After years of searching and finding the right gear, I've never been happier with the
stuff I use (on AND offstage) than right now! This page is for showing you the COOL
STUFF the band and I have the pleasure of using every day, and the fine folks who
have made it possible...hope you enjoy all of it!! Click on these below for details...

GUITARS      AMPS     EFFECTS      HARMONICA GEAR           

DRUMS       "THE MONSTER" LAPTOP

My main guitar is a 1975 black Gibson Les Paul Custom. It's got the sweetest neck I've ever played and it's the most versatile
Les Paul ever, thanks to the coil-tapped Gibson 490R and 498T Humbuckers. I've had it for 17 years now and It's my favorite in
the world! Pull up on the tone pots and now they're single coil for a Fender sound (but a little fatter)...check out the outro on
"Workin' Real Hard" and the solo on "Be Mine Anyway" for the single-coil tone! The saddles are graph-tech string savers which
keep me from breaking strings thru various beatings with drumsticks or pool cues...everything else (except the tuners, knobs, and
pickguard) has been replaced...I'm a player, not a collector.  Also, my hand has worn through much of the paint on the neck, which I used as a motif in the CD artwork for "Ain't Just Temporary".  My Backup Les Paul is a maroon mid-90s Les Paul Studio with the same coil-tapped pickups.  All my guitars are strung with Dean Markley Strings, gauges 10-46.  To see more of these guitars, click here.

My close friend Chip Todd (designer of the T-60 guitar for Peavey) builds, designs, and repairs guitars at his shop in Cedar Park
TX, just north of Austin. He has built me 2 mini guitars that sound and look incredible!!  The one I use onstage is a little copy of my black Les Paul, with 2 humbuckers, 17" scale, tuned up a minor 3rd to "G", strung with Dean Markley guages 12-54.

My other one is made of walnut with an ebony fingerboard with a 17" scale, and I tune it up a 3rd to "G". The pickups are single-coils from the T-27 guitar Chip designed, and they scream!  Email Chip (who is also an expert repairman and builds regular guitars of course) at chiptodd@austin.rr.com.  Below is a pic of us building it...

My on-stage amp is a beautiful custom-made Fargen "OLDE 800" 2x12 combo.  It was built my my new friend Ben Fargen of Sacramento CA...click here to check out his site.  Its circuit is based on the Marshall JCM800, but with tons more clean headroom, more bottom end, and more useable EQ.  This baby is so sweet and warm, and it's totally overbuilt, so i'm looking forward to many years of gigging without frequent trips to the shop (like my Marshall and my Fenders...read below).

FELLOW GUITARISTS TAKE NOTE!!  I used the newer Fender amps for a few years until ALL of them broke down on me.  My 2 Hot Rod DeVilles, my Blues Junior, and the Blues Deluxe I used in England all broke down during performances, so I have determined that all newer Fender tube amps are cheaply made with cheap components.  They are not roadworthy and I will never buy another "new series" Fender again (excluding the original point-to-point wired ones).  For my harmonica, I'm using a Line 6 POD straight into the P.A. system...my Fender Blues Junior broke down, so I had to use the POD one night...it was really easy to set up and the tone was even better, so I stuck with it.

While in England, I discovered WolfTone amps...they are a brand new company who also makes some of the finest tube amps I've ever seen or heard.  Their amp is a hand made, class A, 20 watt head with reverb and vibrato.  They are beginning production of their 40 watt 2 channel head, with 3 band EQ in place of the vibrato.  I played it on my last trip to England...yum.  They come with a choice of 3 cabinets: 1x12, 2x12, & 4x10 (pictured below).  I am honored to be their very first endorsee, and they are sending me one with a 4x10 cabinet as soon as it is finished.  Special thanks to Dave Richardson and Gavin Maclaclan for making a top-notch product.  Click here for the WolfTone website.

My bassist, Danny Beltran, plays his Sadowsky Metro V thru an Aguilar DB750 head, and currently an SWR Goliath III 4x10 cabinet. 

