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Artist / Heroes,
Billy Sheehan Visits the Source Audio booth at NAMM
Monday, January 25, 2010
Posted by: Jeffrey McAlack | Posted in: Artist / Heroes,
All of us on the Source Audio crew had a great time this year at the NAMM Convention in Anaheim. We met and jammed with all kinds of interesting and talented people. One encounter that really sticks out in my head is Billy Sheehan’s unexpected visit to the booth. We were situated right across the aisle from Rotosound where guys like Duff McKagan, Warren DeMartini and Carlos Cavazo greeted fans and signed autographs—it was fun. Eventually Billy arrived for his session and as soon as he finished he made a beeline for the Source Audio booth to check out the new products. It turns out he bought a Soundblox Multiwave Distortion last year and loves it. Shit Billy, if we knew you wanted to try one, we would have given it to you. I mean this is Billy Sheehan, the man played with Talas, David Lee Roth, Mr. Big and was voted “Best Rock Bass Player” five times by the readers of Guitar Player Magazine—he’s a monster in the bass world, an all around nice guy, and we’re proud to say he uses our pedals.
Billy checks out the Soundblox Pro Multiwave Bass Distortion
What a career—I’ll never forget the first time I heard “Yankee Rose” from David Lee Roth’s Eat ‘em and Smile record. At the time I was still dealing with the disappointment of Van Halen’s first post Diamond Dave record—seemingly overnight they went from being one of the greatest, most innovative and entertaining groups of the decade to a band that would have sounded right at home next to Kenny Loggins on the Top Gun Soundtrack. But the always exciting David Lee Roth took a different approach, he hired a killer band that featured our man Billy Sheehan and the legendary Steve Vai. Together they pumped out tunes that easily shared the stage with Van Halen classics like “Runnin’ With the Devil”, “Everybody Wants Some” and “Unchained”—high voltage rock and roll that pulled from a massively wide range of influences like James Brown, Frank Sinatra, and Led Zeppelin. The musicianship on the record is unbelievable, check out the simultaneous guitar and bass run at the end of “Shy Boy” (a song originally recorded by Billy’s band Talas), it’s a devastating combination of musical beauty and technical precision.
While he played around with our new Soundblox Pro Multiwave Bass Distortion, Billy explained his setup and how he currently uses the Soundblox Multiwave. He has a customized Yamaha bass with dual output jacks that run to separate amps. One jack is linked to a DiMarzio Model One pickup positioned at the neck—this is where he gets his super low-end. The other jack receives a signal from a DiMarzio Will Power pickup positioned at the center—this is how gets his high end and note definition. Running the Will Power signal through the Multiwave creates pa rallel distorted and low-end signals that don’t interfere with one another. We explained that the Pro Multiwave Bass Distortion, with its separate clean and distortion mix knobs, runs on a similar principle. It’s always great to sit down and share ideas with somebody who’s dedicated his life to the bass guitar and the sounds it produces—it looks like we’re on the same page with many aspects of bass distortion.
Check out this video of Billy describing his set up. He gets to the topic at 2 minutes 12 seconds.
That’s it for today, take care everybody.
Jeff
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