Soundwall
Soundwall is a podcast that discusses Music Creation, Performance, and Equipment.
Soundwall
Episode 10 - Bill Schneider
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Bill Schneider is a CA Bay Area based musician and band manager who has been involved with the SF music scene since the late 80’s. Not only has Bill played in bands such as Pinhead Gunpowder, The Influents, and Dead Sound, Bill has worked as a premier amp/ guitar technician (Joe Satriani, Green Day), managed multiple music shops (Broken Guitars, Black Market Music, Univibe), and is now working as a part of the management team for the legendary Green Day. Bill has played an integral part of designing Signature Models for members of Green Day…. working closely with Fender, Gibson, and Marshall Amplifiers.
In this interview, we talk about his entry to the Bay Area music scene, inception of early amp circuits, how to properly create a pirate radio station without going to prison, and of course…….Gear!
Bill Schneider is a California Bay Area musician and band manager who has been involved with the SF music scene since the late 1980s. Not only has Bill played and such bands as Pinhead Gunpowder, the Influence, and Dead Sound, Bill has worked as a premier amp and guitar technician for the likes of Green Day, Joe Patriani, and many others. Bill has managed multiple music shops, broken guitars, black market music, and univibe, and is now working as part of the management team for the legendary Green Day. Bill has played an integral part of designing signature models for the members of Green Day, working closely with Fender, Gibson, Dunlop, and Marshall Amplifiers. In this interview, we talk about his entry to the Bay Area music scene, inception of early amp circuits, how to properly create a pirate radio station without going to prison, and of course, gear. Enjoy.
SPEAKER_00You're listening to Soundwall with Adam Schuman, presented by Danville Music, your local music store.
SPEAKER_05When did you fall in love with music?
SPEAKER_02Well, for as long as I remember, I've when I was a kid, I was I I think it started when I was, I probably started in choir. I went to Catholic school, so like a good way you could get out of like doing uh you know academic work during the day was you could get away for like one period a week to go to do choir practice. And so although I am the worst singer in the world, other than maybe doing some emo la la la backups, um I was in the choir. So I figured out that I could get out of like you know, math class to go to the choir every Friday uh at 11 a.m. And so I I started doing that. And then soon after that, they did a band program at my school when that was still a thing, and I started playing trumpet. I was gonna wanted to do drums, but too many people had said they wanted to do drums, so I became a trumpet player.
SPEAKER_05Okay. How old did you do the trumpet?
SPEAKER_02Um I played all through high school and I was in the marching band all the way up until I was a sophomore in high school until uh I got sick of it.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha. So you went from uh woodwind instrument to delving more into guitars, stringed instruments, and also the technology behind it. So were you that kid who was taking stuff apart all the time?
SPEAKER_02I did. I always took everything apart. So, you know, when I was as young as like two years old, my favorite toy was the take apart car. Okay. And then, you know, as soon as I got older, I'd get I'd find like broken stereos at yard sales and uh, you know, stuff people were giving away, throwing away, and I'd try to fix it. And every once in a while I was successful and would find that a fuse was bad or a speaker was blown. But most of the time I was just disassembling things. And uh, you know, I can remember uh getting, you know, my first like boom box stereo, and I was able to actually fix the on-off switch. Uh and uh it was like a huge moment to me that I was like, oh, I can I can make something out of nothing. And so it was uh it was just a good feeling. And then I was drawn towards I I loved metal music when I was younger, I still do, but then I really loved it. That was my first love more than punk uh or rock or anything else. And uh I stopped playing trumpet when I was in high school and got a bass guitar. And along with that, the very first thing I did when I like, you know, I think my parents bought me a headless or rented me a headless court bass from the local music store. And it the first thing I did when I got it home is I took it completely apart. And I had no idea how intonation worked or uh anything like that. So I put it back together and I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't play in tune. So I had to teach myself and figure out how everything was supposed to work. This is long before the internet. I had to ask questions of like my uncle who played guitar, and I had to figure out how to intonate a guitar because I had taken my brand new rented bass guitar apart, and I had to put it back together and make it playable.
SPEAKER_05Was there a moment of fear when it happened?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm kind of one that that dives in headfirst into things, and then I have a good I think I've learned it probably over the years from doing that, but having a good understanding of uh, I'll figure it out. And I I figured it out.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha. And so getting into the music industry, uh, were you thinking, yeah, I like playing the instruments, but did you have the inclination that you might be going more towards the tech side of things? Or did you want to do it all and just kind of see what stuck?
SPEAKER_02No, I I actually I I was not interested. I mean, I was always interested in the tech side because that's how my brain works. I've very uh I I think like that about how things work, you know, by thinking about how they work, you think about well how how what are the parts inside and what do they do. But you know, when I was as young as I know eighth grade, uh, and I didn't realize this until a few years ago, but like my parents found my eighth grade graduation like yearbook, and in there I had put like what I wanted to do, you know, for with my life or as a career, and I had put uh be a tour manager for bands.
SPEAKER_05Really?
SPEAKER_02I and I had no I'm my parents only found this like four years ago. And so it's it's you know, I was fifty years old when they found this thing, and it was really funny because I don't even remember saying that. Um at that time I was more interested in playing music and I wanted to be in a band and I want to get good enough to, you know, play with other people and you know play music in a band because I would go see a lot of house shows, you know, when I was in high school and see bands play, and I always thought it was the coolest thing in the world. So I wanted to do that.
SPEAKER_05Oh, awesome. Well, I've found that with a lot of guys who are good at tech, yeah, a lot of times they're more of a I want to deal with only this machinery and I don't want to deal with people. So you've got to be a unicorn of some sort. If if you're okay with doing the tour managing stuff, you've you've all you've essentially just said, I'm gonna do the to I'm gonna do the technical stuff, and I'm also willing to deal with people's bullshit.
SPEAKER_02Well, an interesting part of that is I got into it, the way I got into working on the technical side was I there used to be in here in Walnut Creek, you know, right near where we are now, there used to be a store that opened up in the late 80s called Black Market Music, which was kind of the you know, it was the alternative to um you know, subway guitars. There wasn't a lot of used music stores. There was a lot of mom and pop shops around. There was country with music here in Walnut Creek, and there was, I think, a couple here in Concord. Spitzers as well. Yeah, Spitzers and uh there was one other one too, I can't remember. And uh I would always go hang out at this used, you know, guitar store called Black Market Music. And I hung out there enough that they would give me things to do, like uh, hey, can you go uh you have a truck, can you go pick these things up in San Francisco, bring them back out here? And then they had a real problem where they had tons and tons of gear that was broken that was just piling up in their warehouse because they had all these amps and all these guitars that just needed simple repairs. But as soon as you had to spend the money to fix them, to resell them, it took the profit away. Right. And so, you know, when I was about, you know, I moved from Santa Monica to uh Northern California up to Walnut Creek when I was a junior in high school and started hanging out at this place. And they started giving me these jobs, so I quickly figured out I was like, oh, I I know how to fix guitars, that's easy. It wasn't something I ever thought I would do for other people, but you know, I would go in and I would say, hey, I really want to get that baseman. And so at the time a baseman was a hundred bucks or 150 bucks for a blackface baseman. And and they go, Well, tell you what, if you uh if if you come in and work on Friday and just fix all those broken guitars that are in the back room and put them out, you know, do intonation, you know, change out one broken tuner, you know, uh figure out why the the pickups don't work, go and just do that for one afternoon. I'll give you that amp. And so I was like, oh wait, really? Okay. And so I kind of another kind of ongoing theme of my life is I just bullshit my way into the job. And was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I could do that. Because I figured I could figure it out.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so I did. And then from that, I ended up uh long story, but the two owners split, and one of the owners uh went on to uh to open some other stores and take over that store, and he offered me a job with him uh to uh to you know work in the guitar store and run a guitar store. And so that was I think 1990 or 91. Is that Univibe when it turned into Univi? And then it turned into Univide.
