Richie Castellano

In this guitar pick photo posted by Castellano, the Dunlop Jazz III picks can be seen.

"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."

"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 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."

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

In this pick photo posted by Castellano, the Dunlop Ultex 2.0 sharp pick can be seen.

"I have a fantastic Rickenbacker 4001 from the 70's, but its range is limited to rock. I need an overall good sounding bass that'll work for anything. My favorite sounding bass is a P-bass with passive pickups. The natural sound of that bass just sounds right to me for some reason. It fills up the frequencies that I listen for in a bass."

"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 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."

"My old wireless just took a dump, so I just got an Audio Technica 4000 series. This wireless sounds great and works great. There's actually some tone from the instrument coming through which is something that a lot of wireless systems can't do. I also got custom picks made. They are dunlop .88mm tortex."

"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"

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 Hammond XK2 organ.

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses the Audio Technica AEW-4100 wireless system.

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses the Audio-Technica M2 IEM system.

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

According to the Blue Oyster Cult's live gear list, Castellano uses the Alesis NanoPiano module.

"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."

"The Pod's mono output goes into a BBE Sonic Stomp pedal. One unexpected side effect of turning the cabinet simulation off and only using the Pod as a preamp was the loss of the low end. Don't get me wrong, the tone was great, but that super low end depth that you get from a real amp, was just not there. This pedal was the perfect solution to these missing freqencies."

"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."

"The drums were recorded using a Roland TD-6 kit with a Alesis Surge cymbals. I used this kit as a MIDI controller and recorded that MIDI data into Pro Tools. After that, I sent that data to FXpansion's BFD2 plug in. To get that Abbey Road tea towel sound, I used very little ambience on the kit. The room mics were all muted. I also used BFD2's dampening function to get the drums to sound as close to the record as I could."

"Vocals were straight forward. I used an Audio Technica AT-4033 condensor microphone into the SSL preamp."

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

In this short Instagram video, Castellano can be seen playing the Line 6 Variax guitar, which has the DiMarzio Tone Zone S humbucker pickup.

In this short Instagram video, Castellano can be seen playing the Line 6 Variax guitar, which has the DiMarzio Area 61 pickup.

In this photo, Castellano's guitar and strings can be seen, with strings being the Ernie Ball 10-46 Slinky strings.

"Cool spare backline guitar tonight. A Brent Mason model PRS."

In this rack photo taken by Castellano, the MOTU 1248 can be seen in his rack.

"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 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."