See these jam-happy ganders soar with one guitar each and a stockpile of Strymons. Plus, why Rick Mitarotonda embraces random changes to pedal settings.
“Are you guys with the band?” A pleasant passerby asked while we were loading out camera gear near the Goose tour bus parked outside Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl.
“No, we’re just here to do an interview.” I responded.
“Oh man, tell the band that last night’s concert was uh-mazing,” exclaimed the joyous fan. “We’ll be talking about it for years to come.”
And with that sort of impassioned, infectious positivity, Goose is following the freeform footsteps of the Grateful Dead, Phish, Dave Matthews Band, and Umphrey’s McGee—where polished, recorded albums are secondary to improvisation-rich, snowflake-unique performances that illicit exchanges like that above. (Adding to their jam-band credit, they livestream most shows, and guitarist Peter Anspach mixes the band’s gigs for release shortly afterwards.)
Formed in 2014, the quintet currently includes: Peter Anspach (guitar, keys, vocals), Jeff Arevalo (percussion, vocals), Ben Atkind (drums), Rick Mitarotonda (guitar, lead vocals), and Trevor Weekz (bass). The Northeast-based crew has released two albums (2016’s Moon Cabin and 2021’s Shenanigans Nite Club), an EP (2020’s Night Lights), and Dripfieldis on the horizon, for release on June 24.
However, the recorded songs are just guideposts and mile markers. It is all about the live experience. The band often performs two sets, without an opener, and keeps fans on their toes with natural, symbiotic excursions and unlikely, progressive covers. The first evening of their sold-out, two-night run in Nashville saw them flex their musical adeptness and vocabulary with covers of Wes Montgomery (“Switchin’”) and Steppenwolf (“Magic Carpet Ride”).
Their word-of-mouth growth has elevated them to cross several milestones in 2022. They sold out their first arena (Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut) and followed that with sell-outs at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre and historic Radio City Music Hall. So you can plan on seeing these birds fly high for years to come.
Before Goose’s second sold-out show in Nashville, PG was invited onstage to catalog their current setups. In this Rundown, guitarists Peter Anspach and Rick Mitarotonda show off their all-night 6-string costars, detail the pedals that help them warp space and time for organic odysseys, and Mitarotonda explains how a looper helps him from hitting mental walls and getting cornered in redundant guitar-playing boxes.
Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard.
Suhr Is Pretty
Goose guitarist Peter Anspach has always loved humbuckers, but he felt the huskier tones on ’bucker-equipped guitars had a few shortcomings—primarily lacking the 2- and 4-position squawk of an S-style instrument. The solution was switching to this Suhr Mateus Asato Signature Classic that threads the needle with an Asato Custom Humbucker and a pair of ML Standard single-coils. He rocks D’Addario Classic Celluloid picks (1.0 mm), NYXLs (.010 –.046), and Original Fuzz straps.
The Backup Beauty
Sitting close by in the bullpen is this Fender American Vintage ’62 Stratocaster that pulls its weight as a backup.
A Reliable Deluxe
“It’s just so full, clean, and reliable, and that’s what you need on the road. I can’t emphasize its reliability enough,” says Anspach of his Fender ’64 Custom Deluxe Reverb. “I have a ’70s silver-panel Deluxe Reverb at home that gets blown out of the water by this one.” He plugs his guitar into the normal channel, while putting his clavinet into the bright channel.
Peter’s Pedal Playground
Quickly glancing at Anspach’s pedalboard, you see that he has his feet in the analog and digital worlds. The industry standbys include a Moog Moogerfooger MF-101 Lowpass Filter, Electro-Harmonix Small Stone phase shifter, Keeley Compressor Plus, Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer (with Analog Man mod), and an Analog Man King of Tone. The modern juggernauts include a trio of Chase Bliss boxes (Dark World, Tonal Recall, and Mood) and a pair of Strymon stomps (TimeLine and Flint). A Dunlop Cry Baby Classic GCB95F sits in the lower righthand corner and a TC Electronic Polytune 2 Mini keeps his guitars in check. Underneath is a Strymon Zuma to power his noisemakers.