SPEAKER_05And that was uh in Berkeley, correct?
SPEAKER_02There was one in Berkeley. We opened one in Berkeley that I was a co-owner of, but then the there was another store in Walnut Creek, which was the main store.
SPEAKER_05Okay, cool. Yeah. Cool, cool. So you got so you got you got all these guitars. Did you have any books that you used for reference or or did you kind of wing it?
SPEAKER_02Uh well, I had basic uh I'm trying to think back. I I did have base, there was there was there was materials available. Um like every time you buy a set of pickups, it would come with a schematic and a wiring diagram layout. And so you if you once you looked at one of those and then you looked at any other ones, they were all the same. And so you're like, all you had to do is just figure out what kind of switch it was going to have, and that was the only, or if it had, you know, pickups with split coils or something, you would have to figure it out a little more. But there there was there was books and there was simple, you know, things around before the internet where you could look at a picture or a schematic and figure out how something worked.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha. So did you have any uh Bibles, so to speak, during your uh your years learning how to do tech?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's a um there's uh a book called the Tube Amp Handbook. Uh Dan Torres? Uh the Dan Torres one, and then there's another one um that was made by Groove Tubes that has like all of the schematics for everything and a lot of the history behind all the amps in it. Uh and then I would just any book I could find, you know, I go I would go to Barnes and Noble when I I was young and just go into the the set you know the to the guitar section that they used to have, and I would buy every book that had anything to do with you know with amplifiers or guitars or electronics and just to learn more and more about it.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha. Did you ever get into home stereo stuff? Yeah. Like well, other than like going to garage sales, did you actually start working on that stuff on the side?
SPEAKER_02I never liked working on there's a familiarity with like guitars and tube amps that I didn't have when I started working on solid state gear. Because although that you look at a solid state amp or stereo, um it's it's kind of basically the same thing. It's voltage and uh you know amplification, it's they're all different. Every single circuit you would look at would have a different way of doing everything. And the cool thing about guitar amps and tube amps, you know, old like tube stereo stuff I did get into, but the tube uh guitar amps are they're all based off the same DNA. If you understand how the tubes work, you can fix the amp. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_05And uh we we had a discussion about this and uh and uh at the risk of having you repeat it, I'm gonna ask you to repeat it. Um where you talked about just the um the genesis of Fender amps, where they came from, and I mentioned uh them being copies of the old t telephone amplifiers. Yeah. But you went even deeper than that. You talked about a lot of the times these companies like General Electric would would come out with these tube schematics and they'd give you like free source information on their circuits.
SPEAKER_02Right. So like you know, if you're Westinghouse or RCA or General Electric and your job is selling, you know, the brand new tube that you've you've you've designed this power pentode. You have you know a 6L6 tube and you want to uh you want to sell a million of them, and you want you know everybody to have it in whatever their home stereo is. You know, they'll they're gonna they would put out a book that came along like a data sheet that came with that tube and it would have sample circuits. It would say, here's a way you can use this, you know, to do a you know an amplifier to you know amplify sound. And it would have all of the, you know, try these cathodes, try these plate resistors, you know, operated at this voltage and with this impedance transformer, and it'll give you these results. And they would have graphs showing over a different range uh you know how much power in, how much power out it could put. And so uh, you know, come along people like Leo Fender, who's designing, you know, the first bass guitar and the first, you know, not the first guitar amps, but he was right there at the beginning. I think Rickenbacher gets credit right for the first. That sounds right. Yeah, I think I think so. And then anyway, he uh, you know, he and he was like, okay, we want to make an amp. And so he goes into that book and he's like, okay, how can we use you know the the least number of tubes to do an amplifier? And he's like, okay, we're gonna do a champ. So it's gonna have, you know, one output tube, what it's gonna have one rectifier tube that's gonna take the the AC and turn it into DC, because we need DC power. And then we're gonna have one preamp tube that's gonna amplify the sound from the guitar from a low impedance signal to a high impedance signal, and then we're gonna have a power section, a single-ended one tube that that that signal's gonna hit that's gonna amplify that small high impedance signal into a low impedance, uh I just said that backwards, but uh to a high current signal that then's gonna be able to drive a speaker and make it louder. And so he went into that book and he goes, okay, well we're going to we're gonna use this tube because this is made for audio, and you know, 12x7s, you know, 7025s are cheap tubes, so we're gonna use that. And then you know, we want it to be about 8 watts, 6 watts. We'll use a uh we'll use a 6v6. And because of the current that's coming out of this, we'll use a you know, a 5AR4, I think is what it uses for the for the rectifier. And they're like, because that'll have the minimum amount of current we need to do that job for the cheapest amount of money with the least amount of parts.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha. So so so theoretically, the first thing they did was figure out what to do with these tube schematics, and then everything else came after the cabinet, the speaker that they would use, right? And and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because they were just they were taking off-the-shelf components that were made by different manufacturers, and they were filling in the blanks. It's like saying, if you wanted to build a car right now, you're like, you know, I want to build a go-kart. How are you gonna build the go-kart? You're like, well, how fast do you want it to go? And you're like, okay, I want it to go, you know, 20 miles an hour. You're like, okay, I can probably do that with a lawnmower engine. So you would go, you know, you you go down to Harbor Freight and see whatever the five horsepower engine is, because you think that it could move that weight, uh, you know, your weight, you it can move you to 20 miles an hour in a reasonable time with this much horsepower. It's just all math. And so you would then go, okay, well, I want that, but I also want it to steer. Well, how do I want it to steer? I'm gonna need gears for the steering. So I, you know, you would just go source each thing as the problem arose. And then if you wanted to do it at scale like he did and make a million different models, he was like, Okay, I'm gonna do that same amount, but how do we make it louder? Gotcha.
SPEAKER_05Two V6 tubes. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02And then at that point, you're gonna have a A B class A B amplifiers as soon as you get two tubes. So you're like, oh, I need to add a phase inverter. Let me go back to that RCA handbook. And you're like, oh, there's a long tail pair, I can do that, or a Bandaxol phase inverter. How am I gonna split the phase into two different tubes? And so that's just all he did. Is it was just he was an engineer, and in his brain, he was like, Gotta solve this problem. Let me go to my literature and solve the problem.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's simple. And then and then find some investors to uh to scale it up, right? Yeah. Now, to your knowledge, um were were c were countries like England offered 6L6 and 6V6s, or did did an independent company um develop the the EL34s and the EL84s? I'm kind of curious why the why the different power tubes. Does it have to do with the No, they just they had their own companies.
