Trey and Mike's Guitars/Rigs

[Marmar]

Ok....this is mainly for tet, but anyone else, feel free to chime in on this one.....



Those are Time Guitars.....



That is Old Reliable without the middle Pickup.....



That is Old Reliable with the middle pickup......



That's the Koa.....



Trey playing an Ibanez.....



Great pic of the Old Reliable......



Awesome pic of the Koa.....note the Andromeda A6 that Page uses.......and that Page also uses a Tube Screamer for the Clavinet.....

[Marmar]

Oh...I just emailed Page about his rig....hopefully he'll reply if he isn't too busy.....if he is, I'll ask KS if he knows who/how to contact someone who would know......

[susep]

nice visual hty there.

[Gumbo72203]

Hey, i have 2 guitar mags that have details of Trey's rig.  One is Guitar Player from 2000, doing an interview for Farmhouse and getting Trey to talk quite in-depth about his looping setup and what exactly he does (more than just whammy>boomerang).  The other is a Guitar World article... i forget when thats from, im gonna have to dig that up, but im assuming its from the same time, right before the hiatus.  lemme know if you want me to get that info up and running, because therse a lot more stuff there than whats listed at trey.com

[jephrey]

Good, but I doubt we can use the pics straight up.  You can sketch them or something like that and add the sketch to Trey's page. or maybe even just add text.

J

[Casey Lenahan]

You can pretty much get all of treys rig right here.

http://www.treyanastasio.com/treysrig/

http://www.phish.net/faq/qs-band.html

[jephrey]

which we have on the site, but how about his older setups, year-by-year or whatever.  The evolution.  I think that's what we're talking about.  Check out the Trey page on the wiki and see what's already there.

J

[Casey Lenahan]

Trey has played these guitars, in this order, and still plays those with asterisks:

Pearl-white solid-body Ibanez
Time Guitars
Europe acoustic
Original blonde (1987)
Padauk blonde (1990)
Koa hollowbody (1996)
Wentzell acoustic

Trey's guitars include:

Old reliable, a blonde beauty built in 1987 from a combination of spruce and maple, with 2 humbuckers and a piece of plastic filling the middle pickup hole (where a single once was). This became Trey's backup until the koa was built in 1996.
His main guitar, built in 1990, with the same (blonde) finish as the main one but made from padauk, with a different inlay on the headstock, a large inlay from frets ~11-13, and two chrome soapbars. (This is the one Paul is talking about below.)
A koa hollowbody built 1996, with a darker, redder finish, almost like mahagony, with different inlays, and two soapbars. He used this for the first three or four tunes at Hartford, which included PYITE and AC/DC Bag, and for the Waste encore 10-16-96 and for PYITE, Poor Heart and AC/DC Bag 10-23-96. (Thanks to Julia Mordaunt) Mainly a backup, it was used increasingly throughout 1996 and into 1997, though the padauk remains Trey's main axe.
Trey Anastasio has thre"index.html"ul Languadoc electric guitars, all built by Paul Languadoc, the soundman for the band. Trey's guitars include:

1. "Old Reliable," Trey's first custom electric guitar. This blonde beauty was built in late1987 for Trey when he told Paul that he wanted a fatter sound. Paul built it from a combination of spruce and maple, with 2 humbuckers and a single coil in the middle. The back and sides are spruce and the top is maple. This became Trey's primary guitar until his next one was built in 1992. When Paul began to build Trey's second guitar, he removed the single coil from the middle, and covered up the hole with plastic. Photos from 1992 show Trey using the spruce guitar with the plastic pickup cover, indicating that construction had begun on #2. When #2 was complete, Old Reliable became his backup guitar.
2. Trey's second Languadoc, built in 1992, became his main guitar in the beginning of 1993 primarily, until late 1996. This one has the same natural finish as the first one but the body is made from padauk (as opposed to spruce). There is a slightly different inlay on the headstock, and the inlay on frets12 and 24 are larger while the rest have been thinned down. The upper and lower bouts of this guitar are also not as curved as the original. Paul put the single coil pickup from the spruce guitar into this one, replacing the vacant hole in his old one with a plastic cover.
3. Trey's third, and current Languadoc is a koa hollowbody built during 1996. This guitar is all koa with a maple neck, and the same tapered body shape as the second one. The finish on this one is a darker, redder stain, with a slightly different headstock shape, different (even smaller) inlays, and two chrome-covered humbuckers. The saddles are bronze on this guitar as opposed to the bone of the first two. He used this for the first time in October of 1996, and sporadically for the remainder of the year. In 1997, it completed the transition to his main axe, leaving the two blonde ones as backups. Languadoc states that "The koa guitar is the best of all of them because the wood has the most elegant and solid sound of the three."
According to Guitar World (12/98), "Each has a carved top and bottom (with minimal interior bracing), exquisit fingerboard inlays, and six-in-line headstock, a custom tail-piece, and a hand-carved bridge. (The padauk and maple/spruce guitars are made of bone, but the koa's is bronze to give it a more brilliant sound.) The hand carved, arched top hollowbodies have a shape reminiscent of a scaled down Fender Starcaster. The tops, backs and F-holes have multiple layers of white and black binding. The laminated curly maple necks are set and glued to the body with carved heel-joint, and have 24 fret, bound ebony fingerboards with a 25-1/2" scale. The shaped headstocks (with chrome plated Schallar tuning machines all on one side) have multiple binding and black faces with exceptional mother-of pearl inlay work depicting Trey's dog Marley. Bone was used for the nuts and two piece bridge saddles and bases on the first two guitars, and bronze was used for the saddles of the koa one, for a more brillian sound. The cello-style tail-pieces are all hand carved ebony. Trey's primary Languedoc (before the koa one) has a top of European curly maple - preferred by cello builders - and the back and sides are padauk with no back bracing. The guitar's wiring harness and controls are painstakingly accessed through the F-holes. The electronics consist of a pair of Schallar Golden 50 humbucking pickups with individual volume controls,,a tone Control, and a 3-way pickup selector."


