In this article we will be discussing the gear Shawn Lane used when touring during the Powers Of Ten years. If you have listened to Shawn’s music, you will notice a major change in his tone a round 1995. When he began playing with basist Jonas Helborg and drummer Jeff Sipes he used different gear. But it still sounds like Shawn.
I will be primarily discussing Shawn’s live setup with the Holmes amps and not the custom
Bob Gjika amp
known as the 10^N. Bob has recently began building these amps again so if you like Shawn’s tone on his CD, check it out.
Taken from Bob’s website: “For the discerning guitarist, the search for the right amp is like looking for the Holy Grail. Is the 10^n yours?” Yes Bob, I would say it is. Shawn used the 10^N amps when recording the “Powers Of Ten” in the studio and sometimes when playing live. That monster amp deserves its own post!
I rote this article to give fans of Shawn an idea of some of the gear he was using and to post an audio demo. As I own most of this gear besides the 10^N amp, I will give an in-depth review. Not enough information exists on this monster player!
How to achieve the round smooth tone of Shawn Lane
Many guitarists ask how to achieve Shawn’s smooth tone and while tone comes from your hands, gear also plays a big part! Sorry, but you couldn’t achieve that tone from a Fender practice amp! So, at the end of this article I will share what gear you can purchase on today’s market that will get you a full smooth tone if used correctly.
Who is Shawn Lane?
If you are asking this question you are not alone. It is impossible to sum up Shawn in a small paragraph.
this article from Guitar World
does the best job of describing him.
Shawn’s influence on tone.
As a guitarist, few players have influenced my guitar tone as Shawn Lane. I first saw a solo he did with Sean Rickman on drums. After watching the video, I thought… “That tone… I want that tone…!
Shawn completely changed the way I viewed the guitar… along with the amazing Eric Johnson. Before hearing of him I was largely exposed to rock and blues players who were extremely good players in their own right. But when I listened to players like Shawn, Eric Johnson and Allan Holdsworth, they didn’t sound like other guitar players. They had something different!
The journey of finding Shawn’s smooth tone
The first part of this journey was to find out what gear Shawn Lane was using and to have that full yet silky smooth distortion at my own finger tips. Perhaps you are looking to have a similar tone to Shawn’s and what I have learned along the way may get you closer to that goal!
Sound demos and videos
Before I talk about his gear, I want to show you a few examples. The following demos are of my clean tone and the Westbury W20 tube distortion. My clean tone is a Vigier Shawn Lane signature running in to the Westbury and then in to the front of a Yamaha DG80 amp with a 1-12 speaker. The reverb is coming from the amp and I am running a Yamaha UD Stomp in to it’s affects loop for a bit of delay. This should give you an excellent example of what the Westbury sounds like.
In the following audio examples, I wanted to let the pedal breathe a bit and didn’t want this to be a shread fest. I am playing over a looped drone that is reversed similar to what Shawn did in some of his recordings.
I do not yet own the 10^n amps made by Bob Gjika. But if you listen to my Westbury and then to Bob’s amps, you can tell where Shawn got that smooth tone we are all looking for.
Shawn’s instructional videos.
The first thing I did to find out more about Shawn, was get his instructional videos that he did in the early 90’s. I watched them many times to get the concepts down as he went through it quite fast. I can still watch them today and learn a thing or… three.
Near the end, I got what I wanted! I found that at the time he was using a 70’s Holmes Mississippi Bluesmaster amp with a 4-10 cab. This was used for his clean tone and a Westbury w20 Tube overdrive was used for distortion!
Now all I had to do was find the gear. Well turns out that gear is quite hard to find. However, it is not impossible to achieve a very similar tone with current gear. And with a little digging and patience it is still possible to find the Homes Bluesmaster and Westbury…
History of the Holmes Mississippi Blues Master amp.
Homes Bluesmaster
The Bluesmaster was a solid-state amp made in Mississippi in the late 70’s. The amp was a single channel amp with the basic standard controls. You had Drive, volume, treble, bass, reverb and a unique control called super T. (It really does live up to its name. Wanna slice some heads off? Just turn it up all the way! FATALITY!)
This knob acts not only as a global high-end control but also as a volume. The secret to using this amp is mixing the super T in and out with the master volume to get the desired tone. Look at the super t knob as a gain/volume/presence boost all rolled in to one unique control.
Holmes amps had nkt 275 components in them making this a solid-state amp with a fuzz face built in. (The first fuzz face pedals used nkt 275 components.)
When knew, the amp came in a head form with a 4-10 cab. I do not think the amp was ever made in a combo version although Holmes did make some combo amps.
