspiring, I think, to kids to know they don’t have to spend five grand on a guitar.”
The SG stays in Kollman’s drop tuning with the low E dropped to C and the A dropped to G. He keeps all his guitars strung with Ernie Ball Super Slinkys (.009–.046).
Surfy Strat
Kollman’s other No. 1 is a ’59 reissue Strat from Wildwood Guitars in Colorado. It features a Brazilian rosewood fretboard and John Cruz custom-wound pickups in the neck and middle. The guitarist isn’t entirely sure what humbucker is in the bridge position, but it’s low output, coil tapped, and he loves it. This Strat stays in standard tuning.
A Lucky Les Paul
Kollman received a tip from pal Greg Koch that this Les Paul, from a limited edition run of featherweight LPs built for Wildwood Guitars, is a “tone beast,” so he jumped on it. At 7.98 pounds, it came as advertised. Kollman loaded it up with an original vintage set of PAFs.
Easy Amp Recipe
Since the Parsons Project does lots of fly dates, Kollman needs a tone recipe for an amp he can find anywhere. He requests a Marshall JCM2000, uses both the clean and dirty channels, and says, “I can flop and go in 5 minutes and have my sound,” while showing off the EVH-style dirt and “ethereal cleans” he can dial-up.
Functional and Fun
Kollman rolls with a pair of pedalboards built by Japan’s Free the Tone. The first is his practical board that is loaded up with an Xotic EP Booster, SP Compressor, and a pair of RC Boosters; some signature gear he co-designed with Tim Jauernig that includes his F-Bomb 3, Kollmanation distortion, and a Zhingh-Whundh (which he says is on the down-low currently);
an Ibanez Tube Screamer TS-808, and a Vemuram Jan Ray dirt box. They’re complemented with a Free the Tone Flight Time Digital Delay and Ambi Space Digital Reverb, and it’s all kept in tune with a TC Electronic PolyTune. Kollman only steps on his Free the Tone Direct Volume and his Free the Tone ARC-3 Audio Routing Controller.
His second board is “just toys” and includes a DigiTech Digidelay, a signature Tim Jauernig Bombastortion, another TS808, a Free the Tone Tri Avatar Multi-Dimensional Chorus, Boss OC-2 Octave, an Octavia clone prototype built by Tim Jauernig, a DigiTech EX-7 Expression Factory, and an MXR Custom Audio Electronics buffer.
Free The Tone announces its Overdriveland ODL-1-CS custom shop version overdrive pedal, which is based on the sound of a late-model Dumble Overdrive Special amplifier.
In order to give a pedal-type overdrive the characteristics of a Dumble amplifier, Free the Tone tried various circuit ideas, conducted experiments, and spent a long time developing a dedicated drive circuit module. Overdriveland, like the now hard-to-find Dumble amplifier, is designed to offer a rich and distinctive presence, allowing players to express their individuality.
Key Features of Overdriveland Include:
- Equipped with a dedicated drive circuit module.
- ROCK/JAZZ switch for changing gain and frequency characteristics (Normal channel).
- "GLASS "switch for bypassing the TONE circuit to achieve a glass-like sound (Normal channel).
- Individual output level adjustment for the Normal channel and Drive channel. *Equipped with the HTS (Holistic Tonal Solution) circuit, which, unlike traditional buffer circuits, extracts the sound characteristics of the guitar to the maximum while performing impedance conversion, achieving a balance between "sound" and "low noise." This HTS circuit prevents degradation of sound quality even when the effect is turned off.
Additionally, the output signal is in phase with the input signal, eliminating concerns about phase inversion. In December, we will release the Standard version ODL-1 following the Custom Shop version.
Overdriveland ODL-1-CS carries a suggested retail price of $425.20, and is available now through our North American dealers listed.
For more information, please visit freethetone.com.
Using high-speed signal processing with a dedicated DSP and analog & digital audio circuits we perfected over time, this compact unit attains high sound quality.
A compact, but epoch-making digital delay with multiple filter functions. Using high-speed signal processing with a dedicated DSP and analog & digital audio circuits we perfected over time, this compact unit attains high sound quality. This unit’s tone filter can process the delay sound to have a rich tone or conversely adjust it to be far from the original sound. The proprietary COSMIC filter creates an effect sound reminiscent of outer space, adding a new color to your delay sounds. Utilizing a new method, the newly developed reverse delay succeeds in producing a smoother, more musical reverse sound. In addition, we added a new function to adjust the number of output bits of the delay sound in 1-bit units, from smooth and high-quality 24-bit to rough 8-bit sound that contains distorted noise when the volume is lowered. You can reproduce the nuances of the delay sound used in the 1980s and 90s, and even the delay sound with the bit crusher effect applied.
Features
- *Built-in multiple filter effects including equalizer function. It is possible to apply multiple filters at the same time (Cosmic Filter, Bandpass Filter, 3-Band EQ, Tone).
- Equipped with a newly developed reverse delay and output bit number adjustment function(8–24 bits).
- Combination of high-speed arithmetic processing with 32-bit fixed-point arithmetic and high-precision arithmetic processing with 32-bit floating-point arithmetic achieves both high-quality sound and high processing speed and provides the best performance.
COSMIC WAVE carries a suggested retail price of $318.18, and is available now through their North American dealers. For more information, please visit freethetone.com.