Joe Satriani

Used on Not of This Earth, Surfing With the Alien, the Dreaming #11 EP and Flying In A Blue Dream. Satriani's X100 was later modeled in IK Multimedia's AmpliTube for his signature pack, released July 8, 2020. In this September 25, 2020 IK Multimedia interview, "Joe Satriani on budget gear like the Rockman - Satch LIVE on AmpliTube Joe Satriani", Satriani explains that the X100 was part of his low-tech, contrarian recording ethic at the time, being used with a Neve preamp to boost its levels. Other sources are as follows:

Guitar World, November 1989, “Blue Heaven: It was worth the wait. Joe Satriani’s Flying In A Blue Dream is a master’s masterpiece.”

Is that you on the harmonica?

Yeah, but it 's a joke. I'm playing it through a Bullet microphone hooked to a Rockman. I stumbled across the idea when Jagger was looking for a wild sound while we were rehearsing for his tour. He had a harmonica and I said, "Why don't you play it through this?"

Guitar Player, July 31, 2007, "Joe Satriani Reflects on 20 Years of Surfing With the Alien"

Did you have a game plan for the album’s guitar tones?

By the time I started making solo records, I had developed some pretty bad attitudes towards vintage gear and the vintage cognoscenti. I think it stemmed from the fact I was working at a vintage guitar store—Second Hand Guitars in Berkeley—and I was broke. But back then, I only thought about music. So, in a way, I became “Mr. Contrarian” when it came to tone. With Surfing, I went in with a Roland JC-120 and a ’68 Marshall half-stack that was modded with a master volume. I also used original Chandler Tube Drivers, a Boss DS-1 and an SD-1, a Scholz Rockman, a Nomad amplifier, and a borrowed bass amp.

For vintage tone guys, this was blasphemy. You don’t get big guitar sounds from Boss pedals and a Rockman! People always asked me if I wanted to borrow their Hiwatts and Les Paul Juniors, and I’d always say “no.” As long as the material you’re presenting asks for an interesting take, then you can go cheap or expensive. It doesn’t matter whether you use a ’55 Strat or a Kramer Pacer.

Did the Rockman tones make you play differently?

Oh, yeah. Take the solo on “Crushing Day,” for example. That was the only worked-out solo on the record, and it sports a very obvious Rockman tone. But I like the way the Rockman just emasculates the tone. I could never have played the solo the way I did with natural tube distortion through a 4x12 cabinet, because there would be too much sonic information. The low strings would be huge and boomy, and the high-end would be screaming. But the Rockman creates a “tunnel vision” of sound that evens everything out. The low notes and high notes were all equal volume. So for legato technique, it was great. It kind of makes you feel like Allan Holdsworth!

Do those sounds still hold up for you?

Most of them do. There are some Rockman tones from Not of This Earth that I don’t feel were the best application, but by the time I did Surfing, I had refined my Rockman use to the point of feeling emboldened. You have to remember—we didn’t have the budget to spend a week getting guitar sounds. There weren’t six different speaker cabs and a bunch of exotic amplifiers lying around. We had a modest studio with a small amount of time and a tight schedule.

Strange Beautiful Music: A Musical Memoir by Joe Satriani and Jake Brown (April 8, 2014)

Not of this Earth—1985-1986

For the ’85 studio sessions, I started plugging my guitars into a Tom Scholz Rockman, which I really liked as a direct amplifier, primarily because my record didn’t sound like traditional rock music at the time. I had played through 100-watt Marshalls for a good five years already, and I was getting kind of tired of the straight-ahead guitar-into-a-Marshall approach. My competitors were all doing that—they were in studios with their Marshalls turned all the way up, trying to continue the dream of the late sixties and early seventies. And I thought what would really sound more modern to me, especially if I had some drum tracks that were drum machines, would be to get the guitar into that space as well. So if I’ve got a drum machine and a synthesizer, how could I get the guitar to sound like it’s coming from the same space as them?

