Kyle O'Neal

With leading worship at churches and events, I get to meet and know younger middle school to high school musicians who are already honing their craft of their instrument.  I also use to manage a music store in Cedartown, GA and I worked in Guitars at Ken Stanton Music for a while.  So I get asked about what kind of gear should be strived for.  I say strived for because most young musicians are still in school and barely have a part time job or maybe even just an allowance.  So I wanted to create a gear list of what to strive for in order to create great instruments and excellent sounds out of your instrument.  Please note that what I list would be what I consider to be the best of the best, but also what you should eventually strive for.

FOR EVERY MUSICIAN

• A great set of in-ear monitors. There are many brands out there, and obviously people have their preferences, but I would recommend some Westone or some Fidelity Customs. Westone UM2s or Westone UM3s are widely used and sound phenomenal.  However, unlike most musicians, I would actually steer away from custom molds from Westone.  They are way overpriced when you get basically the same in-ear with the UM2s.  I am currently using Fidelity Triples.  They are significantly cheaper than Westone and I think they sound just as good if not better than my UM2s.  Either way, at least get Dual Drivers.  That way you’ll hear the highs and lows.  There are alot of mid in electric guitar tones so I would recommend dual drivers for electric players.  For anyone else, if you can swing triple drivers, go for it!

FOR ACOUSTIC GUITAR PLAYERS

• Acoustic guitar. The most important aspect of having a great acoustic is getting a all solid wood instrument.  Lesser guitars use laminates to construct their backs and sides, but make sure you get an all solids guitar.  Rosewood is the absolute best wood for the backs and sides of an acoustic guitar.  The top piece of wood is the tonal wood in your instrument and will vary the sound slighty.  I actually did a video with Ken Stanton on this very subject.  But for the short version, spruce (or anything close to it, like sapele) is going to be a warm and balanced tone, cedar will give you a darker tone, and maple will give you the brightest tone.  I may be a little biased because I have an artist endorsement through them, but I think that Larrivees are the best acoustic guitars out there.  I play a Larrivee OM-09E and a D03RE.  But really any Larrivee 03 (Rosewood), 09, or 10 series would be great.  Taylor acoustic guitars are also great and very popular guitars.  On the Taylor side of things, anything in their 500, 600, 700, or 800 series are great guitars.  Just try out a few top tonal woods and see what you prefer.
• Direct Box. Most acoustic players just show up to a gig and plug into whatever direct box is there and is marked “acoustic”.  The direct box you use actually helps or hinders your tone in a sound system drastically.  The main things to look for in a direct box is that it should be active and/or preamped with a tube.  I used to use a Stewert ADB-1 active direct box and it not only made my tone transparent but boosted the output level I sent to the sound guy.  I’ve recently upgraded to an Avalon U5 to give me a warmer tube tone.  I fully believe the U5 is the best direct box out there for an acoustic guitar.
• Tuner. Whether you rack mount any gear or just use floor pedals, a tuner is very essential.  Acoustic guitars go out of tune more than any other instrument in a worship band.  Tune often!  And use a great tuner.  There is none more road worthy and solid than the Boss TU-2.  You simply cannot go wrong with one.  If you rack mount gear, there are great tuners out there.  Just make sure you have a tuner!
• No effects pedals. There is nothing worse to a sound guy or experienced player than to see an acoustic player show up with a pedalboard full of pedals.  The acoustic should be the purest instrument.  An acoustic guitar through effects pedals muddies up the sound that eventually gets to the soundboard.  If a song calls for effects, then let the effects be added at the soundboard after your signal.  Keep your line as clear and transparent as possible.

