Me Likey This #3

My guitar sound and style of playing have evolved over a long period of time. I have used many different sonic tools to make music since I first started playing.

The earliest sounds I made were on a Fender Music Master that was given to me by my dad at age 6. I plugged it into one of his spare Pignose amps.

As I improved I got a Fender Stratocaster and a Kramer Flying V that can be seen on the cover sleeve of "My Mother Is A Space Cadet." I started playing through Franks Acoustic amps that he used on stage in the early 80's. That is what I used on the recording sessions for the single "My Mother Is A Space Cadet"

Next I got my Green Charvel and played through Carvin X100B amps, also from what Frank was using on stage in the early 80's. I used that amp and an Ibanez UE 405 for the "Havin' A Bad Day" album. I remember that the delay in the Ibanez was main thing I used and it was mainly for the song "Electric Hoedown". I used this set up in mono.

After that I started collecting a few more guitars. I had some more Charvels and Fenders mainly. Even though I really liked them I didn't play Gibsons at all in those days.

Towards the end of 1986 I switched to Mesa Boogie amps and used those with a variety of rack effects like the Yamaha SPX 90, and TC Electronic 2290, and Eventide H3000 in a stereo set up. A little later I also used a Roland GP-8. Slightly off topic, my Dad liked the sound of many of my presets on the GP-8 so I went to Guitar Center and bought him one. I copied all of my presets into it and he used it extensively on his 1988 tour. The clean sound that you hear him soloing with is him playing his blonde Performance Guitar through the GP-8.

I had some other pedals as well at that time but it was nothing out of the ordinary, some phasers, flangers and fuzz tones. The usual suspects. Actually I did have a stereo guitar from Steve Ripley that had a dedicated two rack space brain and an 18 pin cable to operate the guitar. Only 2 were ever made. I had one and Ry Cooder had the other. Ry recently borrowed mine since his broke. I should see if he's done with it...

Anyway, that is what I used when I made the 1988 "MY Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama" Album. The stereo guitar can be heard on the intro and outro to "Your Money Or Your Life" and the solo on "Before I get Old."

The next phase of guitars and gear came around during the sessions for "Confessions..." I was still using Mesa Boogie amps and some rack effects in stereo with a Bradshaw switching system. By this time I was using a Steinberger guitar with a trans-trem as my main guitar. It's all over that album. The Madonna signed Charvel was used a lot as well as a sea foam green Fender Strat. The mixed record is a lot brighter than my actual sounds were in the room.

Next came "Shampoohorn." Around that time my rig changed a lot. I started using Peavey 5150s and Classic 100s. At one stage the rig consisted of three 4X12s powered by 3 different amps, creating a stereo outside, dry center array. I even had Fender Bassman as a center channel at one point. I used a lot of the same rack effects and a few pedals too including an old 60s Octavia and Fuzz Face. The main guitar I played at that time was a Purple Ernie Ball Van Halen model guitar. I also played a champagne colored Fender Strat and a turquoise Fender Strat that later went through a transmogrification and became the vintage cream colored one seen in the 2006 Zappa Plays Zappa DVD. I also played my chartreuse sparkle Baritone guitar on that album on a few tunes, most notable "Did I Mention It Was Huge?".

Around that time I started recording the basic tracks for the majority of the project that is still in progress called "What The Hell Was I Thinking?" I also wrote and recorded the theme music for the EMMY winning FOX TV series "The Ben Stiller Show."

Subsequent touring for the "Shampoohorn" record saw me using an original mid 80's Kramer that was painted green but later was covered in faux cow hide material by Performance Guitar. That guitar had a sustainer in it. It became my main touring guitar for a while. I did use it on "Shamppohorn" and many other studio projects to follow. I also used a custom made Moser fretless guitar with a Les Paul junior body and a Fender strat style fretless neck.

The amp and effects rig went back to stereo for a while but my taste in guitars changed a bit. I started playing a cream colored 60s SG and I also played an old sunburst Fender Telecaster that has a signature from Albert Lee on the back. It was already there when I bought it. (An interesting connection to him comes later.)

