Richie Castellano

"I've also been bringing a different guitar out on the road. I decided to give the Blue Silhouette Special a rest for a while. It's an awesome guitar, I just wanted to change things up a bit, so now I'm using a translucent gold Axis. The Axis sounds a little more hard rock than the Silhouette, so it's a nice fit. It's also nice to have the Silhouette home because it's such a versatile guitar that I could do any gig with it."

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses the Music Man Steve Morse signature guitar.

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses the Ernie Ball Music Man Axis.

"For guitars I used a custom Ernie Ball Music Man Axis, an Ernie Ball Music Man Silhouette Special, a Rickenbacker 325V59 and an Ibanez AE-30 acoustic."

"For guitars I used a custom Ernie Ball Music Man Axis, an Ernie Ball Music Man Silhouette Special, a Rickenbacker 325V59 and an Ibanez AE-30 acoustic."

In this short Instagram video, Castellano can be seen playing the Line 6 Variax guitar.

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses Engl Steve Morse E656 signature model head.

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses the Engl 4x12 cabinet.

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses the VHT Fryette GP3 guitar preamp.

"The power amp goes into a Marshall 1960 Cabinet. This is the only piece of rental gear I use. These are usually consistent enough where my sound won't change much from gig to gig. This gets miked up and then sent to the PA. I'd say the most important step in getting a good guitar sound through a PA is microphone placement. Poor placement can totally wreck your sound, no matter how great your gear is. I place the microphone myself using my in ears to monitor the sound."

"I borrowed my friend, Chris Segalini's Vox AC-30 amp and used my little Brian May amp as a preamp and that got me really close. I even miked up that little amp for a couple of tracks."

"I got the new Behringer FCB-1010 midi controller pedal. I was skeptical about it at first, but after reading all those manuals, I decided to buy it and give it a try. This thing kicks ass. They call it an ultra-flexible foot controller, and they aint bullshitting. This thing made my head spin. It's got the standard 10 button bank up/down configuration. It also has two expression pedals and two analog 1/4 inch switching mechanisms! I'll give you an example of what this thing can do. When you select a preset, it can change your effects settings, midi settings, start a computer, change channels on an analog amp, assign functions on each device to the expression pedals, and more! I sound like a friggin' salesman, but this thing is great! I'm totally using it on Tuesday This has allowed me to get rid of some un-needed crap in my rig, it has made things a lot simpler for me. I must be honest though, it took me over 2 hours to program the pedal, but now that it's done, it's really great. I can't control volume and effects parameters all from this unit!"

"The first pedal in the chain is the Super Octave. I got this because Danny Miranda used one a lot. Danny mainly used it to go lower than a D. He played a 4 string and the octave pedal made it easy for him to play lower notes. I play a 5 string so I mainly use it as an effect when I want to hear 2 notes out of my amp. I use this effect on many of the fills on "Golden Age of Leather" and for the bass solo in "Black Blade.""

"The second pedal in the chain is the Bass Overdrive. This is my insurance policy. Most of the times when we play shows that require us to fly out and use rental gear, I get an Ampeg SVT amp. This amp is the greatest Rock n Roll bass amp because it breaks up just right when you push it. On some occasions the rental company doesn't give us the right bass amp, and that totally sucks. Certain amps (I'm not going to name names) Are completely sterile sounding and just wrong for rock music. When I get these amps I play way to hard because the amp isn't helping the sound at all. The result is a shitty sound and me getting blisters on my fingers from playing so hard. The Bass Overdrive pedal is my insurance policy here because when this happens, I put the pedal on it's lowest setting with just a slight amount of overdrive. This smoothes out the sound enough to make it playable for the Rock style. The other place I use this pedal is during the bass solo for the heavy stuff. It's on a more extreme setting for the solo."

"The third pedal in the chain is the Dynamic Auto Wah. I have it set as an envelope filter. It's kind of like the 70s synth bass effect (see P Funk.) I rarely use this one, but it's fun so I had to have it : ) I use it on the bass solo in "Black Blade" and I occasionally use it on my bass solo during Godzilla."

"The fourth pedal is an old school Flanger. Before Boss made guitar and bass pedals, they made one pedal for both This is an old BF-2. I have it set for a heavy chorus effect. I use this in the quiet section of Astronomy and during my bass solo."

"The fifth pedal is old school Limiter. I think all bass players should have a compressor or limiter of some kind. This is great for moments when I want to play with a soft timbre, but at a loud volume. This is great for the soft part in Astronomy. Instead of banging out those chords I can play very lightly and they come out as loud as I want. I also use this pedal when I ever I do the two handed tapping stuff."

"The sixth pedal is a Noise Gate. With all that power on stage: House sound, monitors, backline, lights... you're bound to get a buzz. When there's enough time to track the buzz down and kill it, it's great, but there are times when there just isn't enough time to do that. This pedal is great for that. I can set a threshold so that sound is only let through when I play above a certain volume. This minimizes noise. The pedal also acts as a mute which allows me to tune the bass without being heard. It's a very cool pedal."

"The last thing in the board is a TU-2? tuner. It's got the bass mode on it so it actually picks up the low B."

"I got the new boss pedal board which fits 6 pedals and a tuner. I think it's the BCB-60. It's got an onboard power and audio routing. I'm gonna attempt to describe all the effects and how I use them in the show"

"This is the work in progress picture. I'll take a finished picture on my next gig. I have to use 2 effects processors, which I'm not too happy about. The G-Force is fantastic, but I couldn't get it to absolutely everything I needed. I'm still using the Digitech IPS-33B for the complex harmonies."

"The Acoustic Simulator is a new addition as well, but I'm still trying to tweak that out. I've used the stuff on two gigs so far, and the sound has been completely different depending on the venue. I feel that the rig is capable of getting what I want, but I need to just get a better handle on what every dial does."

"At the heart of it is TC Electronic's Nova System. This little box is great. Although it's slightly scaled down from the G-Force rig that I'm used to, it still has tons of features for such a small unit. I got a VHT/Freyette GP3 preamp going into the Nova System. The Nova is going out to a Freyette 2/90/2 90 watt stereo power amp, then into a 4x12 cabinet. I'm still waiting to get the GP3 back from being repaired, so I haven't even heard it yet. I hope to have all of this ready for the BOC gig in Atlantic City at the end of the month."

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses the Voodoo Lab Control Switcher.

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses the Ernie Ball JR. Volume pedal.

"The output of the wireless goes into a TC Electronic Poly Tune. This is the coolest tuner ever. You can check the tuning of all 6 strings at once. This makes it really easy to tune during very short song breaks."

"From the tuner, we go into the input of a Line 6 Pod HD-500. That's right, a POD! I used to be a tube amp purist. So why did I start using a Pod? As I said before, the unpredictable nature of backline tube amps, made it nearly impossible to get a consistent sound. Also, since we started using in-ear monitors, we've been able to keep the stage volume way down. This made it easier to make this transition. It took me a long period of tweaking, but I finally got the Pod sounding just right. The HD models in there are very nice. The effects are also cool, but they too require a whole lot of tweaking."