Almost Monday’s Luke Fabry - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 558

Hello, I'm Luke from Almost Monday, and we are currently on the dive tour in Chicago. And here's a bit of my gear. So I'll start with the basses. So this is an American Jazz bass. She's been kind of sturdy and always stays in tune, which is really nice. I'm thinking about going to a P-Bass soon, so we'll see, kind of different sound. And then over here, American Mustang. I just really like short scale. I started a lot of bass players playing guitar, so it feels more natural, but the problem is you kind of lose some of the body in the low end. I mean, everything's pretty stock. We got some glow tape, you know, really helps in the dark rooms. I need to do it on that, because we did another tour before this, and I was mostly rocking this, but it's just hard to beat a full body bass. So I think that's why I'm going to go to the P. Pretty much just all the way, everything's fully on. I mostly mess with my tone on my board, and then Robbie up front of the house helps a lot. There's a bass compressor on his rig that kind of helps as well. So I just have everything pretty standard, and then let the rest take care of it. You know, it's standard tuning. I haven't changed strings in years. And I know some people like changing them all the time, some people leave them on forever. I am in the camp of leaving them on. I should probably do that. It's probably a smart idea, but yeah, I think I've had the same string for like three years. Until we have like a tech, I just like keeping it, rocking with the same bass, and then again changing tone on my board if I need to. Just keeping it simple. But I think eventually I'll start switching out, because there's a couple songs where the Mustang's a little better, but not necessarily to the point where I want to be switching. It's just nice to be with the same thing the whole show, at least what I like right now. So that's what I'm doing. Alright, so this is the board. I actually just, I had a bigger pedal board, pedal train, and I only had like a few, another pedal than these three, so it was like kind of excessive. So size down, it's just been amazing. I literally fit it in like a little like carry-on, which is a blessing. Sposs tuner, things indestructible. I have had it again for like six, seven years, you know, so that works. This is, what does it say, it's like a fuzz basically, by JHS. And recently I went to Chicago Music Exchange to get this nut and washer, because I punched through it. I think I kind of stomped kind of too hard, so that's something I'm trying to grow in as a bass player, but they were super nice and hooked me up with a new washer. But this is great. I use it on a couple songs, nice fuzz, but the cool thing about this one is that it keeps the low end, because some of the fuzz pedals will kind of take the low end out of the bass, so that's why I got this guy, and it's also what we use in the studio. This is coming on Only Wanna Dance, as well as it comes on a new song called Lost. So just those two songs right now, but it's nice to have a little versatility, a little more grit, and yeah, it sounds really awesome. And then over here, I was on a Sans Amp forever, until this last tour, Robbie, our front of house, recommended this, and basically like an amp simulator, gets a little more of those vintage tones, pretty warm, just again, makes it feel a little more analog, which you know, right now we're not lugging around a ton of amps, which for practical reasons is best, but it's still nice to try to get a little more of that sound, because it's just, it's the best. So this has been good, kind of again leave the settings, we went through rehearsal right before this tour, and try to set it, so I didn't forget it, just have a nice clean tone, and then when I need more dirt, get this guy. And then for power, we're running this OneSpot Pro, kind of funny story, I was running a voodoo lab before this, like a year or two ago, and we played a show in Korea, and I fried it, like it fully just blew up, so I taped this recently. So I got this one in Korea, and the cool thing about this one is that it runs on all different wattage, so I think we run like 120 or something, it goes up to 2 something, and it works in all countries, which is, you know, helpful when you're tuning XUS. Taped it up, this is my super handy clean up job, you know, it's my best, also AirTag, keep things safe, and I can watch it, because things get stolen unfortunately, but a simple rig, and I'm excited to add on to it, talk about maybe adding like a, you can get like a two pedal to get a little brighter of a sound, but for now, this has been awesome. Alright, so in-ears, I should really know the model, these are Ultimineers, second pair, I crushed my last ones, as one does, but these are the base ones, again, I don't know the actual model, but they've been great, custom, really comfortable, I haven't had any problems besides my own foot on top of them, but those have been great, and then my pick, I've had this pick, I've used these types of picks for, again, like 10 years, Dunlop 1.5 max grip, it's cool because I can play guitar with them and bass with them, has a little flex, but not much, and that's, it's nice, so I can kind of use the same thing if I'm in an acoustic set or something, and I can play acoustic with it, feel comfortable with it, and also play bass with it, so, kind of the ultimate pick, I like that they're blue, I can find them, and yeah, I think it's kind of my ride or die. Thank you for walking with me through the gear promotion, we just released a deluxe of our Dive debut album, really excited about it, it's our first tour touring it, and check it out, we're on social media everywhere, almost Monday, and yeah, hope you enjoy.