One for the Birds!
During his formative guitar-playing years, Rick Mitarotonda’s father took him to the House of Guitars in Rochester, New York. He tried a bunch of instruments that day, but the cream of the crop for 13-year-old Rick was a PRS. And ever since he’s been partial to the birds. His main ride for some time has been this PRS Hollowbody II Piezo. The hollowbody features PRS’ 58/15 LT (low turn) humbuckers that work alongside the LR Baggs/PRS proprietary piezo electronics. And similar to his guitar mate, Mitarotonda employs D’Addario NYXLs (.010 –.046).
Bird of a Feather Flock Together
Rick’s 6-string insurance plan is in the shape of another PRS Hollowbody II Piezo, but this one technically still belongs to Anspach, who has settled into his Strat-osphere.
Blast Off With Boogie
Rick has been plugging into Mesa/Boogie combos for 10-plus years. He started his journey with the smaller Express 5:25 Plus 1x12 combo with EL84s. He’s since graduated to the Express 5:50 with 6L6s. He’s stayed loyal to the brand because he enjoys how the amps naturally compress his guitar sound.
V Formation
Mitarotonda has some serious pedal power at his feet. The first board on his far right is dedicated to vocals. He has a TC Helicon Play Electric vocal effects processor that integrates and is controlled by the TC Helicon Switch-3. (The Play adds an octave-up harmony. The three buttons on the Switch-3 toggle engage hardtune, delay, and reverb for his vocals.)
Moving left, we have his first board for guitar. He has a Dunlop Cry Baby 535Q wah and DigiTech Whammy at his disposal before hitting a Lovepedal Eternity Fuse. Then he goes into a Mu-Tron Micro-Tron IV envelope filter, Strymon OB.1 compressor and clean boost, and a MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe. The top-right corner holds a TC Electronic Polytune. Strapped to the bottom is a Truetone 1 Spot power supply.
The third and final board has a MXR Analog Chorus. And then things get serious with a 5-pack of Strymons that include a Deco tape saturation and doubletracker, El Capistan dTape Echo, TimeLine, Flint tremolo/reverb, and a NightSky time-warped reverberator. Off the board to the left is a TC Electronic Ditto X4 that Rick leans on to peel open new textures to help him get out of his head during improvisational parts and see his instrument with a fresh lens.
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Cory Wong—a funky player with his own signature-model Strat wiring.
Guitarist, songwriter, and producer Cory Wong is renowned for his solo work, his band Fearless Flyers (with Mark Lettieri, Joe Dart, and Nate Smith), and collaborations with artists such as Vulfpeck, Jon Batiste, and Dave Koz. His playing style is deeply rooted in funk rhythm guitar, with a heavy dose of rock and jazz. Well-known for playing a Stratocaster, his signature model was released in 2021, and it’s a unique offering. If you want to build your personal Cory Wong Strat, here is your shopping list, starting with the primary structure:
• Alder body, scaled down to slightly smaller than a regular Stratocaster, with Fender American Ultra body contours
• Maple neck with a rosewood fretboard with rolled edges, modern Fender American Ultra D neck profile, slightly larger headstock, 25.5" scale, 10" to 14" compound radius, 22 medium jumbo frets
• Locking tuners with all short posts, a bone nut, and two roller string trees
• Vintage-style 6-screw synchronized tremolo
• Hair tie around the tremolo springs (which mutes them to enhance the rhythm tone)
• .010–.046 strings (nickel-plated steel)
“While these are all interesting features, resulting in a very comfortable guitar, you don’t need to copy every detail to transform one of your Stratocasters into a Cory Wong-style Strat.”
