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Introduction | My Guitar Gear | My LAST.FM Charts | Custom Guitar Effects | More coming soon!

My Guitar Gear

As you probably know — if you've been visiting my sites for any length of time — I'm a guitarist, and I've been one since I was 13. My first guitar was a black Ibanez Roadstar Limited Edition (which I sold in college), and over the years, I've collected loads more — so I thought I may as well make a page on my site to show off the jewels in my musical family. If you know me, you know I'm always getting new gear, so feel free to check this page often because you never know what will show up. Now, on with the introductions...

My Guitars

This is my '88 Gibson Les Paul Standard, and I've owned her for over 17 years. This gal has been with me through thick and thin, and she's the workhorse of the group — and the one I turn to when I want to get my fat, nasty tone. I've gone through scores of pickups with this guitar, but I'm currently using WCR Goodwoods.

This is my Fender American Deluxe Ash Stratocaster. I never thought I'd be a Fender guy, but I totally love playing this guitar. Everything about it feels perfect, and it has a great open tone. The S-1 switching system is really great, too, and provides loads of boost and fullness.

This is my Fender American Deluxe Telecaster. I absolutely love this guitar. It plays wonderfully, and it has the perfect Tele twang.

This is my Taylor K-14C acoustic, and she's no longer in production. Taylor sold this model for a year as part of a special koa line in their 414 series, and after 2 hours of searching, playing, and listening, I couldn't go home without her. This Taylor is another guitar that I'll never part with because in all my years of playing, I still haven't heard a better sounding acoustic than this one. What else can you expect from a ceder-topped and flamed koa side/back acoustic?

This is my Fender Highway One Telecaster. I bought this guitar for 2 reasons. First, I love the color (Daphne Blue), and second, it has hotter pickups than the typical Tele, so it can handle more punch and overdrive with less brightness. It's kind of a hybrid between the typical Tele and Strat sounds.

This is my Reverend Manta Ray HB, and this is my go-to guitar when I need to be able to go from clean/acoustic to distortion with one guitar.

This is my DiPinto Belvedere Standard, and I bought this mainly because I love the way it looks. That said, I was pleasantly surprised with how awesome it sounds — especially when it's clean or doing light distortion.

Last but not least, this is my Taylor T5 Custom Koa, and she's the most gorgeous guitar I've ever laid eyes on. I can get authentic acoustic tone as well as driving rock, so it covers lots of bases. The weight, the feel, the looks — perfection. I love this guitar.

My Amps

At home, I play through a Stulce SA-10C, a 10-watt, all-tube amp. It's packed with two gains (a 12AU7 and 12AX7), a single EL84 power tube, and Hammond transformers. All that tube goodness is piped through an Avatar Hellatone 30. This is the best all-around amp I've ever played or heard, hands-down.

At church, I play a Goodsell Super Seventeen Mk2. This is a 17-watt monster, and the clean tone of this amp is pure heaven. It's packed with two 12AX7s, two EL84s, and a 5v4 tube rectifier. The cab is a 2x10 sporting an Eminence Copperhead and a Ragin Cajun. I prefer the overdrive of the Stulce over this amp's, but nothing can touch the cleans of the Goodsell.

I just added this amp — a Goodsell 5 — to my small collection. This is a little 5-watt wonder that sounds incredible, and it gets used in my guitar effects shop to test builds. It has great resonance and tone, and I'm proud to own one of the nineteen Richard built.

My Pedalboard

Starting at the top right and going down and around, the effect chain is:

Goodrich L120 Volume Pedal > Teese Wizard Wah > Peterson StroboStomp Tuner > Barber Tone Press > Z.VEX Box of Rock > RAILhead Effects io > Paul Cochrane's Timmy Overdrive > Empress Tremolo > Maxon FL-9 Flanger > BOSS DD-20 Giga Delay > Barber Electronics Launch Pad > RAILhead Effects Switcha Rooski > LR Baggs Para Acoustic DI (when needed)

I now use Lavacable patch cords after getting tired of futzing with George L's. The specific type I use are the Canare GS-6s. My board is a NYC Pedalboards Big Shot.