SPEAKER_02So it wasn't the world economy like it is now. So it's like to move tubes over the ocean, you know, uh, you know, after World War II uh was uh really expensive, you know. Uh they they take up a lot of space. They're light, but they take up a lot of space, and they're fragile, they're made of glass. And so they had their own factories. You know, they had Mullard and I want to Tungsaul? Tungsaul and I can't remember all the different ones. Oh, Siemens, German. And so they had all they already had factories that had been making tubes for them, you know, a lot of them from the war effort, actually. Right, right. The guys with the radio packs out, right? Yeah. And so they had already had all this infrastructure that was wartime infrastructure that had to go into everybody wanted a TV and a radio now, you know, post-World War II. And so that all that infrastructure, they had just made it slightly different. So there, they make a tube, you know, you can put there's other than the grounding, uh, you can an EL34 and a 6L6 and a 6550 are all to some extent uh, and I'll just say don't do it, but they are you can if you know what you're doing, you can put those three tubes, even 6v6 is you can uh put all of those tubes in the same socket, in the same circuit, and as long as the grounding is correct and the amp is biased in a manner that will work for that tube, you can't just do it, but you can make any of those tubes work in the same amp.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha. So just change the resistors and you don't blow anything down.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you have to change some resistors and make sure all the voltages are correct. Right, right. That's why I say don't do it. But if you know what you're doing, you can swap all those tubes out for each other. And so they had those same things, but their problem was they're like, well, we already make this tube called the EL34. And other than you know, having ground on on you know on different pins, it needs to be grounded on pin one and pin eight on a on an EL34. Uh they're like, you know, other than that, it's it'll you can plug it in and work it in this, use it in the same, you know, amplifier. And so they already had that. And so um that's why they had, you know, they already had these tubes, so it's just what they used. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_05And I'm sure there's a huge surplus once the war effort stopped. Like what are you gonna do with all this stuff, right?
SPEAKER_02When I when I started working in guitar stores in the late 80s, and uh all of the tubes we were getting, even into the 90s, were all still war surplus tubes, mostly from Vietnam. But like there was still that's where all the tubes came from. Like groove tubes, I think the whole company was built on buying government auctions of tubes and rescreen printing their name on it. And right, and they just did it continually until they had to start having them made somewhere because they couldn't buy anymore.
SPEAKER_05Right, right. And for for listeners who don't know this, uh the process of making a tube is uh really toxic. Yeah. So that's where that's why you get a lot of. Yeah, exactly. So that's that's why uh that's why um well, up until the embargo, Russia was making a ton of them, Czechoslovakia, China, I think those are the major suppliers of tubes. But I remember like in the 90s, there'd be there'd be times where they'd find some old World War II bunking and uh bunker somewhere, and and man, if you found a telefunken tube, that was new old stock. Like people were kind of going nuts over that stuff. Yep. Because they made like the the American and the English and the German tubes were really highly sought after for a while. And then eBay happened and prices went up and blah blah blah blah blah through the roof. So so you were repairing then and speaking of eBay, that that was kind of I I would imagine kind of tapering off the end of an era for a lot of the the stores like univide and black market music and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean that's that's kind of what happened to to Univibe is uh you know went through many iterations. I ended up opening a drum shop, uh uh and that was up until you know the the early 2000s. Um and yeah, w along with eBay and all these ways of selling stuff direct, used gear directly, it sort of killed the big at the time, the big, you know, in-store used music store was kind of gone because why would somebody come in and you know sell us a Les Paul uh you know for five hundred bucks that we were gonna sell for a thousand bucks if you know if they could just throw it on eBay and sell it for, you know, nine hundred bucks or maybe even the that same thousand dollars. So it it kind of took that side of it away for us and became less profitable.
SPEAKER_05Now at the same time, this happening. So you're you're working on amplifiers and you're you're the the tech guy. I'm imagining that because you're working on people's amplifiers you're associating with a lot of Bay Area musicians. Yep. And tell me how were were things naturally kind of tapering off to where you were kind of saying maybe I should look for some other work adjacent to music or how did things happen?
SPEAKER_02I can tell you I know what you're getting at. So you know I was playing in bands uh I played in a band you know formed in 1989 with uh Billy Joe from Green Day called uh Pinhead Gun Powder. And so we were already playing in a band together and uh you know Greek Green Day of course had you know when Dookie came out they had gotten huge were touring constantly they already had been touring constantly for years at that point but this time on a much larger scale and uh you know I would always help my buddies out with their stuff you know that was broken when they would come around. And at the time I wasn't doing a lot of amp repair just very basic stuff mostly it was guitar repair and uh you know simple kind of repair things uh luthier kind of repair work um too and uh you know after Insomniac came out they found Green Day found themselves in a position where they were like okay we need to get some more people to work for us that actually know more tech stuff they're not just our they they they had had a lot of their friends working for them who didn't really have a lot of uh experience working on the gear and as their gear got bigger to play bigger venues they needed you know a little more help with for guitar tech so in 1996 end of 1996 after the Insomniac tour they Billy asked me he's like hey would you want to work for us and like you know just you know help us out with all the gear come in we're gonna you know we have to we're gonna record a new record we want somebody to come into the studio and make sure all our stuff's in tune and you know fix any of our gear and help out with all the guitar sounds and all that kind of stuff because me and him had already known each other for a long time. We'd played in bands we'd made records together so he knew kind of he knew me well enough to know what he was getting. Yeah and so uh they hired me as a guitar tech and uh for the studio to make uh the Nimrod record and uh that went really well and so after that record um they asked me to work for them full time and so I actually went on tour um as a guitar tech uh and it was actually on stage I was Mike's bass tech at that time and I did that for for years uh along with doing the guitar store when I was home and during breaks. And so uh it it just kind of uh it was kind of got into the touring world that way I'd already been touring with my own bands for years and so all of a sudden doing it on this other level where it's like oh wait we we get hotel rooms sometimes and we sleep on a bus and it was just it it was a lot uh it was a lot of fun it was a good uh we had we had a really good time and it was uh you know it was a neat time there was so much music and so many bands yeah yeah and so I loved it and I've uh off and on been there ever since I've taken breaks here and there for family stuff from touring uh but yeah here we are ther almost 30 years later ladies and gentlemen from your house at Anvil Music your stores of the best guitars and music related accessories here in the Bay Area and around the globe at Danville Music Danville Music.com your local music store so you uh you went on a like basically a major tour and did you did you start with Dexter amplifiers at this point? No I didn't I didn't get into like it it came from necessity. Uh there was a point in time you know a few years later um where we just needed you know I I I I I could always do basic stuff like you know uh bias amplifiers change tubes you know repair like you know the electronics part of the amplifier if you know as far as you know if fuses were blowing I could figure out why and you know change out switches and sockets and uh you know uh fix jacks and pots and things like that. But I didn't understand on a component level you know the function if you just took a board out of an amplifier and pointed at a resistor I couldn't tell you what it did. You know? And there it just became something I was interested in.
SPEAKER_05So um so you had to flip over from being like a my dad used to say there's a difference between a mechanic and a parts changer. Yeah. So you had to go from parts changer to really delving into that getting into the theory.
