Hey guys,
This will be an informal video today so i hope you enjoy it.
I still have some content left over from the last geezer videos.
These are a few things that wouldn’t sit nicely together but I still wanted to include
And provide a bit more information about his rig.
So this’ll be a quick video today and just go over Geezer’s actual rack units, microphones,
effects and bass follow up.
These two pictures were taken early on in the end tour.
As you can see he actually has two racks.
The one of the left which I’ll break down in a minute. Is his typical Hartke rack.
And the one right was later released as his custom Hand of Doom rig by Ashdown.
I did ask Ashdown and another dude who was working with Sabbath whether he A/B’d the
rigs or switched for certain songs.
But It wasn’t clear and no one gave me a clear answer
From my interpretation.
This was the beginning of the tour so he kept his regular hartke rig
and possibly switched in the Ashdown at certains points until he was comfortable with it.
And Then eventually stopped using hartke altogether.
These pictures were from february 2016 and Ashdown made their press release in March
of the same year
so it was most likely a trial period.
On to the racks.
Now this is again my interpretation from what I understand of geezers setup so take it with
a grain of salt.
For the Hartke rig he had
Whirlwind rack mounted multi switcher
I understand he uses basses in both C and C# tuning so would be able to switch between
these lines when needed.
Below that is his wireless receivers And He has two Shure ULX-D4Q’s supporting
8 inputs.
In this stage picture we see at least 6 basses with wireless packs.
Moving on, there’s the Peterson strobe tuner. Nothing fancy here, just a nice big tuner
to see at at a distance.
In this picture you can see the tunings listed at either side of the unit. C and C#
Below this is a pedal tray
Following the input chain - right to left.
Is a Palmer PDI-03 JB processor.
It’s a fancy DI that’s supposed to simulate an amplifier and relieve microphone placement
issues.
As a DI, it’s it’s most likely used to colour the sound going to the front out of
house or outbound recording.
In the middle Is what appears to be a Boss line selector
you can see the knob arrangement mirrors the LS2 so this is a pretty safe bet.
It’s a compact line selection pedal for connecting and switching between multiple
amplifiers and effects devices so not too dissimilar to the whirlwind.
And lastly on the left, - it’s a little unclear
and I can only tell this based on the body profile. This pedal looks like an MXR line
boost.
The MXR noise clamp in comparison does look similar.
It’s black and has one knob.
But the The defining factor of of this pedal is the font across the bottom.
If you look close enough. The pedal name is of a similar size to the line driver.
So i’ll leave it to you, a line driver or a noise clamp. But my bets on the line driver.
Then lastly, the four hartke kilos which were mentioned in part 2. And they go on to power
four 4x12s and four 2x15s
Moving onto the second rack. And as I said i’m not sure how it works in conjunction
with the Hartke rig.
But I do know this Ashdown rig was more about running his speakers at full range.
This rig is a bit lighter,
At the top of the rack is a Millennia Media SST-1 direct box
Which is a hybrid solid state microphone preamp
or can be used as a vacuum tube preamp , with solid state gain amplifiers,
Now That’s a of amplification and From what I can tell this unit is critically
acclaimed in studios to warm up a signal and to shape it before hitting the amplifiers.
That brings us to the second set of preamplifiers..
The custom made Geezer preamp made by Ashdown -
not to be confused with their new head of doom.
He has two of these in his rack here one driving the 12 inch speakers and the second for the
15s
Which we covered in part 2 so just a quick recap
This output goes into the ashdown APM which is a stereo amplifier and powers the speakers
at full range
Now electronics isn’t my strong suit so the question I put to ashdown was kindly humoured
to say the least.
I asked Ashdown why you couldn’t daisy chain these amplifiers together. Why would you need
a whole new unit?
They said that problems emerge when you drive 4 stereo amplifiers together at the same time
to power 16 cabs.
So the GZR preamp has what they described as “extra boosted balanced outputs” and
was provided to be able to couple the amplifiers together without earth loops -
As for microphones, in this picture, still from February 2016
He was using an Audio Technica 3035 on the 12 inch cabs.
Then again, strangely one month later in an article from Front of House online.
Their engineer Greg Price stated he was now using an Electrovoice ND38.
For the 15 inch cabs he seems to have used a sE Electronic Voodoo consistently from the
“13" right up til "The End"
and then this strange contraption behind the Voodoo mic is an sE reflection filter
The reflection filter is a compact and portable acoustic absorber.
Designed primarily to reduce the room absence picked up by the microphone
It may also assist in isolating the microphone from other sounds on stage.
So there you go that is Geezer racks and hopefully answers all your questions in terms of backline.
The only other things I wanted to address was the disappointment in some basses being
left out of part 1
So I’m gonna mention them now and do you a solid.
During the recording of Heaven and Hell Geezer stated he wasn’t happy with his bass tone
and at a recommendation, he met with BC Rich owner Bernie Rico.
He then used a BC Rich eagle during the 80's And following this there was a second BC rich
notably seen at live aid in 1985 which was named the Ironbird.
During The Last Supper dvd which was shot during 1999’s reunion tours. Geezer played
Vigier basses. The apre,
the excess and the passion 5 string with Heaven and Hell.
There was also some gigs where he used a white Spector NS2 but not too many before switching
to lakland in the 2000s.
Then finally, I saw this comment recently and it’s been bugigng me “what about the
phaser Geezer used?” Geezer isn’t known for regular use of effects so I had to be
sure and find out for myself.
I found two articles both buried deep in the web archive which mention geezer using a custom
yamaha effects board and
a second tycobrahe pedal which was their flanger model
. So there you go John Wright props to you sir I hope that answers your question.
Alright, there you go. That’s everything i know about Geezer Butler.
I hope you enjoyed his series . I’m sure there are a few things I’ve missed out but
I’m moving on my with life and You should too ;)
I still owe you guys an update video which is coming don’t you worry and with that
i’ll see you next time.