Holmes amps was founded by Hal Aiken, a musician and a part time employee and Harrison Holmes who owned a music store. They made solid-state amps and then sold the company and the trademark to On-Site Music in the early 1980’s. On-site Music continued making a few amps until they closed.
After Holmes was sold, the logos on the amps went from all caps to lower case. An old page is still up on the Holmes website that talks about the Holmes amps and has a schematic that you electronic folks might find useful.
The Westbury w20 tube overdrive.
Westbury W20
The Westbury w20 was a tube overdrive made in the 70’s by none other than… Westbury! They made a few amps and guitars, but I have never had a chance to try them out. I wonder if their amps had the same distortion circuit as the W20?
The Westbury has only two knobs, volume and gain so it is the world’s simplest pedal to use. I only wish it could take a battery.
“It goes from an excellent moderate overdrive to full on tube drive. It uses an AC high voltage driven 12AX7 and just destroys all the starved plate tube designed pedals. Great tone, from mild to warm, to flat out killer overdrive.
Like all tube amps the 12ax7 tube will need to be replaced after a while, and the thing just perks up to that nice warm overdrive again. AC powered to get the tube good and warm so it can do its thing.” (Taken from effectsfreak.com.)
Through the right amp, I would described the Westbury as being very sax like, having a full round tone. What drew me to it was that it did not have harsh high frequencies that sounded like you were being stabbed with an ice pick.
You would probably have to adjust the EQ on your amp to get the best sound from the Westbury as no EQ is built in to the pedal. A few videos have been uploaded on Youtube but none sound remoatly close to the pedal accept for mine. Most people are running the pedal directly through a mixer… eww!
The Westbury was eventually discontinued and got in to the hands of Nady. The Nady TD1 tube overdrive is supposed to be a W20 circuit with some improvements. The improvements being the 3 band EQ that was added so that the tone could be shaped to match the amp being used.
Shawn Lane’s live tone
It is said that the Holmes Mississippi Bluesmaster was Shawn’s favorite amp. I am not sure if he really liked it or just chose to use it because it was the first amp he ever purchased. Although Shawn did have Peavey copy the amp and the Westbury pedal in their Profex rack units when he switched gear a round 1995.
When playing live, Shawn had 2 to 4 of the Holmes amps running at once. He would delay the signal going to each amp with an Boss dd2 delay. One amp would run in real time, the next would receive the signal 20 MS later, then 30 MS, and 50 MS. Depending on the room he would adjust as needed.
Shawn had the Holmes set to slightly breakup when strumming hard, but it was only used for his clean sound.
This kind of rig is like adding layers to your tone. Shawn got the idea from playing in dry rooms. Ever played some places where the sound just seems to die? Outside is a good example!
Shawn was also a big fan of Allan Holdsworth who had a very similar tone. Allan used large rack units in early days and then used a Yamaha UD stomp with the Yamaha dg80 amps in the 90s to achieve the same thing. So maybe Shawn got the idea from him, but I can’t verify that through the interviews or AIM clinics.
He would stack the Westbury W20 on top for the distortion sound. And it was the Holmes Westbury combination that gave him that signature smooth tone. (Plus, the way he played before anyone gets their guitar strings all in a wod.) LOL
Shawn’s other live setup with the 10^N amps
As I have mentioned before, Bob Gjika built Shawn an amp at some point and that was the amp that was used to record Powers of Ten in the studio. I always thought it was the Holmes but it is not.
But Shawn also used those amps live when he could. There are a few videos where he is running two of Bob’s amps in stereo and it sounds amazing.
You can certainly tell a difference between the two setups if you listen. The amp that Bob built sounds much fuller and has much more saturation than the Westbury pedal. As it should for a tube amp built in a “single ended” design.
Bob is building those amps again and I would highly recommend checking them out.
Some of Shawn’s later gear.
Sometime around 1995 Shawn Lane began playing with bassists Jonas Helborg and drummer Jeff Sipes. (I took drum lessons from Jeff for a bit and he is one of the nicest guys in the world!)
Peavey was making some Profex rack units for the market and Shawn had them copy the Holmes and Westbury pedal, storing them as patches. It is still unclear today if you could have the same exact presets with the standard units that are still out there, or if they were completely custom made.
As stated in one of his clinics, he chose this setup because the Holmes and Westbury pedals couldn’t take the road anymore. A set of rack units also makes for a better flying partner than a heavy amp. Racks are easier to set up than 4 amps as you can just rent an amp when you get to your destination.
Shawn also began using Vigier guitars because they gave him an incredibly low action. I own one and I can say that they are very good guitars.
