Allan Holdsworth let me baby sit his rig!

danihrabin

New member
My band Marbin opened for Allan for about a month on his last tour (shared a van and everything) and after Allan asked me to babysit his rig until next tour so I have it in my house and wanted to share what he's using.

He has 2 2x12 cabs on the bottom that he powers with a yamaha power amp for his clean tones and two 2x12 hughes & kettner combos (he bypasses the preamp) that he uses for his dirty tone

Each pair is run in stereo and goes through 3 yamaha magic stomps.

Basically he uses the first magic stomp as a pre amp the second as a stereo delay and the third as an effect (modulation usually or a longer delay to create that wide reverie sound) he also has a booster on the dirt pair his amp (some old pedal from the 70's, nothing special, that gives his more sustain and drives the front of the amp and an old mxr noise gate)

he also has a pair of volume pedals. one volume pedal controls the clean pair and the other the dirty pair

Thats it

Btw,
I was surprised that contrary to many rumors about his string gauge he uses 10's with normal action (not low at all)

Cheers,

Dani Rabin
 
Re: Allan Holdsworth let me baby sit his rig!

Which guitar has he been using? Which pickup?
 
Re: Allan Holdsworth let me baby sit his rig!

So his tone is essentially a Magic Stomp? Man, when I had one, I couldn't get much out of it. Amazing he can sound that good with such an old piece of digital technology.
 
Re: Allan Holdsworth let me baby sit his rig!

So his tone is essentially a Magic Stomp? Man, when I had one, I couldn't get much out of it. Amazing he can sound that good with such an old piece of digital technology.

Tone is in the fingers ;)
But seriously though, while the Magic Stomp might be 'obsolete', many of those older amp modelers like the POD XT, Boss GT-8 etc will get you great sounds if you're not hung up about 100 percent tube sound accuracy and looking for something non-traditional.
Allan Holdsworth obviously isn't the kind of guy that got hung up about wanting the late 70s Marshall with a Gibson/Strat tone, so the non-traditional method works for him.
Some of the 'amp models' in the POD XT/Line 6 Vetta became so popular purely because they were totally new sounds and feel non achievable by any kind of analog amp and some were disappointed when they took those models out when the more tube-amp like POD HD series came out.
 
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