Todd's Music Page Page created some time in 1996, for reasons never fully explained. Triple Threat My current band where I play bass and drums. Detailed Band Histories. A "Resume" of sorts that names names and lists songs. Influences. Answers to the essential question. Troubled Player Theory A controversial piece. Hearing protection, stage volume my treatise/tips Creative Nomad Jukebox Recording Page Mic and pre-amp selection tips. Up to Todd's main page. Warning: it's your free time!

Instruments & Gearhead Fodder

1. Drums/Percussion (since 1982)

   I have the faintest recollection of my first drum set--maybe Mickey Mouse? It was something of an orange color, with a bass drum, and two toms on it and a terrible little cymbal, I think. Some years later after I'd either broken the MM drums, or lost interest in them cus they didn't look like anything on MTV...I recall beating my brother's inner sleeves of his albums with chop sticks to Blondie's Parallel Lines (it made a sort of snare sound) and him getting upset when I ripped one. I wanted to drum. Mom was fine with that so long as I took some lessons first to see if I was truly interested. Art Gore was my first drum teacher in Cincinnati. Very nice, calm, African American jazz guy humbly teaching out of a tiny little music store in North Gate Mall-- using nothing but a kit arranged of Remo practice pads. I learned my rudiments I'll tell ya.
   
   In 1983, my birthday was blissful--a 5-piece 1983 Slingerland Spirit 1000 kit (photo below) appeared that I still play today. My mother should be canonized for purchasing drums for a child. I soon switched to a music store Stix and Stuff where they taught on actual drum sets. Doug Lemke was my teacher there, and he got me all the way to 4-way independence for which I'm very grateful! And thanks Ma, for investing in the lessons!
   
   My lil drums set has grown a little in hardware since... Cymbals from left to right are Zildjian (15" quick beat hats, 10" splash, 18" medium crash, 16" thin crash, 12" thin crash, 21" rock ride) and a Wuhan china-type on a shock mount. I use DW 5000 bass pedals.
   
   I also use a Roland SPD-11 electronic percussion (looks a lot the SPD-20, only older) module with TD-7 and FD-7 triggers for small acoustic gigs or as an addendum to my acoustic kit. My 16" thin is probably my favorite cymbal, and I do love the fast response of the quick beat high hats, although lately, I've been wishing they were the smaller 14" size. I also have an A. Zildjian 18" rock crash, but it's on the bench recently--it's just too darn heavy for what I do anymore. Age.
   
   In 1999, I added a 14x5 Pearl maple Free-Floater snare drum. I really like this drum. It's got a great warmth, plenty of crack, wonderful sensitivity, and the maple shell looks rather dashing with the maple hoops on the venerable old black Slingerland kick.
   
   For heads, I was grateful to discover Aquarian double-thin heads for my toms and the Superkick-I bass drum head. After 18 years, I'd finally have the kick drum sound I've been looking for, and my toms finally sound decent. I also recently purchased a Roc-n-Soc nitro series throne (boing boing boing). How did I sit on those awful drum stools for so long?!

2. Bass Guitar (since 1989)

   I got into bass as an extension of my drumming interest, and to fill a perennial need for bassists--as kids we could never find one! Compared to drums, there are fewer pieces to carry, and standing up, you get to move around and stuff! Throw in a wireless unit, and suddenly you can harass audience members during shows.
   
   I play Peavey basses exclusively. My main axe as of 2004 is my 5 string Peavey Fury V, which replaced my "let's see if I like 5 string" bass, a 5-string Peavey Dyna-Bass which I've since sold on to a friend. The Peavey Cirrus 4 Bubinga is pictured to the right--which is my bass of choice for anything in keys of E or above, and I still own my very first bass, the Peavey Foundation S Active bass (below a bit, with horrible shirt). I played my Foundation for 13 years before finding something that moved me to an upgrade (despite having played lots of stuff more expensive)...and how bout dem apples, it was a Peavey too! The Cirrus is super solid, plays like butter is a 35" long scale and has smooth beautiful action. The Foundation is a 34" scale, a bit lighter, and plays with higher action and .105 gauge strings--I like it for slap/funk due to the slightly higher action. The Foundastion S Active is also a total sleeper bass--always seems to pleasantly surprise folks who pick it and expect a piece of driftwood. I'm a big fan of products that perform better than people might think, and that's part of the reason I play Peavey basses exclusively. It's also handy for picking up bargains on eBay. :-) Yes, I still own 2 functional Sony Betamax decks.
   