Those two guitars were used the most on "Music For Pets" but I did also utilize both of my blue and orange custom designed Performance Guitar DZ models. The orange one had a 3 band parametric in it which was later removed and put into the Performance Guitar Jumbo Foot pedal I've been using on stage since 2010. Another guitar I used a lot at that time was my gold sparkle Ibanez Iceman. It was given to me by a friend who found it in the closet of a house he had recently moved into. Originally black, I had it painted gold sparkle by Dan Lawrence. That guitar is most notably featured on the song "Badass." Dan did a lot of the art on my guitars going back to Charvel days. The watermelon guitar and the Madonna guitar. While at Moser he painted The Dr. Seuss and Where The Wild Things Are guitars as well as the "Sheik Yer Bouti Guitar" I played on Zappa's Universe DVD.

After "Music For Pets" I designed an amp with Peavey called "Wiggy." This became my main amp for a while. It was solid state with an interesting low mid frequency graphic eq circuit. Tonally it was very reminiscent of the Acoustic amp Frank used in the mid 70's alongside his Marshall. The Wiggy is what I used when I recorded with Lisa Loeb on "Cake And Pie." At that time my main guitar became an Ernie Ball Albert Lee model. I didn't realize the subliminal effect of his signature on my tele until the time I started playing his signature model EB! He also played a very memorable solo on "What The Hell Was I Thinking?"

I did many recordings for film and television with my "Wiggy" rig. At that time I began to take a serious interest in recording and engineering. Certain types of amps and effects were being developed as smaller alternatives to big amps. There was a system by Lexicon called MPXG2 which had a 6 watt rack mounted amp along with a multi effects processor. I used this for a lot of sessions including the Britney Spears cover song "Hit Me Baby One More Time." I liked the idea of such a compact guitar rig option. At the time it was not a complete solution for every kind of tone though.

I also used it and my Wiggy amps for the album "Automatic." The song Automatic featured an effect in a TC electronics G-Force box. The first time played with the effect I started recording the song. There's also a cool wide stereo effect from a short delay made by an old ADA multi efx 4. I've added that into different versions of rigs since then specifically for that doubling effect. It was in the 2009 ZPZ rig and the 2011 ZPZ rig.

The guitar orchestration for "The Grinch" and "Hawaii 5-O" is all done with the Lexicon and some crafty eq from an Orban Parametric Equalizer.

Next I started experimenting and recording more stuff in the studio without amps. I made some strange sounding recordings for textures on "What The Hell Was I Thinking?" by running into different distortion boxes and then directly into channel strips on the console. I used Native Instruments Guitar Rig for several projects and many overdubs on my "Go with What You Know" CD. At that time I was also in development for a tube version of the Wiggy amp with Peavey. They never went to market with it but I used the prototype on "Go With What You Know." The Tube Wiggy is most notably heard on Noitpure and the solo in Fighty Bitey.

"Go With What You Know" featured a hint at the next project that was to come. All Roads Lead To Inca was inspired by the work I had been putting into learning my dad's music and the total technical transformation of my guitar playing. On that track I was using a combination of 2 special amps, a Blankenship 16 watt Leeds head and a Blankenship modified black face Fender Bassman head. It had some modulation effects added in the mix.

At that time I also started using some Cornford amps. They made a special 3 channel head for me that I used on the entire 2006 Zappa Plays Zappa tour.

That rig included 2 Cornford heads and a Blankenship Leeds head going into 2 Cornford 4X12s. The effects were TC 2290, Eventide Orville and a variety of stomp boxes. The one I used the most was a Tech 21 XXL. It provided a slightly softer Fuzz Face style sound and attack and it's most notably heard on the 2nd half of the solo in Inca Roads from the ZPZ DVD. That rig morphed throughout 2006 and 2007 and eventually included a Fender Cybertwin along with the Cornfords and the Blankenship. I was still chasing after the best recreation of my dad's classic tones. Up until that point I had not been using any of his actual gear to recreate the sounds.

