Discover Top Posts Tagged with #fender showman

Tube with heavy reverb on the clean channel

Fender Showman 112 Combo Amp

Straight out of 1983, the solid state Showman packs 200 watts of pure power, a 12" speaker, 2 selectable channels, a spring reverb tank and a very unique 5-band equalizer (also available on the London Reverb) which will have you discovering new tones for years to come!

Joe

#Fender #Fender Amp #Fender Showman #Fender Showman 112 #Paul Rivera #Rivera Era

Brad from Pissed Jeans talks rigs. Big rigs.

Brad plays guitar for Pissed Jeans from Allentown, Pennsylvania. His tone is killer - he's an awesome player and fully into gear. This is how you do it.

Sasquatch Nation: Firstly, what's your live setup these days? How's it working out for you, anything you'd like to change?

Brad from Pissed Jeans: Right now, I’m using a Peavey Renown into a 2x12” blackface bassman cab and a 1966 Fender Showman into a 70’s 4x12” bassman cab. The 4x12” is one of those diamond shaped ones inside with all the speakers angled. It’s a total monster of a cab and takes up so much room. I used one the first time we were in Europe and fell in love with it. Took me almost 2 years to find one local enough to pick up.

Inside the 70s Fender 4x12.

I think I’ve used the renown since our second show. I bought it in 95 or 96 from Mark Kale, who I worked with at a screen printing shop. He used it in Weston and a few other bands, then I bought it, used it for a few years, sold it to our now bassist Randy, who then sold it to our friend Michael, who then sold it back to me in 2004 when the Jeans started playing more. The loudest amp I’ve ever heard/played. For the first few years it was just plug in and turn it up all the way. Over the past 4 years when I’ve moved more to overdrives and other pedals, I’ve switched to the “clean” channel on it, which has more mid range. One dude made me a pedal with a Super Hard On, Infinity Drive and Church of Tone clones in it. I’m running the SHO into the peavey. The SHO is at about 3:00 and I adjust the gain on the amp for the song or guitar I’m using. The Showman is basically clean all the way up to 10, so whatever pedal is pushing it gives it it’s sound. With that, I mainly use a BYOC OD2 with the trim pots cranked to the point where they don’t just feedback automatically. I also mix it up with the overdrive on this Bardel pedal sometimes.

Not too much to change right now. I was using a 4x12” sunn cab with the peavey for the longest time, but the switch to a 2x12” cab hasn’t had any change in volume or tone. It’s just a lot easy for loading and on the van space. I do switch up the Showman with a sunn 1200s every so often. I’m always switching up guitars, pedals, heads etc to keep it interesting for me.

Here's the Peavey Renown with the Sunn 1200s. Brad is hidden (sorry Brad). Photo from Mechanical Forest Sound.

SN: I noticed a couple of years ago you switched from an SG to a Jazzmaster. What was the reason for the change?

BfPJ: I like to think that I have a pretty distinct tone, but I get bored with stuff, so I want it to be ever evolving, but still be kind of tied back to the original vision of the band. I picked up a jaguar in early 2008, but it needed some adjustments for it to be playing for me. Had to pick up a mustang bridge, buzzstop etc. I do this with all my Jags and Jazzmasters. So it’s May 2008 and we’re playing the last show of a 3 week European tour. It’s Primavera Sound in Spain in front of the biggest crowd we’ve ever played to. We’re three songs in, I set down my SG, or so I thought. Came back to it and the headstock is hanging off the neck. Just a clean break. So that sucks, but it was the last show, so no big deal and I go to grab my telecaster. Pull it out and the jack is hanging out of the body. No clue what happened between soundcheck and then. Three songs in, two broken guitars. Luckily after some throwing around of the SG, I was able to borrow a tele from one of the other bands and finish the set.

When we got home, I picked up another SG shortly after that, but it just had this massive neck and never had the feel of the other one. I ended up just selling it and picking up another jaguar. I was kind of sick of the Gibson g string falling out of tune issue as well. I used a Jaguar with a humbucker in it for a while and actually recorded most of King of Jeans with that. I’ve grown to really like using single coils for their clarity live so the jazzmaster falls into that category. While we’re still pretty loud live, we’ve tried to clean up our sound for the live show.

My main rotation now is the Jazzmaster, Jaguar with humbucker, Epiphone Sheraton [Pissed Jeans with a Sheraton!!!??? - Sasquatch] and a Tele Deluxe. I mainly use the Tele Deluxe for shows we fly to since it has the smallest case, but when we were in Spain last year either me flinging it across the stage or Matt trying to do a windmill with it broke one of the tuning keys. I’ve just been too lazy to fix it. Had to take the Jazzmaster with us to Finland/Poland and I was nervous. Wouldn’t you know it, the gear was lost for a little bit and we didn’t have it for the first show.

SN: What was your latest gear purchase, and why?

