Together Pangea’s Danny Bengston - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 629

Literally you got two knobs and you can make them do kind of anything. Last year we played Coachella and I figured it was finally time for me to get a pedal board. I could literally pick it up with my pinky. It's crazy. Hi, I'm Danny from the band Together Pangea. And we're in Chicago at Bottom Lounge. And we're on the tour promoting our new album, Eat Myself. Doing a little co-headline with our friends the Red Pears. So this is my main bass. It's my birth year P-Bass. Made in Japan. Fender P-Bass. I love this thing. I bought it off my buddy Chad Ubevich who plays in a band called The Meat Bodies and another band called Fuzz. I was playing a Rickenbacker for a really long time. And then our friend Jason at Fender got me my first P-Bass in 2016. And I kind of realized that in my opinion a P-Bass does everything and more than any other bass I've ever played a little bit. They're just so versatile. They feel so good. They're so playable. They're easy. They're light. They just feel great. And I kind of fell in love. That bass is over there, which I'll show you in a second. But yeah, I'd been playing a Rickenbacker for a while and I realized that I'd slowly stopped playing it because it kind of, in my opinion, I love Rickenbackers. I think they're really bitchin' and they sound really cool but I feel like they kind of do one thing really well. Sort of like a mid, intense, aggressive sound. Whereas I feel like, yeah, P-Bass has literally got two knobs and you can make them do kind of anything with those two knobs. It's kind of incredible. On all my basses I put the Ernie Ball Cobalt Flatwounds 45-105s. It's like the orange, yellowish-orange pack. Tuning, just normal, basic, nothing crazy. We have a couple songs in Drop D. But that's, yeah, that's kind of it. So just standard tuning. I've kind of almost always only played Flatwounds. I just think that they sound so much better. You can get really punchy with them or you can get really, you know, dead with them if you want to palm mute. They're great. I love them. It depends. When I go in, I'm pretty much rolled all the way up. Both maxed all the way, tone all the way up, volume all the way up, except when I put on my fuzz pedal, then I roll off the tone about halfway just so that I have some room. If I want to do feedback, then I can roll it up. If I don't, if I want it to just be more straightforward playable and not be too crazy crunchy sounding and blown out sounding, then I can roll it back off and it sort of has like a nice dead fuzzy sound to it. So this is my other P-Bass. This is my first P-Bass. Like I said, Fender gifted it to me back in 2015 or 16, I want to say. Shout out to Jason Klein. And I don't know. There's something really special about this bass. I've had a lot of P-Basses since then. Probably had about half a dozen and maybe more. But for some reason, this one always just stuck with me. Maybe it's because it was my first P-Bass and I fell in love with it. But I've actually talked to some other people who said like weirdly like this era of Fender manufacturing made-in-Mexico basses or there's just something about them that's really good. I don't know. It feels really good. It plays really well. It sounds good. I think I'm going to play it tonight actually. I don't know. I can't really. I have much more of a sentimental and emotional attachment to this bass. I think this bass is technically a far superior bass. It's an incredible. Like the made-in-Japan era of Fender stuff is insane. And it's really cool too because it's my birth year. And that's why I like over my Rickenbacker because my buddy was like, I have that bass in your birth year. And I was like, I think I have it. It's made for me then. But that being said, I don't know. There's just something really special about this bass. And I play it quite often still. Oh, shout out really quick. This is my friend made this strap, Sunday leather. It's gorgeous. I'm kind of obsessed with it. It's really cool. She's a leather worker. I'm stoked on it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very crazy stuff going on over here. This is my tuning pedal. Which we painted a long time ago. If you ever see something that says Jummies backstage at a venue, we may or may not have played there. Let's see what else. Bass Big Muff. Classic. I mean, it's just, I had the bigger one for a while. And then a few years ago, they started making this one. And I tossed it on here. And it does everything that any of the other