This update to the Pedalbay series integrates a power supply into a crossbar of the pedalboard.
The 60 PB and 40 PB sets combine the Palmer Pedalbay WT PB 60, and the Pedalbay 40 and the WT PB 40 power supplies respectively, both with 8 single-isolated outputs. Due to the patented integration, the power supply can be exchanged and fixed with the rear rail of the models. A separate transport for power supply is no longer necessary.
Features
- Screwed, hollow aluminum construction that allows for integrated power supply bar to replace another crossbar
- Modular, screwed design allows for adjustment of the spacing of the crossbars to accommodate pedals of different sizes
- Six 9 V 300 mA isolated DC outputs and two switchable 9/12/18 V 500 mA isolated DC outputs
- Adjustable height and tilt
- Each model comes with a padded carry bag with accessory pocket and shoulder strap
The Pedalbay 60 PB ($299.99 USD) and 40 PB ($269.99 USD) can be found at retailers nationwide.
The ever-intrepid guitarist recorded in isolation and dug deep on his 18th studio album, The Elephants of Mars, achieving even greater levels of emotional expression and dimension-stretching 6-string sonics.
“Don’t ever think that you’re going to impress people by reminding them that you can play faster, stretch your fingers longer, be louder, and look cooler,” says Joe Satriani. Those words carry a lot of weight coming from Satch, who can, of course, do all those things. But while he’s received plenty of attention for his endless supply of dexterous digital athletics over the years, he’s always been a committed melody player. And if you ask him, that’s even harder to dish out.
“The songs that sound like they don’t have a lot of technique are actually the hardest ones to play,” he admits. “And the ones that people think showcase the most amount of technique are actually the easiest to practice and perform.”
Satriani has long understood that guitarists cannot live on shred alone. With the release of his 18th studio album, The Elephants of Mars, he proves himself a living example of this message, showcasing the electric guitar as a lyrical, emotionally attuned instrument that can exist on a chromatic spectrum of senses—particularly when it’s in the right hands. The album covers a range of ground, from the Middle Eastern-influenced “Sahara”—whose release was accompanied by a music video directed by Satriani’s son ZZ—to the melancholic ballad “Faceless” to “Dance of the Spores,” which features a full-on circus music breakdown.
Joe Satriani "Sahara" (Official Music Video)
Having an extensive body of work makes it that much harder for some players to keep things fresh, but Satriani pulls it off. For Elephants, he decided to use the isolation of the early pandemic to focus creatively and give remote recording a shot, calling upon bandmates bassist Bryan Beller, drummer Kenny Aronoff, and keyboardist Rai Thistlethwayte to contribute.
When Satriani’s previous album, Shapeshifting,was released in April 2020, he and his team imagined that its promotional tour would be postponed for about three to six months. He considered recording a vocal album to offer as a free supplement, but months later the world was still on hold—and he realized that his audience would be expecting an entirely new project the next time he was to release something. So, he got to work on what would eventually become Elephants.
“I’m always a bit shy around people and it gets reflected in how I play.”
The remote recording experience created a significant change of pace. “For the last couple of records, I really enjoyed going to the studio, having the clock on the wall ticking fast,” he shares. “In a way, having a schedule is good; it just gets you motivated to work hard. If everybody’s stuck at home and there’s no clock on the wall, then we can’t use that as an excuse anymore. Now it’s just you listening to your performance, and it comes down to whether you’re going to stand behind it.”
As the guitarist became more patient and considered, he asked his band to do the same, telling them, “I’m not going to send you anything until I think it’s the best version that I can give you, and I expect everyone else to take their time. Don’t feel pressured by me to just get it done. And if you want to do something different, change my mind with a great performance.”
TIDBIT: Recording remotely gave Satriani access to a broader range of emotions while working. It’s a first for the guitarist, who says he “never would have felt that vulnerable or comfortable” if he weren’t alone while tracking.
That freed the instrumentalists from the restraints of both time and peer pressure, and for Satriani, performing all his parts in solitude yielded a more peaceful creative process: “[If I hadn’t been recording alone,] I never would have felt that vulnerable or comfortable. I’m always a bit shy around people and it gets reflected in how I play, so this setup worked for me in a way that it’d never worked before.”
“Guitars are made of wood and wood comes out of the ground, so you have only so much control; nature really has most of it.”
