Rigs of Dad proprietor Ross Hurt welcomes PG into his tone zone to demo Dunable and Fender riff machines, stereo-amp setup, and overflowing pedalboards.
Facing a mandatory shelter-in-place ordinance to limit the spread of COVID-19, PG enacted a hybrid approach to filming and producing Rig Rundowns. This is the 45th video in that format.
Do you love guitars, comedy, and peruse Instagram? Then take a break from PG to make sure you follow Rigs of Dad. (You can thank us in the comment section.) While you might think Ross Hurt, the man behind the spit-take spoofery hosted on Rigs of Dad, is the Weird Al of guitardom, rest assured, the axe is mightier than the sword (or in his case, keyboard).
The multi-dimensional Burial Waves is a D.C./Baltimore quintet created by longtime friends and touring mates. Singer Kyle Durfey (Pianos Become the Teeth), guitarists Ross Hurt (Black Clouds) and Matthew Dowling (Deleted Scenes, The Effects), bassist Kevin Hilliard (Flavor Waster, Caverns), and drummer Jimmy Rhodes (Black Clouds) blend their pedigrees to create a washy, spacy rock that ventures into realms of helium-grade post-rock and thunderous, amp-worshiping metal.
Just before putting out another new Burial Waves song, the Rigs-of-Dad guitar hero virtually welcomed PGās Chris Kies into his D.C.-based art venue and practice space.
In this episode, Burial Waves sound architect Ross Hurt walks us through two solid guitar setups and a monstrous bass rig created by his personal collection of gear. He introduces us to a pair of custom Dunables and a couple revamped sig Jazzmasters, he explains the use (and signal flow) for a complex solid-state stereo rig, and we witness how a pedal problem proves beneficial when build post-rock boards.
Hereās Hurtās main squeezeāa TV yellow Dunable Cyclops that is constructed with a mahogany body, maple neck, and ebony fretboard. The custom pickup configuration features a Dunable Grizzly (bridge) and an under-wound Banana Slug (neck). Both pickups come with coil-splitting options. Itās topped with Grover locking tuners and all the hardware is aged nickel.
Above is Rossā second-favorite Dunableāa āpearlā shell pink Cyclops. Like the previous one, this one has a mahogany body, maple neck, and ebony fretboard. However, the pickups are different, with a Lollar Imperial (bridge) and Lollar low-wind Imperial (neck). Both his Dunable 6-strings are typically tuned down a whole step and take GHS Boomers (.012ā.052).
The third axe in Hurtās guitarsenal is a Squier J Mascis Signature Jazzmaster that has been overhauled with ājazzercisedā Dunable Grizzlies (humbucker crammed into the JM-style, single-coil covers), Staytrem Jazzmaster vibrato arm paired with a Mastery vibrato and bridge. For post-rock, drone-note layers, he keeps this one tuned to CāGāCāGāCāG.
The third axe in Hurtās guitarsenal is a Squier J Mascis Signature Jazzmaster that has been overhauled with ājazzercisedā Dunable Grizzlies (humbucker crammed into the JM-style, single-coil covers), Staytrem Jazzmaster vibrato arm paired with a Mastery vibrato and bridge. For post-rock, drone-note layers, he keeps this one tuned to CāGāCāGāCāG.
Hurtās pedal playground has a bit of everythingāa little weird, a little wonky, a little wooly, and little whoa!
Below is his signal flow for Burial Waves.
Korg Pitchblack > ZCat Big Reverb TI > DigiTech Drop > DigiTech FreqOut > DigiTech Dirty Robot > Boss ES-8 Effects Switching System controller:
- Loop 1: Electro-Harmonix Mel9
- Loop 2: Antisleep Audio KWB Plus
- Loop 3: 1981 Inventions DRV
- Loop 4: Last Gasp Art Labs Gomorrah subharmonic fuzz
- Loop 5: Lehle P-Split (to send/return to dry amp)
- Loop 6: OBNE RĆŖver
- Loop 7: (introduces stereo) Wampler Terraform > Meris Polymoon
- Loop 8: Strymon TimeLine > Strymon BigSkyāstereo outs into a TC Electronic Ditto X2 Looper.