Shawn used this set up until he passed. I read somewhere that he was thinking about changing from Vigier guitars to another company but that never happened.
He was also a big fan of the Line6 DD4 pedals and would use multiple pedals together for some interesting sounds.
Finding the Westbury W 20
So, on this strange obsessive journey to find this allusive gear, I managed to find the Westbury W20 first. It was found on Craigslist although not in my area.
It took me a while to find one but I wasn’t very aggressive about doing so. I paid $150 for it when I bought it and it apparently wasn’t working properly. But as I knew I wouldn’t find another one soon, I decided to gamble. When I got it in, it was working fine and only needed a knew foot switch. It has been with my rig ever since.
Finding the Holmes Mississippi Bluesmaster
As people do when they get bored, I got on Ebay. And to my surprise, there was a Holmes Mississippi Bluesmaster head listed. So, I decided to snatch it up. I paid $500 or so in total. I saw another head for $1000 but I wasn’t going to pay that high of a price.
When I received the amp, it was in excellent condition! It looked like someone had changed the outer case of the amp because it looked so good. Even the corner protectors did not have any discoloration to them. A few knobs were not original but who cares! I had to have it repaired however, as the last person had run a bass through it and had done some damage to the electronics.
When trying out the amp for the first time I was surprised at how full it sounded and how fast it captured my notes. It did not seem to get sloppy like my tube amps but that may just be an artifact of tube amps vs solid state amps. Besides Bob’s amps. 🙂
The super T control is a pretty neat control to play with. But it takes getting used to as it controls both volume and highs.
After having the amp for a while, a fuse blew or something and I just never got around to having it repaired again. So, it has been sitting for the last 5 years.
My thoughts on the Bluesmaster and Westbury.
As of now I have not played the Holmes in about 5 years, but I still have it. I should have it repaired again. It is a unique amp for a solid state but you can achieve a far better clean tone with other amps.
I will never get rid of the Westbury pedal! If ran through the correct amp, it will give you that Shawn Lane lead tone right out of the box… mostly because the pedal is a giant box lol.
There is a certain mid-range sound with this pedal that I can’t seem to find with others. I would describe it as “very sax like”. The pedal gives you a thick full tone with rounded highs. I can see why Shawn used these pedals for many years. If it aint broke don’t fix it! 😛
How to achieve a similar tone to Shawn Lane today?
So how would one go about achieving a similar tone today? After having the Holmes amp, I do not believe it has to be a big part of the equation. Although the amp adds just a bit with the fuzface being built in, the Westbury will get you 90 percent their on its own.
If you are still looking for a fuzz face to add, the Morgan Amps NKT275 Germanium Fuzz Pedal would be a great addition. I myself am not much of a Fuzz guy but I love the sound of this pedal!
Check out this short demo to hear what it sounds like.
If you can find a Westbury pedal and run it through your existing amp you can still get that smooth distortion. You may have to play with your EQ a bit though. Be aware of what other distortion pedals sound like through your existing amp. If they sound harsh and natty due to the speakers you use or the amp, the Westbury will sound the same.
If you can’t find a Westbury look for the Nady TD1. I have no personal experience with this pedal yet but would like to compare them. From Youtube demos it seems to sound very similar to the Westbury.
I have been running the Westbury through an old Yamaha dg80 amp from the late 90’s and really enjoy the tone. Mine is a single 1-12 speaker and sounds full for being so small.
This is the same amp that Allan Holdswroth used for many years. The amp has a few presets, but I only use one. I have it set to slightly break up when pushed hard, and I use the Westbury to get my distortion.
But what if you can’t find any of these pedals I have talked about? Well it’s time to look elsewhere at other great options.
Hermida Audio Zendrive
Another excellent pedal that will get you close to this tone is the Hermida Audio Zendrive. Since this pedal was designed to emulate the Dumble Overdrive Special’s saturation and compression, it has a very smooth tone. If you find one pick it up as these pedals are getting harder to find.
Allan Holdsworth Signature Overdrive by J Rockett
Whether you are in to his music or not, most of you will know who Master Allan Holdsworth is. Even if his music is not your bag of guitar picks, you should appreciate the fact that his tone is quite different than others.
Like Shawns it is very round and smooth. Allan always wanted to play a horn and this really came through in his tone.
Behringer Vamp
Behringer really? That’s right folks, the cheapest thing you never knew you needed for your smooth tone. The Vamp is a pod type modeler containing 32 amp models, digital effects, an audio interface and a very affordable price tag. Check it out! If anything these pod type modelers are good practice tools so that you wont annoy family by practicing late at night.
