A Past Due chat with Wally Farkas, Pt 1
It was a pleasure for the WTDP? crew a couple of weeks back to have an afternoon conversation with former Galactic Cowboys guitarist Wally Farkas. Wally, knee deep into recording his first solo record, took time out to talk with us about a bit of his past – mainly all of the cool gear he used to make-up his signature tone on the last four Galactic Cowboys releases as well as many of the other projects he has been involved in since.
In this two-part series, Wally will first walk us through the hand-made pedal board that he used on the road during the Metal Blade years with the Cowboys. Later, he will let us in on his amp and guitar collection and drop a few hints about his upcoming solo record ‘Past Due’… slated for release this fall on Molken Music. Now, over to Wally…
“I had everything plugged in and wired so all the tech would have to do is throw the stuff down, run the out to the amp, run the power out and plug right in. Anything on this board that ran off batteries – overdrives, fuzzes, wahs – anything that could be run off a 9V or AC, I always ran on batteries. Always. Reason being is that on fuzzes, when they are not full 9V, when it starts dying a little bit, the tone changes… and it is actually more desirable for me. Also, sometimes even if you use the adapter you are supposed to use, when you run a bunch of them there is always the chance of getting some ground buzz coming through them. So I just cut all of that out by using batteries whenever I could.”
“This configuration has been abandoned, but it is what I used to use. To start we have a stereo Ernie Ball volume pedal. The thing I loved about this is that live, I only toured with one head – the red Marshall JCM-900 SLX single channel. So there was no clean channel on it. A lot of our songs would have (clean) stuff in there and I didn’t bring a clean amp and there is no channel switching, and I didn’t even have two overdrive settings. So what I would do when I needed a clean sound is – well I’m kind of getting ahead of myself.”
“One of my Les Pauls is coil-tapped so I could pull the volume pot and make it a single coil. So, on the neck pickup I would have it coil-tapped and have the volume knob down a bit. When I needed to be clean, I would just pop over to the neck pickup, and the great thing about these Ernie Ball volume pedals is that on the side there is a volume potentiometer on here to where if I had it rolled all the way off and pushed it down it would act like a volume pedal and cut off completely. However, I would have the volume knob on the pedal set at around 2 or 3… so that when the volume pedal is set with the “heel” part down, it would in effect be like rolling my volume on the guitar down. For a quick gain change from heavy to “cleaner” I would flip the pickup switch to the neck pickup with the volume rolled back a little… have the pickup coil-tapped and then slam the volume pedal down (“heel down”) to get as clean as I could.”
“From there I had it going into this old Vox wah. (Model #V847). It’s not original. It is a reissue from probably the mid ’90s. I had it altered to be true bypass. In general, wahs are really bad about eating dB gain.”
“From there I go into this Fulltone Soul Bender, which is true bypass. I have many of the earliest issues of the Fulltone stuff. None of the Fulltone stuff looks like this anymore. This is one of the ancient versions – serial number 81. Mike Fuller actually sold me this off of his personal pedal board way back. It is kind of a replica of a Sola Sound Tone Bender, which is quite hard to find these days. It (the Sola Sound) was popular in the ’60s. Jimmy Page used one a lot. I used it on many of the leads on Galactic Cowboys albums (‘Oregon,’ ‘Ranch on Mars Pt. 2′, etc…). The really good thing about all the Fulltone fuzzes is that you can back down the volume on your guitar and the fuzz cleans up nicely with it. A lot of other brands of fuzz pedals just go out of control and start screeching and are really noisy when you do this. The Fulltone ones are really responsive and come down with it. This one gave me a real throaty, kind of Cream tone.”
“Next is the Fulltone Ultimate Octave (# 96). It has a fuzz and an octave up. I never used it without the octave. It’s on every GC album. It’s also featured on dUg Pinnick’s new Strum Sum Up album….you can hear it on the lead on ‘Angel’ and the extended solo on ‘You’re Coming Over.’
