Gear:
Overview:
Guitars: G&L Rampage, G&L ASAT, Gibson Les Pauls, Ernie Ball Music Man, Custom Fender Style, Danelectro Baritone, Guild Acoustic
Amps: Bogner Fish Preamp, Shark, Bogner Shiva, Peavey 5150, Marshall, Soldano, Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, Fender, Marshall Cabinets
Rack: Eventide Harmonizer, Alesis Intelliverb, BBE Sonic Maximzer, MosValve Poweramp
Misc: Dunlop Crybaby, Dunlop Rotovibe, Boss TU-2 Tuner, Big Muff, Pro Co Rat, Dean Markley Strings
Gear information culled from Guitar World articles:
A pair of distinctive G&L axes - the creatively decorated ASAT and Rampage - along with a healty arsenal of Gibson Les Pauls made up the rocker's six-string arsenal on his recent sojourn with the Jerry Cantrell Band.
Cantrell's rack includes a pair of Bogner Fish preamps feeding a pair of Mesa Simul-Class 2 Ninety power amps (the duplication is for backup purposes), plus a pair of Rocktron RPS Intelliverbs and a BBE 462 Sonic Maximizer.
Floor effects include a couple of well-worn wah pedals. Less glamorous, but equally important, tools include wireless systems by Nady and Samson, a Furman line conditioner, and a Digital Music Corp. Ground Control GCX switcher with foot controller. Cantrell's metallic grunge is then fed to a bank of Marshall cabinets.
Gear information culled from Guitar One article:
I used everything in the studio. I had a really great experience in the studio. Actually, for amps I used the Bogner Fish before and the Shark, which is a preamp and a power amp, but what I'm using now is just a straight head, the Bogner Shiva. I use those heads almost exclusively on this record. It's a little smaller than a regular head. I was very cocky about my sound, so I was like, "Well, this is what I use, I use these." My engineer, Jeff Tomei, said, "Man, you gotta try this amp out, it's really cool." I like all Bogner amps pretty much, but I've got my thing, which I thought was my sound, and really, your sound is in your hands anyway. It really doesn't matter what you play through. So, I ended up blowing out my amp about five or six songs in, and then I had to use this amp. But after I used it, I went back and re-recorded all of my tracks. It's so good, and that's what I'm using live, the Bogner Shiva.
In the studio, we probably used about 40 or 50 guitars. And I was lucky enough to have a guitar tech who works out of L.A. and also has a vintage guitar and equipment rental company, so basically, I had his store in the studio. So there where guitars and amps lined up everywhere. I mean, you name it, we used it. I've always been into layering sound and layering tracks and different guitars and stuff. We made full use of about every parameter or every combination of guitar and amp that you could thing of on this album. And because it's such a big record, we tried to make the songs as individual as possible. We really listened to what the songs needed, instead of what you think the song needs. That's the trick.
Guitars: Cantrell owns four G&L Rampages, each equipped with a singles Seymoue Duncan Jeff Beck pickup in the bridge position and a Kahler tremolo. About his penchant for these guitars, he says, "When I picked up my first Rampage, it was the most comfortable thing I'd ever played. I'm not sure what the body is made of; I think it's alder. It's also got ebony fretboard and a hard rock maple neck.
"The stickers on my main Rampage came from KISW, a Seattle radio station that was always my main conduit to rock music. I cut the word 'rock' out of three KISW stickers and stuck them on the middle of the guitar. I did this when I was 18 or 19, so they've really been there for a while. The sticker of the naked girl is a different story. I cut her out of a Oui magazine, I think."
Cantrell's other guitars include an Earnie Ball Music Man Van Halen signature model that was a gift from Eddie himself, and a variety of Fender Strats and Teles. Lately he's been playing Les Pauls frequently, including black and white Les Paul Customs, a '52 goldtop, a Seventies goldtop Standard and a Les Paul Junior that he bought from Heart's Nancy Wilson. To record his acoustic parts on Jar Of Flies, Cantrell borrowed a Guild acoustic from Mike Inez.
Strings & picks: Dean Markley Custom strings, .009-.046, black Jim Dunlop Tortex picks. "I used to use the purple Tortex picks," says Cantrell, "whick are the heaviest, but now I use the black ones, which are the next to the heaviest. I've eased up in my old age!"
