Rigged: Bassist Jeremy Pyrzynski of Encrust
Jeremy from Encrust here to walk you through my live rig.
I only use Ernie Ball Musicman Basses. I’ve got two that I bring on the road with me. The first, my main, is a standard Stingray 5-string in an old, discontinued silver sparkle color with a single humbucker. The backup is the Guitar Center 45th anniversary Stingray 5-string that EBMM did a few years ago. It’s one of the only Stingrays with an ebony fingerboard that ISN’T a stealth model. This bass has two humbuckers, and that’s where I can start to get into different sound territory. It really cops a great P-Bass tone as well as the standard Musicman tone. I was always a fan of these basses for the funky tone they can get, but I remember seeing Nate from Converge use one with a bunch of distortion live and knew that I had to have that setup.
My rig consists of a Sunn 300T amplifier running into two Emperor 4×10 cabinets that were built extra deep to fit the head on top. The Sunn is hands down the best sounding head I’ve ever played through. It’s the first bass amp Fender put out when they acquired Sunn, and it’s by far the best they’ve put out in a LONG time. It’s a two-channel amp with ten-band EQ and compression on-board. I run the dirty/clean blend channel with the gain at about 5 and the channels blended evenly. This gives my “clean” tone a little bit of dirt and grit when I dig in. I keep the EQ pretty flat, except I boost my mids a little bit.
The cabinets are built by local dudes at Emperor Custom Cabinets. I had them build two 4×10 cabinets that were 18 inches deep for two reasons: 1) The Sunn is MASSIVE, so I needed something it would fit on, and 2) Low end for days. They’re both front-ported cabs with no horns or tweeters. I went with a classic look on them: orange stain & wheat grille cloth. For 4×10 cabinets they’re surprisingly light. I’d say about 50-60 lbs at most, which is WAY better than trying to move an 8×10 cab by myself.
My signal chain is set up as follows: Bass -> Korg Pitchblack tuner -> Fulltone OCD -> ISP Decimator -> EHX Memory Boy -> BBE Sonic Stomp -> Amp.
Aside from one new song, the OCD is always on and the BBE is always on as well. I’ve played through a lot of different fuzz/distortion/overdrive pedals in search of that perfect tone and finally settled on the OCD. Combined with the gain on my head I run it pretty hot, but it doesn’t lose the clarity of each note; it still cuts through without being too muddy. I use the Memory Boy on two songs right now: “Grime Maiden” & “Conscious and Trembling” (new song), and the best part of that pedal, especially for bass, is the blend knob. Being able to blend my bass signal with the effect is great. The last pedal is the BBE Sonic Stomp, and that always stays on. It’s a pedal version of their rack effects and it really does wonders. Any time you run an overdrive/distortion/fuzz through a bass, you lose a ton of low end really quick; this pedal puts it all right back where it was with some extra low end to spare.
That’s all. Thanks for reading.
– Jeremy Pyrzynski / Encrust