That’s where the Rockman came in. It sounded like it was coming from the same aural space as the Prophet-5 synthesizer and the Oberheim DX we were using. It made them more mixable, to my ear, and they presented a more unified sonic sound. We rarely used big amps—we were using very small one- and two- speaker Fender amps for this stuff. The sound seemed to be more easy to place; I liked the fact that it was somewhat compressed, and the drums were very much like that as well, because they were coming from a drum machine and already had a sort of recorded sound.

John Cuniberti: Throughout the album’s recording, there would be occasions where Joe would need to get close to his amplifier for a particular sound, but it was very rare. Even then, he was using foot pedals for distortion and setting his amp up clean. He never really took to the loud amplifier-standing-in-the-room kind of approach.

John wasn’t always a fan of me using small amps, and I remember there were moments when we would definitely argue back and forth about it, because John had a long history of getting great guitar sounds out of amps, so he was pushing for using mics. I remember I showed up for that record without an amp, and John asked, “What do you mean?” And I said, “I want to use whatever the smallest little amp is you’ve got,” because I was really Mr. Antithesis, and I just didn’t want to waste time getting a big rock sound because I thought it would never fit. As we got deeper into recording for the record, I think he understood that sometimes the part would sound better technically if it was played through the Rockman. But other times he would provide me a more upscale path and say, “I know what you want. Let me show you how to do it better,” and we’d go direct. He introduced me to going into a vintage mic pre, directly to tape, and then using very expensive signal processors to recreate stereo chorus and delay. So we wound up using that instead of the Rockman. It was a balance, back and forth.

Along with the Rockman, my go-to traditional amplifier was the Roland JC-120. We used it quite a bit, and I still have that amp; it’s fantastic. It wasn’t really great at distorted guitar sounds, because it had this high end that revealed itself as being a transistor amp. But for clean sounds it was excellent, because it had a quick, snappy, transient response in the high end, and it had that unusual, wide stereo chorus effect. It’s a unique acoustic phenomenon, and recording it is tricky, but we got good at it. I found some small silver-faced Fender amps in the closets at Hyde Street that I would borrow sometimes, and if I needed a Marshall, I still had my half stacks.

Surfing with the Alien—1987

“Always with Me, Always with You” began as a love song for my wife, Rubina. I remember composing most of it in my Berkeley apartment one afternoon. The chord sequence uses suspended triads arpeggiated over a major-key bass line. On top of that, a lyrical melody in counterpoint with the arpeggios, and a little pitch axis B-section. There’s even some two-handed tapping in there as well! John, Jeff, and Bongo Bob Smith helped me keep the end result sweet and as light as a feather by adding the perfect accompaniment and a unique final mix. All the guitars were recorded using a Rockman, and then straight into mic pres on that song—no amps!

With a song like “Circles,” I’m using dyads to create a harmonized melody against an exotic rhythm section that shifts gears suddenly with Jeff Campitelli’s amazing footwork on the kick drum. It’s a crazy arrangement that was a lot of fun to work out in the studio. DI guitars for the main melody, amped-up rhythm guitars combined with the Rockman for the solo. For me, it was a new way of combining melody, rhythm, and harmony to create a memorable hook. The trippy ending with all the swirling percussion and sound effects completes the song’s fantasy.

Launching the Silver Surfer

Postscript: Late in 1987, just before everything was about to “pop,” Guitar Player magazine asked me to record an original piece of music for a Soundpage to be included in the February 1988 issue where I was to grace the cover—my first! I jumped into the studio with John and Jeff and recorded two pieces of music: “The Power Cosmic,” a solo guitar piece, and what would become a hit for me, “The Crush of Love,” a soul song with a lilting wah-wah melody over a funky bass and fat backbeat. With my new Ibanez 540 Radius guitar in hand, Rockman amp, and Casio CZ-101 keyboard, we recorded and mixed the new music in a few hours at Hyde Street Studios. It eventually was added to a live EP called Dreaming #11 that was released about a year later. The live performances, recorded at the California Theatre in San Diego, featured Stuart Hamm on bass and Jonathan Mover on drums, my touring band that year.

