Pedals can be a source of inspiration. But can they be the catalyst to start a band? The argument could be made that without a looper bassist Kristian Dunn and drummer Tim Fogarty would’ve never taken flight as El Ten Eleven. (The band is named after the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar airplane.)
“I knew I wanted to start a band—in my mind it was probably going to sound like El Ten Eleven—but I didn’t know exactly how I’d do it. I got Tim [Fogarty] to play drums and I thought I’d get a third person for keyboards,” recalls Dunn.
Fogarty wondered if Dunn had ever heard of a looper pedal. He hadn’t, so Dunn borrowed one from a friend and brought it to band practice. “We tried it, and right out of the gate our eyes lit up and we thought out loud, ‘Oh my god! Could we just do this with the two of us?!’”
Since 2002, the live-looping masterminds have taking to the skies performing their organic, net-free, high-wire act. (Even Fogarty loops electronic drum parts through Dunn’s Boomerang that runs into a Gallien-Krueger MB Fusion 800 and a GK 115 RBH cabinet that sits near Fogarty.) And to celebrate two decades of their clever, playfully poetic, post-rock instrumentals, they’ll release their ninth album, New Year’s Eve, on March 4, 2022 via Joyful Noise.
Before El Ten Eleven’s headlining show at Nashville’s Exit/In on January 26, juggling, tap-dancing, bass-playing Dunn gave PG’s Chris Kies 30-plus minutes to detail his cockpit. He explains how a late-night Genesis video influenced his doubleneck duality, illuminates why he always carries a marker, and then unlocks some expressive cheat codes with his pedalboard and signal chain.
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Two Instruments, One Musician
“I’m a bass player,” declares Dunn. “I’m a terrible guitarist [laughs].” Late one night while watching VH1 Classic, Dunn saw a Genesis video where Mike Rutherford used a guitar/bass doubleneck. Up to that point, he was crudely looping by putting on and taking off various instruments. (He still uses several instruments during one song.) This doubleneck would alleviate all that rigmarole. So Dunn pivoted to eBay and immediately found this 1977 Carvin DB630 Doubleneck that has a 6-string top and 4-string bottom (30" scale length). It features a bird’s-eye maple
body, a bolt-on, hard-rock maple neck, APH-6S pickups (guitar), and APH-8 pickups (bass). Each set has master volume and tone controls, plus phase switches and coil splitters. Dunn uses Ernie Ball 2221 Slinkys (.010–.046) for the guitar and Ernie Ball 2852 Short Scale Regular Slinkys (.045–.105) for the bass. The guitar neck is tuned to E-A-D-G#-B-E, while the bass neck is tuned to D-A-D-A.
A Head Above the Rest
Here are the matching headstocks for the doubleneck, revealing both have a zero fret.
A Wal of a Good Time
“For me, Wals are the best basses in the world,” contends Dunn. “I’ve never heard a better-sounding bass.” This 1988 Wal Mk1 was bought from Rig Rundown alumnus Tim Lefebvre. It has a Brazilian mahogany core that’s masked by a bird’s-eye maple cover. The fretboard is made from Indian rosewood. The humbuckers are controlled by a master volume that can pulled out to engage “pick attack” circuity that Dunn describes as having “a brighter sound.” The pickup selector is actual a knob that dials in each pickup for maximum blending control. And each pickup has a low-pass-filter knob.
On their upcoming album, New Year’s Eve, Dunn rides the bridge pickup’s low-pass filter at about 4 and kicks on his Marshall Guv’nor for the nasty groove in “Meta Metta.” He did use roundwound strings on this instrument for years, but after having the fretboard sanded down from the wear they caused, he’s since opted for Ernie Ball 2813 Hybrid Slinky Flatwounds (.045–.105) that are kinder to the wood and still give a brighter tonal sheen.
Hungry Like the Wolf
“When I was a teenager, one of my bass heroes was John Taylor of Duran Duran, so I’ve always wanted an Aria like his,” states Dunn. This is an Aria Pro II SB-1000 with an ash body, a 7-ply maple/walnut neck (with thru construction), an ebony fretboard, a 34" scale length, a MB-1E Double Coil pickup, a 6-way low-pass filter preset, and Gotoh hardware. Varying the low-pass filter allows Dunn to loop several parts atop each other, providing tones to handle bass, guitar, and keyboards. This one takes Ernie Ball Hybrid Bass Slinkys (.045–.105).
Captain Hook
El Ten Eleven has had the pleasure of opening for Peter Hook and his various outfits several times. Hook is known to perform with custom Shergold Marathon 6 basses. (The difference with this instrument are the extra two strings are higher-tuned, allowing it to creep into a guitar’s range. Most standard models have the standard four bass strings plus one higher and one lower.)
