Agriculture’s Richard Chowenhill - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 618

You don't have to go toe down to click it on. I actually use a mandolin pick. There's even a little thing in the back where it holds a spare fuse. So I just have a Euro fuse on one side and then a US fuse on the other side. Hey, this is Richard Challenhill from the band Agriculture. I play lead guitar and I'm also the producer of our records. So right now we're on tour in Chicago. We're at the Empty Bottle here for a sold out show. We're about in the middle of a US tour. So we started in Philly and we're kind of going through East Coast, Midwest, up to Canada and then back down for finishing off with three shows in New York. And we'll be back in the States again in the spring, as well as over in Europe. So hopefully we'll catch you guys out there. We're supporting our new record that came out last year called The Spiritual Sound. It's out on the Flenser in all formats, on all streaming platforms. You can check that out. Also, if you come see us, you can buy all the physical copies from us. And we've also got tons of cool merch and stuff. And we also love talking to y'all. So if you ever want to come out, talk to me or Leah or Dan or Curren about gear or anything like that, we're pretty friendly. And I love chatting about that stuff. So this guitar is an EVH Wolfgang Special that I've done some mods on. So the first thing is these are Lawler pickups. And these are prototypes of a humbucker that's going to be coming out soon. In fact, it's likely that by the time this video is out, they'll already be available. So this is a newest offering from Lawler. They're really, really, really good. I love them. I really like clarity. Clarity is really important for me, even with a lot of gain. And we actually don't play with a ton of gain just because I like that extra clarity, but this has allowed me to get even more clarity and sustain, especially with the bigger tremolo pick sort of black metal style chords. It really helps to have that extra clarity. And then for the solos, you know, volume is one thing, but also just overall kind of spectral clarity is really important. And getting those extra harmonics allows me to still be at a nice level with the rest of the band, but still come out for the solos. So that's really important. And I am loving these pickups from Lawler. Great company, family owned in Tacoma, Washington. Really great folks to work with. So I've been loving these. I've also got these locking tuners on here. So I replaced the stock ones on here just because we retune kind of a lot. So we play our current set. I think we do four different tunings, three or four different tunings. And tuning is also really important to me. It's just a thing that that I have, especially with three string players on stage. So two guitars and the bass, of course, and it's a five it's a five string bass. So a lot of strings, a lot of stuff to go out of tune, a lot of sort of funky stuff to deal with. So having the extra stability for me has been really nice. These are from Graph Tech. The other thing I really like about these, in addition to being locking, is there the ratio line, which means that each one is a different ratio, essentially calibrated so that one turn gets you the same pitch difference or change per string, which, again, might seem like a small thing. But if you're doing tons of shows a year and you're doing different tunings in different, you know, it's it's like 12 degrees outside right now. And it's like what, like 80 degrees in here right now. So all of those variables, it really helps to have that extra stability. So I just I just really love that. And and that's been great. I put these on pretty recently and I put these these in pretty recently as well. And so far, it's been quite nice. So the other thing I really like about this guitar is it's got a unique neck shape. So it's a little thicker on one end than the other end. And that's a kind of a Wolfgang thing that has just always fit my hand really nicely. It's kind of a have your cake and eat it to situation, which I like. So that's been working great for me in terms of how I gain stage the rig I do up all the time. You can see the knobs have fallen off and I've just kept them like that. I like the roughness here, too. It's sort of like a side note. I get very sweaty when performing live and I can just sort of rub the sweat off using this. It's almost like a file. But I like it. And it also helps make sure that they just kind of stay set. So I usually just have them rolled all the way up. I do play with the volume knob, especially with like transitions. I like to fade in and out with feedback things and stuff like that. Segues between songs. So I mess with that. But in terms of the actual playing, it's always turned up. And any dips in volume are programmed on the pedal. And I'll show you that in a minute. Strings I'm using. I almost always use tens. So these are Ernie Ball. This is just the lime green pack. Robert Ochoa is our guy at Ernie Ball. Really, really cool guy. Really great guy. He sends us these strings and keeps us in tune. For me, I play about a million notes a night. So I have to change strings every night. Otherwise they just break. So I like them. You put them on. They sound great. And they last the whole set. So the pick I use, I actually use a mandolin pick. And I've been using one of these. Right side up for you. I've been using one of these for some version of a mandolin pick for the last, I guess, about 15 years now. I was playing