By 2008 I made more radical changes to my set up. I started using the FUCHS triple overdrive supreme heads along with FUCHS 4X12 cabs and a traditional Fender Twin in the center. There were 2 giant racks that I called the Twin Towers. In them I housed some vintage and modern effects. The most modern were the Digitech GSP1101s. I had 3 of them. They had amp modeling and great effects in them. For an analog rig I had some ridiculous routing flexibility in the towers. I was using a Switchblade to route effects. Many different pedals including some Butler Tube overdrives, some Fuchs boost pedals and a variety of other boutique items. The available tones multiplied exponentially.

There were 3 main effects that I used that my father used to use to get some amazing signature tones. First, the MicMix Dynaflangers (Shut Up An Play Yer Guitar tone), 2nd, Oberheim VCF (for Ship Ahoy and envelope), and 3rd, the Systech Harmonic Energizer (Pojama People.) Those effects and many more pedals were available so I could blend amps and morph effects. This rig was by far the most expensive rig I ever had built and most complex of any I had ever put together. It sounded great but it was not very reliable. Over time it did not travel well and was very expensive to ship around the world.

By 2009 I had decided to downsize out of fiscal necessity but I did not want to give up flexibility of tone or more importantly, authenticity. I started to use the Fractal Axe Effects and this became a revelation. Not only did the rig get smaller and more easily transportable, it became more flexible. The core tones and FZ tones I could recreate became more reliable and more detailed. I made a rig utilizing 2 Fractal Ultras and multiple effects pedals. I included the FZ effects like the Dyna Flanger and the Oberheim VCF and Systech. This rig had a larger pedal board than previous rigs but took up far less backline stage real estate.

Back to the guitars again, the main guitar since forming Zappa Plays Zappa has been my walnut Gibson SG. I've played it at every single Zappa Plays Zappa concert I've performed. It is the workhorse and I absolutely love that guitar. It is the one guitar that helped me transform my playing the most and I would hate to part with it. It has been slightly modified since the 2006 tour to include push pull tone knobs. The bottom tone splits the coil of the brigde pick up and the top tone knock the neck and bridge pickups out of phase. It's very close to how Frank had his Roxy SG set up. It was recently set up at the Gibson custom shop in Nashville and it plays better than ever. They put it on a machine called a Plek which analyzes fret height and shaves offending frets. It made a huge difference to the playability and intonation of the instrument.

I have played a few other guitars on ZPZ tours. A Fender Strat that started it's life as a cream colored Jeff Beck model but later became a lipstick pickup sparkle factory. It was featured in some tour ads campaigns and I used it on "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" and "Suzy Creamcheese" in 2009. I've played a few Eric Johnson model Fenders as well over the years. A white one, a tobacco burst one and an ice blue one. The latter guitars have 22 fret necks and Eric Johnson was kind enough to give Fender permission to add the extra frets for me since they are not part of the specs of his signature model. I have also played a custom made Fender Stratocaster that has an embossed image of my dad layered into the tobacco burst finish and a custom shaped strat pickguard inspired by Jeff Beck.

I've played my 58 re-issue Gibson Les Paul and a few Hagstrom Vikings, including an original 1969 Viking that was recently given to me as a gift during the 2011 Dweezilla music bootcamp by Ago Totaro.

I also played my Dweezil Zappa signature model Paul Reed Smith guitar and will continue to do so at future shows. The one I have is beautifully made and truly inspiring to play.

As our touring continued the worldwide shipping costs increased too. The upside is that the capabilities of the Fractal rig increased as well. With each new firmware upgrade it could do more and more. Over time I was able to remove a few items that I was carrying in the rig that I could now duplicate within the Fractal itself. Knowing that it was possible to do that made me excited for the future. I wondered if it would it be possible to one day just use one Fractal and a small pedal board without sacrificing any of my tonal requirements?

That day has arrived. I am currently set to tour the UK in November 2011 with my newest and smallest rig ever. It is filled with some of the most inspiring sounds I've ever had a chance to play.

The future is now and I'm inspired to make music. I have plans to record a CD of my own very soon. I'll keep you posted on what I use for that and when it will be available.

Having recently experienced an incredibly difficult and traumatic event in my life this quote seems appropriate.

"I am impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is 
not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; 
we must do." - Leonardo da Vinci

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