With the help of Hook’s son, Dunn was able to secure one of the beasts. He did several tours with it, but has since retired the unique instrument because supposedly only about 100 of the 6-string models were made. Luckily, in 2019 Eastwood struck a partnership with the famed New Order and Joy Division bassist and released the Hooky Bass 6 Pro. Dunn admits to trying several other 6-string models from Fender and Schecter, but says those are designed more for guitarists, whereas the Shergold and the Hooky have bassists in mind—with wider string spacing that allows Dunn to play fingerstyle as he would on a normal 4-string.
Its ingredients are a solid alder body, bolt-on maple neck, maple fretboard, an Eastwood custom humbucker, and a 30" scale length. Dunn tunes his D-A-D-A-B-E and uses a custom range of Ernie Balls that starts with Hybrid Bass Slinkys (.045–.105), and the 5th-string is a .042 and the 6th-string is a .030.
With a Little Help from My Marker
To help him see the upper register for more precise picking, he added in some Sharpie inlays to give guidance when the lights go low during the show.
Growling With the Gallien
Dunn only plugs into this Gallien-Krueger MB Fusion 800. He gooses the treble control to help the guitar and keyboard sounds push through the other layers. He swore by GK’s 4x10 extension cab for years, but after doing a shootout with different configuration and speakers, he surprisingly favored the ported GK 115 RBH cabinet that has a ceramic driver and tweeter. He loves this setup’s hi-fi sound.
At one point, Dunn had three pedalboards and would have to crouch down and manipulate settings all night. Most of the swatches coloring his sound come from the Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler. The two Boomerang III Phrase Samplers are what make an El Ten Eleven show (or record) happen. In line, they’re separated by the DigiTech Bass Whammy. Dunn routes his signal this way so he can use the Whammy to shift octaves or keys on entire loops in Phrase Sampler one. The second Phrase Sampler, after the Whammy, allows him to pitch-shift specific loops without impacting the whole song or other loops (which can be done by the first Boomerang). The Strymon TimeLine sees the spotlight for precise repeats and specific delay settings not in the M9. The Electro-Harmonix Superego is a secret weapon harnessed by Dunn for sleek, reverse-sound bends. When he holds down the freeze function, it holds the original note. Then he continues holding down and plays the next note (which is not audible), but once he releases the switch, the ongoing audible note bends into the second note. The remaining two pedals are more standard fare: a Nu-X NFB-2 Lacerate FET Boost and a Marshall GV-2 Guv’nor Plus. A Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner keeps his instruments in check.
Bradshaw Breakthrough
Simplifying scene changes and making life a little easier for Dunn is this Custom Audio Electronics RS-T MIDI Foot Controller. The unit talks with the M9 and Strymon, alleviating some tap dancing for Dunn to pull off an El Ten Eleven performance.
Because there are so many places to get each other's take on which pickups or nut material will yield such-and-such sound, this year's No-Brainer Mods outing (our fourth so far) takes the same tack as last year's. As with all past NBMs, we've purchased a handful of quality affordable axes, but rather than just upgrading them with one of the innumerable sets of great pickups on the market, and maybe a fancier bridge or set of tuners, we're taking a more adventurous approach. Guitar shops the world over are full of well-made instruments you can get brand-new for $300–$500 and then turn into something you'd never be able to buy off the rack simply by investing a little more time and money. In the process, you'll have a whole lot of fun and hopefully end up with an inspiring new "custom" instrument. If something goes a little haywire or the experiment's end result isn't quite as mind-blowing as you'd hoped, at least you haven't lost a ton of dough—and unless you've really botched things, you can always try out your next great idea on the same "canvas."
Considering how many cool, well-made affordable guitars there are, what's a "no-brainer" about all this isn't so much what we do in our No-Brainer Mods series—it's that you take advantage of the waiting gold mine of possibilities to do the weird stuff that occurs to you. We're just here to stoke your imagination a little.
