Eric Johnson ACL 1988 Rig
Pretty cool thread with some excellent details on old school EJ.
Posted by Fat Tone
Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:35 pm
I’m pretty sure of the amps… maybe not….but does anyone have a specific diagram of Eric’s rig during this Ah Via era…down to the signal chain, and effects employed for which amps ?
Thanks in advance
Posted by highme
Sat Sep 29, 2007 1:26 am
His rig is almost the same from his instructional video that was shot as the same place as his ACL show (KLRU in Austin). Yeah, I’ve watched a “few” times…
In chain order and all switched by A/B boxes:
CLEAN
Echoplex
Deluxe Memory Man (used with a true bypass loop)
TC Stereo Chorus out stereo to two Twin Reverbs
OVERDRIVE
Fuzz Face
Tube Screamer
MXR Flanger/Doubler (on floor in rack-used with a true bypass loop)
MXR Digital Time Delay 1000ms (in big rack, also has switch for repeat hold on pedalboard)
Dumble Steel String Singer (amp also has multiple channels and functions that EJ could switch from a small wooden pedal above the TS808 on his board. Lots of tone options.)
LEAD
Wah Wah
Tube Screamer or Tube Driver (both in rack depending on the day!)
Echoplex
Fender Spring Reverb (he stopped using it later and opted to get reverb from the house)
1968 or 69 100-watt plexi
Note that even though EJ had two Marshall heads on stage during ACL, the middle head was just a dummy. That cab goes to the Dumble sitting on the rack behind the twins. And, at the time, he REALLY liked old 80-watt Celestions.
Happy tone hunting.
James Santiago
VP Marketing/Product Development
Voodoo Lab
Posted by Long2Play
Tue Oct 02, 2007 3:47 pm
That rig is mostly right but for some reason on the ACL show I remember two Blackface Dual Showman’s stacked on top of a Marshall 4×12, wired stereo for the clean signal path……..
I’ll have to rewatch the show…..
Posted by Nix
Tue Oct 02, 2007 4:34 pm
They weren’t Dual Showmans, they were Twins mounted in Showman shells. He used those for bigger venues to get more low-end from a Marshall cab wired in stereo with an open back.
I played some shows with EJ around that time and what James listed is dead-on accurate. I never got over playing through his Steel String Singer, and to this day wish I had ordered one when I had the opportunity.
Posted by Fat Tone
Tue Oct 02, 2007 4:43 pm
(…) Another question…why were the Tube Driver and Tube Screamer ( one of two Tube Screamers ) mounted in the rack…were they switched on with a loop box of sort, or were they just always on, in line with a specific head ?
Posted by Nix
Tue Oct 02, 2007 4:54 pm
Always on. The Tube Driver was specific to the Plexi, the Tube Screamer for the Dumble. He had a second Tube Screamer on the Dumble line also, on his pedalboard. He would sometimes switch this in on top of the other SRV-style.
I always though it was clever to run the Tube Driver last in the chain, after the Echoplex, to get a sort of natural delay-ducking when he was playing faster stuff. When he would stop, the echoes would sort of fade in. You gotta give him credit or being pretty creative with a bunch of gear that was both old and rather common.
Definitely simple but uniquely ingenious, also.
Posted by highme
Tue Oct 02, 2007 7:55 pm
Yup. I’ll have to dig through my photo archives. Over the last 10 years that I’ve worked on stuff with him, I would usually take pics of all the gear and settings. Definitely some very interesting things going on behind the scenes like Nix pointed out with the Tube Driver. He does things that look somewhat normal, then when you actually look at the settings, it’s a whole other deal.
Will post more as I find materials…
James Santiago
VP Marketing/Product Development
Voodoo Lab
Posted by highme
Tue Oct 02, 2007 11:29 pm
Okay, so I’ve gone through a bit of my archive and pulled out a few things. Almost all of this stuff has never been published before and has never left my computer. Here we go…
TUBE DRIVER
January 2001 – The Fillmore – San Francisco
You’ll notice that the knob settings look really funny. Almost everything is off! Depending on how loud the Marshall is, that Drive knob could be anywhere from 0 to 4. After soundcheck, I think it ended up around 3
LEAD MARSHALL
January 2001 – The Fillmore – San Francisco
What can you say? That 50-watt head is on 10. Also note that the Treble knob is cut way low as well as the Presence. And, he ALWAYS uses a Y-cable into the top 1st and 2nd channels. And, for as many pictures of his lead Marshall amps that I’ve taken over the years, I’ve never seen him use the covers for the preamp tubes, or the holders for the power tubes.
