Hi this is Eric Johnson here on Music Radar and we're out here on the Jimi Hendrix Experience
Tour for 2010. We're at Atlantic City actually, we've been having a great time been out for
a 3 week tour we've got a few more dates to do and I just wanted to show you the scene,
what we're doing here, what I'm doing. I'm just using one of my EJ strats that's
one of the main ones I've been using and it's just stock, a stock guitar of course it doesn't
have a back tremolo plate on it, that way I can just go back there and bang on the springs,
talk to them and stuff but it's easier to change strings and actually I think it sounds
better without that thing on believe it or not, I don't know what that's about. Might
be more that neurotic stuff I'm known for, at least I don't stuff banana peels inside
it or anything. This is one of the main ones, I'm actually just using a couple of guitars on
this tour, I'm using this, I don't know, it's like 3 or 4 years old signature strat and
one of the other ones I'm using down here it's another, it's one of the rosewood model
ones, kind of the same deal. Rosewood model but I put a super vee tremolo on it because
it's a locking tremolo where you don't have to change the stock guitar, there's no need
to dig it out or change the screw holes and it stays in tune real well and I think the tone of it is pretty good.
I had to use some kind of locking tremolo, I'm doing the songs I'm doing are House Burning
Down by Jimi and Burning of the Midnight Lamp as well as Drifting and Are You Experienced?
I use this other one, the stock one, but these it's kind of necessary to have some kind of
tremolo that would stay in tune, I like the super vee it's pretty cool. I guess it's really
between these 2 playing anywhere between 3 and 5 songs a night, sometimes we do this
thing with Susan Tedeschi where I come out and do One Rainy Wish which is a lot of fun.
The whole tour's been a lot of fun. Hope you get to catch some of it.
So anyhow I'm just going to walk you through some of my pedal board stuff, which I'm using now, I've changed
a few things but not a lot. This is my main set up there's only very little that's changing
for the Hendrix tour, but it's basically like usual where I've managed to put all the
pedals on one board and then I've gone back to having a rack behind my amps that has
a couple of more things. This really just a master AB switch which either gives me a
lead tone or a rhythm tone and the one side of the switch that goes to lead goes to my Cry
Baby wah wah and then that goes back behind the amps which goes to a Maestro Echoplex
and a BK Butler Tube Driver, the other side is a rhythm and the rhythm goes to a second AB
which gives me 2 choices of types of rhythm either a clean rhythm or a dirty rhythm the
clean rhythm goes straight to the loop for the Memory Man which is only on occasionally,
I'm not using it a whole lot on this tour. It's just a real nice long vibrato coasrey
echo but if that loop isn't on, it just bypasses it and goes straight to the DD2 digital delay
which then goes into the TC stereo course and that goes back to a pair of twin revurbs.
The other side of the rhythm goes to a dirtier rhythm which the first stop on that is to
go to another loop which the tube screamer is on a loop and I don't use it all the time,
so essentially it's going without going there but I can turn it on if I want and sometimes that
loop will switch out with the Octavia for a song like One Rainy Wish or something by
Jimi. Other than that it just goes straight to the FuzzFace and then it goes to the Hardlease
Toadworks barracuda flanger and that goes behind the amp to an MXR digital delay into
the dirty rhythm amp. That's pretty much it so all this stuff on the pedal board comes
back to my amp set up which is basically a 3 amp situation. I use 4 amps but there's
3 different sounds being that the clean tone is a stereo sound and the other 2 are mono.
So for my lead tone I use a 100 watt or a 50 watt head tonight, probably using a 100
watt, just a 69 metal panel Marshall turned on 10 of course because there is no other
volume! Then I white chord that and that goes into this bottom cabinet here that's just
an old Marshall cabinet that I have wired at 8 ohms because I kind of like 8 ohms for
lead. That's pretty much the lead tone, the other sounds are the clean tones which is a couple
of twin revurbs in a dual showman reverb head cases and there's 4 lancings JBLs in this bottom
cabinet and 1 twin does 2 JBLs, the other twin does the other 2 JBLs and then if I close
mic by the time it hits a PA it get's pretty stereo, it doesn't stound as stereo on stage
because the speakers are so close together but it kind of works out there. So for my dirty rhythm tone i have this full tone
Whip made by Bill Webb guitar technician. It's 100 watt head, real clean Fender-y Marshall-y
clean, a lot of big transformer early Hendrix tone and that's what feeds the FuzzFace goes
into it and this MXR delay is also what goes into that.
So here's an example of a lead tone that I use the Marshall, the '69 Marshall's for, this is with a tube driver.
[music]
And then I could flip that over to get the other 2 rhythm sounds, which one of them is the lead tone.
That's the twin reverse.
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Alright we'll switch it over to the dirty rhythm sound which is sort of like...
[music]
I can turn the Fuzz Face on now.
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That's pretty much, oh I can put the flanger on too.
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That's pretty much it.