Equipment
Trumpets - Since 1999 I have been using a Bobby Shew - Yamaha Trumpet and Yamaha Flugelhorn. Both horns were customized by Bobby Shew and Bob Malone at Bob Malones workshop in Van Nuys California. Normal process was, Bobby would play the new horn, make a suggestion to Bob, and Bob would take a pipe and hammer to it, and have Bobby play it again until Bobby was happy with it. At some point I stopped playing for about 10 years, and seem to have either given away or sold many of my previous horns and equipment. Still have a 1972 Shew Olds Custom Trumpet, that Bobby and I picked out at the Olds factory, a 1926 Bach Strad, customized by Mike Paulson in Vegas in the 80’s and a Benge customized by Bob Reeves.
Mouthpieces - custom Joe Marcinkiewicz mouthpieces. I have been using Marcinkiewicz mouthpieces since the early 1980’s when he was in Burbank. Visited Joe in Oregon in 1999, and he modified his original designs for use with the Yamaha horns.
Custom Nyle Steiner EVI Controller - EVI stands for Electronic Valve Instrument. In 1998 I found an Akai EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) that Nyle(the original inventor) gutted the components and created a custom Valve unit from. I played this for maybe a year, eventually deciding that it sounded like a giant kazoo. Still use it on occassion for recording, since it is much more expressive than Midi Keyboards.
Composition Rig - Currently have a couple Roland XP-30 Controllers, Roland 1080 sound modules, Roland 760 Samplers, Apple computers, Logic and Digital Performer software, and MOTU Midi converters.
Audio Recording - Neve Pre-amps, Coles Ribbon Mic