Richie's Gear

Guitar Department

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...

Pedalboard Department

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...

Gear: Legacy

Notes:

Tour Board 2018 - 2022: 

1 - Boss ES5 Switching Unit
 2 - Plutoneium Chi-Wah-Wah
 3 - Love Pedal Pickle Vibe
 4 - MXR Phase 95
 5 - Nobels ODR-Mini

 6 - Line6 Helix HX Stomp

 7 - Boss FS-5U

 8 - Seymour Duncan Power Stage 170

 9 - Boss FV-500H

10 - Line6 Relay G70

Not displayed/under the hood:

Yankee PS-M12 power supply

Radial Engineering IC-1 Ice Cube Line Isolator


(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

This is rock city, folks. A Marshall YJM100, basically a Plexi 100 watts without master volume (Modell 1959), but with modern gadgets:  FX-loop, reverb, a (well... quiet crappy) DOD overdrive  and, tadaaaah: Powerscaling, reducing the volume to bedroom level. This Marsh sounds so much warmer than most of the sewing machines I ran into the last 30+ years...

I run this fat boy together with my TC electronics G-System, so with this 1-channel amp I have about the same variety of sounds at hand as with a multi-channel amp setup. Also on this board I employ an MXR Phase 90 script, a Digitech Mosaic, a Source Audio Programmable EQ and a Fultone OCD (though Mike Fuller is a bloody douchebag). But as with every guitar player, this is subject to change... ;o)


Coming up - Richie live

(Confirmed at this point of time):

06.04.24 Theater a. Hornwerk, Nienburg (Paniker)

19.05.24 Parkfestival, Bad Lippspringe (Paniker)

01.06.24 Chattahoochee HH (Johnny B Bad)

08.06.24 Dillingen (Paniker)

15.06.24 Bischofswerda, Stadtfest (Paniker)

21.06.24 Wernigerode, Rathausfest (Paniker)

20.07.24 Wiesmoor, Freilichtbühne (Paniker)

What's up, Ridge?

Meeting (and rehearsing with) Udo Lindenberg

----

Dreams come true. Sometimes. Happened to me in May '22. No kidding', seriously!

In April '22 I got a call from Andy, a guy who turned out to be a member of the „inner circle“ of Udo Lindenberg’s tour production team. In essence: „The artist wants to meet you, Richie! And bring your guitar...“.

Wait... WHAT?!? Fou...

So, this happened on May 1st 2022:

I drove to Timmendorfer Strand, where UL and the Panikorchester were rehearsing for the tour ’22, and met all these icons I knew from concerts and articles and the telly. I met the man himself and we rehearsed his music all day long. Mark well: Not a tribute band, I was part of the real deal!

I met a totally friendly, overwhelmingly nice guy, professionally well informed about this Richie Jones he was making music with. A man who’s absolutely reflected and aware about his attribute being a national treasure, totally committed to make everybody in the room feel comfortable and easy, including himself.

Maybe the purpose of having me at a rehearsal was to check out some plan B on guitar players against the background of the pandemic.

Since the tour took place without any virus incident (hence me not playing on this tour), you might ask: „Okay, now what’s next?!?“ Frankly, I dunno, but I keep dreaming of being part of Germany’s greatest Rock’n Roll circus. But whatever may come, hey, I’m already on the bright side of life. I played with Udo Lindenberg, he liked what he saw/heard, and nobody will ever take that away from me.

Surely, a dream came true…

Hamburg, May 2022

 

Update log - The latest enhancements:

24.10.2023

Welcome the Ridgeboard 2023 (aka "Kemperboard") to the Gear page!

 

06.05.2023

Pics and Vids on the Paniker page.

 

17.08.2022

Pics page: Some substitutions done.

 

01.08.2022

Some pics here and there added.

 

14.05.2022

What's up, Ridge?

"Meeting Udo Lindenberg" - Short Story.

 

11.01.2022

The Gear page needed an update wich was long overdue. Particularly the floor board was pretty outdated...