Dave's current rig

updated: 01 Nov 2005

My Current Setup

I go through long lapses of not updating this page, and since I'm always buying and selling gear on Ebay it drifts out of date. As of this writing, things have settled down again and here's the current state of the gig rig.

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 working out well. The current righ is based around that:

Nord Electro2 73 organ/Rhodes/piano/clav keyboard
Mesa Boogie Mark I reissue guitar amp
"Pancake" Leslie organ speaker
Speakeasy Vintage tube Leslie preamp
GeneralMusic RealPiano piano module
Kurzweil MicroPiano piano module
Korg M3R synth module
Unison keyboard stand

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. Once I finally did get it, it actually didn't take me that long to get past the lack of real drawbars. Overall I like the Hammond simulation better than the Voce V-5 it replaced. The built-in Leslie simulation is pretty good too, about as good as Leslie simulations get. More importantly, it has an absolutely killer Rhodes piano sound.

It actually has a pretty limited number of on-board sounds, but the manufacturer (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. I also like the fact that the Electro2 has built-in analog filters, and most importantly, the pedals are programmable. I have mine set up so that in organ mode, the volume pedal acts as an expression pedal and the sustain pedal toggles the speed of the internal Leslie sim. When in piano mode, the volume pedal is preset to control the wah-wah effect, and of course the sustain acts as a sustain. It's just great that I only need two pedals, and they're pretty lightweight. Again, very easy to deal with in a gigging situation.

I've experimented with a few different amps and monitors, and I've grown to really like the sound of the Nord though this Mesa Boogie Mark I reissue. In fact, for smaller gigs or gigs with a small timeslot, I'll bring just the Nord and the Boogie, and rely on the Nord's Leslie simulation. It's not bad, and through the Boogie it's pretty convincing.

For larger gigs, I'll bring the setup shown here. The "Pancake" Leslie is called the "Spin Doctor" (cheesy bame, huh), made by Dr. David Tarantolo in New Orleans. It uses stock Leslie components, except for the bass rotor and driver which are 12" instead of the normal 15 inches. When I ordered it I had my doubts about the bass response. However, speaker technology has come a long way in the 40+ years since the Leslie came out, and the high-efficiency 12 in this pancake Leslie puts out at least as much bottom end as the 15s in my convetional Leslies... and this thing is 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.

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 something to be desired, whereas the GeneralMusic RealPiano in my rack kicks butt.