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LegendaryTones Staff Gear – Part 2 Jon Dunn What am I playing? As a writer, I have always been able to interview other people and prepare an article or story on them without much trouble. I never did like writing about myself, however. The reporter shouldn’t be part of the story. But when David asked me to prepare something about what I play these days, that became as interesting angle to write from, as I love to talk about guitars and amps, especially my own. In a personality profile, you like to introduce the subject with a little background so that the following information has a better context. That said, I’ll start my story with how I got interested in the guitar in the first place. I started playing the guitar after hearing Cream and Pink Floyd tunes wafting out of my older sister’s room. After listening to those records for a while, I decided that I had to learn how to play guitar. That was during the summer of 1978 and by the fall, I was taking lessons at the local music shop. I started out on her battered acoustic and spent a summer mowing lawns to finally get a sunburst Strat-style copy by a company called Lori. I also happened upon an old Magnatone amp at a garage sale soon afterwards and paid the $20 to take my prize home in a wheelbarrow. Luckily, the guy had thrown in some picks, cables and red Fuzz Face pedal (more on that later), so at least I could inflict my studies on the rest of my family. The lessons lasted until one day the next summer, when I found the store had closed for good. I sat in the car thinking, “now what?” I could stop playing, look for another teacher or just figure it out on my own. I chose the latter and joined a band right soon after. Sometimes, I now regret not finding another teacher (especially later on as I wanted to expand my style), but I never regret my decision to keep playing. The band taught me a lot and people jammed all the time at school. When I got old enough to drink, I hit clubs with good bands, watched carefully and asked lots of questions. Nowadays, I go out far less, but I still ask lots of questions whenever I see a good band. It’s kind of come full circle as I play in a band that does many of the old songs I used to go to hear. Two years later, I had a found a real Strat at a local electronics store and convinced them to let me make payments on it. I visited my new love every weekend, grinding out the $10 and $20 payments until I could finally take her home. It was a 1974 black Strat with a maple fretboard that looked just like David Gilmour’s, and that thrilled me. That guitar was my main one for many years and it has the scars to prove it. Not long after getting that one, I put together another Strat-style, and it being the height of the Van Halen-era, I stuck a Dimarzio PAF in there for good measure. Those two were my players for the next few years, especially at college. In 1990, I ordered one of the new (then) Japanese Classic Reissues Strats in the 60s style, Sonic Blue with a rosewood fretboard. The build and finish quality on this one were particularly great and after upgrading the electronics, it has been my number one player around the house. It has only gotten better and better with age, and remains a favorite to other players who visit my home. Playing in the Band I put another Strat-style together in 1995 and this has become my main player for the classic rock cover band I currently play in. A sunburst with a rosewood fingerboard, I am running a Dimarzio humbucker and two single-coil pickups in there. This one is a great player and has worn in to be very comfortable. It offsets well with the Paul Reed Smith/Mesa Boogie setup our singer plays, as I am able to get the regular Strat sounds and have a humbucker for anything that needs a little hair on it. My second guitar in the band is a 1999 Gibson SG Standard that has a Seth Lover PAF in the bridge and a Duncan 59N at the neck. I love this one; it plays very fast and captures the Gibson sound without the weight of a Les Paul. Recently, I scored an ESP Strat-style and I am getting it ready to be a third backup guitar for the band. Between these three, I can cover most of the bases for what we play. For amplification, I am using a 1997 Marshall DSL100 top and a matching Marshall JCM 900 1960B cab with the 75-watt Celestions. This is definitely overkill for a band that plays small clubs and bars, but the DSL has a nice clean channel and I can get a good sound at club-friendly levels. It’s also great in situations where we play outside occasionally, or I am not miked up through the PA. I plan to swap out the 75-watt speakers for Greenback reissues and 30-watt Celestions as soon as I can, as the 75s can be a bit overbearing. In a perfect world, I would split the cab and run a clean amp through one side and the DSL through the other. As soon as I find an old Fender Bassman or Bandmaster head, I will follow through on that idea. People tend to give the DSLs a bad shake, but I bought this one brand new off the floor at Sam Ash when they came out in 1997, and it has thousands of hours on it, from gigs and band practices. I have never had a problem and I think it sounds great in a variety of situations. Is it a ’67 Plexi? No it is not, but I get a lot more use out of the DSL than I would the Plexi. I’d like to have both, though. I think of it as my work amp. For effects, I use a Boss Tuner pedal, LS-2 Line Selector (to loop some of the pedals) a Visual Sounds H2O chorus/delay, an Ibanez AD9 delay, MXR Micro Amp and Phase 90 (both reissues), and a Cry Baby wah wah pedal. These are all connected with red George L’s cables, then velcroed to an SKB pedalboard and powered with a One Spot power supply. I run it all