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by Edward » Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:53 am
It is a synth, a Korg I believe. But not a bass synth exclusively. On that tour, he used it on a majority of the BTS songs, to stay true to the album, which had no bass guitar/bass player. There were a lot of fusion and rock artists using it at the time. A female, whose name escapes me, wowed the world with it, when she debuted it in a rock guitar solo on the Tonight Show (when Johnny Carson-the KING had it). Petra never got any props from marketing, and they were high-profile back then. Mark had a Peavey guitar amp endorsement deal, which accounts for the farty bass sound that Peavey was known for.
Bob played the Roland GX-707 guitar with synth module on the BTS songs also. The 707 was doomed the day that it left the production line. A friend of mine was a beta tester for it, since he made guitars for Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Dweezil Zappa and Joe Satriani, they wanted his input. He used it once and put it away. Bob Hartman may have been the only player from a National act to play it, much less play it on a record, video and then have it retired to the wall of the Hard Rock Cafe. The $7,000 product ( a LOT of cash back then for a guitar) lasted a year or two and that was it. Complete garbage and way ahead of it's time. The best thing to come out then was the SynthAxe, but they were $20,000. I was selling Roland at the time, and can't remember if they gave Bob any props then or not. They should have.
On this tour, Louie was playing Yamaha. He used the new Yamaha electronic pads (which were a joke in comparison to everyone elses, and soon would be discontinued) and synth. These would effectionately (not) be called "moon" drums, because of their 80s space/disco/George Jetson sound. He hated them. Louie was one of the first artists, and for sure the first Christian artist to use/highlight a drum machine in the drum solo on video. He started it, then got up and walked around on the tour. You couldn't do that today.
On the previous tour, the band secured the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) lighting and trussing. It was maximized on the BTS tour.
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