Jeff Rostis reported
(8/25/98) that "over the last tour or so Trey has ditched
the Groove Tubes Amp and now plays thru a pair of [1965] Fender
Twin Reverbs.
Carl Frank Zeletz
(12/7/98): Apparently, Deluxe Reverbs are the reissue of the Fender
Twin, since they don't make the Twin anymore.
Sunil 8/14/98: Gone
(at least from sight) are the two speaker cabinets that flanked
his rack.
Instead there were two different Fender combo amps on the ground
angled up in front of the main rack. Looking at the new poster
from Dry Goods of the Worcester fall show, the Fender amps were
used during the fall tour. (and possibly summer 97?) I noticed
at either Shoreline or Riverport a proliferation of microphones
on his amps. Perhpas Paul and Trey were experimenting with mics
to find one good for live sound and one good for SBD taping. (just
a thought) One mic was touching the speaker grill, another several
inches off, and another about one foot away.
Gil Guajardo 10/26/98:
The 12/98 issue of Guitar World has an interview with Trey and
a small side article about his gear. In it, they say that he is
running his effects rig into a '65 Fender Deluxe Reverb; this
is a 1x12 combo amp. They mention that he has two of them on stage,
but one is there as a backup. I don't know if these are the same
amps that Jeff Rostis referred to as Twins, but a Fender Twin
is a 2x12 combo amp with a lot more power than a Deluxe Reverb.
There is no mention of his Custom Audio Electronics(Bob Bradshaw)
preamp, nor of his Groove Tubes power amp.
Richard Akers 3/1/99:
You mention in your page that the deluxe reverbs Trey has are
silverface. In fact the amps Trey has are both Black face Fenders
produced in 67 and 68. They're modified by a guy in vermont who's
a friend of the band.
Mini Leslie:
Charles 'RubberChickenTwo' 1/23/97
> The leslie (yes, that's how you spell it) was a type of speaker that they
> used to use on organs. The Allmans use it on their B3, and so does the
> organist for BB King. It is just a big speaker that rotates to give that
> airplane effect. Trey must use a digital pedal version. He also adds:
> "They're [leslies] awesome."
Trey has a mini leslie
speaker mounted on top of his effects rig. It is NOT a digital
imposter. If you notice, that huge hunk of brown furniture behind
Page is a leslie. Nearly every Hammond (of Goff Professional redux)
player uses the Leslie speaker. Basically it is two speakers inside
a cabinet. The top speaker handles the high end frequencies (sort
of like a tweeter but different) and that speaker spins around
creating a whooshy doppler effect vibrato like tone. The bottom
speaker (or woofer kinda) is stationary but has a baffle that
spins around it in the opposite direction creating a different
effect. The combination of these two effects is very difficult
to exact in the digital domain. In fact music gear companies are
pumping out unreasonable facsimilies at an astounding rate. Jimi
Hendrix used this effect to a great degree on Electric Ladyland,
his later live albums features a late 60's early 70's effect called
the Univibe which is supposed to simulate the leslie but is portable
(about the size of a small lunch box) The truth about the leslie
is that it is heavy both mentally and physically.
from 12/98 guitar
world: The signal also splits and goes into a 100-watt Boogie
head powering a Goff Leslie in a custom cabinet, built by Goff.
Then it feeds into a Morely AB pedal, and from there into a 1965
Fender Deluxe Reverb. (There are actually two onstage, but one
is a backup). The amps were rehabbed by Bill Carruth, a Fender
amp specialist, in Vermont who custom tuned each amp by, among
the other things, swapping out the vintage resistors until the
tone met Anastasio's approval. The amps also includes a cathode
bias switch to pull a few more "clean" watts from them, but Corruth
says, "Trey hasn't discovered that yet."
EQ: Brad Sarno
posted: 1/20/98 I guess the main part of his amp that effects
the tone is the midrange heavy EQ with very little low bass or
treble. Generally his amp was run quite clean (except for the
occasional overdrive channel switch) and the pedals did the tone
forming. I'm talking about his older rig with the Boogie head.
Preamp mic:
Jonathan Dennis Kirshbaum mailed: "In the rear-center of
the stage is a speaker in a wooden cabinet w/ a mike just a bit
in front of it and aimed at it. That cabinet is part of Trey's
electric guitar system. Placing a mic right in front of a speaker
seems counter-intuitive. After all, we could just take the signal
directly and cut down on the distortion caused by the speaker
and mic. But consider the speaker actually part
of the musical instrument, and it starts to make more sense.
The speaker's coloring of the sound is part of the overall sound
the guitarist is trying to achieve. The _whole_ instrument is
the combination of the guitar, amp, and speaker. ... Some guitarists,
and most bassists do choose to send their signals directly to
the PA instead of through the mic. The speaker's coloring is favored
for lead guitar but is often undesirable for other guitar and
bass."
Brad Sarno posted:
1/20/98: Regarding the use of a microphone on Trey's speaker.
It is very very rare that a guitarist will run directly to the
PA system. Any guitar player or soundman knows that the tone of
a speaker is very much a key part of getting guitar tone. The
Celestion Vintage 30 speakers that Trey uses play a key roll in
the tone. Direct guitar generally sounds like a knife in the ear
and is seldom used. Also the Sennheiser 409 microphone that Paul
uses on Trey's cabinet is also a key player in that full warm
tone.
from 12/98 Guitar
World: Languedoc uses two pairs of mics on the Deluxe Reverb -
two Sennheiser 409's and two AKG 414s. "One pair goes to one side
of the PA and the other pair goes to the other side," he explains.
"By doing that and panning them hard, you get a really big sterio
image." Languedoc adds that the second set of mics is set off
about eight inches from the speaker, "so there's a slight tonal
difference from one pair of mics to the other."