But wouldn’t that environment, free from time constraints, give way to extreme perfectionism? Not if you set rules for yourself, Satriani says. His solution was to remind himself not to “sit there and fix everything,” but rather to make sure he was tuned in to the moods of the tracks he was recording. He was sure that if he wasn’t having fun while recording the upbeat, bass- and synth-driven “Pumpin’” or the funk-infused “Blue Foot Groovy,” the music would bore his audience. And on “Dance of the Spores,” he immersed himself in pure fantasy. “I came up with this idea where, while we’re worried about politics and the virus and the environment and all this kind of stuff, there are spores having parties because everything’s great for them,” Satriani muses. “Like SpongeBob: It’s so insane, it’s so impossible, and yet it’s so funny and sad and cute. Everything about life is in that absolutely ridiculous concept. So, what would that sound like?”
Joe Satriani’s Gear
Reaching for a big bend on a guitar that bears his likeness, Satriani picks ecstatically at a concert at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.
Photo by Frank White
Guitars
- Ibanez AR3212 12-string electric
- Ibanez JS1CR No. 3
- Ibanez JS2480 MCR No. 2
- Ibanez JS2450 B&W Paisley prototype No. 1
- Ibanez JS2 Gold Chrome Hum-Sing-Sing prototype (1989)
- Ibanez JS Sing-Sing-Sing Blue prototype (2005)
- Ibanez JS6 Style 7 String prototype No. 1 (2001)
- Jerry Jones Electric Sitar (1997)
- Ibanez JSA20 Acoustic prototype No. 1 (2012)
- Martin HD-28E Retro (2014)
Amps
- Avid SansAmp plug-in
Effects
- TC Electronic Sub 'N' Up Octaver
- EHX Micro Q-Tron
- Dunlop Hendrix ’69 Psych Series Octavio Fuzz
- VOX BBW wah
- Palmer Y-Box splitter
Strings & Picks
- Extra heavy celluloid picks
- D’Addario .010 sets
On the other end of the emotional spectrum, Satriani spent days repeatedly trying to embody the grief he wanted to convey on the darker “Desolation.” Finally, unrehearsed and unpracticed, he improvised something that fit perfectly. “I never would have done that had we been in a studio with people standing around,” he says.
Since around 1999, Satriani’s standard protocol for tracking has been to record direct and reamp later. But this time around, reamping “seemed to get rid of a certain percentage of my personality and replace it with ‘general electric guitar.’” Instead, mixing engineer Greg Koller employed the Avid SansAmp plug-in to the guitar tracks for the entire album.
“I’m not sure if that’s a letting go of ego or just realizing your place in the big scheme of things. But I had to realize that it wasn’t all about me.”
“I plugged into a Millennia Media HV-37 Mic Pre and went right into Pro Tools,” Satriani elaborates. “A couple of times there was a wah-wah pedal, a [TC Electronic] Sub 'N' Up, a [Dunlop Hendrix ’69 Psych Series] Octavio Fuzz, or an [Electro-Harmonix] Micro Q-Tron. And that was it!”
If you’ve read Satriani’s autobiography, Strange Beautiful Music, you know that the guitarist is obsessed with gear. He spends several chapters—each devoted to the making of a different album—sharing every technical approach and gear combination that went into each recording. When asked about his signature guitars, he’s a bit Zen. “Guitars are made of wood,” he says, “and wood comes out of the ground, so you have only so much control; nature really has most of it.”
Donning his other signature item—black Oakleys—Satch boogies down at the Fillmore in Detroit.
Photo by Ken Settle
But that hasn’t stopped him from refining the design of his signature models over the years. “All these changes that I’ve requested and that Ibanez made really did help me bring my music forward to a higher level of expression.” Picking up his Ibanez JS2450 B&W Paisley Proto, Satriani points out some of those refinements: “the height of the bridge, the fact that the edge bridge is such a well-made machine piece, the Satchur8 pickup, the size of the frets, and the fact that Ibanez now stock puts in the Sustainiac in the bridge position. It’s a 24-fret model, with a compound-radius neck. Everything about this guitar helps me express myself, and I’m still working on it. I’ve never changed my pursuit of trying to make the guitar less resistant to my musical ideas. I feel more like I have so much to say, and my body just will not cooperate to let me get it out properly,” he says, laughing.
Satriani has been searching for ways to express his ideas ever since his early days growing up in Westbury, Long Island, where he not only dedicated himself to his music, but to sharing what he’d learned by modeling his educator mother, Katherine, and, at the age of 15, famously teaching a young Steve Vai. “I realized everything that my mother learned in life she hands over—without holding anything back—to these kids that she’s teaching,” he explains. “So that’s what I should do for this little Steve Vai kid who’s just got these amazing hands, great timing, and really sharp ears. I’m not sure if that’s a letting go of ego or just realizing your place in the big scheme of things. But I had to realize that it wasn’t all about me.”
