When you jam with heavy hitters like Frank Bello and Doug Wimbish, you better be prepared! So we ran to the warehouse to grab all the best gear we could just to keep up. Curious what it takes to jam with Doug Wimbish and Frank Bello? Check out the behind-the-scenes tour of the gear we used in our “Sunshine of Your Love” jam — which you can find on the AMS YouTube channel so please subscribe pretty please pretty please…
Signature Spector Basses
Since this is a jam with the legendary Doug Wimbish of Living Colour and Frank Bello of Anthrax, we have to start with the basses. And they pack some serious power! Both of our guests rocked their signature Spector basses, of course.
Spector Euro 4 Doug Wimbish Signature LE Bass Guitar Amber Relic
Special Price $3,699.99
Doug Wimbish brought down the house with his Spector Euro 4 Doug Wimbish Signature LE in luxurious Amber Relic finish. It has a super slim neck carve with a narrow nut width for plenty of shredding power. And bringing the tones to life are some custom-wound active EMG pickups.
All that bassy goodness is coming out of Doug's preferred cab: a Mesa Boogie Subway. He also had a ridiculous pedalboard that we didn’t even attempt to understand… And a hot sauce bottle, of course.
Frank Bello pulled out all the stops on his Spector Icon NC-4 Frank Bello Signature in gorgeous Tina Rose finish — named after his mom and grandmother. Aside from the striking finish, this lovely signature bass comes packed with EMG Frank Bello Signature P/J Style pickups.
Bringing the tones to life, Frank chose to use a Trace Elliot bass cab.
Spector Icon NC-4 Frank Bello Signature Model Bass Guitar Tina Rose
Special Price $1,499.99
Gotta Have Guitar for a Cream Song!
No Cream song is complete without an awesome guitar. And Russ really brought it for this Jam. That’s right, it’s a Gibson Custom Shop 1958 Les Paul Standard VOS. To get that “creamy” Eric Clapton tone, Russ rolled off the tone knob a bit and kept it on the neck pickup.
Rather than lug a giant amp around, Russ pulled out his trusty Line 6 Helix Floor, which he then set to a Marshall JTM45 preset with a little bit of reverb. It didn’t need anything too fancy with a guitar that sweet!
Rounding out the Rhythm Section
Tommy was bringing the beats with his Ludwig Classic Maple drum set. Whenever you hear a crash or a tick, that was the Zildjian K Sweet cymbals doing their thing. And naturally doing all the beating were a pair of Vic Firth drumsticks.
Mics and Studio Gear
There’s a lot of background gear in a jam session like this. And the AMS Master of Audio, Jake, made sure everything was captured in full detail.
For vocals, Russ was using a Shure KSM8, while Kelly was rocking the Shure Nexadyne N8. And as you might notice, the Shure Nexadyne series was a big part of the audio for this performance, because we also used them on the drum set with plenty of the tom-friendly Shure Nexadyne 6 mics.
Going behind the scenes, all the audio ran through a Universal Audio Apollo x4 interface daisy chained to an Apollo x8, so we could use plenty of preamps. Which preamps you might ask?
- Manley Force
- Audient ASP880
- AEA RPQ3 2-channel
Finally, so our amazing musicians could hear what they were doing, we ran the in-ears through the Shure PSM300 wireless system.
Universal Audio Apollo x4 Gen 2 Studio Thunderbolt Interface
Special Price $2,299.00
Universal Audio Apollo x8 Gen 2 Studio Thunderbolt Interface
Special Price $2,999.00
Ready to Jam with Doug Wimbish and Frank Bello?
It might take some serious gear to jam with Doug Wimbish and Frank Bello, but it’s also a lot of fun! They really brought the AMS Studio down with their rendition of “Sunshine of Your Love” — especially their four-minute chaos- and hot-sauce-fueled outro!
A big thanks to Frank Bello and Doug Wimbish for coming to hang out with us for the day. And another big thanks to Spector for making such awesome basses. And if you want to hear how all that gear sounds, don't forget to check out the Doug Wimbish and Frank Bello Jam on the AMS YouTube Channel!