This is Ross Hurtās (that Matthew Dowling uses in Burial Waves) Fender Troy Van Leeuwen Jazzmaster thatās been modded with Curtis Novak P-90s and a mastery bridge/vibrato. Hurt loves this because of the utilitarian 2-way toggle that goes between the lead and rhythm circuits (something Hurt sees as invaluable for his playing style). The offset takes GHS Boomers (.012ā.052).
Unlike Hurt, Matthew Dowling goes digital-heavy by simply using an Ernie Ball VPJr Volume Pedal into an EarthQuaker Devices Palisades, and it hits the Line 6 HX Effects unit that does the bulk of tone shaping. The RJM MasterMind MIDI Foot Control handles the moody stage lighting. Everything rests on a board from Custom District Pedalboards.
For Burial Waves, bassist Kevin Hilliard borrows Hurtās Dunable R2 finished in matte black. The swamp-ash 4-string has a 34" scale, a wenge neck, and rosewood fretboard. It has a standard P-bass pickup (neck) and Dunable Bigfoot (bridge). Hilliard rocks GHS Boomers (.045ā.105).
Kevin Hilliardās bass board flows this way: Ernie Ball VPJr volume pedal > Fuzzrocious "Bob" Demon (with blend knob and gated boost) > custom Fuzzrocious TS-808 circuit built with blend knob (Phantasm art) > Sanford and Sonny Bluebeard Fuzz > Akai Headrush delay/looper > kill switch. Everything rests on a board from Custom District Pedalboards.
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D'Addario Auto Lock Strap:https://ddar.io/AutoLockStrap
Strong midrange-focused personality. Particularly vowel-ly and vocal sweep. Feels controlled.
Some players will miss silkier, hazier bass-range sounds.
$249
Dunlop Mick Ronson Cry Baby
Park and fly with this mid-focused but very vocal wah honoring Bowieās right-hand man.
Dunlop Mick Ronson Wah - MAIN by premierguitar
Mick Ronsonālead ripper, lieutenant, riff-dealer, and arranger in David Bowieās Spiders from Marsāwas such a cool amalgam of ā60s British guitar voices. He had Keith Richardsā sense of rhythm and hooks, Jimmy Pageās knack for evil-sounding ear candy, and a preference for loud, simple rigs: Les Paul, Marshall, Tone Bender, Echoplex, and, most critically, a Cry Baby wah. You know the sound of this Cry Baby. Itās everywhere on early 1970s Bowie recordsāāQueen Bitch,ā āMoonage Daydream,ā and āWidth of a Circle,ā to name a fewāand it put discernible fangs and venom in his playing. There are many such sounds in Dunlopās excellent new tribute, the Mick Ronson Cry Baby.
Ronno was not a wah player in the āwocka-wockaā sense. He primarily used the pedal in a fixed position or with subtle longer sweeps. His favorite wah for the job was an early Cry Baby built in Italy by Jen. These wahs were notoriously, shall we say, āuniqueā from specimen to specimen. And without Ronnoās original on hand for comparison, itās hard to know how close the tribute gets to nailing it. But there is an unmistakable mid focus that mirrors and invites Ronnoās biting phrasingāparticularly in Bowieās live recordings from the time. The new pedalās sweep starts out squawky at the heel-down position, where my other vintage-voiced wahs just sound foggy. That midrange emphasis and presence remains through its sweep, suggesting the Ronson Wahās singing range is narrow. On the contrary, the many distinctly different vowel sounds within that range color the base tone more strongly than many wahs with a smoother, bassier taper. That profile lends itself to great control and multiple bold, distinct soundsāparticularly when an angry gain device is situated upstream.
