Richie's Gear

Formentera Guitars - "LLUNA" (2018)

I built this one from scratch during my 3 week holidaze on the beautiful island of Formentera, and she's been my #1 go-to guitar ever since.

Check out the Ridge @ Formentera Guitars page!

The Blue Ridge 1887

I built this one from a Fender Squier alder body (E-Series, ca. 85). Neck is a Göldo vintage maple (12" radius), Wilkinson VS100, and 2 humbuckers: In neck position Duncan's Lil' 59 (coil split via push/pull pot), and in bridge position the EVH signature pickup (yezzzz, the ltd edition with Ed's original sig).

For the assembly and the paint job I did, have a look at the "making of" below...

The making of...

Yamaha Pacifica USA 2

My companion since 1999. Together we went through (approx) 666 battles...

Gibson Les Paul Jimmy Page Signature

Wall of sound, mighty voice, holy grail of resonance...

Put it this way: Tone, tone, tone...

Ridgeboard 2023 - now

Pic: www.pedalplayground.com

Ah well... Finally, I became a Kemper guy.

It's the all-in-one solution Kemper Stage, with some spicy additions and some gadgets that come in handy for the live situation.

Firstly, the signal runs through an analog frontend, the Source Audio ZIO (B), which gives some shape and pre-equalisation to it. Also, I can even out some drastic differences between the several guitars that are coming in.

Then, the Kemper Stage (A) takes care of 99% of my sound. The amps, the cabs, effects, rooms, delay, you name it. Btw: I mostly use profiles of my trusty YJM100 Marshall Plexi amp.

In the Kemper, there are two effects inserted. Firstly there's the Digitech Freqout (C), which adds some artificial feedback to the signal, even at bedroom level. You can hear it e.g. on the Paniker's version of "Komet".

Secondly there's the pitch-whammy-effect Ricochet (F), also by Digitech.

Both inserted effects are used very sparingly, hence they are not in the signal chain, except for two songs (Komet and Odyssee).

For the control, there's a Boss FV500 (H) on the left for bringing up the volume while soloing, a Boss FS5U (G) for switching on/off the delay in the Kemper, and another Boss FV500 (I) for controlling the Kemper's wah. This one doesn't live on the board but is set up externaly, for I may feel like putting it in the middle of the stage, for showing off, ha!

Though the PA only sees the signal coming from the Kemper, there's a power amp (D) on the board (Seymour Duncan Powerstage 170), that might propel my trusty 4x12 Marshall, loaded with Celestion G12-65s from the 70ies or a 1x12. loaded with a Greenback for smaller stages. But that's just for my own listening pleasure.

Under the hood there's a Cioks SOL power supply to feed the additional effects (B,C,F) and the LED-strips that I put under the board. And yes, it's blue light that shines on a dark stage like our beloved Volksparkstadion in Hamburg! :o)

Currently, I'm building a smaller board, based on the Kemper Profiler Player, for small stages.

Work in progress...

(Guitar nerd mode - ON):

The heart of it: Line6 HX Stomp (6). It takes care of the Amps, Drives, Delays, Reverbs, as well as the Cab (the PA only sees the Impulse Response IRs). It is switched by the Boss ES-5 via MIDI, and this one also gets the pre-drive pedals (3, 4, 5) in the path. Additional control is provided by a switch (7) for more or less Delay and a pedal (9), of which I hardly take my foot off. This is my Solo-accelerator: Heel position is a "normal" rhythm setting, at the toe position I have more volume (+4 to 6db, ask the FOH guy), longer and louder reverb, more gain, more mids, and the delay goes from 5/8 to 4/4. All this is triggered by a move of my left foot, ha!

The signal is then fed into the PA with Cab-IRs, as well as without IRs into a power amp (8) and into a 4x12 Marshall (see below) or a 1x12 for smaller stages. No mics here, it's all for my own pleasure :o)

And since there was some space left on the board, I put a wireless on it (10). This prevents me from forgetting it at home.

Under the hood, you'd find a Yankee PS-M12 power supply and a Radial Engineering IC-1 Ice Cube Line Isolator.

(Guitar nerd mode - OFF):

And that's about it. This rig's small enough to fit into any car, simple enough to be set up in 10 minutes, and flexible enough to meet the requirements of all of my projects and needs.

Marshall YJM100 & Marshall 4x12" loaded with 70s Celestion G12-65