The Gear: Album by Album

Not of This Earth 1986: ’83 Kramer Pacer, Boogie Body and Rubina-painted Strat- type electrics, ’67 Marshall Super Lead, ’78 Marshall MKII 100-watt head, Roland JC-120, Scholz Rockman, silverface Fender Princeton Reverb amp, Boss DS-1, OD-1, BF-2, and CE-2 pedals

∗∗

Surfing with the Alien 1987: two ’83 Kramer Pacers, Boogie Body and Rubina- painted Strat-type electrics, vintage Coral Sitar, ’67 Marshall Super Lead, ’78 Marshall MKII 100-watt head, Roland JC-120, Gorilla practice amp, Scholz Rockman, original Chandler Tube Drivers, Cry Baby wahs, Boss DS-1, DD-2, OD-1, and CE-2 pedals

∗∗

Dreaming #11 EP 1988: Ibanez JS1 Prototype “Black Dog,” Scholz Rockman, ’64 Fender P-Bass; live rig: Ibanez JS1; ’67 Marshall Super Lead, ’78 Marshall MKII 100-watt head, Cry Baby wahs, Boss DS-1, DD-2, and CE-1 pedals

∗∗

Flying in a Blue Dream 1989: Ibanez JS1 Prototype “Black Dog,” white Ibanez JS1, ’83 Kramer Pacer, Boogie Body Strat-type electric, Fender ’63 reissue Stratocaster, ’64 Fender P-Bass, ’71 Marshall Super Lead, ’78 Marshall MKII 100-watt head, Roland JC 120, Gorilla practice amp, Scholz Rockman, Mesa Boogie Mark llc 100-watt head, Deering 6-string banjo, Cry Baby wahs, Boss DS-1, OD-1, and CE-2 pedals

MusicRadar, February 1, 2017, "Joe Satriani talks Surfing With The Alien track-by-track"

Ice 9 (...) “On that one, I'm using a Boss DS-1 and the overdrive, OD-1, I think. I'm playing my ’60s P-Bass, but I think that's where the rhythm guitars are the DS-1, so they're a bit crunchier. For the solos, I believe it's a Rockman [headphone amp], and we just used one channel of the Rockman and put it up on the middle, flat and dry. I mean, that's about as dry as I've ever recorded. Simple legato technique and just crazy all over the place.

Crushing Day (...) “This song definitely, out of all of them, echoed the time. It had that early-’80s metal sound to it and strictness. It had more Rockman on it than it should have had, and it had tuning issues because it was done as a demo. And then by the time we decided to put it on the album, we had run out of money and so we didn't have time to replace parts again.

KVR Audio, August 23, 2020, "Songs in Isolation: An Interview with Joe Satriani"

What about the gear that was modeled?

That was an interesting process. We had some audio stems and the pedals I used, like the original Rockman 2 [sic] driver DS1 overdrive, that I sent them off to IK in Italy. I thought that was really necessary.

My original Marshall head was a '71 Super Lead that had been modified by a local Bay Area guitar player/engineer named Todd Langer. He had added a gain stage to the front of the amp, kind of a master volume thing. That amp did a lot of the heavy Marshall lifting. We would put it together with the Rockman. I'd go into the Rockman and either stereo or mono with no delay and the output would go into a Neve preamp that John had pulled out of a console and put into a discrete case with the shortest cables possible. We got that Rockman to sound like it was a cool amp by recording it like it was an amp.

So, some of the songs, like Ice 9 has a Roland DS1 distortion pedal into the Marshall mic'd up by a (SM) 57. The melody tones went into the Rockman, tube driver. The last solo is with Doug Doppler's little Gorilla amp that I borrowed without asking him one afternoon (laughs). I think that last solo we recorded in Studio D was with a talkback mic. We wanted to use the gear in non-traditional ways to create a special voice for the albums.