Very diverse slate of tones. Capable of great focus and power. Potentially killer studio tool.
Sculpting tones in a reliably reproducible way can be challenging. Midrange emphasis may be a deal breaker for some.
$199 street
Bold-voiced, super-tunable distortion that excels in contexts from filtered boost to total belligerence.
Whitman Audio calls the Wave Collapse a fuzzāand what a very cool fuzz it is. But classifying it strictly as such undersells the breadth of its sounds. The Seattle, Washington-built Wave Collapse has personality at low gain levels and super crunchy ones. Itās responsive and sensitive enough to input and touch dynamics to move from light overdrive to low-gain distortion and degenerate fuzz with a change in picking intensity or guitar volume. And from the pedalās own very interactive controls, one can summon big, ringing, near-clean tones, desert sludge, or snorkel-y wah buzz.
The Wave Collapse speaks many languages, but it has an accentāusually an almost wah-like midrange lilt that shows up as faint or super-pronounced. Itās not everyoneās creamy distortion ideal. But with the right guitar pairings and a dynamic approach, the Wave Collapseās midrange foundation can still span sparkly and savage extremes that stand tall and distinctive in a mix. Thereās much that sounds and feels familiar in the Wave Collapse, but the many surprises it keeps in store are the real fun.
Heavy Surf, Changing Waves
The absence of a single fundamental influence makes it tricky to get your bearings with the Wave Collapse at first. Depending on where you park the controls to start, you might hear traces of RAT in the midrange-forward, growly distortion, or the Boss SD-1 in many heavy overdrive settings. At its fuzziest, it howls and spits like aFuzz Face orTone Bender and can generate compressed, super-focused, direct-to-desk rasp. And in its darker corners, weighty doom tones abound.
The many personalities are intentional. Whitman Dewey-Smithās design brief was, in his own words, āa wide palette ranging from dirty boost to almost square-wave fuzz and textures that could be smooth or sputtery.ā A parallel goal, he says, was to encourage tone discoveries in less-obvious spaces. Many such gems live in the complex interrelationships between the EQ, filter, and bias controls. They also live in the circuit mash-up at the heart of the Wave Collapse. The two most prominent fixtures on the circuit are the BC108 transistor (best known as a go-to in Fuzz Face builds) and twin red LED clipping diodes (associated, in the minds of many, with clipping in the Turbo RAT and Marshall Jubilee amplifier). Thatās not exactly a classic combination of amplifier and clipping section components, but itās a big part of the Wave Collapseās sonic identity.
The BC108 drives one of two core gain stages in the Wave Collapse. The first stage takes inspiration from early, simple fuzz topologies like the Tone Bender and Fuzz Face, but with a focus on what Dewey-Smith calls āexploiting the odd edges and interactivity in a two-transistor gain stage.ā The BC108 contributes significant character to this stage. The second, post-EQ gain stage is JFET-based. Itās set up to interact like a tube guitar amp input stage and is followed by the clipping LEDs. Dewey-Smith says you can think of the whole as a āfairlyā symmetric hard-clipping scheme.
āThe magic of the circuit is that those gain stages are very complimentary. When stage one is running clean, it still passes a large, unclipped signal that hits the second stage, making those classic early distortion sounds. Conversely, when the first stage is running hot, it clips hard and the second stage takes a back seatāmostly smoothing out the rough edges of the first stage.ā Factor in the modified Jack Orman pickup simulator-style section in the front end, and you start to understand the pedalās propensity for surprise and expressive latitude.
Searchinā Safari
The Wave Collapseās many identities arenāt always easy to wrangle at the granular-detail level. The control setāknobs for bias, filter color, input level, and output level, plus switches for āmassā (gain,) ārangeā(bass content at the input), and ācenterā (shifts the filterās mid emphasis from flat)āare interdependent in such a way that small adjustments can shift a toneās character significantly, and it can be challenging to find your way back to a tone that sounded just right five minutes ago. Practice goes a long way toward mastering these sensitivities. One path to reliably reproducible sounds is to establish a ballpark tone focus with the filter first, dial in the input gain to an appropriately energetic zone, then shape the distortion color and response more specifically with the bias.