SPEAKER_02And the the way I started doing that was I decided I started like wanting to build I mean the first thing I built was a kit you know I bought like a JTM 45 kit or I don't even remember it might it was probably a like a 5e three deluxe you know um kit and I built that and I was like oh okay cool.
SPEAKER_05Yeah I actually did the same thing I have a 5e three that I got from stumac. Yeah and they've got the champ amps they've got the blues breakers those are those are fun.
SPEAKER_02Yeah and it's just it's fun they're easy they go together quick and then from there I was like well you know my favorite sort of circuit in the world is like a uh a a tweed baseman and uh I was like well I I'll build a I didn't I didn't want a tweed baseman I wanted more something more martially so I was like I'm gonna build a JTM 45 because a JTM 45 is almost exactly component to component the exact same amp as a tweed baseman it just has a different tubes in it and a couple uh you know uh cathode cap and resistor values are different.
SPEAKER_05It's pretty wild like the two most iconic rock amps are are made by guys who do not play guitar.
SPEAKER_02Like Leo Fender and then you have Jim Marshall who's a drummer yeah yeah who was make apparently making them for his bass player buddies right yeah yeah and so it's just it's it's just and it's just so neat how it's like they both kind of took the same circuits and there's no you can't really you know you you can't trademark or or copyright a a guitar circuit because that's all just comes from like we were talking about before it all just comes from from common you know common use uh fair use circuits so uh they they all did the same thing and so I started messing around and building more of those amps and then you know there's nothing like uh trying to troubleshoot something that you built to figure out why it doesn't work to figure out what everything does. And so the more amps I built um you know I had a lot of downtime when we'd be you know Green Day would be making records that we'd be in the studio for months. I'd have you know hours and hours of day just waiting around for things to do things you know when we were in the studio and I just started crass course everything I could read about it studying schematics studying layouts um building all of these circuits and then figuring out how I could change them and you know take a tone stack from one amp, a preamp from another, you know, with a cathode follower without a cathode follower and just figuring out what that did to the sound of the amp and and kind of uh doing that and then uh dexter amps came about because after doing that for years you know working with Green Day I had decided that when my daughter went to high school that I was like that's the last four years my daughter's gonna be home before she goes away to college. I'm not gonna tour for four years. I was like I'm not touring while she's in school so I went I I took a high you know a break from working with with with the band full time too and I was at home doing other stuff and I was like you know what I'm gonna you know I'm gonna do some amp repair and I'm I'm gonna do some runs of amplifiers and uh you know I can't even guess to how many amps total I built from scratch you know but it was I for a couple years I just was building amps I would do a run like okay I'm gonna do 12 uh you know amps that are based on a hot rod like I'm gonna build an ACDC amp. You know that would be my idea. And I would go through circuits and I would figure out well this is my favorite like you know 50 watt Marshall you know 2204 circuit you know circuit and these are the little tweaks that I make to it to make it sound like I like it to sound and I would go okay well I'm gonna build 12 of those so I would just order a palette of parts and I would get everything to build 12 of that amp and I would build it and then just sell them to my friends. And luckily a lot of my friends are musicians and producers and uh you know things started getting in people's hands that other people thought were cool and so other people wanted them. And you know um I ended up making a lot of hundred watt sort of martial circuits like hot rodded marshall circuits that were you know all over the realm of different mods some of them were my mods um you know some of them were other people's mods that I would do for people for a request like they would want a certain amp like hey can you build me an amp like slash's amp and it's like and I'd have to go on forums and go, well I don't know okay this is what it says it is build it it sounds like crap and then figure out how to fix it to make it sound more like okay now this sounds like an appetite for destruction amp, you know, or you know and so I did a lot of things like that and everything I did just made me learn more and more about the amps and I did it for as long as it was fun as a business and just doing amp repair you know for my friends in a few shops and a few different luthers I didn't really want people coming direct to me so much. So I would have I had a bunch of different shops that just would say okay I do we can take in repairs and I would go pick up repairs once a week fix all their stuff and bring it back. Okay, cool. Because I didn't want people having to come to me.
SPEAKER_05You couldn't be bothered right yeah so by and large with a lot of the guys we see on stage or some of the iconic guitar players do most of them have a customized amp or do you think most of them are stock? In your experience?
SPEAKER_02There's people who uh yes and no you know I I I did a I did a lot of work for Satriani uh at one period and kind of restored a lot of his old iconic amps um and he had me remod them to make them sound like he likes amps to sound now without having to do you know all of the post processing and like he stopped using the SD1 as a boost in front of his amp. Okay. And so he wanted his amps to just sound like amps and so um he had me his original old amp that somebody had driven a car through the door at a at his rehearsal space and stolen all his gear and he had eventually gotten it back. Somebody had contacted and was able to buy back his original you know plexi um he had me completely restore it and mod it and I came up with a mod that was kind of just for him. And uh so I think a lot of people they they figure out what they like or they've had one amp um that was the amp that they like the sound of but they need to recreate that for touring or something like that. And so there's a lot of modding that goes on to match something else that's either a sound they had on a record um that they just want to get a different way but they want to be able to do it live. Okay. That that comes in there's a lot of that.
SPEAKER_05What are some of the the most common mods always more gain more gain more gain or or nine times out of ten, what do people ask you to do?
SPEAKER_02Is it uh it's well it's a couple different things. It's um making things there's definitely a lot of making things uh so that they're you can take them on the road and they're not gonna break. So there's a there's a lot of just kind of returning what I would honestly tell you is there's a lot of returning amps to stock that have bad mods in them or bad repairs. Yes. And then adding gain. And you know I'm I'm lucky enough that I had uh you know coming up working with Green Day and um you know we had Billy had bought and gotten amps um from you know uh on I'll just tell the story. So uh you know when when you know Billy Joe used to play a JCM 900 he had a GK amp uh that he played all the way up I think until uh I can't remember what record but to for a long time until he started touring and then he got a a brand new JCM900 and he used a JCM 900 like dual reverb was his hundred was his amp. He still has it too um and then when they went in to make Dookie that amp wasn't quite cutting it but Rob Cavallo had just had an amp modded by Martin Goleb at uh Bob Bradshaw's shop uh which later became custom audio electronics and so um Martin he had gone back and forth with Martin it started life as a crunch mod which is just one of their off the shelf mods they were doing for like everybody in Hollywood they had two basic mods the SE Lee mod which is like the Warren Haynes it's similar to like a Soldano circuit um it adds a gain stage um and then they had the crunch mod which is the crunch mod just gives you it takes out the cold cathode in a sorry if I get too nerdy. No do it ask me questions. In in like the your standard like JCM800 you know J MP Marshall circuit um it has a gascaded gain stage and then it adds gain on the stage one and stage two whereas a regular JCM800 or a a um uh uh JMP Marshall they they have a hot stage that hits a cold bias stage which gives you asymmetrical clipping and so it gives you that that bloom sort of chunky crunchy sound um but if you get rid of that cold cathode stage which is under biasing the tube to make it clip and you add more gain to it you get a whole different tone the the amp becomes less user friendly like if you turn the gain knob up past four it sounds like crap. Okay. But at low gain settings you can really dial in pick sensitivity and it it's it's way more when you roll the volume knob back it'll clean up totally clean because it doesn't have that clipping circuit in it. And so and then you when you roll it back up you get all of the articulation you know from every note anywhere in that range because it's it's being fully amplified. And so Billy had had these amps that he had gotten from Bob Bradshaw that Rob Cavallo their producer had you know kind of worked for years with his you know the guys over there to come up with and he just cloned that rig. And so Bob Bradshaw built Billy's guitar rig. And so I had like one of the greatest you know things was like we have this whole rig, we have uh you know all these amps and I could see what the professionals did that had been doing it for years for everybody in the 80s and 90s you know in Hollywood and all the big bands. I was like oh that's how they do it. And so I learned a lot about okay they need lines out they need effects loops so that you can use it for switching and you know that's how you run a power amp and run more cabinets. I had to learn all that because we were doing it you know for the band live and so um those circuits I had figured out kind of how how and where to add gain and where it sounds good.