“Playing a ballad with a few notes and making every note count—that is a skinny mountain road and any variation is death. You’re plunging off the road into ultimate failure.”
That concept still permeates his music. It comes back to expression of melody, and Satriani cites Tony Bennett as an inspiration for knowing when to pause or use fewer notes. “The amount of technique that he has to use to nail it is far more intensive. He has to edit every little bit,” he says. “It’s not like playing your fastest and sticking your tongue out and running around the stage. That’s the easy part. That is a six-lane highway with no lines on it. But playing a ballad with a few notes and making every note count—that is a skinny mountain road and any variation is death. You’re plunging off the road into ultimate failure.”
Authenticity and humility are at the heart of making truly meaningful art, and, speaking with Satriani, it’s clear that those ideals are deeply entwined with what he does. He’s a dedicated practitioner who is still growing, learning, and sharing. “This only works if you give it away,” he adds. “You can’t make people think about your music the way you thought about it—it becomes theirs. When they hear it, it becomes the soundtrack to something in their life. And it’s got nothing to do with you, ’cause you’ve given it away.”
Joe Satriani - Always with Me, Always with You (from Satriani LIVE!)
From rocking garages to filling arenas, Dan Auerbach’s gear has always been odd and eccentric. Still keeping it weird, he spotlights axes from a teenage hero, a custom build influenced by an industry master, and a token of his success in the shape of a Holy Grail Gibson.
So, what led to The Black Keys ending their unannounced hiatus? Well, for Auerbach, it was the same guitar that started the ascent up this crazy rollercoaster—Glenn Schwartz’s 10-string hollowbody. James Gang and Eagles ace Joe Walsh was jamming with Auerbach at Easy Eye and the two brought up Schwartz and how his ferocious playing impacted them both. Auerbach spent any free time he had during high school to make the trek from Akron to Cleveland to see Schwartz play. Walsh coincidentally looked to Glenn as a guitar hero and eventually took over for him in the James Gang when Schwartz left the band, moved to California, and formed Pacific Gas & Electric. (You can see the trio of guitarists jam at Nashville’s famed Robert’s back in 2016.)
Auerbach and Walsh got Schwartz down to Nashville to record him at Easy Eye Sound Studio. The session was inspiring and provided Auerbach the visceral memory of why he loved the Black Keys. The next day he called Carney, they put a session on the books and Let’s Rock was made.
Premier Guitar made the comfortable drive south to Atlanta’s State Farm Arena to not only check in with Auerbach’s longtime tech Dan Johnson, but the guitar master himself makes a cameo to talk all things guitar, including Glenn’s aforementioned 10-string that was loaned to him after a recent Cleveland gig. Other 6-string highlights include a gold-foil-loaded Peavey Razer gunning for the T-Model Ford mojo, a lawsuit-era Ibanez SG, a custom-build (by Dan Johnson) that echoes back to industry heavyweight Paul Bigsby, and surprisingly enough, a ’59 burst. While there, we also spoke with new bandmembers Delicate Steve, and the Gabbard brothers (Andy — above left — and Zach who are also 2/3 of the Buffalo Killers) from Akron, who all show off the goodies they bring to the arenas to back their longtime buds.
Here’s the 10-string that was used and abused by one of Auerbach’s guitar heroes, Glenn Schwartz. Some notable things Glenn did to this instrument are the extended f-holes, swapped in the solid-brass tailpiece that goes through the whole guitar, and because Glenn was very religious, he believed that if you played music for the Lord, you played a 10-string instrument, so he added the four strings to the lower bout. All of Auerbach’s instruments take SIT .011–.050 strings.
Inspired by Mississippi juke-joint legend T-Model Ford, aka James Lewis Carter Ford, Auerbach tracked down this Peavey Razer. The homage is complete with the “T Model The Taledragger” stickers that were on Ford’s beloved Razer. The electronics have been upgraded and the stock pickups have been substituted with DeArmond gold-foils from a Harmony. The tailpiece is from a Kay and tech Dan Johnson machined the bridge and vibrato arm from brass.
Here is one from the old days—a lawsuit-era Ibanez modeled after a 1961 Les Paul Custom aka the first SG.
