CrazyJoe.org - Crazy Joe Equipment!

This page has been assembled for the benefit of guitar nerds who want to know all the nerdy details of the musical equipment I play live and in the studio. I certainly don't mean "guitar nerds" as an insult, because I enjoy talking about this stuff to people; after all, it "takes one to know one." It’s no secret that I’m an incorrigible tinkerer, constantly tweaking my instruments and amplifiers to get the sound I’m looking for; and, for better or worse, I’ve been that way since I was a kid. In third grade, frustrated by my parents’ refusal to buy me an electric guitar, I shoved a microphone down the soundhole of my half-scale Harmony acoustic guitar and cranked it up all the way through the amplifier and speakers of a Califone reel-to-reel; voilá, problem solved (and a new one created for my poor folks). That basically set the precedent for the next 25 years.

With "Crazy Joe" guitar, WEST amp, and Kustom 200 cab w/ three JBL D130F 15" speakers!
Hearing protection was NOT optional that night.
Peach's Grill, Yellow Springs, Ohio, January 2006
Image ©2006 Christopher Bell

I decided to get rid of most of my guitars a few years ago and now only have three electrics, all made by my buddy Casey Simmons, who works at the National USAF Museum restoring B-17's and things like that. Okay, four if you count the electric ukulele. It's not that I have a philosophical problem with guitar collecting, nor do I have any issue with folks who prefer to have a variety of options. In my continuing quest to simplify my life as much as possible, I decided not to keep anything I wasn't using professionally - you know the old saying, "a weapon unused is a useless weapon." Besides, nobody had piles of guitars in the old days; you bought the best you could afford and that was it. So while I've championed various instruments over the years such as the Ovation Breadwinner, G&L ASAT, and the low-impedance Gibson Les Paul Recording, my Simmons guitars are really all I need. I also have a little Epiphone Cortez flattop from the mid-60's, essentially a Gibson B-25, that I strum around the house and use on recordings; it belonged to my late aunt and sounds really, really great.

Guitar amplifier technology is where my nerdiness really shows and I've spent the last twenty years refining my concept of what a guitar amp should sound like. The first piece of equipment I ever tried to build, circa-6th or 7th grade, was supposed to be a tube distortion device so I could get some overdrive on my clean-as-a-whistle Kustom 150 amp (and, God bless them, my parents refused to buy me a distortion pedal – at 11 years old, I thought my life would be over if I couldn’t get an Arion Metal Master from Sheets & Sons Music in Newark, Ohio). I made this death trap on an old tube AM radio chassis. Well, besides shocking the living crap out of myself a few times and getting my fair share of soldering-iron burns, I did eventually get the thing to work…but it didn’t exactly sound like a wall of Marshalls. This naturally progressed to modifying old tube amps and building everything from fuzz pedals to reverb units, and by the end of high school I could build a halfway decent amplifier that didn't blow up during pep band. In keeping with my minimalist attitude towards guitars, I've pretty much gotten rid of all my old amps and only play my "Peacekeeper" amplifiers, although I do still have a couple of Kustoms for fun.

So folks, by popular demand, here's a rundown of my crazy equipment.

The "Crazy Joe" guitar is truly crazy and has been my main instrument since July 2005. What’s so special about this guitar? Well, its most important feature by far is that it says “CRAZY JOE!” on the neck in mother-of-pearl! All kidding aside, Casey and I rigorously engineered every detail of this guitar’s design and construction, which started in late 2004. I told Casey I wanted a big, heavy, fancy, Cadillac of a guitar with my name on the fretboard and a body shape I sketched out during a particularly boring Ph.D. seminar class; Casey had his own ideas about what types of construction would be the sturdiest and have the best tone. The end result is a guitar that is truly unique.

