Tom Bukovac

Tom is playing this guitar in the opening of his January 2020 episode of Rig Rundown, and timestamped at 3:49, Tom will go on to explain a little bit about this guitar.

"Well, this is a '61 SG Custom, or Les Paul Custom, as it says.."

"They're usually white, and this is a factory black... but this is one of less than probably three ever made."

Tom asks John to pick another guitar from the vault, and at 8:04 he begins to talk about his 3 tone sunburst 335 as John hands it to him. He mentions he got the guitar from Gruhn's Guitars in Nashville, TN, at the behest of John's buddy "Greg" who had convinced Tom to purchase it, perhaps Greg Koch? Who can really say...

"This is a '58 335, first year, with the unbound fretboard... That's another Gruhn's guitar, that your buddy Greg talked me into buying..."

At 8:33 Tom begins to tell the story this guitar being put to the test against another 335 he'd owned previously, just before playing it plugged into his rig.

"I had a '58 that I loved before I got this... I kept comparing, I can't afford to keep both of them... I couldn't decide which one I liked better, but I ended up going with this one, a little bit lighter."

At 13:38 John hands Tom his red Firebird, as he begins to say a little about his love for them.

"I'm a big Firebird freak... I like both the reverse and the non-reverse... this guitar is absolutely magic."

"This guitar was not like this when I first got it, and I've spent tons of time and money making it killer..."

Tom mentions this guitar has the set of P90 pickups he would consider his absolute favourite of all time, after playing many different P90 equipped instruments.

at 14:34 Tom details some of the issues these guitars are known to have, and some solutions he invested in to make this Firebird more to his liking.

At 18:35 Tom starts on about his '61 Gretsch 6120, that has a considerable amount of flame in the grain of its maple top.

"That's a '61 6120, and it's got a good bit of flame on it, which is kind of rare for these... this has got the classic Gretsch tone."

at 20:05, after some lovely demonstrative playing, Tom mentions the pleasing sustain of this guitar.

At 20:53, Tom goes into his '38 Martin 000-18, after John asks about his last guitar visible on screen.

"This is definitely the best acoustic guitar I personally have ever had..."

Tom's demonstrative playing with this guitar truly does sound spectacular.

After John decides they should change gears and discuss amps, Tom starts in at 23:17 with his unique Gretsch combo amp.

"...all these [old] Gretsch amps were made by Valco, and this is a model 6161..."

Tom explains these amps originally had multiple smaller speakers, but this specific unit was converted to a single 12" speaker at some point, and he loves it.

At 24:10, Tom explains his preference for a specific year and model of Marshall head, the plexi '68 Super Bass 100w version.

"...this is probably the best amp I've ever owned in my entire life... my favourite variant of old Marshall is the plexi 1968 Super Bass, with the lay down transformer, I buy every one of these I can find, because they're the best Marshalls..."

Tom explains his love of the clean tones he achieves with this type of head with the range of volume up to about 4, and goes on to mention Eric Johnson discussing these amps, and even refer's to this model as the Van Halen Marshall as well.

At 27:00 Tom goes into an amp he spent a long time trying to find, the Sunn Coliseum PA master volume version.

He cites this amp as the first amp to ever use a master volume, and cites Mississippi Queen by Mountain as the inspiration for hunting this amp down, in his search for Leslie West's guitar tone, and was pleasantly surprised by the versatility of the amp.

"..this is the first master volume amp ever made... KT88s..."

"...it's the exact model that Leslie West used on Mississippi Queen... I bought one just to see what it was like... if I could use it for that one cool sound once in awhile... turns out to be a lot more versatile than I thought it was going to be..."

at 27:55 Tom describes his very early, potentially hand built on a "kitchen table" Matchless HC30.

"...I sent a photo of this thing, a bunch of pictures, to Rick Perotta... he went off on great detail about this being one of the first amps he made on his kitchen table..."

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source) one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source) one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Peterson StroboStomp tuner.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source) one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Spontaneous Audio Devices Son of Kong.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source) one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Way Huge Green Rhino overdrive pedal.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source) one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Xotic RC Booster.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source) one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Boss TR-2 tremolo pedal.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source) one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the EHX POG2 octave pedal.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source), one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the EHX Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source), one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Boss GE-7 EQ pedal.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source), one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Dunlop DVP1 volume pedal.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source), one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Way Huge Fat Sandwich.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source), one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Nobels ODR-1 overdrive pedal.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source), one of the pedals that can be seen in his studio pedalboard is the Line 6 EX-1¸expression pedal.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source) one of the pedals that can be seen in his live pedalboard is the Ernie Ball VP JR. volume pedal.

In this photo, which shows his pedalboard built for him by XTS (source) one of the pedals that can be seen in his live pedalboard is the Peterson StroboStomp 2.

According to the Pigtronix's website, Bukovac uses the Pigtronix Echolution delay pedal.

In this photo, which shows Bukovac in studio with his rig, one of the pedals that can be seen in the pedalboard is the DigiTech 5th Gen Whammy pedal.

In this photo, which shows Bukovac in studio with his rig, one of the pedals that can be seen in the pedalboard is the Boss PW-10 wah pedal.