Collectible Guitar NovDec 2016 | Page 22

ToneBook

THE FENDER BLENDER � Doug Doppler

The term ToneBook is our adaptation of the immensely popular LookBooks used by numerous fashion magazines and web sites. Noting that gearheads are every bit as passionate about gear as fashionistas are about clothes, everyone at Collectible Guitar is super excited about this column. Each issue we’ ll be creating killer rigs as well as discussing what gear was placed where in the signal chain and why.

BACKGROUND The journey we are about to embark upon is one best taken with a bit of backstory. If we consider combining a 60’ s Jaguar, Weir Fuzz, and a Vibro Champ a“ rig”, I’ ve been putting these things together since 1976. Fast forward to 1981, I started studying with Joe Satriani.

In addition to theory, technique, and musical sensibilities, we spent a lot of time talking about gear and tone. Joe was playing around town in a band called The Squares and his rig consisted of various pedals into a Boss CE-1 which he ran in stereo out into a pair Echoplexes and 100-watt Marshalls. It should come as no surprise that I went out and bought a CE-1 and started experimenting with running the various Marshall, Boogie, and Ampeg amps I owned at the time in stereo. Before I left to study at GIT in 1984, Joe gave me the number of another former student who was living in L. A.– Steve Vai. Steve was playing the L. A. club circuit, and after I got to know him a bit he asked me to tech a couple of shows for him. Steve’ s rig at the time was a pair of Carvin X100B’ s running in stereo with one head serving as the master and the other as the slave. Of note is the fact that Steve’ s rig today is based on the same template.

TEMPLATES A number of the rigs we’ ll be putting together will be based either on iconic rigs of the most esteemed tone masters, workarounds I’ ve had to come up with, or some combination of the two. This first ToneBook falls in the latter category.

TONEBOOK # 1 In the late 80’ s Gorilla made an amp called the GG110 which had some really great clean and dirty tones. Since coaxing these tones out the amp required setting shared set of controls differently, using them live posed a real

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