Guitars:

I am pleased to announce that I'm playing Godin guitars. I am using a Multiac Jazz Spruce as my main jazz guitar and a Multiac Grand Concert Nylon for my classical and finger style work. Both guitars feature the 13-pin output that drives my AXON AX-50 and AX-100 MKII MIDI Guitar converters. Both guitars play great and track superbly. I also picked up a LG-P90 as a fun guitar to teach on. I love the sound of P-90 pickups. I am looking forward to more Godin news in the future!

I've, of course, kept my best Brian Moore custom shop guitars and still play often. I've also added a one-of-a-kind Strat to my collection. The Strat started its life as a 1950's reissue which I had custom finished by Robert Gerhards (formerly of Brian Moore Guitars) to look like a Piet Mondrian painting. All of the hardware was changed to include custom wound Lindy Fralin pickups, a new Fender bridge, all new electronics and a new nut. The guitar absolutely screams—everyone should have a great Strat.

Classical Guitars:

I only own one classical guitar: A 1977 John Gilbert 8 String. The reason I only own one: I've never found a better one. The guitar has a traumatic history. It was built as an 8-string guitar. At some point in the 80's, someone decided it would be fun to throw two extra strings on there are convert it to a 10-string. This involved a new bridge and drilling out the headstock. At some other point, someone decided to make it back into an 8 string. This involved another new bridge, a refinish, plugging the 10 holes in the headstock and re-drilling; I purchased the guitar in that state. Even though it had been through hell and back, it still sounded amazing. A few years ago, I invested in a full restoration of the guitar and sent it back to California. John, the original builder is no longer building. He has taught the craft to his son William, who did the restoration. The work included: A complete refinish, a new bridge (a custom bridge pin system - a Gilbert invention), restructuring of the internal braces, several crack repairs, the installation of new Gilbert tuners and a new nut. After 1.5 years of restoration, it is better than new! It plays and sounds like no other instrument I have ever played. God willing, it will last me a long, long time. The most common question is "What are the extra two strings?"
I can tune them in a variety of ways, but I always opt for two lower strings. I have a permanent dropped D string and a very, very low A string. I do this to extend the range of the instrument and open up new harmonic doors. As an added bonus, no one but me can play it, so it stays close!
(Pictures Coming Soon)

Strings/Picks/Straps/Cables:

I proudly endorse D'Addario strings. I use EXL110 strings on my solidbody guitars, Half-Round 11 guage strings on my archtop/hollowbodies, and Pro Arte EJ44 on my classical guitars. All my picks, straps and cables are all D'Addario/Planet Waves. They make great stuff and the majority of it is guaranteed for life!

D'Addario Strings

Amps:

Things are changing...
I've been using a Walter Woods 600w amp since 2001. It's about 6 pounds and is the size of a cigar box. It's really easy to carry around and gets an incredible jazz sound —it's the perfect NYC jazz amp... Recently, I picked up three new amps: a 60w Fender 2x12 Deville, a 40w Fender 1x12 Blues Deluxe Reissue (tweed) and a 15w Fender Blues Junior (tweed).
I love my loud, clean Fender amps!

Speakers:

I also proudly endorse Flite Sound speaker cabinets. Flite makes the most innovative cabinets available today. They use a custom honeycomb material to keep their cabinets as light as feathers while retaining the strength of wooden enclosures. Marc and Flite have collaborated on a number of designs over the years. After some experimentation, Marc is using a completely custom enclosure. It consists of either a 8" or a 10" speaker that fires down into the floor. A small port is available on the bottom of the cab to direct some sound out. A tweeter on the front covers the high end of the cabinet and is controlled by a custom attenuator to dial in the correct amount of high end. The result is a cabinet that is 11 pounds, a bit over a foot tall and 7 inches wide. The sound is room filling and lush. I still turn around sometimes and marvel that all that sound is coming out of a cabinet that small. Because the speaker fires down, the floor or stage becomes part of the speaker, resonating the sound in all directions. The result is nothing short of spectacular.

Electronics and Signal Processing:

I'm now running two rigs, one traditional and one not so traditional. My 'traditional' rig is comprised of the following pedals:

• Boss RV-1 Reverb
• Boss DS-1 Distortion
• Boss CH-1 Super Chorus
• Ibanez Tube Screamer
• T.C. Electronic Nova Delay
• Vox Wah

I'm running these pedals into the Fender Blues Junior. It's a very simple rig, but one that I really enjoy playing with. It clearly doesn't have the flexibility of my modern rig (listed below), but for smaller gigs where I don't want to lug a laptop, I really enjoy the sound!

My 'modern' rig is as follows: (almost) all of my electric guitars are equipped with the 13-Pin embedded MIDI pickup so I can access synthetic sounds on gigs. To achieve this, I run the guitar into a AXON MIDI Converter, which converts the guitars pitch to a MIDI signal through either a MIDI cable or a USB cable. The USB cable runs to my laptop.

I use an Apple MacBook Pro as the central source for my signal processing. The guitar runs into the MacBook two ways. First, the audio output of the guitar runs into a Metric Halo ULN-2 audio interface directly into Apple's Logic Pro software. Within Logic, I set up my standard EQ, Reverb and other signal processing to achieve the sound I like. I do this through a plug-in called "Guitar Rig" from Native Instruments (NI). I also run the USB from the AXON MIDI converter into Logic so I can tap into the amazing world of MIDI guitar synth. Logic acts as my host and I run several synths such as: ES1, ES2, NI Reaktor, NI Kontakt 2 and NI Absynth 4. From within one laptop, I get my guitars regular jazz tone and I get access to synthetic sounds, greatly expanding the palette of sound available to most guitarists. Since my signal path is digital, my sound is clean and precise and I can easily control the sound from venue to venue. I have been running this rig full time for three years and have never had a technical glitch that interfered with making music. One day, this will be commonplace, but for now, I am one of the few players around New York playing solely through a laptop computer.

Note: When I'm recording at home, I'm using Digidesign's new plug-in '11' through Pro Tools for my amp modeling -- it's really amazing. I am actually revamping my rig to take Pro Tools out as my live sequencer as we speak, getting together a Pro Tools LE rig just for this purpose (HD isn't exactly portable!), but 11 is that good, and I want to use it live!