Technomania

It’s been a while since we’ve been able to give details of any equipment changes in DT due to the recording of the new album, but here are the latest (as of February 29th) updates/changes to all things “gear related” in DT – apologies to all you non-drummers out there but as drums is my instrument, I tend to pick up more from MP’s setup changes than anything else!

Mike Portnoy

First off for Mike, he has Jose “Ho” Baraquio back as his drum tech. Jose replaces John “Magee” McGary who toured with the band on all dates for the “Touring into Infinity” tour up to Autumn ‘98 (Magee is currently touring with Steve Vai as Mike Mangini’s tech). Jose as most of you will know, is Mike’s original tech and returns to the fold with the extra job of having to swing in MP’s microphone during the set (something he hasn’t had to worry about since the “Fix for ‘96” shows when Mike tried out singing live for the first time!)

Note: we hope to have a full interview with Jose in the next issue.

Mike’s new range of Sabian “Signature” cymbals are now on sale and are available individually or in “sonically matched” sets of either splashes or stack combinations. Most of you drummers will probably know the detail already, but as a reminder the splash sizes are 7”, 9” and 11” and the “STAX” combinations are 8” pair, 10” pair and 12”/14” pair and consist of a special “China Kang” and a splash for the 8” and 10” and a 12” “kang” and a crash for the 12”/14” combination. When MP recorded “Scenes from a Memory” he had prototype versions of these cymbals, but these were almost identical to the versions now available. The eagle eyed amongst you who have Mike’s instructional video “Liquid Drum Theater”, may have spotted that the splashes/STAX had “Prototype” logos on them – check it out! The 8” STAX pair replaces the 8” China Kang to MP’s left, the 10” and 12”/14” STAX are in the same position as before, the 7” splash replaces the 6” splash to MP’s right, the 9” splash replaces the 8”, and the 11” replaces the 12”.

Also spotted for the first time on the same video, and as used for the recording of SFAM, Mike added a 7” Sabian Terry Bozzio “Radia” cup chime above the 10” STAX. Also the three “Bell Disks” to Mike’s left were replaced by a pair of Bozzio cup chimes (7” and 8”). Lastly on the cymbal front, the Latin Percussion “Ice Bell” pair to MP’s high right were replaced by another 8” Bozzio cup chime – phew! However, for the opening leg of the M2000 tour in the US, the cup chime above the 10” STAX has been replaced by a 6” Sabian Cymbal Disk!

The Sabian “Thunder Sheet” behind the kit to MP’s right rear has been replaced by a Sabian 28” “Zodiac” gong; interestingly, this shifted sides on some of the early dates on the M2000 tour most notably. This was clearly the case in San Francisco and Cincinnati where the gong was on Mike’s left rear, yet in LA it was back to its usual position! (I think this was more for space reasons as some of the stages were almost too small for the amount of gear !) JP often has this problem to deal with and has to have his racks positioned at 90 degrees to his cabs – the percussion rack which used to be at MP’s left rear has been pensioned off for most of the opening M2000 dates.

Mike’s Tama “Gong Bass” drum mounted to his right is a custom version as it is mounted on normal floor tom legs rather than the more standard Tama “Rollaway” stand which is much more cumbersome – it’s always been like this, I just remembered to mention it in this piece!

The whole of “Scenes from a Memory” was recorded with the “FII” kick heads in place as was the “Liquid Drum Theater” video (fairly obviously if you own the LDT video)!

When DT played Europe in November ‘99, Mike had plain black Tama Starclassic logo heads in place (i.e. the SFAM heads were not used). This was in fact the same for the opening US dates that started at the end of January as the SFAM logo heads were still in production (a similar thing happened for the opening leg of the FII dates in the states as the FII logo heads were not ready, also in that case they took a while to have the Tama logo added, too). The new heads made their first appearance around February 14th and were in place for the Cincinnati show on February 15th, and as usual, MP surprised me in that I was expecting the album front cover design, but the new heads are of the newspaper headline from the back of the CD booklet. One subtle change is that the word “Daily” has been replaced by “Tama” – cool or what?

The holes cut in the front heads also show that MP is using different kick drum mics on this tour than ever before in that there are no stands to hold the mics in place as before. You can see the wires coming out of the portholes in his kick drums indicating some kind of either shell mounted mic or something like the type of thing Shure produce which just sits on the pillow used for damping. Also on the sound front, MP is using much smaller mics for his toms than he ever used before – these are MUCH neater and easier to position, his monitors too, have shrunk in size but not in loudness and are much more manageable in terms of positioning/adjustment – I guess this is because of the general change in sound crew, being that Vinnie Kowalski was not out with DT for the November ‘99 Euro dates or for the opening leg of the M2000 tour.

Finally the two small kit mounted cooling fans were replaced by a massive floor standing fan to his left when I saw the band in Brussels on November 12th 1999, but this was I’m sure a temporary arrangement on the night.

John Myung / John Petrucci / Jordan Rudess

John Myung used Ampeg cabs when the band played Europe in November ‘99 – he tends to switch between Mesa Boogie and Ampeg as it’s not the first time he’s been out with Ampeg cabs. For the M2000 US shows, he is using the more usual Mesa cabs.

John Petrucci was back with his rack designer as guitar tech Mark Snyder for the November ‘99 Europe dates, also in his backline, he had SIX Mesa Boogie “Rectifier” cabs (on the FII tour where these cabs were first used, he most commonly only used three in a pyramid configuration). I believe Mark was out with JP on the M2000 US dates, too. The “six cab” setup is also being used on the M2000 dates proper.

JP’s rack set up has now grown to THREE cabs – soon his rack setup will be as big as his speaker cab setup!

John used his Ibanez guitars exclusively for the November ‘99 European dates. I mention this as since then he has changed from Ibanez to Ernie Ball/Music Man, but continues to use his Ibanez guitars until the contract ends around May ‘2000, although he incorporated the Music Man guitar into the DT set on the first leg of the M2000 dates in the US and as the tour progressed he used the Music Man more and more. One cool thing however is that he brought out the rarely seen JPM100P4 in “camouflage” finish which is my favourite of the JPM’s so it was nice to see that getting an airing.

Jordan is now using Mackie monitors/mixers exclusively and he has plenty of speakers around him as he plays with no backline amplification as such, relying on his monitoring system for his own keyboard sound and for the rest of the band – incredibly, he also still gets every sound he needs from the one Kurzweil keyboard, playing most of the set with ONE hand too whilst changing the myriad settings/sounds he needs! (However on some of the early shows on the M2000 shows Jordan had a “spare” backup keyboard on stage with him – this arrangement may stay but as I write the tour is in its early stages.)

That’s it for now – thanks to MP and all of the people who took photos of the M2000 US shows which allowed me to get a lot of this info for your enjoyment!

See ya......

Al Muirden February 2000