“He had a rig that was an amp for every string for output" Billy Sheehan discusses bassists’ strange set ups

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Here, did you hear about the bassist who had a separate amp for each string?

Sounds bizarre, but it’s true. Apparently. Well, according to Mr Big bassist Billy Sheehan anyway.

The bass legend, who’s also played with David Lee Roth and Steve Vai amongst many others, was talking to the gear podcast Pedalboards Of Doom. In the midst of talking about bassists and their unusual setups, he offered up two candidates for such a strange rig, both of whom have a connection to the Alembic company.

"I think it was Jack Casady (of Jefferson Airplane) because he lives in San Francisco where Alembic was. I'm not sure if they did this for him or not, but he had, I think he had a rig that was an amp for every string for output."

"Either him or it was the bass player for Grateful Dead [Phil Lesh], because Alembic was also a sound system company, and they did the sound for the Grateful Dead. Stacks and stacks of JBLs, glorious JBLs everywhere. It was quite awesome."

He went on: "But there was at one point, a separate amp which makes when you do a chord, not only is it three times louder, there's no intermodulation between the notes of the chords. It's really quite a great concept. Would probably work in a studio better than live, but I haven't seen it since then."

The interview also threw up the interesting question of whether tonnes of gear was necessary because an audience in all probability can’t tell the difference in tone or whether having an arsenal of pedals was a positive because it adds to your confidence as a live player.

"There's a psychological aspect to it,” Sheehan considered. “There's got to be microscopic nuances that some people can perceive that others can't. It's very subjective and it's also in your hands."

"I remember the famous story, and I know that it's true that Ted Nugent played Eddie Van Halen's guitar through Ed's amp - sounded like Ted Nugent, and Ed played it - sounded like Ed. It's hard to get away from how your hands sound, and a lot of that is the little nuanced things that you do, that you may not even be aware of, but they affect how things come out in the end."