As you get a feel for these interactions, youāll be knocked out by the sounds and ideas you bump into along the way. In addition to obvious vintage fuzz and distortion touchstones I crafted evocations of blistering, compressed tweed amps, jangly Marshalls, and many shades of recording console preamp overdrive. The Wave Collapse responds in cool ways to just about any instrument you situate out front. But while your results may vary, I preferred the greater headroom and detail that comes with single-coil pickup pairings. Humbuckers, predictably conjure a more compressed and, to my ears, less varied set of sounds. I also found black-panel Fender amps a more adaptable pairing than Vox- and Marshall-style voices. But just about any guitar or pickup type can yield magnificent results.
The Verdict
Though itās hard to avoid its filtered midrange signature entirely, the Wave Collapse is a pedal of many masks. Once you master the twitchy interactivity between its controls, you can tailor the pedal to weave innocuously but energetically into a mix or completely dominate it. These capabilities are invaluable in ensemble performances, but itās super enticing to consider how the Wave Collapse would work in a studio situation, where its focus and potency can fill gaps and nooks in color and vitality or turn a tune on its head. Pedals that stimulate the inner arranger, producer, and punk simultaneously are valuable tools. And while the Wave Collapse wonāt suit every taste, when you factor together the pedalās sub-$200 cost, thoughtful design, high-quality execution, and malleability, it adds up to a lot of utility for a very fair price.
The New ToneWoodAmp2 is smaller, lighter, rechargeable, and offers foureffects simultaneously, along with a mobile app and much more.
ToneWoodAmp has released the second generation of its popular accessory that brings a wide array of special effects to acoustic guitars without needing to plug into an external amplifier.
The ToneWoodAmp2 has been redesigned with portability, ease of use, and enhanced performance in mind, featuring a lighter and more compact design while adding more features and capabilities. The new ToneWoodAmp2 has a powerful DSP, a rechargeable battery that lasts for more than 10 hours, and it provides more creative tools as well as the ability to play with up to four simultaneous effects. A new smartphone app allows users to operate the device from either their phone or the device itself.
Reverb Basics | ToneWoodAmp2 Effects Guide
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.The upgraded product is also a fully professional preamp. In addition to the built-in effects, it includes a powerful EQ, compressor, āFeedback Assassinā tools, and more. āWhile the firstToneWoodAmp provided a breakthrough technology in how acoustic guitar players experience their guitar playing mostly off-stage, the new ToneWoodAmp2 doubles as an on-stage professional pre-amp device with many new capabilities, a perfect tool for performing musicians who need a professional set of tools in a very small footprint package,ā says Ofer Webman, CEO of ToneWoodAmp and its inventor.Like the original ToneWoodAmp, the ToneWoodAmp2 attaches to any acoustic guitar via an innovative magnetic X-brace. A new and unique guitar attachment system, called the LiftKit, allows the second-generation device to attach to any acoustic guitar, even a guitar with a curved back.
TonewoodAmp2 features expanded capabilities by its new smartphone app: With its built-inBluetoothĀ®, guitarists can now connect the ToneWoodAmp2 to a free smartphone app for extended control, intuitive adjustments, preset management, and on-the-fly tweaks. The new app is compatible with all modern iOS and Android devices.āThe new device is a massive improvement from the original ToneWoodAmp,ā says MikeDawes, the U.K.-based guitar player who has twice been named the Best Acoustic Guitarist in the World Right Now by MusicRadar and Total Guitar's end-of-year poll. āThis thing is not only reverb or delay or chorus on your guitar itās everything and more at once. The reason why this is so good is that itās reducing every barrier that I would have to creativity.āThe new ToneWoodAmp2 is available for $300.