“I gotta admit, I got this guitar because of these absurd furniture nails,” admits Dan Auerbach. This lawsuit guitar was upgraded with Lollar Lollartrons and an old Bigsby off his Gretsch Duo Jet. Dan Johnson believes this came from one of Neil Young’s guitars as the vibrato was a gift from longtime Young tech Larry Cragg. Ironically, after purchasing the guitar and sitting with it in his living room, he realized it’s the same lawsuit guitar on Junior Kimbrough’s All Night Long, which was a major influence. Billy Sanford, the guitar man behind the “Oh, Pretty Woman” lick, coined the guitar “Nails in My Coffin” because of the guitar body’s rivets the nameplate on the nut cover. Perfect!
It’s no shock to any guitar dork that Auerbach is attracted to odd-shaped instruments. A Gretsch employee reached out to Dan Johnson and wanted to send Auerbach a G6138 Bo Diddley Firebird. The band received it while rehearsing for the Let’s Rock tour at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. The Dans agreed that the guitar needed to be stripped of its red top, so Johnson got to work. Once it was removed, they wanted to stain it like a piece of furniture from the ’70s, but it was late and Johnson didn’t think he could find a hardware store open around midnight. Lucky enough, a Wiltern maintenance worker knew where in the basement he could find the necessary woodworking supplies. Beer in hand, Johnson stained the guitar and let it dry overnight.
Here is a copy of a copy of a copy. Let us a explain. The Italian brand Eko made a signature guitar in the mid-’60s for their version of the Beatles, the Rokes. (Think along the lines of Mosrite building Ventures models coinciding with the surf-rock juggernauts.) Then the Japanese company Kawai made a copy of that in the late ’60s and it was nicknamed the “Flying Wedge.” And as Auerbach does, he bought a Kawai model on eBay and it was shipped directly to Johnson. It was cheap. It was horrible. It wasn’t playable. So, to make good on the bad bargain, Johnson started his own flying-wedge project. It incorporates flavors from its misfit predecessors including Lonnie-Mack’s-Bigsby-Flying-V workaround and machined parts reminiscent of Paul Bigsby’s early work. It has a chambered bird’s-eye maple body and Firebird-style mini-humbuckers. The project was finished just before the Atlanta show on November 9th and played onstage for the first time that same night.
This is a one-owner 1959 Gibson Les Paul that Dan Auerbach bought this year. He’s already recorded with it at Easy Eye and has truly enjoyed owning it. While he admits that a ’59 ’burst isn’t a guitar you’d attach to him because so many other famous guitarists have forged history with it, he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to have such an inspiring instrument. “I had no intention of buying a ’burst,” says Auerbach. “I’ve never even seen one before I walked into that guitar store and bought it from the owner’s sister.”
No, you’re not looking at a Stonehenge-sized Tetris wall, it’s Auerbach’s current lineup of amps.
While doing tour rehearsals at Easy Eye, they were going through the gear vault and brought out the usual suspects—The Marshall, the Danelectros, the Fender Quads. But something was lacking, so the Dans headed down to Nashville’s Carter Vintage and scored two early ’70s silverface Fender Bandmaster Reverb TFL5005D heads (shown above). They were keen on getting a fresh Fender wrinkle because Auerbach needed the squishier punch you get from a tube rectifier. The other one tours alongside its brother and stays in the wings as a backup.
As seen in the 2012 and 2014 Rig Rundowns, a big part of Auerbach’s tone was provided by this Fender Quad Reverb platform. (Again, a nod to Ohio hero Glenn Schwartz who used two of these beasts onstage.) Now the Quads are extension cabs for the Bandmaster Reverb head and are loaded with 12" Tubby Tone Alnico 25-watt Hempcone speakers.
While Auerbach did have a 40-watt Danelectro Challenger in his last Rundown (1956 model), he now travels with two different ones from 1949 and 1950. It does have a 15" speaker in it, but the 1950’s speaker is bypassed and feeds into both the Marshall 8x10s. The 1949 Challenger goes direct to FOH for clean baseline tone.
Here’s the backside of this gem.
While the Bandmaster Reverb does have some ’verb dialed into its sound, the bulk of the dark, deep, lush, springy goodness you hear is from the Premier Reverberation unit that’s coupled with a Maestro Echoplex EP-4 for space-rock guitar solos.
The Canadian company helped BTO’s Randy Bachman after he unsuccessfully ran a Fender Champ into his Marshall head. It probably sounded uh-mazing before the combo was fried. So the Garnet H-Zog was invented to allow Bachman to run a lower-powered tube head, as a preamp, before his full stack. Auerbach adopted the approach and uses the no-load tube preamp in front of all his amps. The H-Zog itself is a tube amp with a single 12AX7 and a single 6V6 powering it.