At 3rd Annual Rockin' 50's Fest, Green Bay, Wisconsin, May 2007
Image ©2007 John Hall

In the initial planning stages, Casey and I put a lot of thought into construction styles and how they affect the guitar's tonal response, whether we knew what the heck we were talking about or not! Eventually we settled on a neck-to-body joint where the neck tenon extends all the way to the end of the guitar body and is glued at both the bottom and sides. The main difference between this method and traditional “neck-through-the-body” construction is that the latter usually has two body “wings” glued to the sides of the full-depth neck. We figured that the strength of our joint, and theoretically the mode of vibration transfer, would be derived primarily at the bottom of the neck channel where it might be more effective. Casey later started using a much deeper neck in a routed body channel, getting closer to neck-through construction; but the body is still a continuous piece underneath, which is the main difference.

In the living room of my old apartment, Yellow Springs, Ohio, January 2006.
The Rig of Death can be seen in the background.
Image ©2006 Christopher Bell

We chose African black limba for the neck and white limba for the body, the latter of which Gibson used in the 1950’s for its Flying V and Explorer guitars with the trade name “Korina.” These woods are not particularly dense, but when used in a solidbody guitar 1-3/4” deep (like a Gibson Les Paul Junior) and 16” wide (the same as a Gibson ES-335 but solid!), the result is not exactly a lightweight; the guitar weighs close to 13 pounds. In contrast to the majority of folks who swear by light, resonant guitars, I actually think all that mass contributes to the guitar's clean, sustaining, even tone. The neck is ridiculously large - I asked Casey to make the biggest neck he could get out of the piece of lumber - and has a very pronounced “V” shape. I'm told it resembles a 1920's Gibson L-5 neck. The 12"-radius fingerboard and headstock overlay are unstained ebony.

The electronics, as you'd expect, represent lots of experimental tweaking. I chose three G&L ASAT "MFD" pickups for their very clean, wide-bandwidth "hi-fi" sound; and because I used them for many years in my various G&L guitars. The MFD design uses a single ferrite bar magnet underneath the coil and large threaded steel polepiece inserts that, according to Lindy Fralin of Fralin Pickups fame, results in an efficient magnetic field geometry somewhere between traditional alnico slugs and steel polepiece screws. The neck pickup is stock, the reverse-angled middle pickup is a stock ASAT bridge pickup, and the bridge pickup is an ASAT neck pickup modified by Lindy for a louder, more robust sound. Rather than simply re-wind the pickup with thinner wire, Lindy actually lengthened the bobbin, changing the coil geometry and allowing more turns without excessively increasing inductance. The result is a punchy, clear-sounding bridge pickup with the solidarity of a steel guitar, exactly what I was looking for. The wiring circuitry is top-secret, but I will reveal the use of Clarostat conductive-plastic sealed pots, a gold-flashed silver-contact ceramic wafer switch, and Teflon-insulated, silver-plated aircraft wire. Does all that mil-spec hardware make a better-sounding guitar? I dunno, but it sure is reliable.

At my kitchen table in Enon, Ohio, January 2008.
The Merle Travis Bigsby assembly didn't last long - I hated that thing.
Image ©2008 Joe Tritschler

Close-up of the Mastery bridge and Fralin-modified bridge pickup.
Image ©2011 Casey Simmons

I insisted on the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece. The guitar’s bridge was originally a “badass”-style wraparound tailpiece anchored to the body with locking studs, followed by a homebrew roller bridge in 2008, neither of which worked very well. I'm now a proud disciple of the Mastery Bridge, which has basically solved every problem I ever had with the guitar. Originally designed as a replacement for the problematic Fender Jaguar / Jazzmaster bridge, I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread for tone, tuning stability, and ergonomics - not to mention the strings no longer pop out of the saddles! I can't recommend it enough. Tuners are Sperzel TrimLoks, proudly made in Cleveland, Ohio.

The guitar has all kinds of cosmetic goodies, like a German carve to the front and back of the body, real nitrocellulose finish and tortoise-grained cellulose nitrate bindings and, best of all…nut and “horn-protectors” made of fossilized wooly mammoth bones! The pickguard and armrest were originally polished aluminum, but these were replaced with .125” solid cellulose nitrate tortoise in 2006. The medium-sized frets were dressed extra low at my request by Casey.