For more information, visit www.tonewoodamp.com.
Paul Reed Smith also continues to evolve as a guitarist, and delivered a compelling take on Jeff Beckās interpretation of āCause Weāve Ended As Loversā at the PRS 40th Anniversary Celebration during this yearās NAMM.
After 40 years at the helm of PRS Guitars, our columnist reflects on the nature of evolution in artistryāof all kinds.
Reflecting on four decades in business, I donāt find myself wishing I āknew then what I know now.ā Instead, Iām grateful to still have the curiosity and environment to keep learning and to be in an art that has a nonstop learning curve. Thereās a quote attributed to artist Kiki Smith that resonates deeply with me: āI can barely control my kitchen sink.ā That simple truth has been a guiding principle in my life. We canāt control the timing of knowledge or discovery. If profound learning comes late in life, so be it. The important thing is to remain open to it when it arrives.
I look at whatās happened at PRS Guitars over the last 40 years with real pride. I love what weāve builtānot just in terms of instruments but in the culture of innovation and craftsmanship that defines our company. The guitar industry as a whole has evolved in extraordinary ways, and Iām fortunate to be part of a world filled with passionate, talented, and good-hearted people.
I love learning. It may sound odd, but thereās something almost spiritual about it. Learning isnāt constant; it comes in stages. Sometimes, there are long dry spells where you can even struggle to hold onto what you already know. Other times, learning is sporadic, with nuggets of understanding appearing here and there that are treasured for their poignancy. And then there are those remarkable moments when the proverbial floodgates open, and the lessons come so fast that you can barely keep up. Iāve heard songwriters and musicians describe this same pattern. Sometimes, no new songs emerge; sometimes, they trickle out one by one; and sometimes, they arrive so quickly itās impossible to capture them all. I believe itās the same for all creatives, including athletes, engineers, and everyone invested in their art.
Looking back over 40 years in business and a decade of preparation before that, I recognize these distinct phases of learning. Right now, Iām in one of those high-gain learning periods. Iāve taken on a teacher who is introducing me to concepts I never imagined, ideas I didnāt think anyone could explaināthings I wasnāt even sure I was worthy of understanding. But when he calls and says, āHave you thought about this?ā I lean in, eager to absorb, not just to learn something new for myself, but because I want him to feel his teaching is appreciated, making it more likely that the teaching continues.
āLearning isnāt just about accumulating knowledge; itās about applying it, sharing it, and evolving because of it.ā
Beyond structured teaching, learning also comes through experience, discovery, and problem solving. We recently got our hands on some old, magical guitars, vintage pickups, microphones, and mic preamps. These arenāt just relics; theyāre windows into a deeper understanding of how things work and what the engineers who invented them knew. By studying the schematics of tube-mic preamps, weāre uncovering insights that directly influence how we wire guitar pickups and their electronics. It may seem like an unrelated field, but the many parallels in audio engineering are there if you look. Knowledge in one area has a ripple effect, unlocking new possibilities in another.
Even as I continue learning, I recognize that our entire team at PRS is on this journey with me. We have people whose sole job is to push the boundaries of what we understand about pickups, spending every day refining and applying that knowledge so that when you pick up a PRS guitar, it sounds better. More than 400 people work here, each contributing to the collective advancement of our craft. I am grateful to be surrounded by such a dedicated and smart team.
One of my favorite memories at PRS was at a time we were deep into investigating scale lengths on vintage guitars, and some unique pickup characteristics, when one of our engineering leaders walked into my office. He had just uncovered something astonishing and said, āYouāre not going to believe this one.ā That excitement and back-and-forth exchange of ideas is what keeps this work so rewarding.
As I reflect on my journey, I see that learning isnāt just about accumulating knowledge; itās about applying it, sharing it, and evolving because of it. I get very excited when something weāve learned ends up on a new product. Whether lessons come early or late, whether they arrive in waves or trickles, there is always good work to be done. And that is something I just adore.