"The JVM410, I have three clones of each other. These are modified by Santiago Alvarez, the Head Engineer for Marshall - also a really good guitar player. He's been working on these things for me for over a year. We've kept the basic design of the 410s, which is four channels and three modes for each channel, so you do get a lot of flexibility. Any working guitarist out there is going to love the fact that it's pretty much got the history of Marshall tones in one head. I'm using about four different settings right now. So I'm using a clean channel, one for a sort of overdriven 800 tone, then two settings in an overdrive channel. My gig is mainly playing melodies and solos full time, so I don't do a whole lot of rhythm work during the show. What Santiago is able to do with the existing 410 is get rid of a lot of the inherent compression that was a little more popular a couple of years ago. So now it's an ultra punchy, super dynamic amplifier. We got it way more quiet, and we got rid of the reverbs and we put it four noise gates - one for each channel. We reshaped the resonance and the presence controls so that they would be a lot more friendly for me. Basically I didn't want the presence to be so harsh and I wanted the resonance to be a little more flexible, let's say, not so overwhelming in the 100-hertz area. Other than that, I'm using just one head during the show and two cabinets. We keep a half step back for guests: John Petrucci was playing through that one the other night in New York City. A spare head is always available just in case something gets finicky with this one. All the heads go into that to keep the power regulated. For the tubes, I don't think we change anything about them, they're EL34s 12AX7s. I don't think in the last twelve months we ever tried anything else, like 6L6s or KT80s. We've kept the EL34s for the whole thing."

At 6:46 of this "Rig Rundown" with Premier Guitar, Joe says "Before on tours I used to travel with 75-watters, and 20-watters and 25s and 30s, and I finally figured out it's a better idea to go with the straighter head 1960B cabinets and tune the heads, so to speak, so that wherever you go in the world you’re going to find this cabinet. This is the most prevalent cabinet for Marshall. I've been really liking this cabinet a lot, more than in the past when I had a softer sound. I think especially with the edition of keyboards now, we're a five-piece band, these cut a lot more so I do like them. They should be 80-watt speakers."

In this Guitar Player interview, Satriani states that he “ha[s] a few original Peavey 5150s”. The article goes on to share signal chains from Satriani's personal notebook, which reveals that the 5150s were used on "Smooth Soul" and "Forever and Ever".

“Smooth Soul”

Melodies: MCO#1, Peavey 5150 Solo: KSR Orthos Rhythm Guitars: Gibson Custom Shop goldtop, Korg G4 Rotary Speaker, Fender ’59 Tweed Twin, Wells amp into Fender Deluxe

(...) “Forever and Ever”

Intro/Outro Guitar/Rhythm Guitars: JS25ART #47, Mezzabarba M Zero Melody: MCO #1, Peavey 5150 Solo: JS25ART #47, Peavey 5150

Another one of Satriani's Peavey 5150s was sold on Reverb.com via Bananas at Large.

Mentioned in this 2007 Guitar Player interview.

By the time I started making solo records, I had developed some pretty bad attitudes towards vintage gear and the vintage cognoscenti. I think it stemmed from the fact I was working at a vintage guitar store—Second Hand Guitars in Berkeley—and I was broke. But back then, I only thought about music. So, in a way, I became “Mr. Contrarian“ when it came to tone. With Surfing, I went in with a Roland JC-120 and a ’68 Marshall half-stack that was modded with a master volume. I also used original Chandler Tube Drivers, a Boss DS-1 and an SD-1, a Scholz Rockman, a Nomad amplifier, and a borrowed bass amp.

Satriani also mentions the JC-120‘s use on Surfin’ With the Alien in this 2012 interview with Vintage Guitar magazine, where it is erroneously transcribed as the then nonexistent JC-20.

Parts of Surfin’ With the Alien were done with a JC-20 [sic] and the DS-1 instead of the Marshall stack.

"We have my little Peavey Mini Collosssal. This we use only for the harp mic for the harp solo in 'Big Bad Moon'. I believe that takes the direct out."