FOR ELECTRIC GUITAR PLAYERS

• Electric Guitar. A great quality and great playing electric guitar is essential to your tone.  Also the style of pickups within the guitar.  There are a few trends in worship music that have stuck, but for good reason.  The Fender Telecaster is probably the most commonly seen electric guitar in a worship setting.  There is great reason for that.  No other electric guitar can bite quite like the Telecaster can.  They bite and cut through better than any other guitar out there so the leads can be heard clearly.  They have also become popular in the country scene so that the fast “chicken-picken” leads cut through everything else.  Fender Stratocasters are also a very cutting through clean sounding electric and can accomplish the same ideas.  No matter what Fender you may get, buy an American model.  It is completely worth the craftsmanship that is put into the guitar and the tone is significantly richer.  For the more rhythm player, maybe a Gibson Les Paul would suite you better.  They have a thicker tone and can fill in chords better.  If you are more versatile player, I would recommend having one of each; a more lead styled guitar and a more rhythm styled guitar.
• Amp. One word…tubes!  Out of everything you’ll need out of an amp, you mainly just need a tube amp.  Solid state amps just don’t get the tone needed for worship.   You can mimic tube sounds when recording, but they always still sound a little digital.  Go tube!  There are different arguments about what brand of amp is best, but I believe that’s all personal preference.  As long as you have tubes warming up the tone you’ll be fine.  A recently growing trend is to get a head and cabinet setup instead of a combo amp.  I use a combo amp because it’s easy to transport, but I can understand the advantages of having a head on stage to adjust your tone while your cabinet remains backstage.  Either way and I’ll say it again, go tube.  I would recommend Vox AC Amps, Dr. Z Amps, Orange Amps, Goodsell Amps, or really anything else boutique.
• Pedalboard. You need a pedalboard that will keep your pedals protected while still keeping them neat and organized.  In my opinion, the Pedaltrain Pedalboards.  Being made of welded aluminum alloy tubing, these boards are strong and lightweight.  They also come with a hard flight case that is one of the most tough out there.  They also are slotted to run all your cableing underneath your board to keep everything neat and clean.
• Pedal Power Supply. Some pedalboards (like the Furman Pedalboard) come equipped with power supplies.  I actually don’t prefer that because it limits where your cables must go and makes your board bulkier.  But to each his own.  I use and prefer the VooDoo Lab PedalPower 2.  The Pedaltrain boards actually come with a kit to mount this power supply underneath without any cutting or modifications.  But whatever you end up using, keep it neat.  Loads of power supplies and cables all over the place looks messy and unprofessional.
• Tuner. As with an acoustic guitar, a tuner is very essential.  Changing capo positions may cause your guitar to go out of tune slightly so tune often.  And again I would recommend the Boss TU-2.  It’s the most solid and accurate tuner pedals out there.
• Volume Pedal. With a volume pedal, you have extra control over the volume knob on your guitar.  With a delay running in the background, you can use a volume pedal to produce ambient swells.  I use and recommend the Ernie Ball Volume Jr.  It’s completely passive so it doesn’t require a power supply and it has a tuner input for having the ability to leave your tuner out of your effects chain and always leaving it on.
• Delay Pedal. A delay pedal is essential to a worship electric player.  Almost every lead part in worship songs require a delay.  And even if they don’t, you can use delays to thicken up your overall sound to round out the band’s sound (especially when there is not a keys player).  I recommend a Line 6 DL4 because it has an onboard tap tempo and 3 presets.  The presets really come in handy.  I use and recommend a digital delay preset for the dotted eighth note sounding stuff (“All Because of Jesus” by Fee), a tube echo with slight modulation preset for just dirtying and thickening your sound, and a heavy auto volume preset for slower worship songs for the volume swells and droning sounds.  Also try adding a 2nd delay pedal.  Double delays are a lot of fun and you can get really cool sounds.  For “From the Inside Out” by Hillsong United, I use 1 delay on a dotted eigth delay and another on a quarter delay with heavy modulation.
• Overdrive Pedal. Not every worship song is a rock song.  You need a overdrive pedal that will just slightly dirty up your gain while still remaining transparent in tone.  I recommend a VooDoo Lab Sparkle Drive.  The Sparkle Drive gives you a gain amp and clean amp to blend together creating a really transparent and great sound.  Many guitar players also use a Boss Blues Driver for this sound.
• Distortion Pedal. Some worship songs basically ARE rock songs and sometime your overdrive pedal just isn’t raunchy enough for what a song may call for.  For this tone, and others, I recommend a  Fulltone Fulldrive 2.  These are great pedals!
• Wah Pedal. Where I wouldn’t say a wah pedal is completely necessary, I would say that if you have one on your board they do come in handy from time.  I typically use mine on slower songs when I have a thick delay that’s heavily modded and I just want to warp the tone.  The original Jimmy Hendrix wah effect is harly used in worship.  Different styles.  I use and recommend the Vox wah or a Budda wah.
• Other Effects Pedals. I would just call all these the basics.  However, there are plenty of other effects pedals that are really useful in a worship setting.  For example, a tremolo is really useful in some songs to give it a different tonality.  Also Digitech Whammy pedals are also becoming very popular for the sounds on songs like “Alive and Running” by Kristian Stanfill.  Another is the Electro Harmonix POG which will give you an organ sound and is a really neat effect.  The main thing I can suggest is to just experiment and see what fits you the best.  Every guitar player is a little different.
• Cables. Use good cables!  With a full pedalboard of pedals, your signal can be interrupted very easily.  There is nothing worse than being in the middle of rehearsal and you know that you have a bad patch cable but can’t find it.  Use good cables!