Last year, we had a blast walking the mod path less taken. We turned a T-style into a 12-string, gave a Squier Starcaster the Jazzmaster trem so many offset aficionados feel it needs, and made a semi-hollow Ibanez's dreams of sounding more orchestral a reality. This year, we're taking on a couple of mods that are roughly as ambitious as those, but we've also thrown in one for folks who need something a little less invasive to chew on during pandemic downtime. We've again enlisted guitar-repair guru Dave Helmer, a two-time Red Wing lutherie graduate based in Iowa City, Iowa, to carry out these glorious transformations. —Shawn Hammond
Before and After Mods Video Demo
Squier Semi-Fretless “Cabronitar”
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Squier instruments have long been a staple for modders looking for an affordable, solid-playing axe to put their own personal touch to. Beyond the brand's usual classic looks and respectable build, the Paranormal Cabronita Telecaster Thinline ($399 street) we've chosen for our first mod has a couple of additional neat things going for it. First, it's lighter than virtually any thinline/semi-hollow guitar we've encountered in this price range. Second, the fiesta red finish is so upscale looking it's easy to almost overlook the Fender-designed alnico Jazzmaster pickups. We thought about swapping them with a set of Seymour Duncan Antiquity or Curtis Novak pickups, but then we remembered our "more adventurous" MO. Besides, the pickups sound pretty good (astute JM fans are bound to note the unusual inclusion of adjustable pole pieces).
As I pondered what sort of specialized sonics might be cool to add to the Cab, I hit on the idea of turning this familiar-feeling guitar into a fretless sitar.Having done fretless conversions before, Dave called me a little after starting the project to make what ended up being a fantastic suggestion: Why not keep the frets on the lower half of the neck and ditch 'em on the upper portion? That way the "Cabronitar" could be used as both a chordal and a lead instrument. Genius! In the end, we decided on fretless past the 10th fret.
At first we thought we'd just buy one of those Gotoh sitar bridges that Danelectro uses on its Sitar and Baby Sitar instruments. However, as of publishing time, it appears Gotoh is no longer making them. This actually turned out to be a boon, though, as the Gotoh wouldn't have fit in the space between the Cabronita's bridge and bridge pickup, and would have required more drastic measures with the bridge and/or other hardware.
Even so, keep in mind that—at a quick glance—the ebony "buzz bridge" portion of this mod looks deceptively simple. Like us, you'll likely end up needing to fashion two or three bridges before you've got all the minute cuts and surface angles right. This fine-tuning by trial and error is why you'll notice successive photos below sometimes show the guitar with strings on, then unstrung with protective tape on the surface, then strung-up again. That's because the only way to know for sure if you're getting things right is to string the guitar and see how it sounds at various points throughout the process. So you'll want to have a few sets of your chosen strings on hand. Luckily, Dave did a lot of great research and built a few prototypes himself, and the lessons he learned should help you get the nuances right, regardless of the guitar model you're modding. —SH
Ibanez JEMJRSP with “Monkey Grip-u-Lator”
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Steve Vai's innovative, aesthetically vibrant signature guitars have been turning heads since his 1987 debut as Ibanez's most prominent and influential artist. The JEM777 started it all. But while Vai—then fresh off both his first tour with David Lee Roth and filming scenes as the Devil's flamboyant guitarist, Jack Butler, in Crossroads—has always put the guitar's unusual "monkey grip" feature to good use, few mortals seem to be able to pull it off with similar aplomb. So we thought we'd take advantage of the grip anatomy on the JEMJRSP ($499 street) to facilitate something more practical—yet weird enough to hopefully still meet with Vai's approval. Taking inspiration from another virtuosic experimentalist, avant dreamscapist/sound mangler /former Bowie sideman David Torn, we've decided to use the space already carved out for the monkey grip to house a circuit similar to the "Tornipulator" he's had installed in guitars by luthiers Uli Teuffel, Saul Koll, and Izzy Lugo at Ronin Stringed Instruments.
David Torn dons his Tornipulator-outfitted Ronin Mirari for an epic soundscape expedition in this 2013 TEDx Talk performance at the California Institute of Technology.
Our "monkey grip-u-lator" circuit has three momentary pushbuttons for engaging 1) a lo-fi "sampling" microphone (a Shaker-brand harmonica mic) that's been added under the guitar's pickguard, 2) a 60-cycle hum (great for conjuring anarchic/deconstructionist vibes), and 3) a 1/4" auxiliary input you can use to connect, say, your phone, an old cassette player, or another outboard device to aid in your havoc-wreaking sonic adventures.
Yamaha Revstar Mojo Pickups Dual Foil Mod
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For those of you who've been shaking your heads at the two previous mods, first—in the immortal words of King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail—"You make me sad." Second, thank you for sticking with us anyway. We're rewarding you for your valiance with this straightforward mod. Although the Yamaha Revstar RS320 ($399 street) comes stock with pretty respectable pickups, we've been intrigued for the last little bit by U.K. outfit Mojo Pickups' recent Dual Foil designs—which are humbucking interpretations of the unique gold-foil pickups found on old Teisco and Harmony guitars. As we can attest, the Mojos sound delicious—which is why luthiers at boutique outfits such as Abernethy Guitars, Uma Guitars, and Deimel Guitarworks have recently been gravitating toward them.
