Rig Rundown: Shawn Tubbs
Inspired to by play guitar by his 6-stringing father, Shawn Tubbs emerged from the Christian-music scene. By his late teens, he was doing club and session gigs, and became part of The Violet Burning. In 1992, he played with Stone Temple Pilots on an episode of MTV Unplugged, then got deeper in the high-profile Nashville session scene, and began touring with Carrie Underwood. He’s since stopped road-tripping in favor of the studio, where he’s a first-call player and his credits include recent work with David Crosby. The 30-year-veteran guitarist’s current album, Demolition, A Collection of Short Jams, can be heard on SoundCloud, and he’s got a popular YouTube channel, but you can hear him demo is own gear in this Rig Rundown, filmed at his home studio.
Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard.
Golden Tone
Shawn has an extensive collection of guitars, but we narrowed our focus to the 6-strings he reaches for most often. The first entry is a 2010 PRS DGT, one of the company’s vintage-inclined models that’s all stock. All of his guitars are strung with D’Addario NYXL sets, gauged .010–.046.
Callie Killer
Here’s an S-style designed by elite California builder James Tyler—an SE HSS from 2021. The axe sports JT 2250 Single-Coils and a JT Super Bridge.
Special Topper
Here’s the ultra-distinctive headstock on the James Tyler SE HSS.
Evolved Paul
This Gibson Les Paul R9 has been heavily modded but still retains its classic looks. It’s had a complete refinish include a neck reshaping, non-potted Custom Shop pickups, and a ’58 tailpiece.
Grey Duse
This 2022 Duesenberg Starplayer TV is all-stock, which means it’s a semihollow with a GrandVintage Humbucker and a Domino P-90, a 25 1/2" scale length, and the Dusenberg Diamond Deluxe Tremolo.
S for Shure
Made in 2011, this Suhr Classic Pro Antique HSS has a 2-piece alder body, Suhr ML Single-Coils, a Suhr SSV bridge pickup, a maple C-profile neck, and a Gotoh bridge—all calculated for vintage feel.
Revv’d Up
Although Tubbs has a lot of amps and cabinets in his studio, for this Rig Rundown he played through two amps run in stereo. On the left side there’s a Revv D20 (switchable between 20 and 4 watts) with a 6V6 Power Section. Tubbs ran an XLR out via the amp’s embedded Two Notes reactive load box with virtual cab options.
In the Red
On the right side, there’s a RedPlate Blues Machine 40-watt head with 6L6 Power tubes atop a matched cab. It’s routed to a UA OX Amp Top Box.
Tubbs' Tone Zone
His other amps include a Revv Generator 120, a Friedman Dirty Shirley 40, a Suhr Bella sans reverb, a Friedman BE 100 Deluxe, a Revv G20, a Divided By 13 LDW 17/39 and FTR 37, and a Suhr Badger 30.
Shawn Tubbs' Pedalboard
Shawn’s board was built and designed by XAct Tone Solutions in Nashville, whose Barry O’Neal is one of PG’s “State of the Stomp” columnists. Its residents are: a The GigRig G3 switching system, a BigSky and TimeLine by Strymon, an Eventide H9, a KingTone Octaland Fuzz, a Pro Co Rat V2, an XTS-modified Boss GE-7 equalizer, a Greer Lightspeed Organic Overdrive, a Suhr Koji Comp, a Revv Shawn Tubbs Tilt Overdrive, a Lehle Volume Pedal, two Dunlop X(8)s, Strymon Zuma and Ojai Power Supplies, and an XAct Tone custom interface. For a detailed rundown of Shawn’s signal flow and the dozen loop scenes he employs, take careful notes as you watch the rundown!
Rig Rundown: Butch Walker [2022]
When you produce acts like Taylor Swift, Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco, Weezer, Green Day, Pink, Rayland Baxter, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr., it’s hard to find time for your own music. Yet in 2022, Butch Walker managed to release his 10th album, Butch Walker as … Glenn—a surprising tribute to the ’70s piano-rock balladeers that were among the rulers of FM radio in his youth. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop him from bringing a fleet of cool Fender and Gibson guitars, and a hemi of an amp, a Two-Rock Bloomfield Drive, on his recent It’s About Damn Tour tour.
For Walker, playing those guitars is something of a comeback celebration. In 2007, the house he was renting in Malibu from Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers caught fire and the Rome, Georgia, native lost the collection of classic axes he’d spent a lifetime accumulating, as well as the masters to every song of his own that he’d recorded. As Walker explains in the Rundown, it was a hard lesson about keeping up with insurance and making sure all his valuable instruments are covered—which they weren’t.
Today, he splits time in Nashville, where he’s also built a new version of his RubyRed studio in the old Warner Music building, from the 1950s. As Walker said in a Facebook post. “There’s been countless hits and amazing country and rock ’n’ roll songs recorded here over the years. It smells a little funny. It’s maybe haunted (hell, it was a morgue at one time). But I love it. It’s got vibe for days, sounds incredible, and people dig working here.”
So, dig into Walker’s Rig Rundown, which we filmed in November at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl.
Brought to you by D’Addario XS Strings.
Big Red
This Gibson ’61 reissue Custom Shop ES-335 with a Bigsby vibrato bridge, in wine red, was a gift from Gibson after most of Walker’s instruments were destroyed in the house fire. This guitar, and all of his electrics, stays strung with Ernie Ball .011 Slinkys.
Big Blue
Walker hand-painted this eye-catching Fender ’60s Custom Shop Telecaster, also with a Bigsby, blue with a floral-and-lightning-flash face.
Template Tele Classic
Here’s Walker’s all-stock Fender Custom Shop ’60s Telecaster Custom in a tobacco sunburst.
Give Gibson Some
This 2019 Gibson Explorer has a sonic secret weapon: a pair of 1970s DiMarzio Super Distortion pickups.
Rosy Tones
Another floral flourish: Walker’s live acoustic axe is a 2021 Gibson J-50 strung with an Ernie Ball Earthwood Medium Light set, .012–.054.
Old but Bold
It’s not every day you see a banjolin—not even in 1926, when Gibson built this one, just two years after the great guitar maker Lloyd Loar moved on from the company to begin early development of the concepts that would lead to electric guitar.
To Rock a Two-Rock
Walker runs his Two-Rock Bloomfield Drive into one of the company’s 2x12 open-back cabinets for his stage sound, but his guitar’s signal is fed into a Universal Audio Ox Box for extra tone sculpting. A Paul Reed Smith HDRX 20 come along as a backup.
Butch Walker’s Pedalboard
Actually, they’re Walker’s, and he reaches them via a Line 6 G90 wireless. From there, it’s a Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner, JHS Pulp N Peel compressor, his JHS ЯR signature overdrive, a Way Huge Conspiracy Theory OD, an MXR M249 Super Badass, MXR M300 reverb, UAFX Starlight Echo Station delay and Astra Modulation Machine, and a ToneDexter acoustic DI/preamp/wave mapping (similar to IR technology) pedal. Under the hood is a CIOKS DC10 for power.
