Dave's current rig

updated: 08 February 2009

My Current Setup

Here's the current (Feb 2009) incarnation of the gig rig. I'm sure this page will become out of date before too long. ;-)

If you've perused many of the links to the left, you've seen that I've had some pretty complicated setups over the years, and I'm constantly fighting to simplify the rig, both for sanity's sake, and also to make for an easier load-in and load-out. In 2004 I picked up a 73-note Nord Electro 2, and for the most part it's really worked out well for me. The current rig is based around that:

Nord Electro2 73 organ/Rhodes/piano/clav keyboard
Speakeasy Vintage tube Leslie preamp
"Pancake" Leslie organ speaker
Crown power amp
Bag-End TA12BF monitor speaker
The rack
Unison keyboard stand
Roc-n-Soc throne

Here's the thing about the Nord: unlike every other Hammond clone on the market, the Electro2 does not have drawbars. It uses pushbuttons instead. Because of that, I resisted this keyboard for a long time. But once I did get it, I really liked how versatile it is, and the manufacturer (Clavia) has done some really smart things - you can split the outputs so the organ sounds go out one channel and the other sounds go out the other. That makes it easy to bring a Leslie speaker into the setup. You can set the expression pedal to work as a wah or control other effects, the sustain pedal can toggle the internal Leslie sim, and so on. So you can do a lot of stuff with just a sustain pedal and an expression pedal.

After years of gigging without drawbars, I finally got around to getting another MIDI Solutions Event processor and programmed it to remap the Voce V5's drawbar controller numbers to those of the Nord. So now I can use the V5's drawbars to control the Nord, and it's improved playability significantly. I plan to build my own custom drawbar controller, but that's another project for another day...

The Electro2 has a pretty limited number of on-board sounds, but Clavia has a bunch of piano and Rhodes sounds on its website that you can flash into the keyboard via USB, so you can pick and choose what you like best. So the sounds loaded in mine really are the best Clavia has to offer. For really small gigs, I'll bring just the Electro 2 and an amp. For most gigs, I'll bring the setup shown here. The "Pancake" Leslie is called the "Spin Doctor" (cheesy name, huh), made by Dr. David Tarantolo in New Orleans. I haven't heard from him in years, I don't know if he's still in business. It uses stock Leslie components, except for the bass rotor and driver. Instead of the usual 15" driver this Leslie uses a 16-ohm jensen C12N, and the rotor is some sort of wooden 12-inch rotor that I think was scavenged from a home organ. When I ordered it I had doubts about the bass response, but speaker technology has come a long way in the 50+ years since the Leslie was first popularized. It sounds just like a conventional Leslie 145, but at about 1/3 the size and weight. I use Speakeasy Vintage Music's most excellent all-tube Leslie preamp, which was a huge improvement over my old Trek II pedal. If you play through a Leslie, I highly recommend investing in the Speakeasy preamp. They're kinda pricey, but it'll make a huge difference in your sound.

Lastly, there's the rack, which has a couple sound modules in it and a mic/line mixer. The acoustic piano sound in the Nord leaves a lot to be desired, so I use the sounds in the rack to augment the Nord's sounds. The rack also has some mic preamps in it and a direct box to facilitate interfacing my keyboard setup with the house PA.