Creating Layers Live: Tim's Rig

So, for the gear nerds out there I thought I'd give you a run-down of what I use live to recreate all the righteous sounds we have on AVOHFASIH. I'll go through it in list form to make it nice and easy!

- AMP -
• ENGL PowerBall - Best head I've ever owned. Reliable, tough, and loud as fuck. Plus the focused mid option gives my tone some extra fat.

• Marshall 4x12 - To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what this cab is, but it's loaded with 4 25 watt BlackBack speakers. Insanely gnarly.

*Dahlia to fat-awnry cat not included*

- PedalBoard -
• Homemade board

• Line 6 MM4 - I basically picked this up because I couldn't fine a Phase 90 locally. Dave's guitar in La Crosse had this thing laying around. It has phase, flange, tremolo, chorus, etc etc. Fun to mess with, and I use it for some auto-wah and flange type stuff live here and there.

• ISP Decimater - Noise gate, I try not to use this unless we have a part in a song that requires real silence, otherwise, I just like to let the amp hum and hiss all she wants.

• T. Juernig Gristle King - The king of versatile overdrives, hand-built right here in Wausau by a rad dude named Tim Juernig. We used this for most of the overdrive/distorted tones on AVOH in some way, and I have it on live for various parts to add thickness. Also, I use the second channel of it for a solo boost. It's not the cleanest of boosts, but who the hell cares, it sounds fucking awesome.

• Korg Blackout Tuner - nice and simple, registers low tunings well. Can't beat it.

• Channel switch - lets me access all 4 channels of my amp with just 2 little buttons.

• Line 6 DL4 - I use this pedal for tons of stuff. It has a bunch of great delay, and a 16 second loop, which we use live for "From Depths, I Rise" to get multiple guitar lines layered for the intro.

• Eventide SPACE - You can't find a cooler pedal than this. Honestly the only thing I've found that rivals it is the Eventide Pitchfactor, which Erik has on his board! haha. In all honesty though, If you need reverb, delay, or just some crazy sounding stuff, this pedal can do it. You could ask my wife how many times we've been listening to music only for me to turn it down and say "I bet I could make that sound with the SPACE" and you'll probably get and angry look and a answer something like "too god damned much" lol. If you ever have a chance to play


   

And that's it! Other than a couple LTD guitars and some monster cables!
Thanks for looking and feel free to ask questions if you have any!

Weekend Travel Log

Wow, what an awesome weekend!
Here's a travel recap:
Will - Drives from St. Paul,MN to meet Erik in La Crosse.
Will & Erik - Drive to Madison in Will's car
Tim & Logan - meet Will & Erik at Madison area rest stop with the van and equipment, leave Will's car and continue on to Milwaukee
Tim, Logan, Erik, and Will - pick up Cris in Milwaukee and head to Chicago for the show.

Friday Night:
We played the Ultra Lounge (Pics below thanks to john mourlas: www.johnmourlas.com) with Himalayan, Masses, and Hunters. First off, let me just say, what a nice venue. It was a cool cocktail bar on one side, and the perfect small room live music club on the other. The staff was great, they gave us a nice parking spot and easy access to load in. The dude who put the show on was solid as fuck and super helpful as well. As for the bands, Masses was great. They seemed to have a 90's alt rock meets prog/post metal thing going on, which we all thought was pretty rad. Himalayan was a 3 piece that sounded like a 10 piece. Great band as well. Finally, Hunters: WOAH. Think Wolverine Blue era Entombed meets Bloodbath. We've been pals with these guys for a while, but this was our first chance to get together and play a show, and it was well worth the wait. These guys put on a great, super energetic show, and are tight and super heavy, so check them out Chicago folk!

Saturday:
We stayed over at our lovely friend Kiersten's house with her and her insane-o pit bull "puppy" who's name was Doggie James Dio. He was not only our partner in crime for a VHS marathon (cuz Kiersten's hip like that haha) but also a wonderful, bounding, 70 lb alarm clock! haha.
Anyway, we woke up and headed straight for Kumas to get some breakfast. And yes, giant burgers go exceptionally well with coffee.

Will with the YOB

My Impaled Nazarene

I honestly can't stress enough how amazing Kuma's Corner is. We go there everytime we are in Chicago, and we always will. The food is 100% amazing, the staff is crazy awesome, the music is great, etc etc etc. This is a DO NOT MISS if you go to chicago. Thanks a TON to Luke For making this breakfast possible!

Travel:

Whole band - Leaves Chicago for Milwaukee

Cris - grabs his truck in Milwaukee and follows the van back to the Madison rest stop where we now leave his truck 

Will - gets back in his car, and follows the band to La Crosse

Saturday Night:

We played one of our favorite venues, Jb's Speakeasy in good ol' La Crosse WI. Its a tiny place, but the sound is always great, we always have a great crowd, and we are good friends with the bar owner, so it always makes for a fun night. Of Conscience opened the show. They are a bunch of young kids from La Crosse, and man, they get better everytime we see them. These dudes will be making noise for a while, and I can't wait to watch them continue to grow as a band and kick ass. Sowbelly Bithhog was up next. Our previous drummer Jim Haugen joined Sowbelly a while back and we had been meaning to get a show together, and I'm really glad we did. Sowbelly has been around for a long time, but with Jim behind the kit, they've really stepped it up a notch. This band is (and always has been) heavy as fuck. They're again, a 3 piece that sounds way bigger than a 3 piece. They rocked about a 40 minute set of stoner rock grooves and slams, and it was awesome. After finishing our set and partying hard with our friends from La Crosse and Jim and Jeff from Sowbelly we called it a night and crashed on Jim's floor.

Sunday:

Blah, blah, everyone is hungover, we went to a breakfast place and waited way to long for breakfast, etc etc. lol

Travel:

Will - takes his car home to St. Paul

Erik - is home

Tim, Logan, & Cris - take the van back to the rest stop in Madison where Cris's truck is.

Cris - Drives home to Milwaukee

Tim and Logan - Drive to Practice space, unload all the gear, and then drive back to Tim's to park the van.

Logan - drives home to Steven's Point

Tim - is home, with his awesome bearded dog.

Anyway, this was a crazy long post, so I hope you found it entertaining and not as tiring to read as it was to actually do. haha. Can't wait for more weekends like this in 2012.  Enjoy the pictures!

-T

First shows back

Well, here we are, Saturday July 16th, and we have finally started playing shows again! What a great pair of shows to get us back into the swing of playing. We had an amazing weekend traveling to Michigan, camping, etc, etc.  On top of all that it was Will's and my fiance Dani's birthday, so we had celebrating to do the whole time. Either way, check out the pics if you'd like to see some of what we saw! haha.
See you all on the road soon!


New song coming in T-minus 3 days!


To those of you who came out and grabed a cassette and a poster, we hope you dig it!

-T

Logan loves to travel.