FUZZ FACE
January 2001 – The Fillmore – San Francisco
Note here that he NEVER has the fuzz on 10. No matter what fuzz he uses, he will most likely pull the fuzz back a hair to find the sweet spot. And yes, the rubber band has tone!
ECHOPLEX
January 2001 – The Fillmore – San Francisco
These settings almost never change for him. The echo time on the clean sound Echoplex is almost always around 26 (or 415-420 ms) and has roughly around 4 to 5 repeats.
DELUXE MEMORY MAN
January 2001 – The Fillmore – San Francisco
He started using this post-mic a few years earlier than this, but the same settings apply. Note that he’s not in Chorus mode. He’s in Vibrato modulation mode.
TWIN REVERB HEADS
Late 99? – (These were sent to me when he was selling them. Author of pic unknown.)
This is to verify that for a lot of gigs, EJ would take Twin Reverb amp chassis’ and throw them in vintage showman head cabs. Pretty cool.
GOODBYE RACK
Early 1997 – Shoreline Amphitheater
This is the first time I saw him without his large rack. You’ll notice that he’s still using the MXR delay (a 1500ms, not the 1000ms anymore) and he’s got it modded so he could run it post-mic on the rhythm Marshall. Also, the Dumble power transformer blew up prior to this so he’s continued to use a second Marshall as his rhythm sound with the Fuzz Face. Gone is the Tube Screamer as of this time too. Other pictures from this day ended up in the article I wrote on EJ’s gear during my time at Guitar Player magazine. That article is the first time I ever mentioned the rubber band on the fuzz thing. I could see that when he was telling me how much better it sounded that he should probably have not said anything!!!
STRING WINDING
January 2001 – The Fillmore – San Francisco
Notice that he goes one wind up, then one wind down to sort of lock the string. But, look at the B-string. He uses all the string and it’s wound down as far as possible. Same thing sometimes goes for the E-string too. He doesn’t like string trees
PICKUP HEIGHT
January 2001 – The Fillmore – San Francisco
Note that the bridge pickup is always slanted more toward the 1st string than it is the 6th. Also (and I don’t recommend this unless you don’t mind taking a hammer to your pickups), he usually pushes the pole of the b-string way down into the bobbin.
So in the spirit of sharing information on HRI, I hope you guys find something useful and enjoyable in this stuff. I do have one more thing that I’ll post about in a few. Stay tuned…
James Santiago
VP Marketing/Product Development
Posted by John Ziegler
Wed Oct 03, 2007 1:19 am
way to go mexicali fanboy!
wtf, since we’re waxing on past EJ-isms, i even dug into my OLD stash…
from way back(4th of july ’83) live in dallas, when he was at the height of his powers(in my opinion),
with his fusion/rock group the avenue….the same guys in the 1st acl show.
btw, this was before the dumble, the tc chorus, the tube driver, and a few other things….
when his tone was my personal fave.
jam on!
Posted by highme
Wed Oct 03, 2007 2:28 am
Z! Yeah, you know I agree with you. Some of my favorite stuff is from the 78-83 period when he was just fierce sounding. I’ll have to dig up the live version of “Winter Came” from a shithole called Myskyn’s in Charleston around 1978.
He was all about the Fresh Fuzz, yellow MXR Chorus, Mini Boogie/Matrix… John, you know what I’m talking about…
I’ve still got my Fresh Fuzz (sounds kind of like shit now though) and the Mini Matrix. You still got one?
(For anyone who doesn’t know, the Mini Matrix/Boogie was the first tube overdrive built by BK Butler. He then got sued by Boogie, and redesigned it as the Tube Driver and released it later under a distribution deal with Paul Chander.)