FOR BASS GUITAR PLAYERS

• Bass Guitar. The better your bass, the better you will sound.  And with basses more often than other instruments, the more you spend, the better your tone and sound.  You want to find a bass that is well rounded.  With Fender basses, most worship bassists use jazz basses because of their darker tonality and more pronounced mids to fill out the mix. P-basses handle the deeper low end sounds better but aren’t as versatile.  Recommended more than any other bass, Ernie Ball MusicMan basses are a favorite.  Being an active bass it puts out a lot of output and gives you great tone.  Another favorite of mine in the worship circles I fly in are Reverend basses.  Not only do they look unique but they sound amazing.
• Tuner. As with any other stringed instrument, a tuner is very essential.  And again I would recommend the Boss TU-2.
• Preamp or Direct Box. Like acoustic players, most bass players just show up to a gig and plug into whatever direct box is there and is marked “bass”.  The direct box you use actually creates your tone, reduces buzz and hum, shapes your sound, and increases your output drastically.  The main things to look for in a direct box is that it should be active and/or preamped with a tube.  For a bass, I would recommend an Avalon U5, a Reddi, an Ampeg SVT, or a Tech 21 Bass Driver SansAmp.

FOR KEYBOARD PLAYERS

• Keyboard. There are many ways to use keyboards in worship settings.  The simplest set up would be to get a keyboard that will cover all the bases.  You mainly want a great piano sounds, a synth sounds, pad sounds, and organ sounds.  With an all purpose keyboard you can just show up and plug up and you’re set.  The downsides is having to switch from sound to sound, but newer keyboards have made this much easier to do.  The most important thing in looking for a keyboard is to look for something lightweight that you can transport as easy as possible.  For all purpose keyboards, I recommend a Yamaha S90 or a Yamaha Motif.
• Piano. If you are wanting to just get a great piano sound and that’s all you need, I think Yamaha is making the best piano sounds out there.  I’ve been told that the hammer action and tone for the piano sounds were sampled from a $250,000 Yamaha grand piano.  They sound and play great.  Most of the sounds are found on any multiple purpose keyboard.
• Organ. An organ is probably the 2nd piece of gear you will need or want after an all purpose keyboard.  Although, I’ve heard some great organ sounds on the all purpose keyboards.  If you want a great organ sound, I would recommend a Nord C1, Nord Electro 3, Hammond XK1, or any vintage Hammond B3 or Rhodes organ.
• Synth. Your all purpose keyboard would have a alot of the synth sounds you may be looking for.  But if you wanted to have another axe and wanted to get just a synth, I would recommend a Nord Wave.
• Or all midi based. Another option for keys is to use a midi based programs to run all of your sounds.  Doing this gives you a wide range sounds and different effects because you can use virtually any plug-in you want to.  Some of the programs out there that I’ve seen being used are Ableton Live, Logic, or Reason.

FOR DRUMMERS

• Drumkit. You want the best quality set you can get so that the tone is phenomenal, it’s easy to tune, and stays in tune.  Much like an acoustic guitar, drums are made with tonal woods.  You will want to try out a bunch of different kits with different tonal woods to see what best suits your preferences.  I recommend DW drums or Pacific drums.
• Computer. Although I’m not in the cult or think they are all that great, a Mac is definitely the way to go with anything to do with music or production.  I recommend a Mac with at least 2 gigs of RAM.
• Loop/Click Program. Drummers set the clicks and run the loops and they need to be able to do it quickly and flawlessly in transitions between songs.  There are many programs out there, but I recommend either Ableton Live or Reason.  Once you have the program of your choice, learn it like the back of your hand.  Worship leaders, myself included, ask for changes on the fly and you’ll need to know how to do what is asked and quickly.  If a worship leader feels that the click needs to be doubled or maybe slowed down 2 or 3 clicks, you need to be ready and able to make the changes necessary.

// Credits //
For thoughts on Bass Guitar: Jeff Brewer, Matt Brundage, Chris Brink
For thoughts on Keyboards: Jason Foust, Todd Locke
For thoughts on Drums: Kyle Schumacher

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 11:59 am and is filed under Gear, Leading Worship, Worship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.