SPEAKER_05But like you said with those modifications a lot of times you have to have a buyer beware like once you treat it like a normal amp and it's everything's out the window.
SPEAKER_02Yeah over the years I can't tell you how many people have like come to me and wanted somebody else's sound like oh I heard a uh an amp you made for you know name the person um and I want one like that and I and I'll say you don't play like them you're not gonna like it you like hearing that don't they? Yeah because you know you put any of those people that have those iconic sounds on any amplifier and they still sound like them. Yeah. And that's that's the funny thing. And the amplifier it just is another step that makes it easier for them to do what they do. You know and so you know after all going back and forth and learning the little things uh I can't remember where we're going with this but but just learning about these mods and what people like but more gain is the perfect example. That's how we got here. And so like you know Bradshaw made this thing called the crunch mod. And then that amp, uh you know uh that Billy used on Dookie that got to be known as the Dookie amp, people all talk about the Dookie mod now it it's so far away from what a crunch mod originally was. Every single component in that amp in the preamp has been changed out and the phase inverter um now to what had become over the years to become that sort of iconic sound that he used on all the the Green Day records. So um it it's adding game but it's also adding it's not nearly as dirty as everybody thinks it is it just has a lot more articulation and it breaks up in a different way.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha. So I've um as a guitar instructor I've had to tell a lot of my students all right you're listening to ACDC like listen to the guitar tone. There's really not that much distortion on this thing. Because um intuitively a lot of the younger guitar players will go bass 10 treble 10 mid zero gain 10 you know doing that stuff.
SPEAKER_02An an interesting thing that I've done for a lot of guitar players that think they need more distortion is introduce them to compression. Okay. Because you know if you if you the the perfect way to do it is like plug somebody in with a guitar that's barely breaking up like it's sort of maybe a Vox AC30 sound but then put a Dyna comp in front of it. And it's like it's it's it's magical it has all of that sustain that you get out of a distorted guitar but it still has you know your you know your your total David Bowie tones at that point. You know it it just it rings forever and sounds huge. Yeah. You know just by adding a little bit of compression. And you can do that in a guitar circuit too. So well did you ever get to work on any amps that were a guitar player that you really look up to or um I well yeah I mean obviously I mean all the stuff I did with you know with with with Green Day and and Billy stuff because over the years that's really you know we had to make like 20 something of those dookie amps for touring for A rigs, big rigs, you know, he here and there and recording and so all of that stuff. And then definitely you know working with Satriani he has like the best ears of any guitar player I've ever dealt with you know I only worked for him for a short period of time but uh man that guy can hear everything. I learned more from him explaining to me what he heard from the things I was doing. Wow his ears are amazing. He's like well do you hear that there's like a a fourth level harmonic when you change that part out that I hadn't heard when you had it in the previous revision and I'd be like whoa talks the talk right yeah yeah oh he he he that he has ears that guy cool well I wanted to get into pirate radio with you because I I get the impression you might be a little bit of a derelict and well what sort of subliminal messages were you sending on this stuff? You know it it started with Green Day during the uh it was actually they were out on the warp tour and uh you know warp tour everybody's it's like a bunch of pirates on ships. Uh they wanted to Billy got the idea that he wanted to do pirate radio and be able to uh you know basically talk shit play music for all the people in the parking lot that were showing up. And so uh you know you could get online in 2001 and go on the internet and find out that there's a place called Wave Mock in Canada that sells all of the everything you wanted to buy to get into Pirate Radio. And so they have different kits and it's all stuff this guy is making in his garage. Amplifiers antennas and so it's like a revolutionary startup kit. Oh yeah yeah yeah it definitely is like it's it's straight up homemade stuff is the first stuff we got and so we bought all this gear and uh if you showed up in 2001 you probably saw flyers around that were flyers that that the band made and put in the parking lot and all around you know to tune your radio to you know uh usually was like 90.7 was the frequency we'd use all the time when we could um and you could hear basically live the guys playing music you know from CDs and then just talking shit over the radio and doing funny stuff. Okay. And so it just became a thing we did. Whenever we were set up anywhere for rehearsals or we were set up for uh recording we would set up at the Pirate Radio Station. And over the years it kept getting better and better and better.
SPEAKER_05Then when you say when you say talking shit are you talking about like politics or are we talking about other bands that like you have uh issues with a lot of prank calls.
SPEAKER_02Okay. A lot of prank calls you know there was during the time of like the jerky boys and stuff like that. So there was a lot of prank calls there was a lot of you know funny stuff of you know Trey calling you know pet shops trying to buy a monkey you know just funny funny ridiculous stuff uh a lot of comedy and then just playing rad punk music you know um you know coming up with great you know playlists and playing all that stuff out and so over the years we graduated from the homemade stuff to eventually buying broadcast quality radio station equipment and we had you know we we had you know the rack with all the compressors and finalizers and you know we had ended up with like a 1500 watt station which is it's a that's a powerful station you know and we had multiple different antennas and you know we were running a dual dipole uh you know rig that had a lot of gain to it um and we could we could put our antenna up and get a lot of coverage for a long way okay cool w without trying real hard and so uh it you know back around the time that they were making uh I would say in between like American Idiot and so probably about like 2005 and 2010 we we ran pirate radio constantly out of Southern California. So we had a radio station called KCUF that we we kept on the air every summer for five years until I got in trouble.
SPEAKER_05That was my next question. Did law enforcement ever get involved in your endeavor?