My Effects

Goodrich L120 Volume Pedal. Lately, while playing at church, I've needed to play quietly in the background — and I've gotten tired of maintaining playing while turning my guitar's volume knob. This being the case, I got a volume pedal — and I bought a Goodrich because they're the best brand on the market. It's totally transparent and the action is nice and smooth.

Teese Wizard Wah. A wah pedal is one of those effects that should be used as a seasoning, not a main course, but it's nice to have handy if you get in the mood for it. I chose the Teese Wizard Wah over all the others because I prefer the lower sweep range — most wahs just get too high and thin for my tastes, and the Wizard begin the scoop at a much lower frequency so it's not annoying like most other wahs are.

StroboStomp. It's a bit bulky and ugly, but it's easy to read from across the stage. The strobe pulse makes it easier to set intonation, too, which is nice. I use it in true bypass mode.

Barber Tone Press. Compressors are one of those pedals you have to really play with. Sometimes they sound great, other times they make everything sound like crud. I use it mainly with my clean or mostly clean tones, and I sometimes turn it off when I'm going for a moderate amount of overdrive or distortion. I used to have a Keeley, but the Blend capability of the Tone Press allows me to blend my dry and wet signals to get just the right amount of sustain without too much squish.

Z.VEX Box of Rock. This is a great distortion pedal. I can get a nice fat, Marshall-like sound with this gem. The BoR is not for the bluesy overdrive guys, though you can still get a decent light gain sound if you want it.

RAILhead Effects io. This is a pedal I built and fine-tuned to suit my tastes in a distortion box. In a word? Hairy. This is one massive, fat, gain-dripping distortion box — and I love it. =)

Paul Cochrane's Timmy Overdrive. This is probably one of the best overdrive pedals I've ever heard. It really shines with my Strat and Tele, but my Les Paul's fat humbuckers sound great with it, too.

Empress Tremolo. This is the final word in tremolo effects in my opinion. It has plenty of options to cover pretty much all tremolo types, and the bonus part is that it has a tap-tempo. Outside of that, it just sounds great, hands-down.

Maxon FL-9 Flanger. Flange is one of those effects you don't use often, but when you want the sound, there's no way to get it without a flange box. So, while I don't use it that often, I think of it like one of the tools I keep in my toolbox just in case.

Boss DD-20 Giga Delay. I've gone through a lot of delay pedals over the years, but this is the one I settled with over a year ago — and I haven't looked back. It has some bells and whistles I never use, but I really like the analog and tape delay sounds. I never did much with the tap tempo capability until recently, and now I'm totally loving it. Yes, it's big, but I like the twin pedal setup. I mainly use the analog delay with eighth or dotted eight notes, and for longer, slower delay, I use quarters.

Barber Electronics Launch Pad. This is a line buffer and signal booster, and it works like a dream. This blue wonder not only "cleans" the polluted signal created by all those effects boxes and patch cables, it also gives you up to 20dB of boost. I use it last in my chain to send as good a signal through our long cable runs as possible, and I also use it for a slight boost to cook my amp.

RAILhead Effects Switcha-Rooski. This is my custom made channel switcher, and I use it to send to my amp of direct tot he main desk when playing acoustic through my LR Baggs direct box.

LR Baggs Para Acoustic DI. This is the be all, end all of acoustic direct boxes. I use this to send a perfect signal to the main FoH desk, and it makes my Taylor K14C sound like a dream.

In The Future?

I'm always buying and trying new stuff, so there's no telling what I'll bring home one day — but there are a couple of items I'd like to add to my collection.

First off, I'll be buying a Reverend Daredevil HB in the near future. I used to own the 290 version, but I just don't like the sound of 290s (I know, I know), so I want the humbucker version.

I'm also wanting to get my hands on Taylor's new solidbody electric, just to see how they feel. I'm one of those Taylor players that's been asking for a full-blown Taylor electric for ages.

I'm also really liking DiPinto's Bacchus hollowbody, but I doubt I'll get one any time soon.