I am pretty basic with my overdrive/distortion sounds...I'm using the Fulltone Full Drive 2 on the 'FM' setting.  For Leslie sounds, I use an Arion SCH-1 Stereo Chorus with the speed turned up...you wouldn't think this cheap pedal would sound worth a damn but it blows most Leslie simulators away!  I had it re-housed into a bulletproof casing with new pots, new metal jacks, footswitch, and true bypass by Dereck Tabata at www.tonefreak.com.  I use a Voodoo Labs Tremolo pedal for texture, and I have an Akai Headrush E2 which I use live to loop rhythm guitar behind my solos and to stack harmonies (listen to "Bow Wow" on 'Ain't Just Temporary')...I pipe it thru another amp behind the drummer so he can follow it "on the fly".  Who needs a rhythm guitar?!?  My wireless is a Shure PGX series, and all these are mounted to my Pedaltrain pedalboard.  I am proud to endorse Pedaltrain, which makes the best pedalboards on the market.  They are sturdy steel, and since they have clearance in the back end, I fit a power strip with TWO wall warts, my Dunlop DC power brick, and all the wires UNDERNEATH which frees up the space on top for pedals!  No wasted space whatsoever (and they make 3 sizes).  Thanks to John Chandler at Pedaltrain for the best boards out there, bar none!  (pictures coming soon)

My friend Tom Brannon builds "Lock & Rock" pedals and they are fantastic! The beauty of them is that you never have to bend
down to adjust any parameter on the pedals...they operate on footswitches only. My favorite is the Sour Boost, which is an
overdrive/distortion pedal...he has customized it to include his Sweet Boost (clean boost), and both overdrive and boost levels are
selectable with the foot switches. The tone is amazing!  I supplement my existing rig with this amazing pedal.

My bassist Danny has a MoogerFooger envelope filter and an EBS OctaBass pedal for some extra stinkiness.  Very funky! 

"Yes, it's a vacuum cleaner" is my most repeated phrase at shows lately. I wanted to play harp and guitar at the same time, but
with the same "Chicago-style" dirty tone. I found a vacuum cleaner attachment at my folks' house in Galveston and the harp fit
right in it! Chip Todd made a connector for me and now it fits on the end of my Shaker mic (dynamic). No pun intended, but it
doesn't SUCK!! I play Hohner Special 20 harps mainly, and occasionally Hohner Golden Melodys.  I now proudly endorse Shaker Harmonica Microphones!

My local and touring drummer, Ryan Cortez, plays on a Pearl Masters Kit with a PDP 13"x7" snare, Remo heads, and Sabian cymbals.  His nickname is "tha groOve"...check out Ryan at our live shows!

Levi Haddock III, has been with me since 1995 and is still the funkiest in the Gulf Coast (you can hear him on 'All Fired Up', 'Highlights', and 'Kickin' It').  He plays a new PDP 5-piece rack kit, 22x18 kick, 14x5 wood snare, 10", 12", and 14" toms, Evans heads, Aquarian kick drum heads.

We have also endorsed McChristian Custom drums, made by Mark McChristian of Liberty Hill TX.  He is a talented drum builder who has built several amazing kits for our friend, drummer Ian Bailey of Austin TX.

This is my laptop, an Acer Aspire 1712.  It is a 'desktop replacement' computer, with a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 processor, 2 GB ram, 120 GB hard drive (desktop size), tons of ports, a subwoofer underneath, and a 17" screen.  I recorded most of 'Ain't Just Temporary' on this machine using Cakewalk SONAR 6 Producer Edition, an external 200 GB Seagate hard drive, an Echo AudioFire12 interface, a Langevin Dual Vocal Combo stereo mic preamp, and a single Shure SM-57.  I used Stylus RMX for most of the drum loops, and a cool (free) plug-in called EPhonic LO-FI for some cool distortion effects on the bass and vocals.  Click here to read more about the recording.  I also take the computer on the road with me for net surfing, email, website updates, etc.  It has been with me for 3 years and has been outdated, but it's still a very powerful machine!