Rivers Cuomo's equipment: Difference between revisions

===1992===

So, almost immediately, the Charvel was replaced with a red Fender Stratocaster, which came from Jason Cropper, as Jason was assigned early on to acoustic guitar duties. This Stratocaster guitar was weird. Two of the 3 pickups were replaced with various humbucker pickups, and the selection switch was rewired to provide a large number of combinations thereof. One pickup was a black Seymour Duncan TB59B1, AKA the "Trembucker 59", and the weird looking red and yellow one was a DiMarzio "Humbucker From Hell". the center pickup was some sort of flat lipstick style pickup. This re-wiring job was dubious to begin with due to Jason's fledgling soldering skills, and suffice it to say that the guitar had some pretty strange sounds! Additionally, Jason had painted the thing in a psychedelic paint scheme with thick acrylic paint, and replaced the volume knobs with 20-sided D&D dice, which were melted onto the metal knobs. Also, Jason had replaced the Fender neck with a thicker non-Fender one he had ordered from a catalog. The dice knobs eventually fell off, but I managed to save one. This was to be the only surviving piece of the guitar, as it was later passed on to the band Shufflepuck (containing Justin, later of both Psoma and Nerf Herder), and was smashed to pieces several months later onstage at a LA Shufflepuck show in 1994. In a weird bit of rock excorsicm, it was made sure that nothing from this guitar was saved. It all was thrown away deliberately, very strange... Adam Orth (also formerly of Shufflepuck, now in Roosevelt) writes: "Rivers gave the guitar to me and Justin for Shufflepuck good luck (which it did bring us. many songs that ultimately earned us our record "deal" were composed on this guitar). one night when we were headlining the whiskey, my guitar was giving me tons of shit all night. Tuning fiasco! the red guitar was our trusty back-up. in the middle of the last song in our set, i became so angry that i switched to the red guitar only to find it was more out of tune than the other. driven over the edge, i began to swing the guitar around over my head and proceeded to smash it to bits and pieces. needless to say, the rest of the band joined me and mass destruction ensued. the best part of the story is that as i was smashing the guitar, i noticed kevin ridel [of Ridel High, Peel, and AM Radio] at the front of the stage with a horrified look on his face. after the damage was done and the lights went up, Justin and i were packing up our gear, and i noticed that justin was ghost-white. i asked him what was wrong, and he said "i just sold that guitar to kevin this afternoon for $300". to this day, kevin is still pissed at me for that." -Adam

Early on there were no effects pedals in use by the band at all, except for a Jim Dunlop "Crybaby" Wah Wah. This later fell out of favor, only to be re-integrated into Rivers's set-up during the recording of ''[[Pinkerton]]''. For an amplifier, Rivers was using his other "hold-over" from his metal years, a Randall 120 watt non-tube head powering a Randall 4x12 cabinet that looked exactly like a Marshall when the "Randall" tag was removed. This setup was to remain for several months. The Randall is still in use today, by Patrick Finn of Organic Mechanic. The speaker cabinet (pictured on the left side of ''[[Weezer (The Blue Album)|The Blue Album]]'' garage picture) continues to be sold and resold, and has been spotted as recently as late 2000 in LA's "Recycler" Mag.

While on Weezer's northern California "tour" in August '92, Rivers bought a curious Mesa Boogie amplifier (pictured inside the 'blue' album cover on the left side) at the Berkely Guitar Center. I have never ever seen an amp exactly like this one since. It was a very early issue Mesa Boogie, from approximately 1977 or 1978, and its face plate said "Mesa Engineering", which predates the addition of "Boogie" to Mesa-Boogies name. It was a 60-watt head which apparently didnt even have a model number (I remember looking for one several times). It sounded incredible, and its real bonus was still sounding rich and thick even at low volume, making it ideal for recording demos late at night in the Garage. Sadly, while on tour in '96 (by this time as a back up amp), the Boogie suffered a near fatal blow from an unknown source during shipping. At some point during the tour, the amp was fired up to check it, and it sounded terrible. It was supposed to have been taken in for repairs, but apparently was lost somewhere, either at Weezer's storage facility in LA or later, when Rivers was living in Boston. No one seems to remember where they saw it last, and it is gone. Several fans have written in with info on this amp, but most identify it from the reissues. I have checked the reissues but none are exactly the same. However, several people wrote in with the explanation that this was the 60 watt version of the Mark 1 head. The reason that the amp had no name on it is that it was not named until mesa boogie issued their next amp, the mark 2. A reissue version of the Mark 1 is available right now from Mesa Boogie in a 100 watt head or combo form with a switch to reduce the power to 60 watts, and it is that edition that some people were confusing the "vintage" amp with. Patrick Wilson today owns a Mark 1 reissue in fact, and can confirm that the old one had some pull out knobs that produced amazing sounds that the current reissues do not produce. Its entirely possible that the pull out knobs were a custom job. ...one person wrote in this facinating bit of info, leading us to speculate as to exactly what went down back in the day at the Mesa factory...