to throw some more information onto treys guitar

[Casey Lenahan]

Three Basses (counting one MIA)

New bass: Richard Akers <ampdoc@mindspring.com> repoted (3/1/99), "I've got Mike a new Gibson Thunderbird on the way and he also is testing the echoplex (stay tuned this should be most interesting)."

The Modulus Bass: Mike started using a new bass on the Feb/Mar European tour in 1997 (not July,as previously reported), and has been primarily using it since. It's a five-string graphite Modulus Quantum 5 (not TBX, and no EMG pickups, as previously reported). Thanks to Dennis John Midkiff <djmidkiff@mindspring.com> (11/24/97), Russell Mirabelli <russellm@fastlane.net>, Steve Dolley <liquidlobster@mindspring.com> (4/8/98 and 5/15/98), Julia <FahtHarpua@aol.com> (10/15/98), and Brent Dutcher <donhoolio@aol.com> 1/12/99. Also, Steve commented that "Mike's switch to the Modulus is a big part of the Phishphunk sound, and has led to his stepping out more and leading jams. The Modulus is very clear and articulate in its attack (primarily due to the neck, which is made of a carbon-graphite composite rather than wood). Very righteous for slap and pick styles. It also has nearly infinite sustain, and rings like a bell. Also, Phil Lesh plays them, and Mike is a major Phil admirer."

The Dragon Bass: An earlier Languedoc bass was stolen a few years ago, but was used from circa 1987 through mid-1997. Simpler than the Modulus, it had five strings "with an inlay of an asian-style dragon in mother of pearl on the headstock. It also has Paul Languedoc's name inlaid into it. It looks like the Languedoc bass that Mike is still using." (Shelly Culbertson; thanks also to Matt Laurence.) "Named for its intricate headstock inlay, the Dragon bass (built in 1989) has a five-piece curly-maple neck and a bound ebony fingerboard. The body is solid koa, with a face of curly-maple veneer. The bridge and tuning machines were made by Schaller. Mike custom-ordered the instrument's active, 18-volt Mørch pickups from Denmark; they came with myriad knobs and switches Mike didn't really want. "I have trouble making decisions," he says. "I probably change my instrument settings only every two years." The three larger knobs on the bass control volume (one per pickup) and pickup blend; the four micro-switches and three smaller knobs are for various midrange contours and high and low boosts. (Languedoc comments, "Even I don't know what they all do!") ... Mike and Paul both call the Fish--also named for its inlays--"a bit of an experiment." The bass, which was built about two years ago, has a two-piece curly-maple body with an interior chamber, a koa face with an f-hole and multiple-layered binding, and only one knob, which blends between the two EMG ASB-5 pickups. Mike eventually wants to add a piezo bridge transducer to accentuate the highs of the instrument's hollow body." (From "Paul Languedoc's Custom Basses" (Bass Player, December 1996) The article also includes a small diagram of his rig at the time, and lists a Lovetone Meatball as Mike's envelope filter. (Thanks also to <loend1@aol.com>.) The bass also has custom-ordered 18-volt Mørch pickups. (Nicolai Knudsen <info@interpoint.dk> 8/7/00)

Mikes Basses

[jephrey]

If you haven't, these writeups are nice for the guys' pages, so put them there...

Rock on.

J

[tet]

If you haven't, these writeups are nice for the guys' pages, so put them there...

Rock on.

J

except they are verbatim from somewhere else.  please be sure to attribute complete copyright for the original source...  i'd much prefer our site to have originally written material, but since the info is still coming from elsewhere, we need to cite it. 

[Casey Lenahan]

You need the exact site or just the website it came from.

Well when you have historical info its kinda hard to have your own since history doesn't change, but i can like summarise it in my own words if you'd like

[Marmar]

Seriously....add these pics to the Trey and Mike pages about their stage rigs.....

These are EXACT diagrams of their stage rigs from roughly 1990-1997....note the one for Trey's rig even has his PREAMP SETTINGS!