My good ol' buddy Ryan Bussey. Most of my old G&L's
passed through his hands... sometimes more than once!
I believe he helped shovel my driveway that day in March 2008.
Image ©2008 Joe Tritschler

The guitar once held perfect tuning for three weeks straight on tour with Deke Dickerson and has been remarkably reliable except for one major incident in early 2007. Coming back from Deke’s Guitar Geek Festival in Anaheim, California in January, United Airlines managed to drop the guitar so violently that it busted the peghead and the neck-to-body joint under the neck pickup. Repaired by Mark Kaiser at Fret Repair in Franklin, Ohio, the guitar is as good as new and there was no significant change in tone. (Guess it travels in its 50-lb. road case from now on…take a bow, United.)

So how did I meet Casey Simmons? In the summer of 1999, when I was still an electrical engineering undergraduate student at Wright State University, I had put a Hammond M-3 organ up for sale in the local Tradin’ Post (remember the days before eBay and craigslist?). He and a friend came and bought it, we exchanged numbers and jammed a few times together. He was only a year out of high school at the time. We hadn't spoken for a few years when he called me up in early 2004 asking for help wiring a guitar he’d built in his parents' basement; I said sure, come on over. What he brought over was stunning. I kept asking him again and again, “you built this?” The binding, fretboard and headstock inlays, finish work, fret detailing…all were just amazing, and the guitar played like butter and sounded fantastic (I ended up buying this very guitar years later; see below). I asked him if he’d consider building me a guitar and he said this one was only his second, but he’d certainly try. We started hashing out the Trifonic immediately thereafter. Casey is now an Exhibition Specialist in Restoration at the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, doing upholstery, machining and finish work on B-29’s and the like.

The "Peacekeeper" Amplifiers

(coming soon - stay tuned!)

The "Other" Simmons Trifonic

When Casey built the Crazy Joe guitar, he built an almost identical guitar for himself at the same time. Of course, it doesn't say "CRAZY JOE!" on the fretboard; it has block inlays like a Les Paul Custom and a 24-3/4" scale length instead of 25-1/2". It also has three Fender Jazzmaster pickups instead of G&L MFD's. Except for one gig in January 2006 with a short-lived band called the Mad River Combo, he never actually played the guitar - must've decided it was too big, heavy, and weird. So I bought it from him in early 2012. It's got a slightly smaller neck, slightly bigger frets, and it's a little lighter than the Crazy Joe guitar; in other words, a kinder, gentler version that is really special and has a uniquely rich, clear tone. Beautiful.

At the Tritschler Precision Engineering Headquarters, April 2012.
The Peacekeeper Mark-I is standing by.
Image ©2012 Joe Tritschler

The Simmons Mark-II

In early 2009, I told Casey I wanted a non-vibrato guitar that was “kinda like a Les Paul, but not one.” He was too busy with school to build any guitars at the time, but offered to sell me his “purple” guitar (called this because it’s made of chambered purpleheart wood with a flamed-maple top) and I jumped at the chance; this is the guitar he built in 2004 that impressed me so much that I commissioned the Crazy Joe guitar. Of course, I made him modify it right away; but now I use it all the time, especially when I'm too lazy to heft the back-breaking Crazy Joe guitar. It has basically replaced all my old "normal" guitars (if you can call an Ovation Breadwinner or Les Paul Recording "normal").

As I mentioned in the description of the "Crazy Joe" guitar, when I first saw this instrument, I couldn't believe how well it was made, especially considering it was the second guitar Casey had ever built. But I also thought it was a little butt-ugly. I wasn't fond of the yellow top, nor the fake-tortoise pickguard, and I didn't particularly care for the sound of the Gretsch SuperTron neck pickup. The guitar was a little neck heavy because of the Grover tuners. And the Duncan Antiquity P-90 bridge pickup sounded fine but squealed like crazy when I attempted to play Mountain and Sabbath licks through my Sound City 50 Plus turned up all the way (you got a problem with that?).