James Santiago
VP Marketing/Product Development
Voodoo Lab
Posted by John Ziegler
Wed Oct 03, 2007 9:19 pm
yep, still got the old mini boogee
his early gear setups(pre-’84) have been a big influence on me over the years.
i’ve got probably 20-30 cassettes of EJ shows from ’77-’84 stored in boxes somewhere…
lots of cool stuff from his “eric johnson group” days and also especially “the avenue” era.
i’ve only gotten around to transferring a few clips into the digital realm a few years ago.
i need to dig em out sometime and see whassup.
what’s interesting is that during that ACL ’84 show, when they pan the crowd, i see the dudes that used to record and tape-trade those shows from way back in the day….it’s a trip.
anyways, i used to be a huge ej fan back in texas during the early ’80s when i was first starting to play…and i would catch him pretty much every month when he was doing the club circuit.
his playing and musicality was much more interesting to me back then, mainly because of his forays into the more “fusion-y”/instrumental stuff….and i liked the dudes he was working with(rob alexander and steve meador). they did a lot more improv jamming and went “out” a bunch, which is what i’ve always loved in music.
plus his chops and overall sound during that period were the most deadly back then, in my opinion of course.
btw, here’s another cool little clip from tx ’83….
choice!
Posted by highme
Thu Oct 04, 2007 12:59 am
Word to the JZ! The only Mini Matrix/Boogie pedals I’ve ever seen are mine and yours. Seriously. Out of all the crazy music stores and vintage “back door-private stock” scenarios I’ve been through, never have I seen another. In fact, I found mine in a junky little music store outside of Modesto, CA. It was probably 1992 and I went with a friend of mine who was also “hunting” for treasure with me. Lucky me, I asked about a box on the floor that had some junk cables and what looked like a damn soccer trophy in it. As my buddy turned the corner I grabbed the wooden panel and out came a fucking Mini Matrix. My buddy Robert looked at me, I looked at him, and rather than blow our cover, he quietly said “that’s interesting.”
We both knew what it was. But, there was a code among tone brothers. I found it first, and he was going to let me play the game. So I asked the clerk what it was and he said: “Fuck if I know. It probably doesn’t even work.” So rather than plug it in, I said I’d buy it just because it looks weird and if it doesn’t work, who cares. So, about 20 bucks later, I got to the parking lot, jumped up and down, and screamed I RULE! And yes, it did work, and both tubes inside were in perfect condition.
For size reference, here it is sitting next to a Tube Driver. It’s pretty big. Also, here’s a Fresh Fuzz which coincidently has almost the same story, but substitute San Jose for Modesto.
**Image files unfortunately missing // marsa**
In case anyone’s wondering, the black strip on my old Tube Driver (and EJs) is a piece of tape covering the Chandler brand name. Brent (BK) Butler was nice enough to go through mine about 12 years ago, and when I got it back, he taped off the name. When I asked about it, he told me that his relationship with Chandler didn’t end well.
That’s why you see some odd looking Tube Drivers with the Chandler name that don’t look or sound like these. The real old ones have an internal power supply riveted into the front, 4 knobs, and the B.K. Butler script logo on it. If it doesn’t, then you’ve got one that was made after they messed with his design and put them out without paying him. Not cool. I haven’t talked to Brent in ages, but he was a really nice guy and he’s making them again in his own shop.
James Santiago
VP Marketing/Product Development
Voodoo Lab
Posted by Ian
Sat Oct 06, 2007 5:22 pm
I remember buying the Audio Matrix “Mini Boogie” as it was originally called back in 1981 or ’82…….until Randall Smith at Boogie got them to change the name of their device to the “Mini Matrix”.
It is a preamp in a box, and I used it for a couple years and stupidly sold it…..hey, I was only 17!
I’ve sen them pop up over the years, but I knew it was a BK Bulter design, so I assumed that the Tube Driver pedal would be an improvement.
Regards
Postby highme
Sun Oct 07, 2007 9:48 pm
They both sound real different and the Tube Driver is definitely a smoother deal.
And I think we’ve all sold things in our teens that haunt us. Mine is a ’63 candy apple red Stratocaster that my neighbor was letting me buy on a payment plan when I was sixteen. About a week into the deal, he decided that he really wanted the guitar back. Then, a few years later I heard it was sold to some collector. I was a dumb kid and thought I’d just find another. Never have…
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