Ollie from Cold Pumas and Tense Men gets complicated
Ollie Fisher plays in the excellent Cold Pumas and the excellent Tense Men. His guitar setups are nuts, so we asked him a bunch of questions about them right here on the internet.
Sasquatch Nation: I remember meeting you at the green door store and you handed me a diagram of your tense men setup - do you still have a scan of that or something? it was epic!
Ollie Fisher: See attached. It should be noted that this was when I stupidly used to use three amps so it's not quite so crazy as this now.
His phone number was on the back.
SN: What's your full live setup with tense men these days?
OF: I'm not sure how detailed you want me to go on this so I'm going to go for Full Detail. [Sasquatch Nation wants full detail always].
Guitar into tuner, then into an ABY pedal which splits the signal into two, with one output providing the bass loop and the other the guitar. The bass side goes through a Visual Sound Rote 66 Overdrive and then into a Line 6 delay pedal (those stupid big green things that everyone has) which I use solely as a sampler, and then into the bass amp. I keep changing the guitar side but it currently goes through an old Nobels fuzz pedal, Daphon analogue delay pedal, a Boss FRV1 '63 fake spring reverb pedal and then into the guitar amp. And I put the vocals through a Boss DD3 delay. And then I put Rich through a drum kit.
SN: What's the motivation behind such a complex setup? Has it evolved or grown/shrunk over time?
OF: There is absolutely no motivation behind this set up, in fact it's pretty much the opposite of what I originally wanted to achieve in this band. It was meant to be a fun, throwaway, simple band but somehow I always have to overcomplicate things. I am a victim of my own ego; the main thing is that I wanted to entirely be in control, which meant looping and therefore two signal paths and thus two amps. Although actually it's all relatively light hearted compared to the ludicrous set ups of many bands.
SN: What's your main difference in setup between Tense Men and Cold Pumas? what's your Cold Pumas rig?
OF: One signal path, one amp, no loop, and a different distortion pedal (Crowther Hot Cake).
SN: Are you a gear nerd?
OF: Compared to some people, no. But I do get excited by pedals so maybe yes a bit, and I've definitely had low points in my life where I've spent hours watching youtube pedal demos. I'm probably more into amps right now, or at least the idea of them. And by that I mean the idea that you can obtain the perfect 'real' sound from them, a purity of tone, MAN. My old housemate had a strange old reel to reel tape recorder which had a valve amp built in and although it was only a few watts, it had one of the most arousing, REAL sounds I've ever heard.
SN: What's your favourite piece of gear, or something you can't live without?
My favourite thing is actually something I could easily live without as I never use it sadly - a Moogerfooger Ring modulator.
I have no idea what these things do but they kick ass.
SN: What was your last acquisition? Why did you get it?
OF: It was a Ken Multi Fuzz pedal. I bought it because I used to have one that broke and in my memory it had an amazing sound. I have since learnt not to trust my memory. But it's got a funny name so I don't care.
SN: What are you on the lookout for at the moment?
OF: I'm currently making a half-assed ebay attempt to get some sort of real spring reverb unit, with a view to using it for recordings one day. Haven't really found anything yet that I can currently afford.
Anyway that's enough, I've bored myself to death.
SN: Thank you for talking to Sasquatch Nation (is what I would have said if this was an actual interview and not hacked together by email)
Cold Pumas have a full LP coming out this year and Tense Men I have no idea what they are doing, just google them hey.