Bill Nelson

BN – well, my first serious amplifier was a vox ac30, which was back in the 60s, I wish I still had it now, but I certainly wasn’t powerful enough – before that I had a little rosetti lucky seven amp which was about three watts or something, then after the vox I got … I think I wanted at the time a marshall but couldn’t afford it, and carlsbro came out with 50 and 100 watt heads and 4×12 cabinets at a much more affordable price, so I bought a fifty watt head and 4×12 cab and then when bebop started to happen and we were playing bigger places I bought a 100 watt carlsbro head and ended up with two of those and I think that the full rig that I ended up with in bbd was two carlsbro 100 watt heads, two H&H tape echo units, 6 SAI custom built speaker cabinets, with 2 12s in each, a big pete cornish pedalboard and a custom made preamp on one of the amps so I could push the front end get some natural distortion as well as having the option to kick in pedals, so it was quite an elaborate setup by the end of bebop, and then I tried to scale things back a bit at one point, particularly when digital processors came out – I remember buying that first small zoom unit, remember you could clip it on and thinking this is a fantastic thing, no need to lug amps around, just plug it straight into the pa, monitor through the monitors and it just sits there on your strap, but before long my digital setup ended up as complicated as anything if not more so than anything I had with bbd, what i’ve got now is a rack with three different processors, an oldish zoom 2050s rackmount, a digitex valve fx, i’ve got a pod, the early pod 2, which I use almost exclusively in the studio, not anything else, i’ve got a vetta 2, line 6 vetta 2 amp which I used on the tour in 2004, i’ve got a custom made carlsbro valve amp, which they built for me for the 2004 tour, which I designed, it’s based around the 50watt head that they made but the actual cosmetic of it, is something else, again it looks like its come from the jetsons, and then i’ve just had a signature amp made by a guy who’s based up here in yorkshire, and has an amp building company called rosewell, and he’s a real expert at vintage amp design, and initially did one in a tweed case rather like an old fender band master, and now he’s made one which to look at is more to my style, it’s a two-tone maroon and off-white with three 10s in it, and it’s a 40 watt combo, it’s not huge but it’s heavy. But has a really nice sound, he sources vintage speakers for his amps, and they’re well worth looking at if you’ve not seen them before I think he’s got a website – and then i’ve got couple of quirky things, i’ve got an old shaftesbury amp, which has elliptical speakers, it looks a bit like a tv front style thing, it’s pale blue and grey with a chrome grill that could have come off a 1960 vauxhall cresta by the look of it, but it’s an interesting looking thing I bought it first of all because it lookd so cool, it’d look really nice in the studio, but wen I plugged it in it’s got a sound all of its own, it has a built in vibrato, tremelo unit, these two elliptical speakers, and if you want the guitar to sound lik the kinks’ you really got me, I hasn’t got ripped speakers but it sounds like they are, a rally ratty tone to it – and it’s good for using for certain things and then i’ve got a selma little giant amp, which is very bijou, and again, close-miked it gets a good sound at low volumes. I think that carlsbro made briefly in the 90s which looks like one of these tower space heaters silver metal, it’s 8-sided it’s actually called the tower, and it lights up blue, with the speakers at the bottom it lights up blue – all transistorised, solid state, again it has a particular sound, it’s great for punky kind of stuff, it’s not a very sophisticated sound, but sometimes you don’t want that.BN – well, my first serious amplifier was a vox ac30, which was back in the 60s, I wish I still had it now, but I certainly wasn’t powerful enough – before that I had a little rosetti lucky seven amp which was about three watts or something, then after the vox I got … I think I wanted at the time a marshall but couldn’t afford it, and carlsbro came out with 50 and 100 watt heads and 4×12 cabinets at a much more affordable price, so I bought a fifty watt head and 4×12 cab and then when bebop started to happen and we were playing bigger places I bought a 100 watt carlsbro head and ended up with two of those and I think that the full rig that I ended up with in bbd was two carlsbro 100 watt heads, two H&H tape echo units, 6 SAI custom built speaker cabinets, with 2 12s in each, a big pete cornish pedalboard and a custom made preamp on one of the amps so I could push the front end get some natural distortion as well as having the option to kick in pedals, so it was quite an elaborate setup by the end of bebop, and then I tried to scale things back a bit at one point, particularly when digital processors came out – I remember buying that first small zoom unit, remember you could clip it on and thinking this is a fantastic thing, no need to lug amps around, just plug it straight into the pa, monitor through the monitors and it just sits there on your strap, but before long my digital setup ended up as complicated as anything if not more so than anything I had with bbd, what i’ve got now is a rack with three different processors, an oldish zoom 2050s rackmount, a digitex valve fx, i’ve got a pod, the early pod 2, which I use almost exclusively in the studio, not anything else, i’ve got a vetta 2, line 6 vetta 2 amp which I used on the tour in 2004, i’ve got a custom made carlsbro valve amp, which they built for me for the 2004 tour, which I designed, it’s based around the 50watt head that they made but the actual cosmetic of it, is something else, again it looks like its come from the jetsons, and then i’ve just had a signature amp made by a guy who’s based up here in yorkshire, and has an amp building company called rosewell, and he’s a real expert at vintage amp design, and initially did one in a tweed case rather like an old fender band master, and now he’s made one which to look at is more to my style, it’s a two-tone maroon and off-white with three 10s in it, and it’s a 40 watt combo, it’s not huge but it’s heavy. But has a really nice sound, he sources vintage speakers for his amps, and they’re well worth looking at if you’ve not seen them before I think he’s got a website – and then i’ve got couple of quirky things, i’ve got an old shaftesbury amp, which has elliptical speakers, it looks a bit like a tv front style thing, it’s pale blue and grey with a chrome grill that could have come off a 1960 vauxhall cresta by the look of it, but it’s an interesting looking thing I bought it first of all because it lookd so cool, it’d look really nice in the studio, but wen I plugged it in it’s got a sound all of its own, it has a built in vibrato, tremelo unit, these two elliptical speakers, and if you want the guitar to sound lik the kinks’ you really got me, I hasn’t got ripped speakers but it sounds like they are, a rally ratty tone to it – and it’s good for using for certain things and then i’ve got a selma little giant amp, which is very bijou, and again, close-miked it gets a good sound at low volumes. I think that carlsbro made briefly in the 90s which looks like one of these tower space heaters silver metal, it’s 8-sided it’s actually called the tower, and it lights up blue, with the speakers at the bottom it lights up blue – all transistorised, solid state, again it has a particular sound, it’s great for punky kind of stuff, it’s not a very sophisticated sound, but sometimes you don’t want that.

Bill lists several effects units. "I still have and use my Line 6 Pod II but also have a Line 6 Pod HD500, a Digitech Valve FX, a Zoom 2030S, a Boss ME-50, a Korg Toneworks AX-10 A and a Fractal Audio AXE FX II XL guitar processor, plus several stand alone analogue pedals."