SPEAKER_02They're funny you asked so at this time we had grown to having a mobile we had a trailer we had a like a a basically it looked like a you know your normal like cargo trailer like it was like a 10 by 15 foot cargo trailer that was completely built out as a radio station inside with all the racks of gear and then it had a uh you had a big crank and it would put in a a a tower up 50 feet where we had our our antenna and we we had talked to a friend of ours that had a club and he let us put it in his parking lot and then run an extension cord from his place to run you know a big 30 amp extension cord to run all the gear to broadcast. And so we had been doing it like a we were getting lazy. We had been doing it for years at this point. But we knew all the rules too so you had to have padlocks on everything and then you had to have an obvious place where an accord was plugged into the trailer. And so um one weekend uh me and uh my brother who also works for Green Day and Chris Dugan engineer producer he uh we were flying home so we were headed we gone to the radio station and my brother had made a new playlist and we swapped out the iPod at the time to the new playlist hit play and we drove from where we were putting where we had the radio station set up we drove to the airport and when we got to the airport we said oh let's check our signal because we'd always it's it you get really nerdy about your signal right and you're like oh I gotta go back and adjust the finalizer we need a little more you know we need to kick it a little harder on the the on the uh the the levels or whatever it is and we got to the to the airport and the same song was still on and we realized that uh I think it was it some parliament song was called like Get the Funk Out or something. I I I could be wrong but it was it was something exactly like that. I think it was Parliament Get the Funk Out was playing and it was the same song that had been playing when we drove away from the radio station. And so we stayed in the parking lot at the airport until it repeated and started it over again. And this is on a Friday night at seven o'clock and our flight boards in 20 minutes. And so we had to make the decision are we going to go back and fix the radio station or are we going to play the same song for an entire weekend? And we said I'm not I got to get home. And so we got on a plane and flew home and came back Monday morning and we went and fixed it and something just felt off when we were there. I just felt like somebody was watching me when I went to the radio station and I left and then by the time I got back down to the studio I got a call from the guy at the club that the police and Homeland Security were all over the trailer and his parking lot because they followed the extension cord back to his club and the police had called him and he told him he had to go down to his you know his building and talk to the police and I said okay don't say anything like I told you just say you you rented the space to us and we paid you because there's very specific laws about all this stuff. And so I got back down to the trailer and uh they said well what's going on here and I said I'm responsible for broadcasting and I will stop broadcasting. And at that point I'm a I was able because we knew the law I could undo the plug and I said I take full responsibility for broadcasting. And they say okay we need to see your equipment and I say I'm sorry I can't give you authorization to see the equipment because it doesn't belong to me. So they need they need a search warrant at that point. And so they they sat there and they were like you know we picked you up from 17 miles away you're broadcasting all the way from Newport Beach all the way down to the border to Mexico you know we we followed you all the way from Chino Hills to here your signal was coming in and we just want to see what kind of gear you're running. And they tried to be my friend they tried everything they kept me there like four hours and I just sat there smiling playing dumb you know like I know and they're like well where'd you get it? And oh I bought it on eBay. That's I just kept saying eBay. And so finally they left and as soon as we were sure they were gone we went and picked up that trailer had it 50 miles away disassembled and all I now it's the only thing on my record. So you you go to I had to talk about it when I got my um global entry they they they wanted to know what this FCC thing was about for for playing Parliament on repeats or yeah but that I did a crime we we got away with it. Oh good good for you did you keep some of the gear? We still have it. Oh good yeah every every once in a while I'll set it up and then just realize that oh you it's only worth doing if people are listening. So it's it's if you set it all up and you just put an iPod playing a playlist it's like what's the fun? Right. When we used to actually put the time in to make all the liners like I mean we we did it full on we had liners we had fake commercials we we made everything and it was just it was kind of like comedy and music you know sometimes live stuff it was it was really good. Yeah it sounds fun yeah yeah there's there's parts of Green Day's record uh 21st century breakdown where um Alan Sides that owned United recording which was Oceanway you know in Hollywood he let us put it on the roof and we had the transmitter in the studio and he let us run it for a while until uh and until it was making too much noise in the other studios and they made a stop but but he let us run it from there and there's parts of Green Day's record that were live in the room at Oceanway in famous studio B and they were being put out over the radio station and then recorded from you know out in the parking lot from the radio just to get that sound of the radio compression and the radio thing. And so there we were using it as an effects bus. Oh cool that's really cool but if you listen to that record there's parts of it where you're like what is that and that's what it is. Oh man amazing it was fun.
SPEAKER_05So Pyro that's uh one of the ways you keep amused while you're on the road?
SPEAKER_02Well yeah yeah we haven't done it in a while but yeah uh it's it's been years after getting busted for it well I got busted one other time but they never talked to me they just left cards.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha yeah you never called them? No oh man yeah you really dumped them so um I talked to you about uh Mike and his base rig and going into Fender for a while yeah you want to talk about how that came about the super baseman oh yeah so the super baseman uh ev it seems like everybody plays one now the you know Fender has this awesome amp.
SPEAKER_02Back around 2008 or 2009 you know um Mike was a uh Fender endorsey and so we were spending a lot of time going back and forth with them on stuff going out to Chandler Arizona or you know down to Corona and um he was he had been playing Mesa Boogie amps at this time and he just wasn't he he wanted something different. He had started playing ampegs in the studio and um which is where he started and then came back around after Mesa Boogie to Ampeg and but he didn't like any of the new Ampeg amps. They were all the St. Louis music like solid state like rack mount they had gotten pretty far away from your vintage SVT. And so you know Fender said well why don't you play our amps and he goes well you know all your amps are these solid state million knobs you know uh amps that just they're all punch no tone uh you know no compression they're just he's like they don't work for me he plays too hard you know he you put him through an amp like that and it's just uh you know you'll blow your speakers out and so he he they showed him their new line amps and he said forget all the silver knobs and and you know 800 watts he's like you guys own the super baseman why don't you just revive that and turn it into uh you know turn it into the SVT killer everybody wants to buy a brand new SVT and they can't because Ampeg's not making you know tube SVTs that sound like the amps from the 60s and 70s. And so they went oh huh and so kind of because of him they dropped developing all these solid state amps and they went back to the base the super baseman and he sent like his rig down and at the time he gotten so nerdy his his base rig was uh he was running Vintech 1073s um uh through uh just like crown power amps that was his base his his base rig was like you know it was all studio gear in Iraq and that was his base amp.
SPEAKER_05So essentially like a Neve console with a power amp. Okay.
SPEAKER_02And that's what he played through live for a long time. And so he sent that down and they did you know they they got some EQ curves and they got uh you know we're hearing kind of what he was doing live and you know the kind of uh got the gist of that tone and they baked that into that amp. And you know he was always kind of it never was really sold as his model. I think you know he should at the time we didn't make a big deal about it but I think I think he he he he feels it was a missed opportunity to have his name in front of that because a lot of other people sort of attached their name to it but he was at the forefront of it. And I think a lot of people were kind of pushing them to do that because it just made sense. But yeah it was fun working with them to kind of get that amp started and down that road we did a lot of back and forth.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha and so you were I imagine you were heavily involved with that too. That must be fun to be working I mean from going from repairing vendor stuff to getting to work with their amp designers.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah I'll tell you it's like there's been so many points in my life where I kind of just pinch myself it's like if you know if if uh if like you know 15 year old uh you know Billy Schneider from Barry Avenue in West LA knew that he'd be like working with engineers at at Fender and Gibson and Marshall to develop products I would I you know I would I would pinch myself I'm having a moment like that right now. I mean um you know I don't think we're giving too much of a secret away but uh you know we've been working with Marshall uh with uh Green Day and with Billy Joe to recreate the Dookie amp. So I've been working with them for two years on developing a hand wired Plexy Dukey mod amp you can just buy from Marshall um and we're coming out with it this year at at at the NAM show uh and I'm super proud of it. We we put a lot of work into it. We completely nailed it like if it is his amp.