At Peach's Grill with Ricky Nye, Inc., Yellow Springs, Ohio, November 2009.
Smoking jacket courtesy of Dawn Cooksey.
Image ©2009 Laura Rigsbee

On my living room couch, March 2009, pickguard removed, pre-modification.
The Gibson bell knobs had to go, too.
Image ©2009 Joe Tritschler

So it goes that Casey re-lacquered the top and headstock, made a new pickguard of five-ply Gibson SG-type plastic, and installed a set of open-backed Sperzel Sound-Lok tuners, basically their take on the old "Safeti-Post" concept - and the lightest tuning machines I know of. Pickups are custom-wound Fralin P-90's; the bridge pickup is substantially underwound for a cleaner, twangier tone that still has plenty of meat, and the neck pickup has alnico rod magnets for a very sweet clean tone. The original bridge was a Hipshot hardtail-Strat type with stainless saddles, but the sawed-off Tele bridge with three brass barrels is what really brought this guitar to life. And as before, the ivory-grained cellulose nitrate bindings and Gibson Super 400 inlays on the Gibson-scale ebony fingerboard are just cool. For the ultra-nerds, I'm using silver/Teflon aircraft wire and a Sprague "Vitamin-Q" 96P paper-in-oil tone cap. That's a phase switch between the controls when it's time to get fun-kay.

I really love this guitar...it sounds great and plays like butter, and just works. You'd think all those dense, brittle woods would make for a brash, nasty-sounding guitar, but it's actually just the opposite. Regarding the body shape, I asked Casey what inspired it and he told me he envisioned a solidbody version of the very rare and bizarre-looking 1970's Gibson Les Paul Signature. That's about the weirdest thing he could have said - and why I love this guy.

The Electric Ukulele

Ah yes, the electric ukulele. I conceived this twisted idea in 1992 and built it in eighth-grade shop class after school. Actually, my teacher Mr. (Rich) Allen did most of the work on the two-piece walnut body, which has a few places of curly walnut on the back. He did an exceptional job; all the routs are clean as a pin and the end grains match so well it’s really frightening. The original neck was a homemade thing made out of curly maple with four strings and, as I recall, it was a real pain to work with. My fret work was terrible. It also warped immediately because there was no truss rod. Casey Simmons made me a new six-string octave-up neck out of Honduran mahogany with a Bois de Rose fingerboard in late 2005 so I could pretend like I’m Joe Maphis (yeah, right). It originally had a huge headstock with a black limba overlay (a leftover scrap from the Trifonic), but I made Casey saw it down in early ’09 and make a new overlay out of Bois de Rose. Originally a single-pickup instrument, I had Casey install two alnico-magnet G&L Legacy pickups and, later, two regular ASAT MFD’s. The bridge is an ancient solid-brass thing and I later installed the three-barrel Tele-style compensated saddle set.

The scale length of this instrument is quite a bit longer than it should be for an octave-up guitar. The good thing is that it keeps the frets from being too close together, but as a result the strings are at ridiculously high tension, even with .009’s, and the high-E string will break on tune-up if you don’t take it really easy (I went through at least three trying to record a 30-second part on the “Electric Ukulele Rag” from the Sweatin’ Bullets Over You EP). In fact, I tuned it down a step-and-a-half for “Remington Rock” on The King of Nerd-A-Billy. But the tone of this instrument is really special; perhaps because of the ultra-high tension and super hi-fi pickups, it eerily resembles the sped-up Les Paul/Mary Ford guitar sound. Someday, I plan to make a truly evil instrumental album using it...stay tuned.

Old Stuff

Here are some photos of equipment I no longer own, but of which I have fond memories.

Exhibit A: Here's an amp rig I used for many, many years. It's a very rare (and totally irreversibly modified) 1973 WEST Avalon Reverb amplifier and a cascade-sparkle late-60's Kustom 2x15 cab, both of which I'd had since I was a teenager; bought the cab empty at Sheets & Sons Music in Newark, Ohio when I was a freshman in high school, got the amp from the legendary Chris Ivan when I was 19, and traded Deke Dickerson for the OEM Kustom-branded JBL D130F-6's in 2004. I eventually added a gold Kustom PA head cabinet into which I stuffed a JBL 2370 horn and 2425J driver with a special crossover that really sounded like a good guitar speaker but without the beaminess at high frequencies.