Interviewer: What pedals did you use on this project [Engines of Creation]?

Satriani: We had much success with the Moogerfooger pedals, the Fulltone Ultimate Octave, a DigiTech Whammy pedal and a preamp called a Hafler Triple Giant.

Interviewer: Were there any in particular that really gave you that electronica feel?

Satriani: The Hafler Triple Giant had the most robotic distortion, totally devoid of warmth and feeling. But, in the context of a song like "Borg Sex," it was perfect!

A December 20, 2002 post in this Les Paul Forum thread by user Bluesbreaker59 mentions that Satriani purchased a MKIIC+ from him.

When I had my Mark II C+, it had the original STR 420's in it, which from what I was told by my Boogie dealer, is the holy Grail of Mesa tubes. However they ceased production on them, so I don't know how hard they would be to find. When I finally had to replace them, I just bought brand new Boogie 6L6 tubes and they sounded good, just not spectacular like the old 420's. Just my opinion.

When I sold my Boogie, the guitar shop put it on Ebay and got contacted by one of Joe Satriani's people, because I guess he, Petrucci, Kirk Hammett and a few select others are trying to hoard all the Mark II C+ 's in the world. I got $800, for it, the guitar shop got $1800, so if I were you I'd definitely hold onto that amp, and not let those shredders have it, they don't deserve everything.

"I eventually got into a band with a guy who had a stack made by Lafayette, which was an electronics shop, like Radio Shack, on the East Coast. I believe his was tube. And our bass player had a Heathkit amp, where you buy the parts and build it yourself. Eventually, I wound up with a Fender Bandmaster."

A 1961 “Brownface” Deluxe owned by Satriani is listed for sale on Bananas at Large’s website. The item description states that “[t]he ground switch has been modified to be a bypass swtich.”

Acquired shortly before the recording of What Happens Next. It was used for “Righteous”, “Headrush” and “Forever and Ever”, as taken from Satriani’s personal notebook.

“Righteous”

Melody Guitar: MCO#1, Marshall JVM410HJS Intro/Outro: MCO #1, Electro-Harmonix Microsynth, Strymon El Capistan, Marshall ’71 50-watt Rhythm Guitars: Fender Custom Shop ’69 Strat (gold sparkle), ’63 Fender Deluxe, MCO #1, Mezzabarba M Zero, Gibson Flying V, Vox Big Bad Wah

(...) “Headrush”

Melody Guitar: MCO #4, Mezzabarba M Zero, Marshall ’71 Super Lead Rhythm #1: Fender Custom Shop Tele (red sparkle), Xotic SP Compressor, BOSS CE-2 Chorus, Lazy J J80 combo Rhythm #2: Ibanez T-style with Evertune, Korg G4 Rotary Speaker, Xotic SP Compressor, Lazy J J80 combo Solo: MCO #1, Marshall JVM410HJS

(...) “Forever and Ever”

Intro/Outro Guitar/Rhythm Guitars: JS25ART #47, Mezzabarba M Zero Melody: MCO #1, Peavey 5150 Solo: JS25ART #47, Peavey 5150

A 1962 Brownface is listed for sale on Bananas at Large's website.

Excellent Condition. Overhauled by Chris Barnett. No Slip Cover.

• Serial 55938 makes it mid-year 1962 which is 6G12-A circuit. Label is partially missing though stamped first figure is "L" for 1962.
• Original Oxford speakers in good working order. No rubbing, no tears, stiff cones. Dated (3) 465-236 and (1) 465-233. All: 10K5-XG748 plus all cones stamped original P4630.
• Original transformers: PWR 606235 CHK 126C1A 606241 OUT: 125A9A
• Original tolex and grill cloth in terrific condition as shown.
• Tubes: New pair Sovtek 5881 12AX7s mix of GE, Tung-sol and Chinese.
• Complete electronic service including: Many resistors replaced as needed with metal film. In the B+ drops metal film resistors are quieter than the original carbon resistors.
• All signal path capacitors, coupling and tone, are original.