“I’d go out of the Ultimate Octave into a Fulltone Octafuzz (# 203). This one is more of a clone of the Tycobrahe Octavia. The same premise – it is a fuzz with an octave up – but it is more of a sound like you’d hear on Band of Gypsies… more snarly. Both the fuzz and the octave up are sound different compared to the Ultimate Octave. It’s the kind where you’re really going to bring everything out if you play single notes, but if you start doing chordal work with it, it would put almost this ring modulator kind of overtone on it. I always liked it.”
“Next is my secret weapon – an Ibanez PQ-9 parametric equalizer. I’ve used one of these on every recording I have ever done, even when I wasn’t using all of these effects. It is not true bypassed. Basically, the Cowboys stuff, a lot of it was so heavy… and if I needed to do this kind of heavy Pantera-ish chunk, chunk… real tight, clamped chords, that’s what would give me that extra crunch.”
“Out of that, it goes into a plain old Ibanez TS-9 tube screamer that they still make. (I used to have an original TS-808, but it was stolen.) For the Cowboys stuff, I always preferred the TS-9. The TS-808 was what all the blues guys would use – kind of their holy grail overdrive pedal. The TS-9 is a little more harsh and it just always worked better with my amps for the type of stuff I was playing.”
“Then it goes to the Fulltone Deja Vibe (# 70). One of the best Univibe clones I’ve ever heard. I’ve used this on every album as well.”
“Next is the MXR Stereo Chorus and MXR Analog Delay. I had both of these true bypassed. The Stereo Chorus is really, really noisy. When you turn it on, you get a slight dB boost, everything gets brighter and you hear some hiss. Most other pedals that do this would probably drive me nuts, but this is my favorite chorus pedal, probably ever. It adds a real Beatle-y kind of wobble that a lot of other chorus pedals don’t do. The Analog Delay doesn’t have a long delay time. Usually I would set the regeneration high to where it is almost an infinite echo, then hit a chord and, with my foot, work the knobs and it could almost sound like a pitch transposer.”
“Most people use these Rapco A/B switches when they are running two rigs. I would use it as an on/off switch for my rack gear. I would run a guitar cable out of my rack to the Rapco to access my Chandler stereo digital echo from my amp’s effects loop. The Rapco would turn it on and off.”
“That’s the board. I’ve got all kinds of stuff I’ve used on records that’s not on the board, and stuff I’ve picked up afterwards.”
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Thanks, Wally! Man, that is quite an assortment of very sweet stomps… but it ain’t over! Wally also wanted to share a few items in his effects collection that don’t sit on the board, but have played – and will continue to play – a role in his music. First up is the…
Maestro Rhythm and Sound for Guitar – “This is a really bizarre unit. It’s got these rocker switches on here, and it has percussion sounds… late ’60s, early ’70s. It looks like organ rockers. You can click one and get say tambourine. Hit a guitar note and you get your note, plus a tambourine clap. It had a couple of weird, freaky fuzz tones that no other fuzz pedal that I’ve ever heard had. I used it on the lead for ‘Tilt-A-Whirl’.”
Boss Chorus Ensemble – “This one gets very limited use. You can still find these, but they are starting to get pricey. It actually used to belong to Ty (Tabor). He gave it to me about nine years ago.”
Maestro Echoplex – “This is solid state, not tube. I took this on the road once. One tour (Machine Fish)… it sounded amazing, but I didn’t have an anvil case for it. (Read: It got a little roughed up.) After that, I said ‘done’… it’s staying at home. It has been used a lot. It is on all of the Cowboys records. You can hear it massively on ‘Paradigm Shift’. All of those real weird-sounding delays where it sounds like stuff spinning around was this.”
Tweakhead Technologies Tone Freq – “I’ve used this quite a bit lately. It is a clean dB boost that attaches to your guitar strap. You go from the guitar to the Tone Freq, then out to your pedals or amp. With it on, you have a dial where you can go from zero to 10dB gain. Going in front of an amp, that’s almost like overdrive. A lot of other dB boosts would color up the tone. This one is real transparent. I used this all over dUg Pinnick’s record (Strum Sum Up) and the new Xenuphobe album (2.0: Electrolux) with Ty Tabor.”
Whew! Thanks again Wally!
Look for Part 2 of our chat, where Wally talks about his amps and guitars, soon!
Enjoy the pics!