into the front end of the DSL, not the effects loop. It is a quiet and reliable setup. We play a lot of 70s stuff, so the phaser and chorus come into play pretty often. The Micro Amp helps the Strat stand out during clean solos and the wah wah is just for a couple of tunes, so it sits in a loop with the phaser and a delay. The singer uses only a chorus pedal, so again, our sounds balance out nicely this way. Around the House At home, my setup is a lot less focused. I have a ton of effects, a good selection of heads and cabs and a few guitars to choose from, so there is less emphasis on one particular rig. For just playing upstairs on the couch, it’s the Sonic Blue Strat I mentioned above, usually unplugged. For those times when I need only a little volume, I plug into a ’74 Fender Vibro Champ, with a couple of pedals for fun. These are great little amps to experiment with, as well. You can swap tubes all day long to hear the differences and it gets raunchy when you dime it. For general practicing along with CDs, I use a ’74 50-watt Marshall (with PPIMV mod) into a ’72 A cab loaded with original greenbacks. Currently, I am really running some Sylvania 6CA7s in there, because that amp has no real headroom and the Sylvanias give it a little bit, with no loss of attitude. Preamp tubes are one of my favorite things to experiment with, so they always change. But I basically go with “old glass in the old amps” idea. It is a “classic Marshall sound” head, just plug in and turn it up. I am fortunate in that I have a full basement with a finished practice room where volume is not an issue. My band used to practice here, so I have a modest PA set up and I crank the CDs through that. I am sure my neighbors know the solo to “Limelight” almost as well as I do, by now. When I want to jam with a drummer or simply cause more ear damage, I can fire up the ’71 Super Lead on a ’72 B cab loaded with Rola-Celestion g12h 30s. This is a maniacal amp, tons of gain, yet backs down to “The Wind Cries Mary” tone with a roll of the guitar volume knob. It is unbelievably loud and full, you actually feel this thing on 4. It has Mullard preamp tubes and the New Sensor “Mullard” EL34s, which I am digging. It also has the PPIMV mod and with good reason. I’d like a Hotplate someday for both of these animals. I have two other Marshall heads, a ’78 jmp2204 and a ’81 jmp2204, both 50-watters, but they don’t see as much action as the other two older heads. The DSL and its cab stay at the rehearsal space for the cover band, along with the pedalboard, and only because the rehearsal space is a good friend’s secure garage. I call it my “satellite rig.” For clean sounds, I use an old Carvin X-60B head from the early 80s. I bought it new and it was my main amp for years until I got the ’78 50-watter. This amp has a decent clean sound and a not-so-hot dirty channel. However, it makes a great test amp, since I can tell instantly when a pedal makes it sound better! That goes into an open-back 2x12 or another Marshall cab loaded with the reissue greenback speakers. I’ll play the SG, a very cool Tokai Korina V or once in a while I will break out a lovely 1980 Gibson Les Paul Custom for specific jams. I also used a 1985 Ibanez AH10 Allan Holdsworth signature model for many years in a metal band, so that sees some action, too. Another candy-apple-red 90s Japanese Strat rounds out the stable. Older effect pedals are another one of my weaknesses, so I’ve collected a bunch of old MXR, Boss, Ibanez and other pedals to goof around with. I love time-delay effects in particular, so the emphasis is on choruses, flangers and delays. If you keep your eyes open and keep making the rounds of the music stores and pawnshops, you can score some big-time deals. For example, I recently picked up a nearly mint 1975 script logo MXR Phase 90 from a Sam Ash for $40! No one realized what it was and priced it like a used reissue. I then picked up a Micro Chorus outside the store from a guy who had tried to trade it in and again, the store didn’t recognize it, either, and had offered him only $10. So I doubled their offer in cash and the dude happily took the deal. Everyone was happy and the pedal found a good home. I’ve paid more for other pedals, but they all balanced each other out in the end to where there wasn’t that much paid for a lot of good stuff. My best deal was the red Fuzz Face, which turned out to be a late ’68 with the BC108 transistors. I scored it and the Magnatone amp for the princely sum of $20 in late 1978. Hey, 20 bucks was a LOT of money back then! My delay search reached a peak with the purchase of an old Echoplex EP3 last year, which I love dearly. Nothing sounds quite like one, since the tape has a different headroom than a chip and the preamp of the unit adds a certain something to the overall tone. Plus there is a tiny bit of chorusing going on, due to the inevitable wobble of the tape. And the tape repeat’s decay is unlike any other delay unit, they fade just perfectly. If you get one sounding right, you need nothing else with a Strat and good amp. However, they are very fussy and require someone who really knows how to work on one to keep it working right. So I bought another one for backup and have begun hoarding the tape cartridges. Mine are strictly for at-home use, too. So, between all of these amps, guitars, effects and peripheral gear, I am pretty well set. However, I will always be looking for other stuff to complement what I have, though. I haven’t scratched the surface of Fender amps, for example. I can see that a Deluxe Reverb is in my near future. And more delays, another Echoplex, another Les Paul, speakers and more cabs, etc…. The search for tone and toys just never ends and that’s a big part of the fun.