With his early work the Artist used Fender Basses, including a foam green P-Bass, a Cleo, a Guild Pilot an Orr bass and the "C" model Auerswald bass which precluded the Anastasia guitar in 1984. His recent preference has been for Warwick Basses, a German company who have been hand crafting basses for 35 years. His resident Bass players have used 4, 5 and six string Corvette and thumb bass models for years, both right and left handed in the case of Sonny Thompson. The "eye" bass he uses on stage is a Thumb Bass made from Bubinga, with two jazz pickups, active ELS electronics and Bubinga/Wengewood neck, the eye painting was probably done by his guitar techs. For Emancipation he used a white fretless Warwick Thumb Bass.
Amps.
Although his rig changes frequently the Artist has been documented as using a Soldano Caswell Pre amp for clean sounds and a Soldano 100 watt head for Dirty sounds. For live performances he uses two monitor Cabinets and two off stage cabs miked into the PA, one out of phase, one in. Also in the array are two Mesa Boogie 500 stereo power amps, one per channel.
The cabinets he uses are Marshall slants with 30 watt Celestion speakers for clean and Peavey 5150's for dirty. The clean signal is directed into Paragon house mixing desks via Country man DI boxes. The quiet system incorporates DBX, Rocktron Hush and a noise gate. The Artist uses Sony wirless systems or Samsons for smaller venues.
