Shock! Horror! For the Whitesnake 2005 World Tour, Reb has retired his trusty Suhr-modded Marshalls (detailed below) and replaced them with the John Suhr-designed OD100 head. Reb explains why opposite...

For more information on the OD100 amplifier, visit the following sites:

www.suhrguitars.com
www.customaudioelectronics.com

When I got John's latest head, the OD100, at the beginning of this latest tour, I plugged in and played one chord and stuck my two marshalls in a box in the back of the truck! The tone was similar to that of my Marshalls, just much bigger all the way around. I don't think I have ever plugged into an amp and had it sound that huge without messing with it. I'm told they have one at the Baked Potatoe in L.A. just in case Luke (Steve Lukather) stops in.

It is a basic and self explanatory amp with an excellent effects loop and very active controls. All of a sudden it made three things obsolete in my current set up. First of all, the clean sound blows away my bass head, so I was able to ditch that and its cabinet. Then, it has a great boost for solos, so the search for the perfect distortion pedal is over and I ditched the seven distortion pedals I have been trying out! It really is a great head - I don't ever remember playing through a head with such a great big Marshall sound that also had a wicked clean sound. Every amp I have played had either one or the other. I liked it so much I got another one for a back up."

Many thanks to Reb's guitar tech on the Whitesnake 2005 Tour, Cris Lepurage, for supplying photographs of Reb's new rig.

Both heads have been heavily modified by John Suhr to include a number of additional features. On the front panel, a depth control has been added to give additional low end to the amp. On the rear panel, an effects loop has been added with a send and return level, used to provide a clean, wet signal for delays and reverbs. Next a slave output has been added with a slave level control to send a dry signal direct from the preamp into rack effects. Finally a power amp presence control has been added to control treble direct from the power amp section of the head (the front panel presence controls the preamp section). All 'Homegrown' owners will also know that Reb's amps are fitted with "the irritating plastic thing that always falls out"!

Reb's Marshalls are used for his dirty, distorted sound. For his clean sound, unusually, Reb uses a Guild Hartke bass head with a TC electronics multi effects unit for wetness. The bass head gives a very loud full clean sound. This can be seen in the rack shot above.

Larger in size than a regular Marshall cabinet, Reb's Mesa cabs are loaded with 30 watt Celestion speakers, which he mikes off-centre from the speaker cone. His taped guides for mic placement can be seen in the photo above.

For his live work with Whitesnake, Reb has been using regular Marshall straight front cabinets with vintage weave grill cloth with 4 cabs used in smaller venues and 6 in larger arenas.

The Marshall heads in the photo above are dummies and are not used.

Many thanks to Reb's tech on the Whitesnake 2004 Tour, Matt "Maddi" Schieferstein, for allowing us access to Reb's live rig.