Steve Marion aka Delicate Steve uses this 1966 Melody Maker SG a lot playing behind the Black Keys. In a 2019 interview with PG, he had this to say about it, “The guitar I played on the whole record [Till I Burn Up] was sold to me by my friend, a guitarist named Ofir Ganon, who is the only guitar snob-gear guy whose opinion I care about at all. Ofir sold me a ’66 Gibson Melody Maker SG, which had PAFs in it. The whole album is that guitar.” Steve normally plays .009s because he likes how they’re harder to control and the subtly of strings moving around, but he went with .010s to have more consistent sound for the Keys gig.
On previous Delicate Steve projects before 2019’ Till I Burn Up, Marion used an Epiphone Ltd. Ed. Joe Bonamassa 1958 “Amos” Korina Flying-V. He was gifted this Gibson Custom Shop Flying V VOS from the historic company before embarking on the Let’s Rock tour. It is all original and comes loaded with Custom Buckers.
Appropriately, Steve Marion uses this 2015 Gibson Firebird on the new Let’s Rock song “Eagle Birds.”
Definitely the most Black-Keys-ish of Steve Marion’s arsenal, this 1960 Silvertone Jupiter 1423 sees stage time for songs like “Tighten Up” and “Thickfreakness.”
The only request that Dan Auerbach gave the rest of the bandmates was to try and work with the Fender Super Reverb. (More of a suggestion than demand.) Delicate Steve has enjoyed his time with the Supers because they’re very different than his typical setup. In Delicate Steve he uses an Orange Micro Terror that provides a squashed, overloaded, overdriven sound whereas the Super he uses with the Keys offers the neutral pedal platform that needs to cover all the synth and keyboards with his guitar.
A part of his solo setup that’s crept in the Keys show is this custom-built HammerTone head that is chasing the sound of an old tweed Gibson GA-5 Skylark combo. Dan Johnson suggested that Marion run the head through a Palmer PGA-4 speaker simulator/load box and into the Fender Deluxe Reverb’s speaker.
To replicate all the synth, keys, and organ tones heard on the Keys’ albums Brothers, El Camino, and Turn Blue, Steve Marion travels with a hefty board of goodies starting with the Auerbach-favorite Electro-Harmonix Russian-font Big Muff. The rest of the stomp station has an MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, Xotic EP Booster, JHS Colour Box, EHX C9 and Pitch Fork, Boss TR-2 Tremolo, ZVEX Mastotron, Valeton Coral Mod (a Delicate Steve fave), Pigtronix Octavia, and a Styrmon BigSky. Everything is harnessed by the RJM Mastermind PBC/10 loop controller.
Zach Gabbard and his brother Andy have a longtime connection with the Keys. They were at the band’s first show in Akron and their band Buffalo Killers’ second LP Let It Ride was produced by Auerbach. Coming full circle, Zach was recruited to play bass and sing background vocals on the Let’s Rock tour. Zach’s No. 1 is this Gibson SG Standard Bass—his first short-scale instrument and he absolutely loves it: “I’ve been working too hard for to long [laughs].” It’s a completely stock 2019 model and is strung up with flatwounds.
For this gig, Zach Gabbard moves the Earth with an all-tube Ampeg SVT-VR 300-watt head that powers a matching 8x10 cab.
In addition to running through his cabs, Zach Gabbard uses a Palmer PDI-CTC to provide FOH a clean, pure signal from the Ampeg SVT-VR.
At Zach Gabbard’s feet rest two pedals—an old EarthQuaker Devices Monarch fuzz and a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner keeping his notes in check.
“This is my favorite guitar I own because it’s the best feeling guitar I’ve ever played,” declares Andy Gabbard on his Gibson Les Paul. He safely added the Bigsby via a non-invasive Vibramate, but the rest of the guitar is stock. Gabbard sees his role in the current three-guitar attack is to trust his feeling, following the duo, and accent everything that Dan is doing.
Another guitar, another Gibson for Andy Gabbard. This 2019 Firebird was a pre-tour gift from Gibson. Andy digs it because “it looks cool and it cuts through.”
“This is the guitar I’ve always wanted,” admits Andy Gabbard. This Gibson Les Paul Standard '50s P-90 Gold Top. Gabbard remarks that he had to put a Bigsby on their because his picking hand while hit the strings and then phantom shake because he’s so used to the vibrato arm being used.
For Andy, it doesn’t get any better than Gibson guitars into a Fender amp, and the combo in this equation is a Super Reverb.
An MXR Brown Acid Fuzz, Pigtronix Gate Keeper Micro, and EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master are the few stomps help Andy Gabbard get the job done.