From an article in Musician magazine May 97 "Sandman also owns an impressive collection of Electro-Harmonix effects. Right now he has a Memory Man analog delay and a Poly Chorus set up, and onstage he uses the Electro-Harmonix Microsynthesizer multi-effects unit. "The think I like about Electro-Harmonix boxes," he explains, "is that the knobs always go way past any sound that you'd consider normal. Plus they have really big knobs so you can work the dials with your feet while you're playing."
Sandman is also used to operating his 688 while playing guitar, bass, or organ, which is one of the reasons he favors a simple setup. He's not adverse to overdubs, but he does like to capture the feel of bass and drums grooving together for the basic track of a song. To compensate for gain boosts and other level problems, he has two Aphex Easy Rider four-channel compressors, which give him eight separate channels of compression. For digital delay and reverb, he relies on a new TC Electronic 2290 and his trusty old Lexicon PCM-70. "I love the PCM-70. I used to bring it to all the Morphine gigs when we were playing loft parties and small clubs. Everything always sounded better with it. I also have a PCM-41, and I've got a PCM-42 in a different rack." Topping it all off is the latest addition to Hi-N-Dry, a Tube Tech stereo tube compressor, through which Sandman runs all of his final mixes on their way to his two Panasonic SV-3700 DAT machines. "With the Tube Tech," he admits, "everything sounded about 20 percent better."
Sandman's main Morphine ax is a brown sixties Premiere bass with only two strings on it. He plays it with a slide through a big Ampeg SVT amp. The original Morphine one-string bass hangs on the wall, along with Sandman's self-customized Tritar, a no-name bass adorned with a tulip-print wallpaper finish and outfitted with three strings. (A white back-up Tritar, originally a suro four-string, stands next to the two-string.) The Tritar is also played with a slide, though Sandman sometimes runs it through his Ampeg Reverbrocket instead of the SVT. The collection's rounded out by a '59 Fender Esquire (Sandman's "low guitar" in his pre-Morphine band Treal Her Right), a Silvertone, a red, sparkle-finish, vintage Premier guitar that says "Monza" on the headstock and old basses by Hagstrom and Univox.
Minimalism has always been an important part of the Morphine aesthetic; on of Sandman's favorite quips is "less is best." That's clearly part of what makes home recording attractive to him. "When you go to a real studio, they say things like 'Well, the first day we'll mostly just work on drum sounds,'" he says with a laugh, "The drum sounds I get using two or three nicrophones are great, and the drums are always ready to go."An inventive spendthrift with a penchant for bargain hunting at garage sales, flea markets and second-hand music stores, Sandman has amassed a colorful collection of odds and ends, from two plastic toy saxophones that sit on a shelf with his Octavia pedal behind the drums, to a couple of vintage Eighties drum machines; a Casio RZ-1 and an Oberheim with a Stretch DX. He recently acquired a cheap plastis set of Kawasaki drum synthesizer pads, manufactured by Remco, which he's quite proud of. And one of his best garage-sale finds was an Argosy taxicab-dispatcher microphone, which he uses onstage and in the studio. "You can never have too much stuff," he jokes as he picks up a Transformer toy microphone. "I did the vocals to 'You Speak My Language' with this.
Sandman has been mixing with only one working speaker, a Radio Shack Minimus-7, for the past few months. But he's finally decided to order a pair of high-end Meyer Sound powered speakers to replace the broken set of old Ohms that he bought with his still-functioning Nikko NR-819 receiver over a decade ago. The Technics dual cassette deck with an HX-Pro unit and Admiral CD player are newer purchases.
"That last few years it's been sounding consistently good," Sandman concludes. "But I'm definately going to go out and track down anotherTascam 688 before this article comes out."
