Television – Live At The Academy NYC 12.4.92

Used for Real Time, as stated in the January 1988 Guitar Player interview "Richard Lloyd: The 6 String Alchemy of Richard Lloyd" by Mark Dery.

"Real Time was recorded at CBGB on weekday nights. It was open to the public, and we just set up and played. We took everything D.I. [direct input] so that we were able to run the signal into new amplifiers in the studio if we didn't like the sound that we were getting. For instance, the rhythm guitar had the wrong reverb on certain things, so we just sent the signal out to a Marshall JCM-800. It's the same performance, but the sound is cleaner. We mixed the album and didn't really do that much – hardly any overdubbing."

Used live and for Real Time, as stated in this December 1986 Musician interview and in this January 1988 Guitar Player interview.

Musician, December 1986, "Richard Lloyd" by Bill Flanagan, pg. 26

"Onstage I use my Stratocaster and my JC 120 with a Boss Super Overdrive distortion device and a Korg SDD 2000 digital delay. I just traded an acoustic guitar for this little Acoustic amp to play at home and I've lately been using that onstage, too. Because the JC 120 is not giving me what I need. When we're in Europe we use Marshall amps, because they do something with the electronics of Fender amps in Europe and they're not as good. I'm probably going to switch to either Fenders or Marshalls, because the JC 120 has transistors and it's driving me crazy. It doesn't contain enough threat—it's too damn stable. Very pretty color tone. I mean, Adrian Belew swears by it—but he uses so many boxes he doesn't know what it sounds like anyway."

Guitar Player, January 1988, "Richard Lloyd: The 6 String Alchemy of Richard Lloyd" by Mark Dery

Richard's stripped-down approach to mixing applies to his guitar gear on Real Time, as well. No souped-up signal processors or pawnshop oddities here – just a few scuffed-up pedals, that trusty '61 Strat, and some workhorse amps. "Television used Fender Super Reverbs almost exclusively, with no effects at all," he notes. "I tried a number of different amps. Everybody was hawking this Roland Jazz Chorus JC-120 for its color and tone, so I got one. The JC isn't giving enough of the midrange 'honk' that I need, but financially I'm in the position where, if I buy something, I have to use it [laughs]. I have this cube-shaped Acoustic amp that I stick on top of the JC-120, and I run into that, too. The Acoustic's reverb has a lot of midrange. It has a lot more of what I call 'nose' – that quality your voice gets when you have a cold. I like the tone that's created when something's almost going to feed back, but just doesn't quite. It's very colorful. Occasionally, I turn the JC's distortion on – but not up – because it just gives a little boost, makes the speakers jump a little."

Switching effects on but not turning the dials up has become something of a Lloyd trademark. "Yeah," he nods, "I'm using a wah-wah pedal now, and when I put the wah on, I don't want to hear the phasing. I just want to use it as a tone control. That way, you can get tenacity, starting a passage in the bass frequencies and slowly moving it toward the treble. A lot of times, I use it to get extra midrange."

Lloyd runs his Strat into a Cry Baby wah-wah and then a Boss Super Overdrive with the tone set at three o'clock and the overdrive at one o'clock. That feeds into a Korg SDD-2000 digital delay set at 400 milliseconds: "I keep it at about eight repeats, to get that old Echoplex-type effect. That goes into the high channel of the Roland JC-120, and there's a small cable going into the Acoustic, which has its own overdrive, preamp thing, which I use. I like to have things so they're just at the point of bursting – just this side of overload – but I get quite a clean signal. The Boss Super Overdrive is not that dirty an effect, and the wah-wah pedal doesn't overdrive. I tried different orders, but the signal-to-noise ratio was the cleanest this way, with the digital delay closest to the amp."