Well, it’s got to be about 9am and Daddyo and I are chillin’ by the pool and it’s pretty cold outside. We’re about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Canadian border and in about 2 hours we’ll drive 130 miles to Seattle and check in our hotel. There are some crazy people swimming in a non-heated pool.

I was just think about how much fun we all had in Portland…and I knew we would. The show at the Roseland theatre featured some super long guitar solos as well. Now, mind you, except for Amsterdam (back in May), I haven’t really “gotten my groove on” in that way. But this tour I’m really kinda letting it go. Hope I don’t bore anybody. I mean, I personally don’t like really long guitar solos. But my pedalboard is so kick ass (thanks to JUNIOR at TRUETONE MUSIC in Santa Monica), I HAVE to turned it up and see what happens. Speaking of which, I got an e-mail from Leonard in Portland, asking me what’s exactly on my pedalboard. At first I thought, “why tell him”. But hey, this stuff is fun and i think the stuff I have get’s good sounds so I am gonna endorse this stuff and tell you hat’s what, as far as my sound goes. ok:

I mainly play a Gibson 335 (off-white) with PAF (Patent Applied For) pickups. It’s a ’79, I believe, with all original stuff on it. Jackson Browne sold it to me for an unthinkable low price about 3 years ago. My back up Guitar is a ’68 Gibson SG that Arthur gave me as a birthday gift 8 years ago.

So, from the guitar, I plug straight into my FULLTONE Clyde Wah-Wah pedal. This is the best pedal for your money. You can get that Henrix sound or even that cool “disc 70’s” studio 54 sound. From there,the sound goes to the BOSS Chromatic Tuner…simply the best tuner on the market for live shows. From there, it goes thru the BLACK BOX, which is a loud, nasty distortion pedal. If I’m loud, it’s probably on. From there it goes to the HOT CAKE, which is my “subtle” saturation pedal that I use for “kind” distorted sounds, like the chords to “Singing Cowboy” or on “House is not a motel.”

Then it goes to the SUPER HARD-ON. This is one of my favortie pedals in that it boosts the signal w/o adding any gain to it and it keeps it CLEAR. It’s so nice, you could keep it on all the time and it would make your amp sound better no matter what kind of music you play. From there it goes to the GUYATONE tremolo pedal, which is the sound I use for “7 & 7 is” and a couple of othe things (for slower tremolo, I use the amp’s pedal set to a slower speed, like on “You Set The Scene.) From there, it goes to my MXR phase 90. This is the classic and no matter how hard any company tries, they’ll NEVER EVER beat the phase 90. No wonder Eddie Van halen used it all over those first 4 VH records… From that pedal, it goes to FS-4D, which is a footswitch I use to control the rate/speed of the delay pedal, depending on what song and what temple I want. Which brings us to my last pedal, which is BOSS’s latest digital delay (forget the model…sorry), which you can use to make all kinds of cool sounds. So, just play with buttons…at some point I may pull out the “Backwards guitar” sound!

And all this goes into my early 70’s
model FENDER TWIN REVERB 100 watt amp. So, Leonard, there you have it. And remember, you asked for it! I hope I didn’t bore the rest of you too much…

later on…part 2 of “Day 6”

Mike Randle