For the physical build, as you can see, Wong and Fender created a real signature instrument to his specs and wishes. While these are all interesting features, resulting in a very comfortable guitar, you don’t need to copy every detail to transform one of your Stratocasters into a Cory Wong-style Strat. My personal favorite of these is the hair tie for muting the tremolo springs. A lot of my funk-playing customers are doing similar things on their Strats to get a dry sound, and they’re using all kinds of funny things in there, like foam, rubber bands, and pieces of cotton, as well as hair ties.
Now, let’s have a look at the electronics:
• Seymour Duncan Cory Wong Clean Machine SSS pickup set
• Standard 5-way pickup-selector switch with classic Strat switching matrix
• 250k master volume pot with a 90/10 audio taper and Fender treble-bleed circuit PCB
• 250k tone pot with a 90/10 audio taper and Fender Greasebucket tone control PCB for only the neck pickup
• 250k audio push-push tone pot with Fender Greasebucket tone control PCB for only the bridge pickup; the push-push switch overrides the 5-way switch and defaults to middle + neck pickup (in parallel) as a preset
• Middle pickup is without tone control
Let’s break this down piece-by-piece to decode it:
Pickups
The pickup set is a custom SSS set from the Seymour Duncan company with the following specs:
• Overwound hum-canceling stacked bridge pickup with a 3-conductor wire and shield in permanent hum-canceling mode (red wire taped off), bevelled alnico 5 magnets, approximately 14.5k-ohm DCR
• Overwound middle single-coil, RWRP, beveled alnico 4 magnets, approximately 7.1k-ohm DCR
• Overwound neck single-coil, bevelled alnico 4 magnets, approx. 7.0k-ohm DCR
The pickups are voiced for clear highs, which perfectly suits Wong’s funky playing style and tone. While a lot of pickup companies will have pickups in that ballpark, it will be difficult to put together a full set that really works as intended. The Duncans in the Cory Wong Strat are available as a balanced set, so if you want to get as close as possible, I think this is your best bet.
5-Way Pickup Selector Switch
Nothing special here, just the standard 5-way switch with two switching stages that is wired like a classic Stratocaster:
bridge
bridge + middle in parallel
middle
middle + neck in parallel
neck
The upper tone pot is assigned to the neck pickup, while the lower tone pot is connected to the bridge pickup, leaving the middle pickup without tone control.
Master volume pot and treble-bleed circuit.
The 250k master volume pot is a standard CTS pot with a 90/10 audio taper found in all U.S.-made Fender guitars. The volume pot has the treble-bleed circuit from the Fender American Pro series, but uses a ready-to-solder PCB from Fender instead of individual electronic parts. The PCB is available from Fender individually (part #7711092000), but I have some thoughts about it. While using a PCB makes a lot of sense for mass production, it has some downsides for us mortal human beings:
• Soldering on PCBs requires some training and also special soldering tools.
• The PCB is quite expensive, while the individual electronic parts are only a few cents.
• The PCB uses ultra-tiny surface-mount parts, so it’s very difficult to repair or mod it to your personal taste.
I don’t think we need a PCB for adding a treble-bleed circuit, so let’s do this project using conventional electronic parts. The treble-bleed PCB contains a 1200 pF capacitor with a 150k-ohm resistor in parallel, plus another 20k-ohm resistor in series. Using individual parts, it looks like this:
Courtesy of single-coil.com
In general, a treble-bleed circuit will help you to combat the “volume vs. tone problem” when using passive single-coil pickups. When you turn down the volume (even just a bit), the high end or treble loss is not proportionate. In other words, a small cut in volume creates a far greater loss in your guitar’s treble response. Using a treble-bleed circuit is an easy way to get rid of this problem, as long as it is calculated carefully.
ONLINE ONLY: If you want to find out more about treble bleed circuits please have a look here: https://www.premierguitar.com/diy/mod-garage/treble-bleed-mod
Next month, we will continue with part two of the Cory Wong Stratocaster wiring, bringing it all together, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!