THEM TONES
William and Jerry’s 2018 rig highlights
FRAMUS TALISMAN
William: “Ever since I started with Framus, I would go to NAMM every year, Marcus Spangler who is the head of design, would always say, ‘You should design something,’ and I thought, ‘Well, as soon as I have something that’s worth showing you then I will.’ Finally, last year I did. The thing that I was hoping to achieve is I was trying to get something that could take the place of the other key classic instrument that I’d been using for a number of years; the good old sunburst original spec Gibson Les Pauls. And I needed something that had the sonic girth of that but had a sleeker design. And less weight, a bit more streamlined but, hopefully, still giving you that classic timeless feeling.”
G&L RAMPAGE BLUE DRESS SIGNATURE
Jerry: “The G&L was designed to have some Les Paul qualities with the ebony neck and a darker [tonality]. Some of those qualities in a Strat-feeling guitar.”
1987 GIBSON LES PAUL CUSTOM
Jerry: “I have four Les Pauls and they’re all the same year. One is the white one with the burns on, one is black, one is transparent blue and this one is transparent red. I got all four in the same year. I’ve been using Motor City [bridge] pickups for a while but there’s different stuff in [each].”
FRIEDMAN DOUBLE J
Jerry: “Dave Friedman and I have been working together for years. He’s built pretty much every rig I’ve ever had. At one point he said, ‘I’m going to start making some amps, I’d like to make something for you.’ So we came up with the JJ and we didn’t do any
knock-off [production] versions of it; it’s a more expensive amp but it’s my amp, it’s not a foreignmade, cheap version. When you’re buying my amp or my pedal, it’s the actual gear I use. But we used a ton of that on the record.”
METROPOLIS DVL-1
William: “George Metropolis is one of the great builders alive today. He is a foremost authority on all types of amps but particularly when Marshall amplifiers were making great leaps forward every couple of years. That period of 1965 until 1969 when Marshall was just killing it. It’s an amp that anyone can take and do what they want, I want the most versatile Marshall-style amplifier without having a million knobs on it. I wanted the best balance of maximum versatility with minimum circuitry. Things that compromise your tone and degrade your signal. I needed signal purity with versatility and I think we got it. The ’68 mode is from George. I think he has one of the 12000 series Marshalls it was making in ’68 that Van Halen used for the first six albums. So that’s the original inspiration of the ’68 mode. The ’65 mode with the mid boost was my idea. Take [‘66 mode] one step to the left and have something that’s more like a Bassman. Because that’s what Marshall was first trying to copy. If we can get that and edge the voicing so it’s closer to Vox, have a combo and, of course, what you end up with is something that’s more like a modded JTM45. Mod mode is there to hang with what bands like Alice are doing – more modern harder rock and even metal bands. I just changed the voicing of that so I picked a different low-end capacitor.”