That's my sister, "Crazy Betsy," on her 30th birthday in November 2010, alongside the illustrious "Punkin'" Pat Lee on drums.
She requested a reunion of the original Mad River Outlaws for her birthday and she got it! Our parents must be very proud.
Image ©2010 Laura Rigsbee

True nerds may appreciate this photo, taken in my back yard a few years ago after I installed the "DynaClone" MK-IV transformers,
Allen-Bradley carbon comp resistors, Sprague 196P Vitamin-Q oil caps, silver/Teflon wire, sealed A-B bias pots.
Not shown are the original Mullard EL-34's I've had in the amp since 1998 and are still going strong, despite dissipating close to 30W each continuously.
Image ©2008 Joe Tritschler

The WEST amp was described in the 2008 Guitar Player interview (original text appears HERE) and I used it from the very beginning of the Mad River Outlaws until April 2011, when this rig was replaced by the Peacekeeper amplifiers. The WEST/Kustom rig represented over a decade of continual refinements and its circuitry is much different than any of the "classic" guitar amps. I'm proud to say that it's now being used by my old buddy Eric Sargent on tour with ekoostik hookah! He elected not to use the horn, though...what a wuss.

Exhibit B: The Rig of Death. Described in the GP article interview, this was my vision of a truly insane guitar amplifier...Altec A-5 Voice of the Theater horn speaker, biamplified Presto disc cutter amps, Fisher SpaceXpander reverb, and tube Crown tape echo deck with 14" Muzak reels! The speaker allegedly came out of a porno theater on the west side of Dayton and was full of cigar butts when I got it. The Presto amps came out of Coronet Recording Co., a classic old recording studio in Columbus, and the Crown came from master technician John Haines in Goshen, Indiana. This setup also doubled as my living room hi-fi in the Yellow Springs apartment where I recorded the King of Nerd-A-Billy, if you can believe that. Earlier versions of the Rig of Death included an Ampex 400 transport with 350 and 351 electronics plus an Ampex MX-35 mixer, one of these setups being used to open up for the Reverend Horton Heat at Canal Street Tavern in 2003. The system has long since been parted out.

Exhibit C: For a brief period around 2002-2004, I used two stacked mid-60's Gibson Minuteman amplifiers with JBL G125-8 speakers in them (and, for a while, mint-condition original-cone D120F's). The amps were fairly stock except for the 12AT7 preamp tubes (actually GE five-star 6201's, which replaced the original 6EU7's and required a socket re-wire) and removal of the awful midrange dip filters found in many Gibsons from that period. They actually sounded pretty great with cathode-biased EL84's and an interstage transformer, and they easily fit on the back seat of my 1971 Cadillac - very important. In the end I sold 'em and went back to big triode amps and ported speaker cabinets because I just couldn't get a good clean low-end out of open-back amps, but they did have that really nice slightly-crunchy sound you can hear on the Chopped, Slammed, & Twangin' album. The guitar is my once-beloved ash-bodied 1993 G&L ASAT Classic with '97 George Fullerton v-neck and three-barrel Tele bridge. Great guitar, shoulda kept it. Later I swapped the body for a natural-ash '97 model that was heavier and didn't sound as good.

Photo taken by my late Aunt Sally in my parents' driveway, June 2003, the day I graduated with my Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering.

Exhibit D: No comment.

Tyrd Fyrgysyn playing one of the many, many Ovation Breadwinners I had accumulated since I got my very first one right after I turned 13.
This is a rare "Buckskin" finish model, affectionately named "Flesh Gordon" by Michelle Oleck at the fondly-remembered Ed's Guitars in Miami.
I traded a highly-modified 1963 Gibson SG Junior for this guitar in the late-90's, if you can believe that.
Photo taken at Canal Street Tavern in Dayton, Ohio, possibly by Juliet Fromholt. Photo date unknown, probably circa 2006-2007.

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Background image ©2005 Christopher Bell