It's All Geek To Me

Here's a post for the Gear Geeks that read this blog. My new gig filling in for Jerry Sabatino in his Aerosmith bass tech slot is going fine so far. I've done two shows to date, one in Montreal and the second in Minneapolis. I took a few shots of the stage rigs.

The bass rig as played through by Tom Hamilton (and his stand-in for this tour, David Hull) is pretty straight ahead. All Ampeg heads split three ways into a "dry" cab, a "wet" cab and the stage cabs. The dry and wet cabs are kept in iso boxes off stage. The stage cabs are a pair of Hartke cabs in triplicate. The spare stacks are for aesthetic and insurance purposes.


Bass Stacks

The super-toneful Brad Whitford has a great rig that his tech Greg Howard has compiled. He is presently using a Blockhead prototype amp (on the left) into a pair of Bogner 4x12 cabinets. For smaller venues, he uses a Divided by Thirteen head (orange head on the right).


Whitford Stacks

Brad and Greg are pedal fans and he has a nice assortment of mainstays and a few revolving spots. Greg has a "Pedal of the Week" placard that gets placed next to the current favorite.



Whitford Pedalboard


The set list draws from early classics and later smashes. You really can't go wrong with a 30+ year career to draw from.


Minneapolis Setlist

Russ Irwin is the keyboardist/vocalist who adds a bit of texture to the guitar-heavy attack. Here's a shot of his rig, with Steven's percussion toys and harmonica amp in the foreground.


Keys/Percussion Rig

Joe Perry has the most complex rig on the stage. Guitar Tech Jim Survis has plenty on his plate every day, keeping the vintage amps up and running.


Perry Amp Stacks

Lots of radical sound makers on Joe's board versus Brad's more traditional setup.


Perry Pedalboard

More heads behind the stacks.


Perry Amps

The rack houses the wireless and various switching units and effects.


Perry Rack

A theremin adds to the Zeppelin/Beach Boys vibe of weird sounds. Perry runs it into an octave divider and a delay pedal.


Theremin

Joey Kramer's custom hardware is white powder coated. He sounds great, as always.


Kramer Kit

I'm having a great time out here so far. The band is playing and sounding great, the crew and production staff is on top of things and they have been very helpful in getting me up to speed with the gig. Tomorrow night we play in Edmonton, we flew in here this afternoon. We travel to Calgary after that, then on to Vancouver, Reno and Sacramento.