a lot of mandolin at that time, in addition to guitar. And I just really fell in love with the bigger size. It just gives me more to work with. I really like to dig in for some things, the sort of Eddie Van Halen style, to get those extra harmonics, a combination of thumb and pick. Digging in is nice. Also, I can really grip it close. And it works kind of like a jazz three. Also really important, again, back to me sweating a lot, the grip is huge. For me, I just really like that. It's also beveled on the edges, which for my tremolo style is really, really useful. For me, it's just a little bit clearer in terms of the attack. It's a little less scratchy, a little clearer, almost like having a nice filed nail with classical guitar. That's kind of what it reminds me of. And yeah, it's great. I love these things. They're really, really great. These ones are made by Jim Dunlop. This is a 1.4 millimeter, so pretty thick. The 1.4 and 1.5, I'll kind of go back and forth depending on my mood and availability of pick. But I think 1.4 is what I tend to use. And I just like a really thick pick. There's very little flex. And that's really important to me also with the really fast tremolo picking is to have a lot of control and just fewer variables when it comes to things like bending and flexing and stuff like that. And if I need, again, if I need something a little flexier, a little plunkier or plickier, I can just loosen my grip and back up my grip and then I can get that more kind of classic, acoustic, plucky sound. So for me, this pick is all about convenience, durability, and versatility. So I love coily cables. This one is a Fender one. This is a Third Man Series one. I like the yellow also because it's just sometimes when the stage goes dark or we have strobes on and I'm way in the front of stage and I need to come back to my position to get on the wah pedal or flip a switch, I can see it so I don't kind of trip over it. It's just easy for me to see. So I'll usually go with like a green one or a yellow one, something bright. The coily cable is also just convenient for walking across stage. I'll walk across to hit the sampler and things like that. It just gets tangled less. There's also the whole thing about the coily cable. It's a longer cable run. So theoretically, it rolls off a little bit of the top end, that kind of classic Hendrix thing. Whether or not that's real or just placebo, you know, that's up to you. And also, even if it is real, whether you can hear that in a venue, I'm not sure, but I just like the feel and the convenience. I think they look cool. I grew up watching Hendrix videos and he often had coily cables. And it's just got a cool vintage look that I think is fun. So I like it. So the chain I'm running is I go straight into just straight up boss chromatic tuner, classic. These things are just built like tanks. They last forever and I love them. I have mine set to bypass as opposed to output, which means that it can just always be on. I like this, again, getting back to the tuning thing. If in the middle of a song, I hear something kind of out, it's easier for me to see if it's coming for me or somebody else so I know if between songs I need to sort of tune something. Now, what that means is it doesn't work as a kill switch. So immediately after that, I've got the JHS kill switch here, which is on and off, pretty convenient. And I've just got it right here. So it's just kind of the easiest thing to hit. It's right on the edge of my board. This goes into the electro harmonics pitch fork, which I only use for one song. And it's because even though I do a lot of pitch things in general, I really like having this for the song The Weight. During the solo, there's this really kind of gnarly sounding two octaves up pitch thing that happens. And the reason I like this is it's got sort of quirks with tracking. The tracking isn't exactly on and you can kind of hear it struggle a little bit. And for me, that's definitely a feature, not a bug. I love that sound. It's like kind of crucial for that part in the solo, which is why I just use it kind of standard into everything else is to get that funky sound. From there, we're going into the Morley. This is the mini version of the Bad Horsey. I like to keep everything contained on one board like this. So with a bigger one, I might have to go off the board. So I like this one. That's the first thing I love about this. The second thing I love about this, you don't have to go toe down to click it on. You just have to step on it and it immediately comes on. For me, I love that. For instance, the solo for Bodhi Dharma, I'm transitioning from a clean guitar part right into the solo and the solo starts in the heel down position. So this way you don't hear a crack or a pop coming through the system. You know, those other wah pedals are great for studio and things like that, but for maybe in a louder context. But for me, especially because I often start in the heel down position and usually kind of in the middle of a solo, I'll start either in the middle of a solo or right after a quiet part, I'll start the wah pedal. It's nice to have this because it's kind of a seamless transition. From there, I'm going into my Line 6 HX Stomp. So I love the Helix system. I've been using this. I started using this just for time-based effects years ago when we were still using tube heads on tour. And now I use it for modeling as well. So it's basically just got a model of my 6505 plus head and then all the time-based effects. And I love using this for a few reasons. First of