Question
Hello
I'm from Brazil and watched every Megadeth concert here since 98.
Countdown to Extinction and Rust in Peace are among my favorite of all times albums, and since I'm starting to play the bass I would like to know what gear David Ellefson used on both albums.
Thanks
R. Pigatto
Answer
Great question R. Pigatto!
Gear questions are always best answers by the artist themselves, and David was more than happy to answer yours.
-ScorpioN
"Thank you for coming to the shows over the years and liking these two quintessential albums.
Interestingly, I used very similar gear on both albums, almost identical except I recorded all of "RIP" with two four string Jackson bass guitars. I recall one was red at the time and had an ebony fingerboard on it, which gave it a really bright 'snap' to the tone. I believe the other bass was either my silver one or the one that was originally painted yellow (came that way when I bought it on the "Peace Sells..." tour!) but was later painted black. That one also had a rosewood fingerboard but a very deep and phat sound and was better for slower songs because it was not the fastest playing bass for some reason.
I actually had to drop tune the E string for the first half of "Hangar 18" so I could get that part of the song down to the low D. Once the record was done I needed to recreate that bass line which led to me getting with Jackson to create their very first five string bass.
I used that five string bass on the RIP tour as well as to record much of the "CTE" album a couple years later. That bass was used on songs like "Ashes In Your Mouth" and "Countdown To Extinction". I also used one other four string Jackson bass for some of "CTE" as well, for songs like "Symphony of Destruction", "This Was My Life", "Sweating Bullets" and any other song that didn't require notes below the low E.
For amps on RIP I used a GK 800 RB bass amp head into a 1x15" Hartke cab and a 4x10" Hartke cab. I used that same setup for CTE but used only a pair of 4x10" Hartke cabs instead of the 1x15".
I used the purple heavy gauge Jim Dunlop Tortex picks and Rotosound Swing Bass round wound strings on both albums.
Now that you know the gear used, you can probably start to hear slight tonal differences between the albums as well as between those songs on CTE, too. One of the main differences between those two albums (besides the producers of Mike Clink and Max Norman) was that RIP was recorded on Ampex analog two inch 24 track tape and CTE was recorded entirely in digital, using the Sony 48 track digital tape machines which were brand new at that time. The clarity you hear on CTE is largely because of the digital recording and mixing methods used."
Enjoy!
David Ellefson