Amplifiers: In the early Nineties, Cantrell's amp rig consisted of a Bogner Fish preamp running through a Tubeworks MosValve 500 power amp. After Alice In Chains toured with Van Halen in 1992, Eddie gave Jerry several Peavey 5150 stacks, which have remained part of his backline since then. "The 5150s ended up taking the place of the Mesa Dual Rectifiers that we used on Dirt, which were there to back up the sound of Bogner," says Cantrell, "The 5150 is fatter and nastier, and a little bit more out-of-control kind of tone."
Cantrell records with a variety of amps in the studio, his favorites including Mesa Dual Rectifiers and various Marshalls, Fenders and Soldanos. For his clean electric and amplified "acoustic" parts on Jar Of Flies, Jerry plugged his guitar into a Sixties Fender Twin Reverb. On stage he plays thorugh eight 4x12 Marshall speaker cabinets equipped with Celestion 30-watt Vintage and 25-watt Greenback speakers.
Effects: Alesis Intelliverb digital reverb unit, an Eventide Harmonizer, a Dunlop Crybaby wah from playing songs like "Man in the Box." For his solo album Boggy Depot, Cantrell experimented with several distortion stomp boxes including ProCo Raat and a vintage Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi. Cantrell's wirelles unit is a Sony WR-820 model.
Jerry Cantrell first came to prominence as a member of Alice in Chains, one of the prototypical Seattle grunge bands. With their 1990 debut Facelift, the quartet scored a surprise hit with the ultra-heavy "Man in the Box," and haven't looked back since. Racking up such hit albums as 1992's Dirt and 1995's self-titled release, the band rose to the top of the alterna-metal heap. Lead singer Layne Staley couldn't cope with the pressure of their enormous success, and sank further and further into substance abuse. Due to Staley's problems, the band has to date been unable to mount a substantial tour since 1993's Lollapalooza, and the rest of the band understandably got a little antsy.
Over the course of their career, the group has issued two successful all-acoustic EPs and one unplugged album, which focused primarily on the songwriting and arranging talents of Cantrell, whom fans found out had a very strong voice to boot. With the future of the band up in the air, Cantrell appeared as a solo artist on the soundtrack for the movie The Cable Guy, contributing the track "Leave Me Alone." After AiC opened for the first Kiss reunion show in Detroit in 1996, Cantrell began work on his very first solo album. He enlisted Alice drummer Sean Kinney and a revolving series of bassists -- including Alice's Mike Inez, Les Claypool, Fishbone's Norwood Fisher and Pantera's Rex -- and set out to record Boggy Depot with producer Toby Wright, who had previously worked with Alice in Chains and the Nixons. The record was finished by the end of the year and was released in the spring of 1998 to generally positive reviews. He supported the album as Van Halen's opening act on their summer 1998 tour. A long silence followed after his touring as he helped on a few Alice in Chains releases, including a box set and a greatest hits. He stepped back into the studio to record his second album, this time for Roadrunner Records, in the fall of 2001. He worked with Ozzy Osbourne's touring band on the album, which saw him trying to avoid guest appearances despite the high profile friends he could have counted on. Right before the album was ready to drop in 2002, tragedy struck as Layne Staley's body was found dead in his apartment. The remaining members of Alice in Chains went to a vigil in a Seattle park and released a mournful statement, but the incident did not stop Cantrell from pushing forward and releasing Degradation Trip that summer.
SOURCE: ALLMUSIC
Thanks for the add, the newest CD was great! Hope you had a Merry Christmas, and you have a wonderful New Year! Do you know of any party's around the this area, WR ???
Thank you for the wonderful UK shows: I will be spending my Christmas break writing an article about Alice in Chains, so much to tell! I wish you and your Family a very Merry Christmas and a Fab 2010. Ciao + Baci Fabi
Where have you been??? Well, on second thought, that's a stupid question! You're on tour! I still haven't removed Black Gives Way to Blue from my cd player for going on almost two months now...I'm so impressed and I hope you come back to Toronto and play a bigger venue...I'll have tickets for sure :)
HI Jerry! I try photo acreditation for Alice in Chains Polish concert in Stodola. Accumulate pix for exhibition; "Climates of Concerts". If U can HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i like your new album.I hope it is liked by many.Sometimes i wonder if you should have just put degradation trip out as the next alice cd.That cd was left unheard by too many people.That album was all you with the alice spirit floating above it.
Have a very, Merry Christmas,
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