ones do. It's smaller. I don't really do a whole lot of the sustain. It's kind of all the way up. The volume's at about three quarters. And the tone's about three quarters. And I keep it wet. I have this MXR analog chorus pedal, which I stole from William, my bandmate. I only started really using this on the last record, our newest record, Eat Myself. We were doing some stuff in Drop D and had certain sounds. And I just thought it sounded really cool. I always like the sound of a bass with chorus on it. It's like a really cool 80s post-punk new wave adjacent sound. And when you're playing really heavy, sad music, I think it complements it really well. So, yeah. Once again, Ernie Ball with the cables. Shout out to Tim and Ernie Ball, our rep. Yeah, I just got, for the first time in my life, I started using a pedal board. Last year we played Coachella, and I figured it was finally time for me to get a pedal board when that show came around. And so William, my bandmate, gifted me his old pedal board. So thank you so much, William. Fender Bassman head. God, I can't remember the story, but I needed a head really badly. I think that my head either... Here's what it was. I was a PV loyalist for a really long time. The 70s Solid State PV amps I think sound absolutely amazing. I still think they sound ******* amazing. But I was playing those kind of from day one of this band. I found one for like 100 bucks, and I was just playing on those forever. We were going out on tour, I think with Alkaline Trio, 2018-ish. Something like that. And it was shortly after Jason at Fender had gifted this bass to me. My head stopped working, and it was like a week or two before the tour. You know what it was? We were on a tour, and I brought two of those old PV heads, and both of them blew. I was loaning them out to the whole tour, and one blew, and then the next one blew, and then I didn't have a head. I reached out to Fender, and they had mentioned that they just started remaking the bassman. This thing weighs nothing at all. I can literally pick it up with my pinky. It's crazy. It sounds just like the old bassman, but it weighs nothing. It's an amazing, amazing head. This is all I want to play now. This is all I do play. When we go to Europe, I rent one of these. I just keep it on the clean channel. There's two. There's an overdrive and a clean. Vintage is clean. I just keep it on the clean. I crank the volume all the way up, because I like the presence that it gives. I keep the bass around 7, mid around 4, treble around 7. Sometimes, depending on which bass I'm playing, it has this feature where you can pop out for extra treble or extra bass. Sometimes I'll do that. It just depends on what I'm playing. Then I keep the master at about 3 or 4, depending on the venue. I've never had to go above 4 on this thing. It's a beast. Then my cab, it's a 610 Ampeg. I've always preferred... I do like the 810s a lot, but they're really annoying to have to deal with. You're traveling around with a fridge, basically. Your bandmates get tired of you asking them for help. This is much more manageable. Honestly, I think it sounds better than an 810 in some weird way. I can't put my finger on why. I think it does everything an 810 does. There's something less overpowering about it, but it's big enough to still have presence on stage. There's a lot of artists now who go ampless, or they use a small cab or something like that. I personally really like, even though we've got monitors and technology has gotten to a place where maybe you don't need these sort of things, I really like to feel and hear my bass behind me. I don't know, there's something about it. It just feels weird to me if it's coming out of my front monitor. I always want to feel it on stage with me. I bought this cab from my buddy Killian, and I'm very glad I did. I use the grippy Ernie Ball 1s. 1 millimeter, right? That's what it is? 1.0, I guess that would probably be millimeter. Yeah, I need the grip. They fly out of my hand otherwise. The chalky ones don't do it for me, so I need the grip. Kind of it, yeah, standard stuff. So yeah, Together Pangaea, we're playing here at Bottom Lounge. Really stoked to be doing it. We have a new record out called Eat Myself. It came out a couple months ago. We're on tour right now, and we're probably going to be playing shows, we definitely will be playing shows throughout the rest of the year. So yeah, thank you. Oh, and you can follow us on Instagram, on any social media is at Together Pangaea. My personal Instagram is at Bangsman, B-E-N-G-S-M-A-N. Thanks.