You want the amp to sound right.

• All filter capacitors replaced. high plate and screen voltage so plate and screen capacitors have 700v capacitor rating for surge protection, reliability and long life: this also contributes to the amplifiers punchy robust tone. Originally Fender specified 600v capacitors, but normally used.
• Cathode and bias electrolytic capacitors replaced.
• Fender first made the Concert in 1960 as a 6G12 circuit with a five tube preamp with two tubes dedicated to the vibrato circuit. Fender then refined the circuit as 6G12-A which has the full tube preamp complement with the three tube vibrato. The three tube is unquestionably the best vibrato Fender ever produced and this amplifier is a particularly fine example with rich, deep vibrato.

Overhauled by Chris Barnett: Replaced both volume potentiometers, 2-OEM Fender 1meg audio pots, Checked for leaky capacitors.

Used on Engines of Creation, as mentioned in Strange Beautiful Music: A Musical Memoir. A photo of the amp, taken by Satriani himself, is featured.

We had Neve preamps, a GML mic pre, and a ’64 Fender Bassman head that wound up being used 50 percent of the time. My guitar went into an amp, which would then go into a Palmer speaker simulator, and from there into a Neve mic pre, and from there right into Pro Tools. Sometimes we’d use a Hafler Triple Giant, which was a 4-channel guitar preamp. You hear a lot of that on “Borg Sex” in the intensity of the distortion.

"Congratulations to Bob for picking up Joe Satriani's '59 Fender Twin amp and thanks to Joe for coming down to tell the stories and history of such an iconic piece! Shop Joe's pre-owned gear now http://bit.ly/2vwB3Tt".

2008 and 2016 models, both with the “Dexter Satch Mod”, are listed for sale on Bananas at Large’s website. The second one can be found here.

Listed for sale on Bananas at Large.

KSR Handwired GEMINI 100 2.5 Channel, 100W, Multi-Mode Guitar Amplifier (Pre-Owned)(Joe Satriani Collection).

Joe Satriani is the world’s most commercially successful solo guitar performer, and now you can own gear from his private collection!

Handbuilt and voiced for Joe Satriani

"What was your first amp? A Univox U65Rn, I think. We lived a few miles from Plainview, New York, where Unicord was based. It imported or distributed Marshall at the time, and made a couple budget amps; mine was one of them – narrow 1×12, solidstate with reverb. Not very reliable."

Listed for sale on Bananas at Large's website. It was used on Satriani‘s eponymous 1995 album, as seen throughout the documentary Reel.

Used on Not of This Earth, Surfing With the Alien and "Flying In A Blue Dream". Among online sources, the amp is first mentioned by Satriani in this January 2012 interview with Vintage Guitar Magazine:

"There are so many different ones, but the basic Marshall is the 'kitchen sink' sound – it gives you everything. More than you want, maybe! It’s the most revealing amp you’ll ever plug into, I think.

Early in my career, I tried to run from it. On the first couple of solo records… for Not of This Earth I didn’t even bring one into the studio. I was such a contrarian, I remember calling [recording engineer] John Cuniberti and saying, 'I’m gonna use whatever is in the closet.' I thought that was a cool, artsy way of doing things. What happened to be in the closet was an early-’70s Pro Reverb, and I just plugged little (effects) boxes into it. We’d record quietly and use microphones like a C12A, Boss pedals, and early tube drivers made by Paul Chandler."

Satriani later specified this amp to be a Silverface in a December 26, 2011 Tumblr post, which also revealed that the Pro Reverb was used on the track “Flying In a Blue Dream”.

DAVUDTESCH asked: I've read that you used a Mesa Mark IIC+ on Flying in a Blue Dream... Was it just on the song or the whole album? I ask cuz I love the voicing you get out of your tone in the beginning of part 2 of the Bells of Lal.. When I'm dialing my tone if it feels similar then I know I'm in the ballpark. I use that and the riff from Crystal Planet... those are my tone-testers :)

On that song I was using a silver face Fender Pro Reverb amp with a Boss DS-1 distortion pedal, and put an AKG C12-A microphone up close to the grill.