SPEAKER_05Oh cool so can you tell me about m the mods or is this a secret sauce so what what's the the baseline would be a like a plexi?
SPEAKER_02Yeah so it it it starts with a plexi amp and you cascade the gain stages like a like a JMP Marshall has where you have a gain knob and you have a a volume knob and then you get rid of the cold clipper and you have two hot uh two hot stages basically and then as soon as you get that much gain you have to do a lot of things to quiet it back down uh you know to keep it from being noisy. And then the big the big secret on Billy's amp and the DookieMod amp that makes it sound like it does is that uh later in the amplifier in the phase inverter where it it splits the signal to go into the two halves of the power amp section we run much, much larger capacitors um uh that let a lot more lows through. Usually in a Marshall circuit there's a lot of limiting and compression that comes from using smaller capacitors that sort of act like a your thumb over a garden hose to kind of tame it down on the low end whereas on his amp it's exaggerated to an almost comic level how big the capacitors are to let all of the low end through and be really chuggy. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_05So um what are the the biggest hurdles you have to go through when you're designing an app like that? Like the small things that are like is it like this sometimes it could be like maybe a noise that you're just like God how how the hell do we get rid of this without compromising the tone? What are what are the major engineering things you have to that you were surprised you had to get through?
SPEAKER_02Uh i it it's it's to touch on kind of where we were before it's there's a lot of getting companies like I it's been a theme through working with these big companies is you're trying to make them make things like they used to which is hard to do because they have years and years and years of reasons why they've changed the way they do things because it made sense at the time and they don't want to make things like they used to make things even though they know that's their bread and butter I and and I know that that doesn't make sense. They know it but like working with uh working with Gibson when Billy Joe redid the Les Paul Jr. the Les Paul Jr since the 50s had become a completely different guitar. The heel was different the neck tenon was different the placement of the bridge the angle of the bridge was different um the neck angle was different the uh headstock angle was different and when we did a Billy Joe model junior it was fighting with the the people at Gibson to change all those things back to the way they used to do it and they didn't want to make them that way anymore. Is it the designer that has an ego that wants to be progressive and put their own stamp on it or is it uh a matter of uh cost per unit or what what do you think the reasons are because they changed all of those things for a reason like the high headstock angle on which I think it's 17 degrees on an early Gibson like 50s Gibson was taken away because you need a deeper piece of wood to cut it out of and it breaks easier. And so they had changed it because they were trying to fix it breaking easier. But part of the sound is the higher string tension from having it tilted back.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_02The having the bridge at a more tilted angle um makes it harder to intonate but it sounds better. Gotcha because you don't have the bridge move farther away on a on a soap bar bridge it's how it works. You know it's what sounds right. They they just they have changed all of these things because it was an improvement in their eyes when they did them in small steps. And so you know like the neck on a Les Paul Jr had a step in it. Remember that under the neck it wasn't like smooth going up the neck and the original ones had a step right there where there was a good quarter three eighths of an inch shoulder and they got rid of that because it felt better on your hand but it was different and it made the neck attached to the body different which made the guitar sound different and so same thing with you know working with with uh Marshall was like okay I understand you have all of these European um American UL like there's all of these reasons why newer guitar amps are built the way they do where the power supplies are different they have more safeguards uh they there's a lot of you know they put a lot of IC circuits in front of tubes and audio circuits to buffer signal because they don't want they don't want they can't get the things they need um you know as far as certifications if you can't have a guitar cable going straight into a high voltage tube circuit that can short circuit and electrocute you. And so they do all those things because they have to so there's a all of the fighting isn't even the circuit the circuit's what the circuit is it sounds the way it does. It's fighting with them to make it the way you want it without giving anything up. And if they say well we can't do it that way well what if we do it this way you know there is what ifs around all these things that don't change intrinsically change the sound of the circuit or the amplifier. Yeah. And so it's back to stock.
SPEAKER_05Tell them the man up and just don't play in the rain if you're that worried about it. Exactly awesome okay well we're gonna take uh one more break and then we'll we'll come back with uh more from Bill Schneider. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01Ladies and gentlemen from your house at Anvil Music doors, doors, the best guitars that musical accessories here in the Bay Area and around the globe at Anvil Music, Anvilmusic dot com your local music store.
SPEAKER_02And we're back I got a new beer and um I just wanted to finish up with uh what you're doing currently well I came here today from uh meeting the drywallers at my house that are building out my home studio at my new house. Sounds like a start of an adult movie or something. No you know just working with contractors and although I would love to do everything myself and I think that I should because I'm cheap, I have learned that there's certain things in life that are worth paying professionals the money to do. And drywall is one of them.
SPEAKER_05Okay. So I'm assuming in your industry you're going to be soundproofing things. Yes. Okay so now I have some questions because I I attempted to do like kind of a makeshift soundproofing of my closet because I have a home studio in one of my rooms. Yep. And the trick here is I've got kids so I want to be able to hear an axe murder if they're hacking them to pieces, right? Yep. So I kind of want it soundproof but kind of a little bit uh you know where I can hear something. So I did the hat channel thing where you put the Robergommets you know you have the hat channels, you have the clips, yep, and then put uh rock wool in through there. Um I have a lot of customers asking me about how to soundproof a room, how to do it half-ass and how to do it the proper way.
SPEAKER_02So do you have opinions on that? I I do and I think that most people don't like the answer because there's two different ways to look at it. A lot of people when they say they want a soundproof it's that they want to make a room sound good. And if you're okay with just making a room sound okay and it's gonna have bleed then you're a lot better off because you can add attenuation um you know on the room on the walls you can put the you know the panels the fiberglass panels with cloth over them you can add a drop ceiling of the uh Armstrong acoustic tile and you can stuff that with that blue jean material and it'll act as a huge bass trap and you can make a any room sound good even a big square box. But if you're trying to make a Soundproof because you don't want to piss off the neighbors, you have to have realistic expectations. Because if air can pass anywhere, uh, you know, most people will go into a room and they'll go put four walls of uh you know egg crate material or like you like you did, hang spend a bunch of money and get the clips and the rubber things and hang an you know another set of drywall with insulation behind it. But you still have the floor, and the floor is just you know probably seven-eighths plywood, and you still have the ceiling that that's just drywall. And if you're not doing anything to treat every surface and stop air from moving and stop res, you know uh it from resonating between the two surfaces from each side of the wall, you you're not gonna win that battle.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha. It's a moot point, huh?
SPEAKER_02So doing anything isn't worth it unless you do everything, which means you need an air gap. Um, you know, you need to either use the clips like you did, or use something like the green glue in between two layers of 5/8 drywall. Um, and you also need to treat the floor. You need uh either to do a false floor or you need to have um something blocking under because that sound is just going to transfer through the floor right outside the doors. You need to have double doors, you need to have an air gap between the doors. Um, you know, the correct way to do it is you build another two by four wall that is, you know, an inch away from the other wall that's already existing, and you have you know, a wall, you have drywall, two layers of drywall, you have insulation, air gap, drywall, insulation. And then you need to have an air gap on the same thing on the other side of you know the windows or the doors. And if you're not gonna do all that, it's not even worth spending the money. Gotcha. Just make the room sound good. Right, right. So that that's where I try to steer people. Like uh, unless you're gonna go all the way and build it from scratch, you're going to spend a lot of money. There's no easy way. Gotcha. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So are you doing the full soundproofing or just making the room sound good?
