Rig

Alice Cooper co-founder and Hall Of Fame inductee Dennis Dunaway answers your questions!

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livinluvin72
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Rig

Post by livinluvin72 » Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:30 am

When you finally started making the money, did you buy your dream rig?
It looks like in the 70s you had the Fender Jazz bass with 2 pickups?
Where did you buy it?
Did it have Grover tuners?
What kind/brand of head unit did you use?
What was the wattage?
What kind and brand of speaker cabinets?
Was it 4 – 12s?
Did you daisy chain amps/cabinets together or just have one amp and cabinet and run it through the PA?
Did you use Monster cable?
What effects did you use and what were the brands?
Thanks

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Dreary
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Re: Rig

Post by Dreary » Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:38 pm

Bob Ezrin had a problem getting an even sound from my Gibson EB-0 Bass (with p-bass pickup added) so we rented a 1970 Jazz Bass for the session. The rental price turned out to be more than the purchase price, so it was mine. It was a sunburst and I glued mirrors and crystals on it. I also added a split DiMarzio pickup in the neck position.
In those days, we had lost quite a few guitars and basses from cheap hotel rooms, so I bought a backup 1970 Jazz Bass. That one was white and I put 18 glow-in-the-dark star decals on it. I liked that one so much that I bought another white 1970 Jazz Bass. I used LaBella flat wound strings and RotoSound round-wound strings, and a Herco "Ghastly Green" nylon pick. I played hard with nearly all downstrokes.
All of the tuners were stock Fender.
In the 60's, a new amp company in LA sponsored two bands that I know of, The Doors and Alice Cooper. Their guitar amps weren't great but their Acoustic 361 bass stack, consisting of an Acoustic 360 bass pre-amplifier with an Acoustic 361 W-bin, featuring a built-in 200-watt RMS power amplifier and a rear-facing 18" Cerwin-Vega loudspeaker. It was a formidable work horse.
But my favorite amp was an early Sunn Coliseum 400 watts with 2 15" Cerwin-Vega Speakers. I had one on each side of the stage daisy-chained so Michael could adjust the volume or turn it off depending on the room acoustics. It was mostly there as a backup amp.
PA's were just getting to the point where they could handle bass without muddying the vocals so we rarely had much of the bass direct in the PA. That's why the bass is missing from most board reference tapes. That Sunn Coliseum could handle any room, even our massive show in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Unfortunately, that amp never made it out of Brazil, and the newer Sunn. Coliseum amps weren't nearly as good.
Monster Cables were invented later on. I use regular cables.
I only used one effect - a Fuzz-Wah (Dunlop, I think) for "Unfinished Sweet" and "Sick Things."

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