Worship Guitarist Confessional - June 10

I'm not a worship leader, and this is not going to be a video confessional, but I wanted to give a little insight into my gear each week, as well as my thoughts on how the service went.

First off, I was a little late (as always), and noticed that our drummer wasn't there yet, either. I get everything set up (which is a lot of stuff this week), take a look at my phone to check the time, and realize it is 8:15am. We should be rehearsing by now and the drummer still isn't here. Steve tries to call him a few times and can't get a hold of him. Steve even spoke with him yesterday and confirmed that he'd be there. I tried to call him as well and just got voicemail. Another week without drums and without Steve getting advanced notice to program drums on his keyboard.

As we start playing, I realize that the bass guitar is slightly off the beat. He forgot to bring his headphones so he is trying to listen to the beat coming from the mains (pointing away from him) and seems to be picking up the slap back sound coming from the back of the room. Steve was playing with his new electric guitar and was excited to play it for the first time in service, but figured that his acoustic would be better for everyone to pick up the rhythm, so he changed guitars.

First service comes and goes, and we play pretty good and energetic considering the lack of drums. The second service gets ready to start and Steve picks up his acoustic guitar and nothing comes from it. His guitar is silent through the mixing board. So he puts on his electric and strums it once and realizes it is slightly out of tune. He doesn't have time to tune it so we just all come in together. Luckily, there were only 2 songs before the announcements so Steve had time to swap out batteries in his guitar and it worked the rest of the service.

So, if you were wondering why Steve didn't post his worship confessional this week, it probably was he just needed to let this week go (for good reason). Pray for Steve a lot. It seems like he has had a rough couple of months with Sunday morning worship and he needs to be lifted up. Pray for the drummer that has missed multiple times without notice that he can find what it is he is looking for in life, and in music. And finally, pray that more drummers find their way to our church.

Now onto my rig...

This week, I changed out my pickups in my Stratocaster. I got the Tex Mex pickup set and they sound great. So here is my chain:

Stratocaster (guitar) - Boss SD-1 Overdrive - HAO Rust Driver Distortion - Fulltone Fulldrive 2 Overdrive - Fender Tuner to 2 separate outs (1 out to PODxt Live direct to board; 1 out to Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Amp - speaker out to isolation cabinet with 1x12" speaker - mic'ed to mixing board)

I use the Boss SD-1 primarily as a boost for leads since I have the distortion level turned way down but it works well for some very slight overdrive sound. The HAO Rust Driver is a great high gain pedal that I used for Your Grace is Enough. The Fulldrive 2 is just about the perfect overdrive to keep on all the time.

Here was our setlist:

Love The Lord (With All My Heart)
King of Majesty
Only You
Before You
Only Grace
How Great is Our God
Your Grace is Enough

Next week, we have our fill-in drummer coming to play so that will be fun. Also, another guitarist who plays with us once a month will be playing, too. It's going to be a good time!!! I will try to take a picture of my rig next month so you can see how many power cords and cables there are. It's pretty impressive.