SPEAKER_02I'm just making the room sound good and I'm making it airtight, yes. Which airtight is the number one thing to shoot for if you're not going all out. So I'm going, I'm not doing double walls, I'm not doing double, you know, layers. Um, I'm just gonna do uh, you know, sealing the whole thing up so that everything's sealed, everything's drywalled, and and error I have, you know, the maximum amount of insulation I can fit in all of the walls. And then I'm gonna do a drop ceiling that's stuffed with the recycled blue jean material above it. So you do you get the Armstrong acoustic ceiling panels in a grid and you put them, you know, they don't even have to be far, like eight inches below your ceiling. And I'm lucky that I have a nine-foot ceiling, so I can do a regular eight-foot ceiling, and then I'll have above that, I'll have six inches of insulation, the recycled uh blue jean material, and then six inches of air, and that's just gonna act as a giant bass resonator, and the room's gonna sound great. Awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So presumably you're doing this because you have other projects coming up, or you're gonna be doing more sound.
SPEAKER_02Well, I've been I you know, I've I've been playing in bands still. I I do a band called the cover-ups with uh Billy from Green Day and Chris Dugan on drums and Jason White from Green Day on guitar, and we just kind of play bars and parties and we play a bunch of, we go, you know, have a good time, play covers. Awesome. And then I have another band, Dead Sound. Uh we're uh we've been pretty inactive the last few years, but uh I'm real proud of the record we made a few years ago, and uh I'm trying to get a new band together right now. I recently moved to Santa Cruz and uh trying to kind of get in with the music scene there enough to get something going with people that live a little closer to where I do, so I'm not driving you know an hour and a half to prep band practice.
SPEAKER_05Cool. Now I I listened to Dead Sound and I I texted you. This sounds like big star, but more punk rock. Is that is that what you're going for for the new band?
SPEAKER_02Or uh I actually uh funny enough, I'm I'm pretty open. I I kind of uh my my tastes have I've gotten older have gone both sides of the spectrum where I'm sort of a lot, I'm I'm I'm into like a lot more Americana that's like kind of almost country folky leaning stuff than I've ever been in my whole life. But then I'm also really into like a lot of the you know bands like Kowloon, Walled Seal uh City or Pelican or kind of this like drudge metal uh kind of jam stuff. And so really I'm and of course I'm always comfortable sort of, you know, so many of the bands I've done over the years are kind of in the punk rock sort of more rock poppy, but still in that vein, where that's always my wheelhouse. But I'm I'm looking to actually play bass in a band again, which is always my main instrument. And then I got into playing guitar and dead sound, and because I wanted to make myself a better guitar player, as a bass player, I just felt like I was forever going to be a terrible guitar player, which I still am, but I I I wanted to be one step better terrible guitar player.
SPEAKER_05I've you know, having played bass and guitar in in band situations, I've always liked playing the bass. I feel like I'm kind of driving the band.
SPEAKER_02And that's what I like about it too. And uh it's uh it's it's it's completely different. And you know from doing both, but but people I I think a lot of people don't understand, like if if you're a guitar player and you play bass, you go to play bass to fill in for somebody, or just because you can play bass, because it's the same notes and everything like that, it's different than a bass player.
SPEAKER_05Yes. And and there's a stigma about that too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people play guitar on the bass. That is true. That's true. And and and I will say to defend myself, yeah. I played in jazz band and guitars, and I can play guitar competently. But um when I picked up the bass, um, it was because a mutual friend of ours, like Rich Brinkerhoff. Yeah, he was in a band called Divot, and we started a band called Cold Hot Crash. Before I joined the band, I I made sure I I uh did the RB bass Bible. Um so I was learning a bunch of James Jameson bass lines. Yeah. And because well, yeah, you did the homework. I try I try to make it try to not be that guy, but but it was fun. And it and you know, with um I'm I'm sure you feel the same way where you play guitar, you get to know all the gear, and then you learn a new instrument, and you're like, Well, I'm not I what do bass players use? What yeah, like and I started learning about the acoustics. I have a old one acoustic 136 solid state amp. It sounds great. Yeah. And um, and then I actually had the SVT classic. Yeah. And you know, would carry the fucking 8x10 up and down stairs and stuff like that. But it was fun. It was it was fun dipping my toes into new territory and doing that sort of stuff. Yep. So so what sort of bass rig do you have?
SPEAKER_02What sort of amp are you using for I'm a purist, I've gone full realm. I I've owned four vintage SVTs over my life, and uh they almost never leave my jam room. Uh I don't have any anymore. Um, I am a solid uh dual showman. Uh I that's my amp. I I play a dual showman. Um I I have a pedal board, I run a uh I got a pre-amp, a chorus pedal, and I run a Keeley uh compressor, studio compressor, and um and then an MXR uh uh DI line driver, uh, and that's my whole rig into a dual showman, and it sounds every much as good, every bit as good as my uh my SVTs at the volumes you can actually play in clubs these days. Awesome. That's great. But I love dual showmans. They're you you do a couple little mods to them, you beef up the capacitors and you know the power section on them, and they're just they're they're awesome.
SPEAKER_05Was the showman, I thought, was that originally a guitar amp? Yeah. So how do you how do you oh this is a good question? How how would you mod a guitar amp to where you're not gonna blow anything playing a bass through?
SPEAKER_02Well, it's a complete uh I was gonna say wives tail, but that's not PC anymore. Oh, yeah. It's a complete uh uh fallacy that there's a difference. You can plug a bass guitar into any guitar amp in the world and it's not going to do anything except for maybe sound bad. It won't blow a speaker? It will not blow a speaker.
SPEAKER_05So how did this come about? How does this rumor?
SPEAKER_02Uh I think it came about because early on, um, you know, if you think of an amp like uh you know, something that has a very weak speaker, like back maybe in the 60s, you know, when speaker technology wasn't as good, and you had a guitar amp, and you went and you plugged a bass guitar into it, and it wasn't a very well-designed circuit, and you hit it and there was a lot of square wave distortion and from all the low end going through, it could be uh putting out enough power and enough clipping to destroy a speaker. But any modern amp that is not going to do anything to hurt it. It might sound cool. Look at Lemmy, he played out of guitar amps, you know, he had uh Roan Marshall stacks that he played bass out of and didn't didn't do anything. Sounded great.
SPEAKER_05I learned something today. Yeah. I've always been told, no, don't do it.
SPEAKER_02So I'm like, okay, okay. No, it try it. Sounds cool. Okay, cool. It's one of those things that people tell you not to do, is you're not gonna, it doesn't hurt anything.
SPEAKER_05I I get the feeling if we put try it sounds cool on your epitaph, you'd be like pretty stoked about that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_05Yep. Well, I do want to say thank you so much for coming on the show. I learned a lot, and uh yeah, hopefully everybody else did too. So okay, great.
SPEAKER_02Cheers happy to be here.