BfPJ: I’ve kind of slowed down as of late. My room of gear was starting to get crowded and playing time has been going down. The last thing I bought was a Mexican Strat. I’ve always wanted a Strat, but never wanted to pay for an American one. With most Fenders, it’s not where it’s made, it’s how the guitar feels. I’ve played Squiers that have felt better than some American made Fenders. This one had a hotrail in the bridge and just felt nice. When playing live, the routine is play and put the guitar back in its case. I never really clean them up or anything so they get pretty gross and beat up after a while. This will be a good live guitar. It’s amazing how thick the hotrails are. Amp wise, I picked up a pretty cool Gretsch Super Bass earlier this year. It’s Valco made and pretty interesting. Has two transformers that each power one of the 12”s. Just a volume and tone knob with a selector switch for guitar, low bass and high bass. It’s pretty weird and sounds great cranked, but the speakers are a bit harsh in it.

Back of the Gretch Super Bass - cool.

SN: How does one achieve the best feedback, gearwise?

BfPJ: I guess that depends on the type of feedback you want. With gear, the louder the better. When we started playing, I tried to use feedback as part of the overall sound. It’s so hard to contain when playing loud, so why no embrace it. Most of the screechy feedback I get is from jamming my fist in between the pick ups.

SN: What's your favourite piece? or something you couldn't live without?

BfPJ: The hardest thing to let go of would be my 1963 Blonde Bassman. It’s recovered, but everything else in it is 1967 or prior. The thing just sounds incredible. When it’s cranked on 10 it sounds like a 70’s marshall, but at lower volumes it’s clean and full. I’ll never use it live or anything, but it’s my go to amp for playing at home. I’m a huge ventures mark, especially the live stuff where it’s actually them playing. I get super psyched each time I get to play a Mosrite through the Bassman cause it nails that tone.

SN: Are you a gear nerd?

BfPJ: To an extent, yes. I love gear, I love knowing about what it does and how things play, but I’ve never got into the mechanics of them. I tried to build a pedal once and got so frustrated. I wish I knew more and was self sufficient when I comes to repairs, but I just have no patience.

SN: What are you on the lookout for at the moment, if anything?

BfPJ: The old saying is the small old tube amps sound the biggest for recording. Well, our producer, Alex Newport, had this 68 or 69 drip edge Fender Champ and the thing sounded incredible. Everything on 10 was so fuzzy, but since it had a bass control, it was still really full. So I’d love one of those, but I’d love to compare it to a blackface one. I’ve played a blackface vibro champ, but I don’t remember it being that dirty. Outside of that, pretty much any weird small tube amp. I borrowed a Silvertone 1472 from my friend Joe and that thing was great too.

SN: I take it your personal amp setup is quite crucial to the Pissed Jeans sound? How do you find it when you're in other places playing with backline that potentially sounds different from your idiosyncratic rig?

BfPJ: It definitely is important and we try to use our own gear whenever possible. We rented gear our first trip to Europe and I used a Model T and beefed up JCM800. It was great. I’ve done my best to just not let it bother me when we’re playing with a backline and just trust the soundmen that it sounds good out front. The hardest thing, believe it or not, is not using two amps/heads. Using two amps isn’t really for volume, it’s more for filling out the sound. I a lot of cases, the backline is a silverface twin or a JCM900. Two amps not really know for their bottom end.

SN: Has your setup been influenced by other musicians? How about when you were younger or just starting out, did you try to mimic the gear of bands that you really loved?

BfPJ: It definitely has. Tone is like fashion. When you’re younger, you’re still figuring out what you want and who you are. When I first started playing, I had no money, there was no internet and places like guitar center didn’t exist by me. It was trial and error, with plenty of error on my end. I actually didn’t own too much gear for a long time. When we were doing the Ultimate Warriors, I played bass and sang. I had a bass, but borrowed amps and when we were doing the Gate Crashers, I sang. I was filling in on guitar for another band our drummer played with and I had to borrow a guitar and an amp to play with them. For the longest time I figured to be a good guitar player, you needed to be able to play super fast and perfect. It wasn’t until I realized the what makes a player good is tone and style that I figured out the sound that worked best for me. I’m sloppy, noisy and have short stubby fingers so I just ended up embracing that. I won’t ever be technically sound.

When we started, I just wanted to sound like the first Fang record and I actually saw he had what looked to be a Renown, so that’s when I bought it back and started using it. That record was a huge influence on the way I played moving from a scooped mid sound to mids all the way up sound. I’ve always figured the best guitar sound is one where the amp sounds like it’s on 10 and ready to blow up.

Peavey Renown - these old Peaveys are built like goddam tanks. Pretty good for bass too.

SN: Any advice for other bands when it comes to touring with gear? What has being in a touring band taught you about gear?

BfPJ: What I’ve learned is to not tour with anything you care about. It may be fine mechanically, but cosmetically it’s gonna get beat up. My sunn 1200s has had the frame cracked from Matt dropping it and the 4x12” cab tolex is just destroyed. Guitars broken, pedals covered in beer etc. Another key thing is you don’t know who or what you’ll be dealing with at shows. Some sound guys are cool, but you need to be prepared to get your sound at a low volume and a normal volume.

My all time favourite band photo.

Huge thanks to Brad for going into epic detail about his gear. This was great.

#Peavey renown #fender showman #Gibson SG #Fender Jaguar #Super hard on #infinity drive #church of tone #byoc od2

I opened for Chris Isaak last week. In the foreground is his blackface Twin Reverb; in the background two blackface Showmans for bass. Not pictured: two silverface Twins. Twangy.

#fender #chris isaak #fender twin reverb #fender twin #fender showman #twang