all, convenience is huge. So for us, I like to keep consistency in our rig sort of place to place and we do a lot of touring in Europe as well. So I have the exact same rig in the States as I do in Europe and that's just really nice and convenient. Consistency just adds a level of security to your psyche, right? The other thing I love about this is I have the whole set programmed. So what I do, and I'll have little fail-safes in between, but I can go through the whole set this way and this is really convenient because the time-based effects are slightly different for each song. So I produce and mix and master all of our records and when we finish a song, what I'll do is I'll go into the Pro Tools session and look at all the time-based effects I've got and program those directly into here. So what you're getting live is extremely close to what's on the record. The last thing about this that's super awesome is the fact that using snapshots, so within a preset, I'll use snapshots and a snapshot can turn on as many pedals as you want. So I found myself before I was using one of these, like trying to hit three or four pedals at once and I didn't want to do a whole MIDI rig and I don't have like an offstage system or anything like that. I just kind of wanted to be able to do it myself and so this works perfectly for that. And before every tour, I'll just reprogram the setlist to be whatever it is we're doing and I can just run right through. I got this thing just off of Reverb. It's by Simple Switches and it literally just allows me to just toggle between without having to do the double-tap thing. Finally, this goes into a JHS Smuffaletta, which this is just dimed and it's on the JHS version of the fuzz. I only use that for our song, Glory of the Ocean. It's just an extra sort of fuzz, it's kind of shoegazy noise thing and it sounds really good and I've been using it since the beginning. It's on the recording. It's just really consistent, convenient and nice. And then powering this, I have a Voodoo Labs little pedal block and what I love about that is a couple of years ago, they started making them that have variable voltage for traveling. So again, this is the exact pedal I use in Europe, the UK and the States and it just automatically switches the voltage. So all I have to do is just travel with a different IEC cable for each country and I don't have to deal with any conversion or sometimes in venues, the power is kind of funky with the converter and all that stuff. I just don't even mess with that anymore and it's really clean and I just love the convenience. So as I said before, I'm using amp modeling for the head sound, so the preamp and that's going into the Orange Pedal Baby 100 which is just very clean, solid state power. So this just functions as a power amp and the settings are pretty neutral. It's basically just past noon on the bass, just before noon on the treble and then volume is just a taste but depending on the venue. Two of these fit in a suitcase really easily. So again, this is also what I bring to Europe and the UK and again, this does have a variable voltage thing. All you have to do is switch out a fuse in the back. So I just travel with a box of fuses and the fuse is like this big. It's just like changing a battery basically. The tech support at Orange was really helpful. I bought these and just emailed the guy. He got back to me. He was like, yeah, all you have to do is just change the fuse. There's even a little thing in the back where it holds a spare fuse. So I just have a Euro fuse on one side and then a US fuse on the other side and I can just switch them back and forth very easy. This is going directly into the cab. Depending on where we are, we'll either use our own cabs or have cab rentals but the consistent thing for me is I love the Celestion V30s. I know people debate about specs of which version they like. I think, I mean, I have my own favorites obviously for recording and things like that. As far as live goes, I think it's, I'm just happy with any V30. They have that like mid-range punch that's really great. Again, especially with two guitars and then Leah's really low thick like syrupy fuzzy bass sound. It's nice to have kind of extra mid-range density and cut and that is cutting through and that's why I love the V30s. And that's pretty much it. So even though we're doing modeling, I don't do any sort of modeling direct into house. It's modeling kind of for convenience but then still getting full stage sound. This is still cranked. You're still getting the full pushing of air happening here even though we're not using tubes. So again, this is Richard Townhill from Agriculture. You can reach us at agriculturemusic.com. We have merch. We have tour dates. You can buy tickets on there for upcoming tours. You can see basically our whole calendar for the year. You can also reach us at agriculturemusic on Instagram. You can reach me at richardtownhill on Instagram where I talk about gear. We have tutorials. There's all sorts of live videos of the band on the Agriculture account as well so you can check all that out. We're currently on tour supporting our record The Spiritual Sound which came out last year. We're going all through the U.S. right now. We're going to be in the U.K. and Europe in the spring. Come see us. We'd be happy to chat with you. Again, if you ever want to chat with me or anybody in the band about gear or music or anything, we're always at the merch table and always happy to chat about this stuff. And we just love hanging out. So we hope to see you out there.