This dispells a popular myth that a Mesa/BOOGIE MKIIC+ was used, as discussed in this May 3, 2016 post in the Fractal Audio forums by user marklumsley.

While Satch did indeed use a respectable bunch of amplifiers during his 'Flying...' album - including the Mesa/Boogie Mk IIC+, it was NOT used during the recording of the title track. Used instead was a silverface Fender Pro Reverb as stated by the man himself on his Tumblr account whilst answering a fan's question, seen here:

The amp is brought up a third time in this February 17, 2017 Music Radar interview about Surfing With the Alien.

“We used a [Roland] JC-120 for almost all of Echo. John had a very clever way of recording the JC-120 with six different microphones, an [AKG] C12A and this and that, and using the DS-1. It was just really interesting how we got a lot of mileage out of that amp. It was the perfect antidote to the Marshall stack or the little Silverface Pro Reverb or Princeton that was there that we used for a lot of the album, too."

Used on “Headrush”, as taken from Satriani’s personal notebook.

Melody Guitar: MCO #4, Mezzabarba M Zero, Marshall ’71 Super Lead Rhythm #1: Fender Custom Shop Tele (red sparkle), Xotic SP Compressor, BOSS CE-2 Chorus, Lazy J J80 combo Rhythm #2: Ibanez T-style with Evertune, Korg G4 Rotary Speaker, Xotic SP Compressor, Lazy J J80 combo Solo: MCO #1, Marshall JVM410HJS

In this video from Musician's Friend, at 2:42 Joe says about the amp head "it’s got a clean channel and it’s got a crunch, and it’s got a you know ultra."

"For amps, I use my Marshall JVM410JS signature head. It’s comfortable having your own signature gear to plug into and wrap your fingers around. These days I have the most input into the gear, which makes for the least resistance."

Used on Flying In A Blue Dream, as featured in this advertisement for Rockman.

Shown on KSR’s official artist page. Satriani acquired his Orthos MKII shortly before the recording of What Happens Next and used it extensively on the album. His personal notebook details the amp’s use.

“Smooth Soul”

Melodies: MCO#1, Peavey 5150 Solo: KSR Orthos Rhythm Guitars: Gibson Custom Shop goldtop, Korg G4 Rotary Speaker, Fender ’59 Tweed Twin, Wells amp into Fender Deluxe

(...) “What Happens Next”

Melody Guitar: MCO #1, Re-amped with KSR Orthos and Tech 21 SansAmp Power Chords: ’63 Fender Deluxe

(...) “Super Funky Badass”

MCO #1, Re-amped with KSR Orthos Breakdown Rhythms: Fender Custom Shop ’69 Strat (gold sparkle), Electro-Harmonix Mel9, Electro-Harmonix Micro POG, Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe, Strymon El Capistan

“Invisible”

Melody/Solo/Intro/Outro: MCO#1, KSR Orthos, Wells Amp into Fender Deluxe cab Intro/Outro: JS25ART #47, Electro-Harmonix Micro POG, KSR Orthos Rhythm Guitars: MCO #1, Dunlop EchoPlex Preamp, Wells amp/Fender Deluxe Cab

Listed for sale on Bananas at Large's website.

Listed for sale on Bananas at Large's website.

A P12P with a date code of 2200925 (it was made in the 25th week of 2009) and a serial number of P12PC6641 was sold on Reverb.com via Bananas at Large.

This Peavey Blue Marvel 8", 8 Ohms speaker, part of Joe Satriani's private collection, was sold on Reverb.com by Bananas at Large.

A P10R with a date code of SD414 and serial number of P10RC5888-6, owned by Satriani, was sold on Reverb.com via Bananas at Large.

Joe Satriani's private collection includes a Celestion Seventy 80 80W, 12" Guitar Speaker, as listed on Reverb.com by Bananas at Large.