   Other bass goodies I own include the wonderful Sennheiser EW172 G2 wireless unit. It's the result of a long search for a wireless that can handle the frequency and dynamic range of bass guitar without compressing the hell out of it, and doesn't modify the tone one iota. It'll cost ya over 4 bills, but if wireless is where you want to be, this thing is fashizzle. I also own an MXR Bass D.I. preamp/stomp box for dirty tone (I like it because it has a blend function and doesn't squash the heck out of the low end like most distortion units), but I find myself not really using it much since I like the natural tone of my Fury through the GK and Eden rig so much. Maybe if we did harder rock stuff I'd have more use for it.
   
   For amplification, after an exhaustive search in 2001 that abused the return policies of both Sam Ash and Guitar Center, I happily brought home a Gallien-Kruger 1001RB bass amplifier. 18lbs, 2 rack spaces, 540W into 4ohms, with punch and warmth galore! As an interesting side light to this purchase, click here to see how I guilted GK into addressing a quality control/design modification issue on this amp and click here for pictures of what happened when a capacitor in it exploded 13 months into my owning it (GK made good on the warranty though)
   
   For speaker cabinets, I am thrilled with my Eden D210XLT on top of a Peavey 115BX BW. The combination of the fat 15" and the punch 10's suits blues and rock work perfectly and the 3-piece set up lets me mix and match to scale up and down to any venue. I've upgraded a few times from humbler beginnings of the Peavey TNT130 which now is relegated to practice duty. I owned a Fender BXR300C head for a brief time while I saved my pennies for the GK.
   
   The rig you see at the left (and boy that shirt was a mistake) was an in-between phase. The Peavey cab was a 4ohm cabinet while the Eden was 8ohms..and the Fender didn't like to drive 2.6ohms. Hence that monstrous stereo CS-400 on top. To address this problem, a Black Widow 1502DT-8RB replacement basket went into the 115BX BW and magically transformed it to a well behaved 8ohm enclosure. The CS-400 was sold on the cheap to a suburban Chicago church...which makes my back much happier.

3. Guitar (since 1986, but traded it in on the bass in 1989)

   When my maternal grandmother died, my mother split the modest inheritance among my siblings for educational savings. We were allowed to buy one item by which to remember her--I picked up a $250 used cherry sunburst Odessa Les Paul copy. It was cheap, but had great action and stayed in tune...which was a far cry better than my grade school friends' Hondo and Fender Squier guitars! My first amp was hilarious--it was given to me from the trash of my brother in law. It was a 1x8" combo amp made by some no-name manufacturer. It's original speaker was gone--nowhere to be found. The amplifier consisted of a transformer about the size of an egg, and a small 3" square circuit board. Armed with some knowledge I'd been picking up from my brother's Stereo Review magazine subscription, I had no fewer than 6 speakers hanging off this amplifier in a towering array in my room. A pair of little old Radio Shack bookshelves, some bigger floorstanding radio shack home speakers, some car speakers salvaged from a neighbor--you name it. I bought a Ross distortion pedal my brother in law was ditching to upgrade to Boss, and off I went--I had gain enough to drive and get that distorted rock and roll tone at some sort of volume. 6 months of guitar lessons with an interesting character at Buddy Rogers music, and I was a Barre chord maniac with knowledge of various modes but no idea how to put them into a solo, or any clue of chord inversions and voicings.
   
   I quit lessons out of laziness and lack of motivation. One day my homebrew mega stack amplifier died a quiet death under the load of all those speakers. I dropped out of the 2nd story window to see the case satisfyingly split as it hit the stone wall below. Then I found an amp I could use in a band. My brother in law sold me his Fender Pro Reverb that had some failing speakers in it which I retrofitted with gargantuan 12" ElectroVoice SRO speakers. Each driver had a 19 pound magnetic structure with cooling fins. It made for a very heavy amp. With the new speakers in it, my brother in law fell in love with again, and he did an even trade with his new Peavey Stereo Chorus 212. He was happy, I was very happy.
   
   A year later, I still was at best a mediocre rhythm guitarist, every band I was in was always looking for a bassist, and I had recently seen a really great bassist that got me excited about the instrument I associated entirely with Geddy Lee of rush. The Odessa and Peavey were traded in for the Foundation S Active and the TNT 130 in 1989. My grandmother's legacy is now my ability to play bass. Thanks grammy! More recently, in 2003 I met a lovely woman who happened to own an a cheap Korean-made Carlos brand acoustic/electric guitar and I'm once again among the guitar ownin' populace. I'm still just a strummer though--no usable lead or fingerpicking chops in sight.

4. Voice (and that's a distant 4th).

   Despite what I'm told is a good speaking voice, the gods of pitch were not necessarily kind to me. Nor were the gods of harmony. Give me something in a baritone range and I may do okay for ya, but fully expect to jump up and double your harmonies from time to time. In 2006 though, I launched into voice lessons in a mission to rectify this ear training problem!