I heard of the V amp through a guitarist on Youtube named Marshal Harison. He uses this along with a Yamaha DG amp and Yamaha UD Stomp delay unit to achieve a very smooth tone. He also uses a Vigier Shawn Lane model. Check his channel out.
What about tube amps?
I have found that it is hard to get a smooth tone like this from a tube amp. Unless we are talking about the amp Bob built for Shawn.
It probably has to do with the way that both solid-state and tube amps react to your playing. SS amps seem to grab your notes much faster and have less give. I have found that many people that look for this tone use solid state amps or high-end modelers. (If there is such a thing.) 😊
What are your thoughts?
Have you found a rig that will give you that smooth Shawn Lane Allan Holdsworth tone? If so post it in the comments! If you have any demos I may could put up that would be even better. I would love to add it to the list.
Sneaky ways to find guitar gear
As you know, some of this gear is quite rare but I have found a few sneaky ways to find guitar gear over the years.
Check out these sneaky tips
To find out how you can find that rare guitar pedal before your buddy does.
References and other helpful links
Stop calling Allan Holdsworth «Allen”! Yes, it IS important!
Corrected 😀 I could of sworn his name was spelled Allen.
Great story! Loves all the information. I have recently been getting into Shawns playing again.
The fast stuff is great fun to play but its his slower phrases and clean playing that really do it for me.
I am currently using a Les Paul with a Dimarzio Tone Zone and Humbucker from Hell.
Mesa Mark III with an evm12l
For drive sounds I use a Fulltone Plimsoul for dirty rhythm and less saturated leads and use a Way Huge Swollen Pickle for the high gain sounds stacked into the plimsoul
I am not able to run multiple heads so I use a holy grail reverb with a long decay but the blend is set so its mostly guitar signal, i use this for my long delay and then a mxr carbon copy with modulation for the short delay. This gives the sound the space that I hear with shawn.
Rolling off some volume and tone from the guitar add to the smoothness, but the build of the les paul gets me most of the way.
Hey Robert! I totally agree. The fast stuff is excellent but the slower stuff just shows how much Shawn was enfluenced by other instruments other than guitar. One of the things that I took most from his slower playing was the use of the bar for Vibrato.
Les Paul huh? That’s pretty cool. I enjoy the sound of them but I prefer the feel of a Strat style. In saying that I have never owned a Les Paul… yet.
I certainly haven’t had much experience with Mesa!
youre absolutely right about the bar, the small inflections and micro tonal stuff he achieves with bar sounds so great. I have a strat as well and play in his style with the bar and clean tones but the distorted tones arent there with single coil pickups.
The Mesa is just so dang tight sounding and has great punch, with saggy amps the fast runs turned to mush, mark 3 4 and 5s all can get the tight high gain sound and you hear everything!
Yeah, that’s true. I would love to have a Strat with a Vigier Shawn Lane model trem system on it. I think the Deluxe Strats sound very good though.
I know what you mean about the amp sag. It’s a problem on most tube amps I have tried anyway.
You should check out the Gjika 10n amplifier. This is the new version of the Gold Amp Shawn used during the Powers of Ten era. This is an all tube amp that will produce the smoothest tone you’ll ever hear. In fact, the tone Shawn got from his Gold Amp is an evolution from his original tone from the holmes/westbury rig.
Hey Fabio! I rote this post a few months back and have since heard some demos of the Jgika amp. It sounds awesome that’s for sure. I am in the process of updating this post with some info on the amp. I know Shawn used it for the actual recording process of POT but I don’t think he used it live much as it was very heavy. I know a guy that streams the Gjika amp setup a ton and have been trying to get him to send me some demos so I can put that on the site. I will be covering the Gjika amp in another post though as this one is quite long. I will also be posting a review of the Vigier Shawn Lane model. Finding time to write for me is harder than doing vids haha.
Hi and thanks for all the information on this incredible player his amplifier and set up I found one of these Mississippi blues master amplifiers head only online and was wondering did they make other models or are they all the same alot of the markings are worn off I don’t know what size it is or what model number but it does resemble the one you have pictured thanks for any information you can offer in advance. Tom
Hello Tom, I believe Holmes only made one model of the Bluesmaster. I know that in later years after Holmes sold the company, the logo was changed to all lower case. I am not sure of the differences but I do not believe the later Bluesmaster is the same as the earlier models. Anyway I think the amp only came in a head form. I know Holmes made other amps but not sure if it was when Harison had the company or if it was after it was sold. If it has the Super T knob I would say that it is certainly the Bluesmaster model.