Mel Schacher's (Grand Funk Railroad) Setup

[Luckydog]

I was in a theater costume store in West Virginia years ago, while on travel, and the owner said, "You should have been here yesterday!" He said Farner was in his store looking at costumes while on a tour, and put on a very nice swashbuckling sailing ship captain's outfit. He was checking himself out in a mirror and singing (to himself), "I'm your captain, yeah yeah yeah yeah!" I thought it was hilarious.

 

[bobyoung53]

I saw Mark Farner here in Peru sometime last year, the sound wasn't very good and I don't think Farner was real impressed, he wouldn't do an encore no matter how loud we yelled. The bass sound didn't impress me at at all (I wanted to go up onstage and grab it as I knew all the stuff they played. It could have been the fault of the sound guy though but the bass has no grind at all and had a very SS type of sound, forgot what kind of bass hs used.

 

[Guiseppe]

A while back I was chatting with Bill Lordan (drummer for Robin Trower) and mentioned that Grand Funk Railroad had been my earliest influence, and was definitely why I play bass. I asked him what he thought of Don Brewer, and he said, "he's a competent drummer"

I actually like some of Don's drum parts, but he was definitely responsible for the demise of GFR. I saw the remnants of GFR (Mel, Don, and the rest) last summer and they basically mailed it in. I was sad after the show.

 

[FranF]

I feel he had a better, less "fart-laden" tone with the Gibson
(Grabber or Ripper, I forget which) on the 1976 live L.P.,
"Caught In The Act"

Actually most of Caught In The Act was recorded with his metallic blue '65 P. I saw them twice on that tour and that's the one he used.

 

[P. Aaron]

I recall the review pasted on the GF LIVE! album's poster for On Time:

Simplistic, nihilistic. The drumming guaranteed to drive you up the wall. Unbelievable!

 

[bobyoung53]

I recall the review pasted on the GF LIVE! album's poster for On Time:

Same here although I had thought it was on the inside of the gatefold cover but when I went to look for it I couldn't find it so it had to have been on the poster. They had a lot of bad reviews IIRC on that poster.